Feds under attack in firearms case

Wednesday, July 25, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.

The U.S. government has found itself on the defense as it prosecutes a man who 19 years ago was the central figure in Southern Nevada's most infamous child kidnapping case.

Jerald Burgess, who was acquitted in the 1978 abduction of 6-year-old Cary Sayegh -- the son of wealthy local business owners -- is being tried on charges of illegal possession of firearms. Burgess is a felon, convicted of sexual assault and tax evasion.

Burgess is alleged to have sold a small-caliber handgun with a homemade silencer to an undercover agent, as well as possessing a semiautomatic rifle.

His attorney was expected to step up his attack against the government today by calling purported FBI informant Franklyn Perry to the witness stand. The defense is trying to show that Perry was acting as a government agent, helping authorities entrap Burgess by having the convicted felon deliver guns to him.

Perry was arrested last week on unrelated charges of fraud stemming from a pyramid scheme that allegedly bilked hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars.

Burgess' attorney, Bob Glennen, on Tuesday accused federal law enforcers of outrageous conduct after the government rested its case. His first witness, Burgess' wife, Phyllis, testified that someone had been in her house tampering with her safe and storage unit before Burgess' arrest last October.

Glennen asked questions that hinted that agents of the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms acted improperly in their investigation that uncovered two guns and several boxes of ammunition in the Burgess home.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Connell said what many were thinking in his first question during cross-examination.

"Are you saying that evidence was planted by the FBI or ATF?" O'Connell asked.

Referring to ammunition federal agents found in a broken, locked freezer that the couple used for storage of jewelry and baseball cards, she replied, "I don't know how it got to my freezer, sir."

Phyllis Burgess testified that the key to the locked freezer was kept in her bedroom safe, and only she knew the combination. However, on the day the FBI and ATF arrived at her home with search warrants, the key was inside the freezer lock.

O'Connell produced a 1976 receipt for a .380 caliber pistol she purchased at a local store. The receipt showed she paid $18.30 for two boxes of bullets.

O'Connell then showed her two boxes of .380 cartridges confiscated from her freezer. Each had a price tag of $9.15. Still, Phyllis Burgess maintained, she did not recall ever seeing those boxes in her freezer before the government search.

U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson did not let the jury hear evidence that an apparent listening device was discovered on the frame of a picture that the Burgesses kept in the attic. Outside the presence of the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Ko took issue with the suggestion, declaring "There was no bug in the house ... (It's) absurd."

In 1981 a Clark County District Court jury acquitted Burgess of kidnapping in the case in which Sayegh vanished from the playground of the Albert Einstein Hebrew School.