“Loving” Dad’s 22 Hour Torture Fest of His Little Girl
Zarya Jocelyn Burgess was born December 23, 2003, to parents Joshua Lee Burgess and Akeisha Pope, who met as students at Weddington High School in Matthews, North Carolina. She was described as an ever-smiling, sweet, and happy girl. Zarya’s parents were 15 and 16 years old when she was born, and like many high school romances, it was short-lived.
Although Zarya went on to live with her mother, her father remained very involved in her life. She often spent time on the weekends that Josh was home in Monroe. The two were very close, with Joshua describing Zarya as his “mini-me.” He constantly bragged about how much he loved her and how he wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world. He was quoted as saying, “I love this little angel more than anything. Nothing beats quality time with my daughter.”
On his now-deleted Facebook page, Joshua essentially dedicated all of his posts to how much he loved his daughter, which makes what happened later on in our story even more bizarre and tragic. With this in mind, I think it’s important to give a small shout-out to creator Paris Milan, who covered Zarya’s case in 2019. Without her, the screenshots of Joshua and Zarya at the county fair, where they stayed up all night talking about getting fried dough, trips to the hairdresser, and everything in between, would not exist today. In fact, many of the pictures of Zarya would have been completely lost to time.
Now, even though Joshua appeared to be a loving father, he did have some prior run-ins with the law. He was arrested on September 12, 2005, for larceny over $200, for which he received probation. He was also arrested on April 6, 2006, for common law robbery, which North Carolina defines as using the threat of force or direct force to physically remove an item from the possession of the victim. He faced up to a year and a half in prison for this offense but also ended up receiving probation. Both offenses were felonies. As such, Joshua had a difficult time maintaining employment as a felon. However, he did manage to secure a job driving an 18-wheeler for Conway Trucking. In fact, Zarya would accompany him on trips from time to time.
In 2018, Zarya was 15 years old and was about to start her sophomore year at Monroe High School, where she was an active member of the school’s marching band and dance team. Her band director, Alan Sturdivant, described her as full of energy. As she got older, she began to want to spend less and less time at her father’s house and even confided in friends that things weren’t as picture-perfect as they seemed.
According to Zarya’s friend’s mother, her daughter stated that Zarya was scared of him because of his anger issues, and sometimes she didn’t want to spend weekends with him because he was lashing out at her for no reason. She also didn’t feel accepted by her father’s side of the family. The mother went on to state that she thought Joshua was crazy because he couldn’t keep a job. Her daughter thought he was probably on drugs as well, but when she asked Zarya, she never confirmed it. She went on to state that when Zarya was at summer camp years ago, she used to often cry out of nowhere. She also shared that when she used to go with her dad on work trips in his 18-wheeler, he used to tell Zarya things like, “I should drop you off on the side of the road and leave you. Is that what you want?” And Zarya would often cry in his truck.
Unfortunately, her mother, Akeisha, had commitments of her own and needed Zarya to go to her father’s house on the weekends whether she wanted to or not. She just chalked it up to her being a teenager. Akeisha was heavily involved at her local church and was a member of their dance team, and they often had performances on the weekends. Akeisha considered the weekends to be her time for herself.
The weekend of August 17, 2019, was one of those weekends where Zarya again didn’t want to go to her father’s house. But as mentioned, Akeisha had obligations with her church dance team. She texted her best friend and asked if she could spend the night at her house, but her family had a wedding rehearsal the following morning. So, begrudgingly, Zarya set out to spend the weekend at her father’s home located in the 5100 block of Hampton Meadows Road in Monroe. However, this wasn’t going to be the fun-filled weekend that Joshua liked to pretend went on in his Facebook posts.
The following day, Joshua wandered over to the Union County Sheriff’s Office and hesitantly told the dispatcher that he wanted to turn himself in. As such, the dispatcher asked for his name so that she could look for possible warrants, but Joshua stopped her before she could continue. He told her that his name was not in the system and that he had just killed someone. Joshua gave the dispatcher details of the crime and where to find the victim’s body, including her name. It was Zarya, his own daughter.
Police rushed to Hampton Meadows Road. When they opened the door, the scene was straight out of a horror movie. Zarya was in the living room facing the front door. It was clear that her body had been staged. She was completely nude, and her hands and feet were bound with handcuffs. It was pretty obvious to the officers that the 15-year-old girl had been tortured and assaulted. She had been stabbed multiple times all over her body, and her throat had been slit ear to ear. An autopsy later showed that Zarya had been strangled before her throat had been cut.
Zarya’s cause of death was revealed by the medical examiner to be the result of a sharp force injury to the neck. According to Union County Sheriff Tony Underwood: “It’s just evil. I mean, murder is murder, but to kill your own flesh and blood like this… there’s just no way to explain it other than it’s just an evil crime.” Sheriff Eddie Cathy stated: “Every officer and detective involved in this case is feeling the effects of what happened to this child. There was no logical answer to explain why this man did what he is accused of doing. Our hearts and prayers are with the victim’s mom and her family.” He later went on to call Joshua the essence of evil.
Joshua Lee Burgess was charged with first-degree homicide, kidnapping, and charges related to the horrific torture and assault of his daughter, and was held at the Union County Jail without bail. The state of North Carolina intended to seek the death penalty. Despite confessing to his crimes, Joshua entered a plea of not guilty at trial. His public defender’s motion for Joshua’s taped confessions to be struck from the records so as to not be played for the jury was ultimately denied. Instead, the jurors heard the harrowing tale of how he subjected 15-year-old Zarya to 22 hours of torture before killing her.
Detectives said that while Joshua explained why he did what he did, his primary motives for the killing appeared to be lust and control. On the topic of motive, we try to make it a point to make sure all of our information is properly sourced, but there is some information out there that I think should probably be shared as it’s been mentioned on another channel. The creator in question claims to have spoken to someone in the courtroom the day that Joshua explained all the horrible things that he did to Zarya. They claim that he planned everything that he did that weekend, from taking her to breakfast, to the torture and assault, to turning himself in to the police. They claimed that he intended on making a scene at the station which would in turn cause the police to shoot him, but he chickened out.
They also claimed that Joshua stated that he loved every minute of what he did to Zarya and that it was the best 48 hours of his life. Allegedly, after choking his daughter, she woke up and bolted, almost making it to the front door before he caught her and slit her throat. So, what was the motive? Allegedly, Joshua was in love with Zarya, and she was getting older. She was no longer a little girl in his mind, and he didn’t want anyone else to have her. Now, again, please keep in mind that this information is technically hearsay. There are no publicly available sources confirming this, and although this creator has no reason not to be truthful, we cannot be 100% certain that this is factual unless we see court transcripts, which at this point are not publicly available online.
On June 3, 2022, after a three-week trial, Joshua was found guilty of one count of first-degree homicide and five counts related to the torture and assault of Zarya. After approximately three hours of deliberations, he was sentenced to death. He received an additional minimum of nearly 76 years in prison for what he did to poor Zarya before he killed her. Joshua will be executed by lethal injection according to state protocol, which must take place between 15 and 120 days after sentencing. But as of the date of this recording, Joshua Burgess is 36 years old and still serving time at the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. The last person executed in the state of North Carolina was Samuel Flippin. He was put to death by lethal injection in August of 2006 for killing his two-year-old stepdaughter.
The Union County District Attorney’s office said in a statement: “District Attorney Trey Robison would like to thank the men and women of the jury who gave their time and effort in this very emotional case and helped bring closure to Zarya’s family and friends. This was truly an especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel killing of an innocent child. This case was emotionally taxing for everyone involved. We continue to grieve with and pray for Zarya’s mother.”
In the wake of Zarya’s death, armchair detectives took to the internet to speculate on a possible motive as to why her father, who by all outward appearances loved his daughter very much, would kill her in such a horrible way. As we mentioned previously, detectives claim that his primary motives for the killing appeared to be lust and control. However, the state of North Carolina remained extremely tight-lipped on this case, and the lack of information caused many to speculate what might have happened on social media.
These armchair detectives took to Facebook and began to accuse him of being a white supremacist based on racially charged memes that he posted, one in particular featuring Barack and Michelle Obama. They also pointed out different pages that he liked, including that of Donald Trump, Fox News, and a now-defunct left-hand path occult organization that called themselves the Serpent’s Flame. Due to this, they surmised that Zarya’s death was some sort of ritualistic killing to be inducted into a white supremacist group or a satanic cult.
One of the more concerning posts that Joshua made was on February 8, 2016. In it, he is holding a KA-BAR knife with a long blade. In the background, you can see an assortment of other folding-style knives. The caption read: “I just really like cutting people. Oops, I meant things. I like cutting things. [Winky Emoji]”
Something that I find extremely tragic and concerning is the fact that many people took to social media to attack Akeisha Pope, claiming that she was responsible for her daughter’s death. Many people took it as far as to say that she was at fault due to her interracial relationship with Joshua in high school, essentially referring to a grieving mother as a “race traitor” and calling her slurs that we cannot repeat here, purely for having a relationship with a white man when she was a minor. Now, while researching this case, we rarely see this type of shaming towards the family of victims. It’s absolutely disgusting and completely unwarranted in this situation.
Zarya’s funeral service was held on August 25, 2019, at the Christ Bible Discipleship Worship Center in Marshville, North Carolina. The Monroe High School Red Storm dedicated their performance at the 2019 Dillon South Carolina Battle of the Bands to Zarya.
