HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — The jury in the second-degree murder trial of Cory Bigsby heard statements he made while behind bars that incriminate him in the death of his son Codi. He reported the child missing January 31, 2022, but the Commonwealth alleges Bigsby killed his son seven months before that.
Cory Bigsby‘s attorney tried to get the case thrown out, calling the confession bogus. But Judge James Hawks denied that motion and the jury heard some of the most incriminating details so far.
A former corrections officer at Hampton Roads Regional Jail testified about writings made by Bigsby in a notebook. It includes a statement with a giant X through it, but it offers the most disturbing details in the case.
According to the officer’s testimony, it reads “On 18 June 2021… I grabbed and dragged Codi, bumped his head on the floor and beat him with my fists… He went into cardiac arrest. I performed CPR but he did not respond.”
Bigsby then goes onto allegedly write that he defiled Codi’s body with his own excrement. Bigsby adds that he ended up burning his own clothes, and concludes the statement with the phrase “please accept my confession.”
The notebook was discovered Christmas Day 2022, but the statement was dated the month before.
Defense Attorney Curtis Brown pointed to other items in that same notebook — coloring made with crayons, scribbles, a list of NFL sports teams names. An HRRJ guard testified that crayons are among approved writing utensils in certain parts of the lockup. Brown was trying to show that his clients mental state was not stable when he was writing in that book.
Earlier in the day a different guard at Hampton Roads regional talked about a statement he transcribed for Bigsby, and then Bigsby wrote a similar version himself.
That incident began with Bigsby yelling “Hey CO [corrections officer] I need you to write this down.” In both of those versions from August, 2022, Bigsby had claimed that Codi was found at the bottom of the stairway in the family home on Ranalet Drive.
The officer was visibly shaken during his testimony, and said despite his 25 years of Army and combat experience, the story of Codi‘s death was too much for him to take.
Earlier testimony Friday came from an FBI digital forensics examiner. He did a data dump on Bigsby’s phone, and found no new original pictures of Codi after the June 18, 2021 date, which Bigsby mentioned in one of his statements. That testimony aligned with testimony Thursday from a former Hampton detective who headed up the task force assigned to the case in 2022.
The defense gets the case Monday morning.
