HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) – Cory Bigsby will be getting another hearing after his attorney challenged a mental evaluation that shows he is competent to stand trial.
Cory Bigsby made his first court appearance Wednesday after a grand jury charged him last week with murder and concealment of a dead body in connection to the death of his son, Codi Bigsby.
New court paperwork that was filed earlier this month alleges that Bigsby killed Codi around June 18, 2021, seven months before Bigsby reported Codi missing to police.
But family members say that date doesn’t add up, because they say Codi was alive for months afterward.
“(He was at) my house, I want to say September. I know for a fact that in December, A relative was at his house, and Codi was very well alive,’ said Tandaleyia Butler, Codi’s aunt.
Another relative, Glenn Hinnance says “we can show photos,” but was not able to produce those photos when asked by reporters.
Circuit Court Judge James Hawks granted a competency hearing but the date is pending because schedules for mental health professionals who’ve evaluated Cory Bigsby will have to be coordinated. Hawks said it will likely be in late August.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell said that Bigsby purposely defrauded the court by giving the mental health evaluators incorrect information.
Bigsby’s attorney, Amina Matheny-Willard says that she believes Bigsby is not ready to stand trial and that any statement that authorities got from him was coerced.
“The concern is what the jail did to him. I’m specifically placing his condition right now on the correctional officers at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. His current condition is their fault,” Matheny-Willard said.
“Everything they been doing to him is wrong. because we want to make you say you killed your son,” Hinnance said. “Well, because you wouldn’t say you killed your son, we are going to persecute you, we’re gonna do all we can, because you’re not saying what we want you to say.”
Bigsby also has a bond hearing regarding the new charges scheduled for June 21.
Former Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney, Harvey Bryant, spoke with 10 On Your Side ahead of Wednesday’s court appearance and said he believe the prosecution must have powerful evidence against Bigsby.
“Once they have charged them, they are going to have to, under discovery rules, provide what evidence they have to the defense. What evidence they have that indicates that he committed this murder, months before he ever reported his son missing. I take it that that’s something very powerful and convincing. Since that’s what’s appeared in the indictment that it actually occurred months before he reported the boy missing,” said Bryant.
With these new charges, some people are wondering how the Commonwealth can convict a defendant of murder without the victim’s body.
“That is possible and it’s happened actually many times that there’s been convictions and murders when the police, no prosecution have been unable to locate the body,” said Bryant.
In 2022, Lamont Johnson was sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing his ex-girlfriend Bellamy Gamboa in Virginia Beach. Her body was never found.
Bryant said there could be a variety of reasons that led to the grand jury indictment.
“In this [Cory Bigsby] case, there’s some strong indication that Mr. Bigsby made a statement to a correctional officer. That must have been I’m assuming incriminating that will be presented at trial for the jury and the judge’s consideration,” Bryant explained.
Bryant said if Cory pleads not guilty to these charges, the prosecution will have to convince the jury of the type of homicide Cory is guilty of.
“I would think that a good strategy would be if this defendant knows that he killed his son is to come forward. With an explanation of how it happened. It may have been completely unplanned, accidental something and the father panicked. We don’t know,” Bryant explained. “But that’s going to be an interesting issue for a jury and a judge also, is to alright, we can convict this person without the body, but now we have to decide what level of homicide was committed against the child.”
Following the indictment last week, Cory’s lawyer, Amina Matheny-Willard, released a statement saying:
We maintain Cory Bigsby’s innocence and we are deeply, deeply disturbed by the
unconstitutional and coercive actions taken by the Commonwealth through its agents at the
Hampton Roads Regional Jail.We will be filing a federal lawsuit against the Hampton Roads Regional Jail at the conclusion of the criminal cases.
Statement from Cory Bigsby’s lawyer
Cory also faces dozens of child neglect charges that are not related to Cory’s disappearance. Bryant says that those charges will be tried separate from the murder charges
10 On Your Side’s Chris Horne will have more about Bigsby’s court appearance this afternoon on WAVY News 10.