Ten years after killing her husband by shooting him in the head and chest in the driveway of their Caldwell Bridge Road home in Concord, Teresa Mangham Burousas is again a free woman. She was released from Pulaski State Prison with little fanfare on Nov. 13, 2018 and is living in Douglasville, according to Department of Corrections records. Buzz Burousas was a Lamar County native. His father was the late Jimmie Burousas Sr. who served as Lamar’s chief magistrate judge for many years. He started dating Teresa in 1981 when they met at Gordon College. They married in January 2006 and moved into their Concord home together in September 2006. She killed him on July 1, 2009 when he was 60 years old. At the time, she was 46 years old and her father, Doug Mangham, was chairman of the Pike board of commissioners. During his daughter’s bench trial, he spoke and begged the judge to give her a short sentence so he could live to see her outside of jail again but Mangham passed away in 2013, just a few years into her 10-year sentence. Several days after the killing, the Burousas home mysteriously burned to the ground but in 2011 the state fire marshal’s office said the cause of the fire was undetermined and closed any further investigation into the fire. Teresa initially told sheriff’s deputies who responded to the 911 call from her on the day of the killing that a white male and a black male attacked her as she worked in a flower bed, drug her across her yard, hit her in the head with a hammer, cut her with a knife and killed her husband. She was life flighted from the scene but was released the next day and was able to attend her husband’s July 5 funeral. Her story unraveled quickly and she was arrested July 31, 2009 and initially charged with felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during commission of a felony. In early October 2011, Judge Quillian Baldwin adjudicated the case at the request of the defense. The prosecution said in opening statements that Teresa Burousas deposited a forged $30,000 postal credit union check the morning of the murder and put $20,000 in her account and left the bank with $10,000 in cash. Heath English said Buzz Burousas left for work at 5:30 a.m., called home at 3:30 p.m. to say he was on his way home and urged his wife to get ready to go to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. Her defense argued that Buzz was abusive and that, ‘she did the only thing she thought she could do in her mind and that was kill him before he killed her.’ During her bench trial – for which no jury was present since the judge hears all testimony – Teresa admitted that she met her husband at the end of the driveway. She concealed a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver behind her back and told her husband to open the door of his 2006 Chevy Cobalt, saying she had a surprise for him. She then shot him twice. GBI crime scene analyst Lanny Cox testified Buzz Burousas was shot once in the chest and then suffered a second wound to the side of his head that was fired from ‘inches away.’ Judge Baldwin found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm in commission of a crime. Burousas was sentenced to 20 years with 10 years to serve in prison and 10 years on probation with credit for the two years she had already served in jail. She actually went to prison on Jan. 9, 2012 so she was in the penal system for six years, 10 months and four days. She will remain on probation for some time. An episode of ‘˜Snapped’ used actors to re-enact certain scenes before, during and after the homicide and several local leaders were interviewed, including Pike County sheriff Jimmy Thomas, Journal Reporter publisher Walter Geiger, PCSO investigator Capt. Jamie Strickland, PCSO investigator Maj. David Neal and District Attorney Ben Coker. The show first aired on The Oxygen Network in June 2016.
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