Mom of 4 was killed in 1982, officials say. Now man is going to prison 41 years later
A mother of four was walking to a grocery store in Maryland in 1982 when she was kidnapped and killed, officials said.
The case went cold for over 40 years until DNA testing identified the suspect as Howard Jackson Bradberry, Jr., 64, the Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Bradberry was sentenced to 25 years in prison Jan. 5 on a second-degree murder charge in the death of 28-year-old Laney Lee McGadney.
McGadney was kidnapped March 29, 1982, while she was walking from her apartment in Columbia to a grocery store at the Owen Brown Village Center, officials said.
Her body was found in a vacant lot hours after witnesses saw her get abducted along Oakland Mills Road, officials said. She had been raped and stabbed, the release says.
Police collected evidence at the scene, but the case went cold.
In 2021, investigators with the Howard County Police Department tested evidence found at the scene for DNA and linked Bradberry to the crime, officials said.
He entered an Alford plea connected to a second-degree murder charge July 12 and was sentenced to prison six months later.
An Alford plea is known as a “best-interests plea,” according to Cornell Law School. It “registers a formal admission of guilt towards charges in criminal court while the defendant simultaneously expresses their innocence toward those same charges.”
“We know today’s sentencing cannot bring back the matriarch of this family, but we do hope it provides some much-needed closure for her 4 kids, 22 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren knowing Bradberry will spend the rest of his life in prison,” State’s Attorney Rich Gibson said in the release.
Columbia is about 20 miles southwest of Baltimore.
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Mom of 4 was killed in 1982, officials say. Now man is going to prison 41 years later."
