Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.
A woman will spend the rest of her life in jail for murdering her boyfriend’s six-year-old daughter and leaving her body in a bucket in her mother’s front garden.
Bunnak “Hannah” Landon was convicted of Bella Fontenelle’s murder in Louisiana last week and has now been sentenced to life in prison without parole, local media reports.
Highlights
- Bunnak “Hannah” Landon was sentenced to life without parole for murdering her boyfriend’s 6-year-old daughter, Bella Fontenelle, in 2023.
- Landon left Bella’s body in a bucket in her mother’s front garden after killing her by strangulation and blunt-force trauma.
- A video on Landon’s phone captured Bella crying for her grandma, with Landon muffling the sounds by placing a towel under the door.
- The jury rejected Landon’s insanity plea despite her PTSD from childhood trauma in a Khmer Rouge death camp in Cambodia.
Landon pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury rejected this after a four-day trial.
Landon will spend the rest of her life behind bars for Bella’s murder in 2023
Image credits: Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office
She was convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of obstruction of justice.
“She knew what she did was wrong,” Assistant District Attorney Lindsay Truhe told jurors in her closing argument. “She just did not care. She is just evil.”
In victim impact statements read in court, Bella’s family described their pain due to her loss.
“You made a decision that changed the course of all our lives,” her mother, Jennifer Zeledon, said.
“Not only did you condemn me and my family to a life sentence of pain and sadness, but you also condemned [Bella’s sister] to a life of not getting to know her sister past the age of six.
“[Bella’s sister] no longer has a sister to fight with, to share secrets with, to confide in, to share her first kiss, to make matron of honor at her wedding, to become an aunt and Godmother to her children.”
Image credits: Bianca Cano/GoFundMe
Zeledon also read a letter on behalf of her other daughter.
“To me, Bella wasn’t just my sister, she was my best friend,” the letter said. “I always saw my future growing with a mini me, but that was taken away because of you.
“My little sister was the most special person to me, but now, she is even more special because she is my own guardian angel. Someday I will forgive you, because I want to be in heaven to see Bella.”
On April 25, 2023, Landon was watching Bella and her older sister as their father worked late.
The children’s paternal grandmother had picked the girls up from school and spent the afternoon with them before dropping them off at their home.
The grandmother left around 7:30 p.m., Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office said, and Landon killed Bella just hours later.
Video surveillance footage captured Landon leaving the home at 9:30 p.m., pulling a blue canvas wagon.
Image credits: Facebook
On the wagon was a bucket, in which she had forced Bella’s 48-pound body.
Landon continued to walk one street over to Bella’s mother’s home and left the bucket in the front garden.
She returned to her house but left shortly afterward, and when Bella’s father arrived home, he went straight to bed assuming his children were asleep.
He called the police when he realized Bella and Landon were missing the next morning, triggering an Amber Alert and a massive police search.
Bella’s maternal grandmother noticed the bucket on the front lawn when she rushed to her daughter’s home during the search, Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office said.
Upon inspection, Bella’s mother realized there was blood on it and phoned Bella’s father, who quickly arrived with police officers.
A sergeant removed the bucket’s lid and found Bella’s body inside. Landon was arrested later that day.
Subsequent investigations found a video on Landon’s phone, which she had sealed in a plastic bag and buried next to a tree.
In the footage, Bella could be heard crying in her bedroom as she kept repeating, “I want my grandma.” Landon placed a bath towel at the bottom of the door to drown out her cries.
Bella had told a therapist that Landon was mean to her before her death
Image credits: FOX8
Digital forensics also found that Landon had searched a criminal defense attorney’s trial preparation service online as she texted Bella’s father to say his children were tucked in bed.
Bella died from asphyxia due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma, the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office determined.
The pathologist found numerous bruises on Bella’s head and abrasions on her neck, as well as indications that she had scratched Landon’s hands while she was being strangled.
The autopsy also revealed that Bella still may have been alive, although unconscious, when Landon put her body into the bucket.
A psychiatrist concluded that Landon suffers from mental disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, rooted in her childhood in a Khmer Rouge death camp in her native Cambodia.
But claims by Landon’s attorneys that she did not know right from wrong when she killed Bella were rejected by the jury.
The court heard that Bella was receiving counseling due to her parents separation and in those sessions, she disclosed that Landon was mean to her.
When Bella told her father, he confronted Landon and said he would re-evaluate their relationship if his daughter told him this again.
Landon killed Bella the following day, Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office said.
“This isn’t a woman who is outside her faculties,” Assistant District Attorney Rachel Africk told jurors last week. “This is a woman who is pissed off and evil.”