Laurel man sentenced for kidnapping, raping, murdering woman in early 1980s

BALTIMORE - A Laurel man is facing 25 years in jail for a kidnapping and murder case in Howard County from the early 1980s.

Howard Jackson Bradberry, 64, was sentenced on second-degree murder charges Thursday in the Howard County Circuit Court.

He entered an Alford plea on July 12.

According to the Howard County State's Attorney's Office, on March 29, 1982, 28-year-old Laney Lee McGadney left her apartment in Columbia to walk to a grocery store in the Owen Brown Village Center. 

Witnesses told police they saw McGadney being abducted as she walked along Oakland Mills Road. 

Her body was found hours later in a vacant lot, now known as Water Lily Way. 

Police said McGadney, a mother of four children, had been raped and stabbed to death. 

 At the time of the incident, police collected evidence from the scene and conducted a lengthy investigation but were unable to identify the person who committed the crime, the State's Attorney said.

Cold case investigators from the Howard County Police Department have revisited the evidence to try and identify any new leads. 

And, in early 2021, DNA results performed on items discarded at the scene linked Bradberry to the crime. 

 "The brutal murder of Laney Lee McGadney fractured her family beyond repair and for 40 years there were very little leads in the case with no one being held responsible for her senseless killing," said Howard County State's Attorney Rich Gibson. "I want to thank Howard County police and our prosecutors for working so diligently on this case. 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 for the innocent life he took and heinous crime he committed."