HARAHAN, La. (TCN) — A jury determined that a woman who killed her boyfriend’s young daughter and left her remains on the child’s mother’s lawn was not insane and instead convicted her of murder.
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office announced in a statement that a jury rejected Bunnak “Hannah” Landon’s insanity defense, despite her attorneys’ argument that “a mental defect prevented her from distinguishing right from wrong.” Landon initially pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. She was found guilty May 1 of first-degree murder and two counts of obstruction of justice in connection with the death of 6-year-old Bella Fontenelle.
Landon will be sentenced May 6.
On April 27, 2023, Fontenelle’s father went to the Harahan Police Department to report Fontenelle and Landon missing. Police went to his home to investigate, then went to Fontenelle’s mother’s house about two blocks away. While there, police discovered Fontenelle’s remains inside a “large plastic bucket in the front yard.” She was pronounced deceased at the scene. Investigators obtained video footage that reportedly showed Landon pulling a wagon down the street where both she and the father lived and where Fontenelle’s mother lived.
Police located Landon at a hospital and later arrested her for murder.
According to the district attorney’s office, Fontenelle and her sister spent the afternoon of April 25, 2023, with their grandmother, who later dropped them back home. Landon reportedly killed the girl “soon after grandmother departed” at around 7:30 p.m. Two hours later, at 9:30 p.m., Landon was seen on video pulling the wagon and placing the bucket on the lawn at 9:35 p.m. Landon returned home, left at 9:45 p.m., and did not come back. Fontenelle’s father went straight to bed when he arrived home from work.
Landon reportedly went to Harahan Police Department headquarters at 11:45 p.m. but was uncooperative with officers. She agreed to be sent to a hospital for a mental evaluation and was ultimately committed.
Police issued an Amber Alert after the father reported her missing, and Fontenelle’s mother rushed home from work to find the bucket on her lawn. Police opened the lid and found Fontenelle still dressed in her pajamas.
Detectives located Landon’s phone nearby and discovered a video of Fontenelle crying and saying, “I want my grandma.” She reportedly searched online about the reputation of a specific criminal defense attorney 16 times while texting her boyfriend that Fontenelle and her sister “were tucked in their beds and that the tooth fairy had visited Bella’s older sister.”
The Jefferson Parish Coroner found that Fontenelle died from asphyxia due to manual strangulation and blunt force trauma. Additionally, she had bruises and marks on her head. There was a chance that Fontenelle was still alive but unconscious when Landon placed her in the container.
Landon’s attorneys argued that she “did not know right from wrong when she killed Bella.” One psychiatrist said Landon has post-traumatic stress disorder from her childhood in a death camp in Cambodia and that she was in the midst of a “psychotic episode” when she killed Fontenelle.
A forensic psychologist who testified for prosecutors acknowledged that Landon has a personality disorder, but she “was sane when she killed Bella, and based on her actions leading up to and after the murder, she was aware that she knew what she was doing was wrong.”
With help from a child psychologist, Fontenelle told her father that Landon “was mean to her.” The father spoke with Landon about it and said he would “‘reassess’ their relationship if he heard this from his daughter again.” Fontenelle was killed the next day, according to the district attorney’s office.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Africk said during closing arguments, “She knew what she did was wrong. She just did not care. She is just evil.”