COLD CASE SOLVED: Maryland man sentenced to 25 years in prison for rape, murder in 1982

Howard Jackson Bradberry, Jr. entered an Alford plea – an assertion of innocence at the same time as admitting that there is evidence to the contrary – to a second-degree murder charge in July, for the kidnapping, and subsequent rape and murder, of 28-year-old Laney Lee McGadney, according to a press release from the Office of the State's Attorney for Howard County.

Witnesses saw McGadney abducted shortly after leaving her apartment in Columbia, Maryland, on March 29, 1982, to walk to the grocery store. Her body was discovered later in the day in a vacant parking lot.

According to investigators, the mother-of-four had been raped and stabbed to death.

Police collected evidence and conducted a lengthly investigation, nothing came of it and the case went cold for decades.

Detectives with the Howard County Police Department revisited the case recently. In 2021, investigators found DND evidence on items discarded at the scene that linked Bradberry to the murder.

"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," he added. "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 greatgrandchildren knowing Bradberry will spend the rest of his life in prison for the innocent life he took and heinous crime he committed."