'Savage' Learns His Fate For Killing & Dismembering Beloved Teacher While She Walked On A Summer Night

[Sugar Cookie]

Harold Francis Landon III will be spending the rest of his behind bars for the death and dismemberment of a beloved elementary school teacher who was attacked while she was out on a walk one summer night.

On Friday, 7th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Carol Coderre sentenced Landon to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On the night in question, Sylla went out for a walk at the park right near her home and never returned.

After a search, the woman's torso was found in a retention pond in Clinton. None of her other remains have been recovered.

A jailhouse phone call played for jurors in which Landon appeared to admit his culpability for the crime.

"I literally let the savage inside of me out," he said, according to a courtroom report by D.C.-based NBC affiliate WRC.

Sylla was originally from the Ivory Coast and moved to the United States roughly a decade before she was killed. She taught second grade at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School, where her pupils are said to have adored her. The slain woman dreamed of returning to her home country and even purchased a home there before her murder.

"This woman was a good person," prosecutor Aisha Braveboy said during the sentencing hearing on Friday, according to a courtroom report by D.C.-based ABC affiliate WJLA "She cared about people. She was religious. She was a believer and she loved her children, the children she taught."

The assault is believed to have been random, as Landon and Sylla did not know each other, authorities said. Investigators never officially determined Sylla's cause of death, although they believe the defendant strangled his victim before chopping up her body parts and dumping them around the area, according to The Washington Post.

"I don't think we'll ever know his true motive," Braveboy said during the sentencing hearing. "What we do know is that he did it, that he was clear-minded that he did it, and he was very calculating in trying to cover up what he had done."

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Self-described 'savage' learns his fate for killing and dismembering beloved school teacher

"She cared about people," the prosecutor said. "She was a believer and she loved her children, the children she taught."

lawandcrime.com

Mariame Toure Sylla