A man from Maryland will spend the rest of his life in jail because he tortured and killed a woman in a bathtub at a home in Delaware on his 40th birthday.
Leonard “Buddy” Church, who is now 43 years old, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given a sentence of 65 years in jail by Judge Reneta L. Green-Streett on Wednesday. He was sentenced for the death of Jennifer Leyanna.
The judge also gave 41-year-old Esther Wright a 25-year prison term for helping Church hold Leyanna down and bury her body. She had admitted to kidnapping and planning to do it.
As Law&Crime had already said, the Delaware State Police started their investigation on November 1, 2020, when Leyanna’s mother said she was lost. Since October 9, 2020, no one had seen or heard from her.
On February 22, 2022, Delaware State Police said they were sure Leyanna’s body had been found six days earlier in the garden of a house in the “25000 block of Schuyler Road, Henderson, MD,” which seems like a pretty out of the way place. Court papers in Maryland show that Church lives in that block.
The News Journal got court papers that said the murder happened at a home on Route 8 in Kent County on October 10, 2020. According to the statement, Church got very angry because he thought Leyanna stole his wallet while he was high on PCP.
He used tape to hold Leyanna down in the water and stuffed things down her throat with Wright’s help. The papers say that he then took a belt and choked her to death.
Church and Wright then took her body to Wright’s house in Henderson and buried her there. Leyanna’s family didn’t hear anything for more than a year, so they made a Facebook page to try to find her.
The case didn’t move forward until Wright allegedly told someone where the body was. The person then told the cops, who then found her body.
The victim’s family gave moving victim impact comments at the sentencing on Wednesday, according to the News Journal.
Her mother is said to have said, “This has been one of the most traumatic experiences a person can go through.” “When someone killing someone else happens, especially the way you killed my daughter, there is never really closure. There are only more questions.”
Her family and friends said she had a long-term drug problem, but that didn’t stop her from loving her family.
Natalie Dehorty, her daughter, is said to have said, “My mother wasn’t perfect, but she was mine.” “She’d do anything for me,” I said. My best friend. That was mine, but you took it away.
The lawyer for Church said that his client was high on drugs and would not have done something so cruel otherwise. Church told the victim’s family he was sorry.