A man was found guilty Tuesday of murdering a second grade teacher who disappeared after she visited a park in Greenbelt, Maryland, two summers ago.
Mariame Toure Sylla was a Prince George’s County educator who taught at Dora Kennedy French Immersion School. Her disappearance set off a frantic search. Then her dismembered body was found.
A jury found Harold Francis Landon III guilty of first-degree murder after deliberating for less than 90 minutes Tuesday. Landon’s sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 17.
“It’s about other people to protect eachother and to have a responsibility, collective responsibility to not let this guy outside because he can kill somebody else,” the victim’s sister, Fatima Toure, told News4 before the jury reached its verdict.
Prosecutors presented a photo of the victim to the jury. Then, they showed a graphic photo of her torso, recovered from the banks of a retention pond in Clinton in summer 2023.
State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy asked the jury: Who would do something like this to such a beautiful woman? To answer the question, she played a call Landon allegedly made from jail, saying: “I literally let the savage inside of me out.”
Braveboy told the jury that is the kind of person Landon is, calling the killing brutal and calculated, without specifically saying how he allegedly did it.
She said there is physical evidence in the case, saying Sylla’s DNA was found on Landon’s boots, and that her clothing items were found in the bed of his truck. Braveboy said cellphone records show their phones “tracked the same path,” without saying exactly how the victim and defendant might have crossed paths.
Police have said detectives determined that the suspect and the victim were in the park at the same time. They believe the two were strangers, Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz said after Landon was identified as a suspect.
On July 29, 2023, Sylla went to take a walk at Schrom Hills Park, not far from her Greenbelt home. She was reported missing after she didn’t show up for evening prayers.
In court, a witness told the jury he saw someone in a white pickup truck carrying something in the area where Sylla’s dismembered body would later be found. He snapped photos of the truck. It was dark at the time, he said.
That same witness said he found Sylla’s torso the next day and called police, launching the murder investigation.
Landon’s attorney, Richard Rydelek, objected to the state’s use of gruesome photos of the victim’s body, claiming they were trying to conduct an “emotional stampede.” He urged jurors to make a decision based on evidence and not seek retribution for her death.
“A fair trial is not a trial ruled by inflamed passions,” he said.
Rydelek said there is no motive for the killing and the medical examiner didn’t conclude how Sylla died.
He suggested that Sylla’s death could have been an accident, that maybe, in a panic, someone could have hit a pedestrian at night and made some bad decisions, but that doesn’t prove first-degree murder, he argued.
Braveboy said she wanted to prosecute this case personally to bring justice to the victim, her family and the community.
Sylla was originally from the Ivory Coast, in West Africa. She bought a house there and dreamed of moving back home.
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