Willard Clifton LandThe man charged with stabbing a 24-year-old Dunlap, Tenn., woman to death with a steak knife in October now faces a Criminal Court arraignment Friday on a grand jury indictment charging him with first-degree murder.
Assistant District Attorney Steve Strain said Tuesday that a Sequatchie County grand jury handed down the indictment Monday against 72-year-old Willard Clifton Land, who is accused in the Oct. 11 slaying of Kerry Summer Angel at the home of a third person atop Cagle Mountain. The crime scene is about nine miles northeast of town, a mile or so off of state Highway 111.
Angel's body was found at 210 Keener Road with a five-inch-deep wound in her shoulder.
A witness told authorities that Angel and Land were arguing over pills, described as Xanax and hydrocodone, and that everyone present at the time of the slaying was intoxicated, officials said in the initial investigation. Land initially fled the site of the stabbing but was caught by deputies in a wooded area not far from the crime scene.
He was originally charged with criminal homicide.
Strain said a considerable amount of information in the case was available for presentation at Land's preliminary hearing a few weeks back, including DNA evidence from blood samples taken from the scene and the knife believed to have been used by Land in the stabbing. Evidence from a medical examination of the body also was presented, he said.
DNA from samples on the knife and at the scene matched the victim's, and medical officials said Angel had been stabbed twice, one of the wounds fatally cutting her aorta, Strain said of testimony from the preliminary hearing. The other knife wound was not life-threatening.
The killing is not the first death in which Land has been accused. Land spent 15 to 20 years in a California prison on a conviction for murder in the 1970s, officials say. He remains held without bond.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or twitter.com/BenBenton or www.facebook.com/ben.benton1 or 423-757-6569.