At sentencing, Lanetta Hill said the person she trusted to watch Hannah Kent became the reason she would never hold her daughter again.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Nearly five years after an overnight babysitting arrangement ended with an 8-month-old girl dead, a Boone County courtroom turned to a mother’s grief Monday as a judge sentenced Jennifer Johnson to life in prison for the child’s killing.
For Lanetta Hill, the case against Johnson was never only about medical evidence, phone records or criminal charges. It was also about trust. Hill told the court that she believed Hannah Kent would be safe when she left her in Johnson’s care in April 2021. Instead, prosecutors said, the infant suffered fatal injuries during the night and Johnson spent the hours afterward giving false accounts, hiding items in the home and making statements that did not match phone records. The sentencing closed one chapter of the case, but the family’s public statements showed how deeply the killing reshaped their lives.
Hill’s description of the relationship made the case unusually personal from the start. She testified that she and Johnson had been friends for more than 10 years before Hannah died. That history became part of the prosecution’s narrative because Johnson was not a stranger or a paid child-care worker with no connection to the family. She was someone Hill believed she knew. Court summaries show Hill left Hannah and other children with Johnson around 5 p.m. on April 17, 2021, at a Columbia home. It was the first time Johnson had been asked to watch Hannah, Hill said. By about 8:30 a.m. the next day, the mother was back and found her baby unresponsive and cool to the touch. She noticed bruising immediately, according to court records. Hannah was taken to Women’s and Children’s Hospital and pronounced dead. That stark before-and-after sequence stayed at the center of the prosecution all the way through the January 2026 trial and the February sentencing.
Hill’s victim impact statement gave the courtroom one of its clearest emotional records of the loss. She said she had left her baby believing the child would be “safe, loved and protected.” Instead, she said, her daughter was harmed and lost her life. Hill also told the court that the betrayal would stay with her forever and that she replayed the moment she entrusted Hannah to someone she believed was a friend. Those statements did not establish the forensic facts of the case, but they explained why the prosecution’s evidence about concealment and false statements carried such force. Investigators said Johnson gave police an account that did not hold up against later evidence. She claimed she fed Hannah and put her to bed around 2:15 a.m., then went to sleep. Phone records, however, showed activity through the night, including messages about drugs. Prosecutors also said Johnson appeared to know the child was dead before she claimed she learned that fact from others later in the morning.
The state’s evidence was built around the short period in which Hannah was alone with Johnson. Police and medical witnesses described bruising and brain injuries consistent with recent trauma. Another child in the home, Hannah’s sister, testified that Johnson had burped the baby “aggressively” that night. Investigators found baby formula on Johnson’s clothes, and testing showed the presence of Hannah’s blood on her shirt. They also found a pink-and-white onesie hidden on a pantry shelf and soaking wet. Authorities said it matched the outfit Hannah had been wearing when she arrived, even though she was taken to the hospital wearing only a diaper. Prosecutors argued the details showed efforts to hide what had happened after the child was injured. Johnson denied recent drug use before later admitting she had used methamphetamine several days earlier, according to reporting on the affidavit and trial testimony. Public summaries of the case do not show her offering an explanation that accounted for the full set of injuries.
The slow movement of the case added to the family’s strain. Although Hannah died in April 2021, the prosecution stretched across several years, and by mid-2025 the case had taken another turn when Johnson was released from Missouri custody even though Boone County records showed a no-bond hold. That led to a new arrest warrant and her later return to Boone County after she was jailed in Arkansas. The custody error did not alter the evidence in the homicide case, but it did delay a final reckoning and exposed the family to another burst of uncertainty before trial. When the case finally reached jurors in January 2026, the state relied on medical findings, family testimony, Johnson’s statements and phone records. Jurors convicted Johnson of second-degree felony murder and two counts of first-degree child endangerment, bringing the case back to the same courthouse weeks later for sentencing.
Judge Brouck Jacobs sentenced Johnson to life in prison on the murder count and 15 years on each endangerment count. Johnson’s daughter reacted unhappily in court, according to local coverage, adding another personal layer to a case already shaped by overlapping family relationships. Still, Hill’s words remained the hearing’s defining account. Her statement asked the court to recognize not only the taking of an innocent life but the breach of trust that made it possible. In that sense, the sentencing hearing did more than mark a punishment. It documented how a private friendship, a single overnight babysitting request and a morning hospital trip became part of a public criminal record that will remain attached to Hannah Kent’s name.
While Hannah Kent’s murder case moves into the post-conviction stage, where any next step would likely involve appeal filings rather than more witness testimony. What remains unchanged is the fact that the mother who left her baby with a friend returned hours later to a scene that ended in a death investigation, a jury conviction and a life sentence.
Author note: Last updated March 23, 2026.