Footage from an alley and nearby laundromat helped investigators reconstruct the hours before Sarah Elizabeth Bundy was found dead.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A surveillance-video timeline that traced Sarah Elizabeth Bundy’s movements through the early hours of May 23, 2025, became a central part of the case against her husband, who later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was ordered to serve 40 years in prison.
The final court action came Sept. 15, 2026, when Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Christine Celeste sentenced Cedric Dion Callaway, 51, to life with all but 40 years suspended. Callaway had admitted killing his 44-year-old wife about a month earlier, changing his plea on Aug. 13 during the fourth day of his jury trial. The sentence ended a prosecution that began with the discovery of Bundy in a Brooklyn Park alley and developed as detectives gathered video from several nearby locations, compared it with Callaway’s account and pieced together a sequence of events extending from shortly after midnight into the morning.
The first publicly documented part of that sequence came from a laundromat at 716 Church Street. Prosecutors said video showed Callaway and Bundy there together until approximately 12:15 a.m. The couple then left and walked in the direction of Sixth Street. Authorities did not release a complete minute-by-minute account of what happened immediately after they departed, and the publicly available prosecution summaries do not state precisely when Bundy died. They do, however, place the two together during the period preceding the homicide and show investigators using multiple cameras rather than relying on a single recording.
Another camera near Alley 79 captured a woman matching Bundy’s description with a man wearing dark clothing and a black hooded sweatshirt during the early morning. Investigators said the man guided her toward the alley where her body was eventually discovered. Police designated that person as a person of interest while detectives continued collecting evidence. A separate local report based on charging documents said a witness heard a woman call out words to the effect of “I love you, don’t hurt me” around the period when the pair entered the area. Authorities did not include that witness account in the later sentencing announcement, but it was reported as part of the charging record.
At about 1:30 a.m., prosecutors said the laundromat camera recorded a significant change in the scene: Callaway returned without Bundy. He approached from the direction of Alley 79 carrying a jacket and a crossbody bag. Investigators said the bag matched one Bundy had been wearing earlier in the surveillance footage. The recording showed Callaway throwing the jacket into a trash can outside the laundromat. Prosecutors later used that sequence to help establish the movements surrounding the killing and to challenge the explanation Callaway would give police hours later.
The case did not become a public homicide investigation until morning. At approximately 9:05 a.m., Anne Arundel County officers responded to a report of a body on the ground near Disney Road and Alley 79 in Brooklyn Park. Fire personnel also responded. Police found a woman who was already dead and who had visible trauma. In its first public release that day, the department said the victim had not yet been identified and that detectives and evidence technicians were collecting items from the scene. Her body was taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore for an autopsy.
Investigators later identified the woman as Bundy, of Curtis Bay. The State’s Attorney’s Office said her body had been covered with tires in what investigators viewed as an attempt to conceal it. Prosecutors described significant injuries to her head, face and neck but released no needlessly graphic details. The May 24 police update named Callaway, Bundy’s husband, as the suspect and said homicide detectives had obtained an arrest warrant the day the body was found. The department’s early release listed him as 49; later prosecution records listed him as 51 when the case reached trial and sentencing in 2026.
The surveillance timeline was only one part of the developing case. While Anne Arundel County detectives were working at the scene, a Baltimore police officer contacted them about Callaway, who was already in custody on an unrelated matter. Callaway told police that he and Bundy had been robbed in the homicide area the previous night. He claimed he had been hit with a gun and that Bundy was missing. According to reporting based on the charging papers, he said he escaped from the robbery and ran away while his wife remained behind.
Detectives compared the account with what they could observe and with the recorded images they had already begun reviewing. They said Callaway resembled the man shown accompanying Bundy toward the alley. Investigators also reported that he did not have injuries consistent with being pistol-whipped. They did, however, see what appeared to be blood on his hands and beneath his fingernails. Those observations added another line of evidence separate from the cameras: police had a recorded route, a suspect whose appearance matched the man in the footage and physical observations that, according to investigators, did not support the robbery story he had provided.
Callaway was taken to the Anne Arundel County Police Criminal Investigations Division for questioning. Prosecutors said that upon arriving he made an unsolicited statement about going to “prison” and said he would kill himself if he was being charged with murder. Detectives had not told him Bundy was dead at that point, according to the state’s attorney’s office. The timing gave the statement importance in the investigation, although the public releases do not contain the entire interview or establish everything Callaway knew before making the remark. Authorities therefore described the circumstances of the statement rather than publishing a fuller interrogation record.
Police obtained a warrant charging Callaway with murder on May 23. The formal circuit court case followed. A Maryland Judiciary report shows that a criminal indictment was filed June 20, 2025, in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court and listed one count of first-degree murder. That filing moved the case from the investigative phase into the long pretrial process that ultimately led to a jury trial more than a year after Bundy’s death. Publicly available prosecution summaries do not detail every pretrial motion or evidentiary ruling, so those matters are not part of the established public chronology used here.
The trial began in August 2026 with Callaway still facing the first-degree murder charge. Jurors heard evidence for several days, but the proceeding ended before they deliberated. On Aug. 13, the fourth day, Callaway pleaded guilty. State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess described the plea as a surprise and said she believed it reflected how the trial had been progressing. She credited Assistant State’s Attorney Katherine D. Anthony with the prosecution. Celeste, the judge presiding over the trial, accepted the plea and scheduled Callaway’s sentencing for Sept. 15.
By entering the plea, Callaway admitted first-degree murder rather than requiring prosecutors to persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Under Maryland law, first-degree murder includes a deliberate, premeditated and willful killing and carries a life sentence or, in cases meeting separate statutory requirements, life without parole. Celeste imposed life but suspended all except 40 years. The sentence meant that the court’s final judgment preserved the legally required life term while setting 40 years as the unsuspended portion announced by prosecutors.
After sentencing, Leitess described Bundy’s death as a calculated act of domestic violence and said the prison term held Callaway accountable while recognizing that a criminal sentence could not reverse the loss suffered by Bundy’s loved ones. Authorities have not released extensive information about Bundy’s family or private life, and the public case record used by prosecutors focused primarily on the crime, the investigation and the legal proceedings.
The case is no longer awaiting a murder trial. Callaway stands convicted by his guilty plea, and the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County has imposed a life sentence with all but 40 years suspended. The video that first helped investigators map the early-morning movements of Bundy and Callaway became part of a broader evidentiary record that ultimately ended not with a jury verdict, but with Callaway’s admission of guilt.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.