| Hancock Is Charged With Cornell Murder
 Reprinted from the Herald-Citizen, Mary Jo Denton reporting
Jason Hancock, already charged with kidnapping an Overton County woman last fall, has now been charged with murdering her and abusing the corpse.
The Clay County grand jury heard evidence in the case from District Attorney Randy York and TBI Agent Steve Huntley.
The grand jury issued a four count indictment against Hancock, who has been in jail since his arrest last November on an Overton County charge that he kidnapped Jennifer Cornell, whose body was found in a sinkhole near Hancock’s home in Clay County a few days after she went missing.
The grand jury indicted the 34-year-old Hancock for first degree murder, felony murder, especially aggravated kidnapping and abuse of a corpse.
Reportedly, the long delay between the original kidnapping charge placed last fall in Overton County and the new charges was due to lengthy crime lab studies, the results of which will be evidence in the case.
Jennifer Cornell, 30, the mother of two children, was on her way to work in Livingston early on the morning of Oct. 30, 2008, when she disappeared.
Relatives found her car, the engine still running, abandoned in the roadway near her home, as if she had just stopped and stepped out.
But she was nowhere in the area, and her purse and cell phone were still in the vehicle. Massive searches by law officers and volunteers in the next couple of days turned up no clue to her whereabouts.
Her husband, Steve Cornell, told investigators that she had been in a dispute with Jason Hancock over child support for her daughter.
She and Hancock had known each other when they were teenagers, and allegedly, she had obtained DNA tests showing that Hancock was the father of her daughter.
As detectives looked for Hancock, a witness told of having seen him driving a truck in the area of the Cornell home the morning that she went missing.
Hancock was arrested in the case the next day, charged with kidnapping Cornell, as the search for her continued.
On the Sunday following her disappearance on Thursday, her body was found in a sinkhole in Clay County not far from where Hancock lived with his wife and children.
Livingston Police Chief Greg Etheredge later testified at a preliminary hearing that the body was only partially clothed, that bloody leaves and sticks were found around and inside the sinkhole, and that Cornell had suffered broken bones and massive head injuries. An autopsy report said the cause of death was “blunt force trauma.”
The Clay County grand jury’s indictment give no details of the allegations, saying only that Hancock “removed or confined” Cornell, the he “interfered substantially with her liberty,” caused her “serious bodily injury,” killed her “with premediation” and did so “in the perpetration of a kidnapping,” and that he “physically mistreated a corpse in a manner offensive to the sensibilities of an ordinary person.”
Hancock’s bond on the new charges has been set at $1 million, and he is scheduled to brought from the Overton County jail to a Clay County courtroom for arraignment Monday, according to Assistant District Attorney Owen Burnett.
Editor’s Note: See related picture and information about Hancock’s arraignment Monday.
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