Pair indicted for concealing dead body of Athens man

The late Lee Dell Smith

By Joe Johnson

A Clarke County grand jury has indicted two people for concealing the death of an Athens man two years ago.

Blandon Cornell Dean and Kianna Tyiynn Walter are accused in the indictment of concealing the death of another and tampering with evidence for transporting the body of 65-year-old Lee Dell Smith in July 2022 to another location after he died at his home on Hawthorne Extension.

Their moving of the body “hindered the discovery of whether Smith was lawfully killed,” the indictment states.

They drove the body in a pickup truck that had been loaned to Smith by a relative and they left it in the parking lot of a dentist office on Oglethorpe Avenue.

Police obtained surveillance video evidence of the truck being parked and a woman who purportedly is Walter wiping the truck’s steering wheel and door handle before walking away.

Kianna Tyiynn Walter

When police found Smith, they estimated that he’d been dead for a day.

An autopsy revealed that he had died from a drug overdose.

Walter and Dean were both arrested several months later and subsequently released from custody upon making bail.

Dean died just a week ago at age 45, and charges are still pending for Walter, who is scheduled to be arraigned on January 14.