HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — Court documents from Hernando County reveal new details about the case of Jennifer Odom, a 12-year-old girl who went missing in 1993 and was found dead about a week later.
Odom was 12 when she went missing on Feb. 19, 1993. She was last seen getting off her school bus around 3 p.m. to walk to her rural Dade City home. The sheriff's office said the short walk was just 200 yards, but she never made it home.
Her body was found nearly a week later, on Feb. 25, by a couple searching an abandoned orange grove in southwest Hernando County.
Authorities charged Jeffrey Crum with her murder.
Hernando County Sheriff said almost 13 months to the day before Odom was kidnapped, in 1992, a 17-year-old girl in Pasco County was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted in a wooded area after she got off the school bus.
DNA was collected from that crime and put into evidence. In 2015, a full DNA profile was created from that evidence, but at the time, they couldn't find a full match, authorities said. FDLE conducted further DNA testing and found a familial match, which turned out to be Crum's son.
After authorities matched the DNA to Crum, he was arrested in February 2015 for the 1992 attack.
New court documents showed Crum told his son that he "did a lot of bad things and hurt a lot of people in his life." He went on to tell his son, "Remember the little black girl when you were a kid, I did that."
The documents said Crum admitted to raping the little black girl and said, "he also 'did' Odom."
Crum is currently serving two life sentences for the 1992 murder after he was sentenced in 2019.
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