BROOKSVILLE – Security was tight at the Hernando County Courthouse on Monday, Aug. 17, as the Jennifer Odom trial was beginning to get underway.
The 12-year-old slain in 1993 has been one of those long-term “cold cases” that keep homicide detectives awake at night and devoting much time before and during retirement to looking at evidence and wondering what actually happened.
In July 2023, Sheriff Al Nienhius announced at a news conference that a suspect had been arrested in the girl’s abduction and slaying.
Jeffrey Norman Crum, 61, was already serving two life sentences for sexual battery and attempted murder. He was charged in Hernando County with first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery.
Pasco County connection
The story actually begins 13 months before Odom was abducted, Nienhuis said in a press conference at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters. Another girl who was getting off a school bus in north central Pasco County had been horribly attacked and sexually assaulted. She had injuries to her head and skull and was left for dead, but survived.
In 2015, Crum was charged in that case, in which a 17-year-old girl enrolled in Land O’Lakes High School’s special education program survived after family members found her in a pool of blood nearby behind an abandoned house south of Masaryktown.
Authorities said that after the girl got off the bus from school on Jan. 16, 1992, Crum took her by the arm and led her behind an abandoned house where he hit her head with a blunt object so hard it crushed part of her skull and caused her to lose part of her brain. When the former honor roll student and track and field participant recovered, she was paralyzed on her left side, investigators said.
In 2019, Crum was sentenced to life in prison in that case.
When Crum was implicated in that case, “he quickly, almost instantaneously became our number one suspect in the Jennifer Odom case,” Nienhuis said.
Never came home
On Feb. 19, 1993, Jennifer Renee Odom stepped off her school bus around 3 p.m., waved goodbye to friends, and started walking the short 200 yards to her home in the St. Joseph area of rural northeastern Pasco County. Children on the bus reported they saw a faded blue pickup truck slowly following Jennifer as she walked home. Jennifer, who was 13, never made it to her door.
In the following days, law enforcement equipped with police dogs and hundreds of volunteers scoured 60 square miles of rolling groves, pastures and woods surrounding Dade City, which is east of the St. Joseph community.
A red sweater, Hooters jacket and other clothes Jennifer Odom was wearing when she disappeared in 1993 have never been found. Her book bag and clarinet case were found in western Hernando County in 1995.
On Feb. 25, 1993, a man and woman searching an abandoned orange grove in southeast Hernando County found Jennifer. Her clothing, including a red sweater and Hooter’s jacket, have not been found.
On Jan. 5, 1995, a couple hunting for scrap metal in a rural area of Hernando County discovered Jennifer’s missing book bag and clarinet case.
Material from Tampa Bay Beacons and Tampa Bay Times archives was used in this report.