Warning: This story discusses sexual assault.
An arrest has been made in Jennifer Odom‘s long-unsolved murder case.
Jeffrey Norman Crum, 61, was charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual battery in connection to the 12-year-old’s death three decades after her body was found in a field in Hernando County, Fla., according to the County Sheriff Al Nienhuis.
Odom vanished on Feb. 12, 1993 after getting off her school bus just 200 yards from her home in Pasco County, Fla. She was found dead with signs trauma in a neighboring county six days later.
In a July 27 press conference, the sheriff said investigators spent years looking for the suspect—who they believed drove a blue pickup truck based on tips from students on the school bus the day of Odom’s disappearance—but many of their leads went cold. They had a breakthrough in the case when investigators noticed how Odom’s attack was “almost identical” to a separate attack on another young girl made 13 months prior to her death, according to Nienhuis.
