HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — The Hernando County Sheriff's Office on Thursday announced an arrest had been made in connection to the murder of 12-year-old Jennifer Odom, delivering answers in a case that was cold for 30 years.
While the sheriff's office is continuing to look into information about her accused killer, 61-year-old Jeffrey Crum, detectives provided some details into how they were able to connect the dots during the decades-long investigation.
Here's a timeline of what we know about the death of Jennifer Odom and the eventual arrest of Jeffrey Crum:
January 1992: A young Pasco County girl is "horribly attacked and sexually assaulted" after getting off the school bus, according to Sheriff Al Nienhuis. Despite suffering injuries to her head and skull and being "left for dead," she survived.
Feb. 19, 1993: Around 3 p.m., 12-year-old Odom vanishes after getting off her school bus, waving goodbye to her friends and walking toward her rural Dade City home, which was just 200 yards away.
Children on the school bus told deputies they saw a faded blue pickup truck slowly following Jennifer on her walk home.
Feb. 20-25, 1993: Law enforcement officers and police dogs from agencies across the Tampa Bay area join hundreds of volunteers in their search for the missing 12-year-old. They "scoured 60 square miles of rolling groves, pastures and woods" in Dade City.
Feb. 25, 1993: Six days after she went missing, Odom's body is found by a man and woman in an abandoned orange grove in southeast Hernando County. Her clothes are never found.
Jan. 5, 1995: A couple hunting for scrap metal find Odom's missing book bag and clarinet case.
1995-2015: Cold case detectives work with officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and other agencies across the country to test evidence collected in the Odom case. Investigators, led by Detective George Loydgren, follow "hundreds and hundreds of leads" in search of answers.
2015: Detectives test biological evidence collected in the case of the Pasco County girl who was attacked in 1992 and are able to obtain a full DNA profile. They begin running the profile through national databases in search of leads.
Detectives get a DNA match to the son of the man who turned out to be a suspect in both cases: Jeffrey Crum.
Crum, 53 years old at the time, is arrested and charged with sexual battery and attempted murder in the 1992 attack. He receives two life sentences.
Jeffrey Crum
2023: The "almost identical" nature of the two cases helps detectives connect Jeffrey Crum to the murder of Jennifer Odom.
Crum, now 61, is arrested and charged with the 1993 murder.
July 27, 2023: State Attorney Bill Gladson announces the state will seek the death penalty for Crum.
“I have confidence that we have the right person and that we have the right aggravators in this particular case to treat it as a death penalty case," Gladson said.
Crum makes his first court appearance virtually at 1 p.m. He asked for a public defender in his defense and is expected to be in court on Aug. 29.