The body of a young Black girl was found hidden in concrete and ditched in the woods of south Georgia in 1988. After 35 long years of investigating, authorities revealed not only her identity but also that of her parents who are now facing murder charges.
Monday, The Georgia Bureau of Investigation revealed that the 5-year-old girl who was found dead in December of 1988 was Ms. Kenyatta Odom, per The Associated Press. The authorities said a man had been walking in the woods of Waycross, Ga. when he came across a TV cabinet filled with concrete dumped in a trash fill. Out of suspicion, he alerted the authorities who came and began digging through the junk and found a trunk concealed in the concrete.
Inside the trunk was a duffle bag where Odom was found wrapped in a blanket.
At the time, there were no reports of any missing children that attached the description of the remains. The only tip investigators received was a copy of The Albany Herald lying near the scene which led the police to believe the victim was from Albany… 110 miles away.
Read more about the investigation from The AP:
Decades passed. In 2019, the GBI began attempts to compare DNA extracted from the girl’s remains with genealogy databases. [GBI Agent] Jason Seacrist said those efforts succeeded last year in confirming the child had family in Albany. But investigators still weren’t able to pinpoint the identity of the girl’s parents.
Around the case’s 34th anniversary in December, the GBI once again made a public appeal for any information that might help crack the case. This time the request came with a reward offer of $5,000 from an anonymous donor.
A woman called in January with a critical tip.
“She knew that there had been a child who had gone missing and that her mother said that the child had gone to live with her father,” Seacrist said. “This person never really believed that story.”
After Odom was identified, her mother was revealed to be 56-year-old Evelyn Odom and the police also named her boyfriend at the time, Ulyster Sanders, the report says. The couple was slammed with an indictment including charges of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children and concealing death.
Odom’s case is eerily similar to another Jane Doe case that also took years to solve.
The remains of a Black girl ranging from ages 4 to 7 was found in an Opelika, Ala. trailer park in 2012, per AL.com. The police used animation technology to create an image of her face but received no word from the public about who she might be. In 2016, investigators received photographs that matched her description. Earlier this year, the police identified the girl as Amore Joveh Wiggins and both her parents were arrested and charged with murder.