2 arrested after body ID’d after 35 years
SAVANNAH, Ga. — A 5-year-old girl whose body was found encased in concrete and dumped in the woods of rural southeast Georgia has been identified nearly 35 years later, authorities said Monday as they announced the child’s mother and a livein boyfriend have been charged with her murder.
DNA tests that began years ago and a crucial tip investigators received in January finally enabled them to determine that Kenyatta Odom was the young victim known for decades only as Baby Jane Doe.
Kenyatta was killed in her hometown of Albany, Georgia, before her body was dumped 110 miles away outside the small city of Waycross, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Agent Jason Seacrist said. It was discovered among broken furniture and other trash left in the woods Dec. 21, 1988.
“Baby Jane Doe is no longer unnamed, is no longer unknown,” Seacrist told a news conference that the GBI streamed online from Waycross, about 100 miles southwest of Savannah. “The baby that was thrown out into a trash pile has been identified, and we’re working to bring justice to her.”
The girl’s mother, 56-year-old Evelyn Odom, and Ulyster Sanders, her boyfriend at the time of the child’s death, were arrested Thursday. A grand jury in Dougherty County, which includes Albany, indicted both on charges of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, concealing a death and other counts.
Both defendants remained jailed Monday. It was not immediately known if either of them had an attorney who could speak on their behalf.
The girl’s death and her identity had been a mystery since a man walking in the woods in December 1988 stumbled on a TV cabinet filled with concrete in an area strewn with trash. The find made him suspicious enough to call the Ware County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Carl James was one of the department’s detectives at the time and was dispatched to the scene that day.
Concealed in the concrete, investigators found a trunk. Packed into the trunk was a duffle bag. And inside that bag was a child’s body wrapped in a blanket.