A man was walking through the woods near Millwood, Georgia, days before Christmas in 1988, when he came upon a TV cabinet encased in concrete, which he correctly viewed as suspicious, per WVIT. He called the Ware County Sheriff's Office, which sent detectives to investigate. "I really was not prepared for what we were about to find," detective turned Sheriff Carl James tells WVIT. Inside the TV cabinet, they found a trunk. Inside the trunk was a duffel bag. Inside the duffel bag was a bundled up blanket, inside of which was the body of a little girl. Thirty-five years after that horrifying discovery, the girl has been identified and her mother and the mother's then-boyfriend charged with murder, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced at a Monday press conference.
Baby Jane Doe, who was "thrown out into a trash pile" at an illegal rural dump site, was identified earlier this year as 5-year-old Kenyatta Odom, said Special Agent in Charge Jason Seacrist, per CBS News. She could not be identified in 1988, but investigators suspected a connection to Albany, a city 100 miles from Millwood, as an Albany Herald newspaper had been found near the TV cabinet, per the AP. In 2019, investigators using genome sequencing found the girl had family in Albany. But it was four years before they would identify the girl's parents. In January, a tipster who'd seen news reports about the 2022 anniversary of the death, including mention of a $5,000 reward for information, called police with a story about a woman who claimed her daughter had gone to live with her father, Seacrist said. "This person never really believed that story."
Agents determined Kenyatta was killed in Albany, her hometown, before her body was taken to the dump site in the woods, where it was found on Dec. 21, 1988, per WVIT. The indictment indicates Evelyn Odom and her live-in boyfriend, Ulyster Sanders, submerged the girl's lower body in hot water, disfiguring her legs and feet and ultimately causing her death, reports WJXT. A Dougherty County grand jury indicted 56-year-old Odom and 61-year-old Sanders on multiple counts including felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, and concealing a death, before their arrests Thursday, Seacrist said. "We believe that there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that will lead to justice being found for Kenyatta," Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said, per WVIT. (More cold cases stories.)
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