When 12-year-old Jennifer Odom was abducted after stepping off her school bus in 1993, she carried with her the clarinet she played in her middle school band.
On Wednesday, 33 years after Jennifer was found dead, Jeffrey Norman Crum Jr. testified that he recognized the clarinet. It looked, he said, like the flute his father, Jeffrey Crum Sr., gave him as a gift when he was about 12.
Gazing at the weathered instrument from the witness stand in a Hernando County courtroom, Crum Jr. looked down and shook his head. He locked eyes with his father, seated at the defense table, and shook his head again.
The younger Crum testified Wednesday in his father’s trial for Jennifer’s murder, a case that for decades has haunted the Tampa Bay area. His testimony punctuated the state’s case, which is built largely on what several people claimed they heard Crum Sr. admit to them over the years: that he kidnapped and killed Jennifer.
If the jury finds Crum Sr. guilty, prosecutors will ask them to recommend the death penalty.
Odom vanished on Feb. 19, 1993, after she got off the bus near her home in rural Pasco County. Her schoolmates saw a blue pickup truck approaching her before the bus pulled away. Her disappearance spurred a massive search that ended six days later when she was found dead in an abandoned orange grove in Hernando County.
Her book bag and clarinet case were found two years later by a Spring Hill roadside, miles from where she was killed. Yet her killer remained unknown.
Three decades of investigation culminated in criminal charges against Crum Sr., who turned 65 the day his trial started.
He is serving a life sentence for the 1992 Pasco County rape of a teen girl, who suffered a brain injury in the attack and was left disabled. The crime bore remarkable similarities to Jennifer’s killing. He was linked to that case in 2015 through a DNA match.
Investigators who testified this week acknowledged a lack of a similar forensic link between Crum Sr. and the evidence collected in Jennifer’s case.
But they know he drove a blue Toyota pickup in 1993. His son remembered it. On the witness stand, he said his father modified it in the years thereafter, converting it to a flatbed and installing a toolbox.
Crum Jr., who is serving a prison sentence for robbery, entered the courtroom shackled and donning inmate orange. He spoke softly, almost inaudibly, as he recalled a conversation with his father from about 20 years ago.
His father had been drinking and probably taking drugs, he said, when he made an admission.
“Son, you know I love you, but one day it’s gonna come out that I’m a monster,” he recalled his father telling him.
“He said he did that Black girl and that he did Jennifer Odom, too.”
What was his demeanor? he was asked.
“A very cold, dead stare,” Crum Jr. said.
His father didn’t elaborate, he said. Later, he backtracked and acted like he was only kidding.
He was asked about the “flute” his father gave him. He tried to play it a few times, he said, but lost interest. He’d rather go dirt biking than play music. He tossed the instrument on a porch and forgot about it. He never saw it again.
Assistant State Attorney Richard Buxman brought out Jennifer’s weathered clarinet case, the rusted instrument still tucked inside. The prosecutor showed the instrument to Crum Jr. and asked if it looked familiar.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Toni Ann Buckner testified that she’d dated the younger Crum for a few years when he was in his 20s. During their relationship, she said, his father lived in a camper in her backyard in Odessa, in rural Hillsborough County.
They often drank together there, she said. When they did, Crum Sr. would start talking about things he had done. She remembered him mentioning a girl named Jennifer Odom.
“He said that he had picked her up from the bus stop and took her to the woods and he had killed her and raped her,” Buckner testified.
Did he tell you where he put the body? she was asked.
“In Hernando County,” Buckner said. “In the orange groves.”
She said she didn’t recognize Jennifer’s name until years later, when it was on the news.
She didn’t tell police, she said, because “I didn’t believe him.”
The packed courtroom sat in silence as Buckner delivered her terse account of Crum’s alleged confession. On cross-examination, though, she faltered.
Buckner admitted she had eight felony convictions, including two for crimes involving dishonesty.
Though she said it was just her and Crum’s son who heard him talk about Jennifer, she admitted she’d previously told detectives other people could have been there, too.
She admitted there were inconsistencies between what she said in court and what she told investigators in 2019, when they came asking about Crum Sr. Back then, she said Crum mentioned Jennifer more than once. She described his behavior as “talking salad.”
“He would get drunk and start talking, babbling all kinds of stuff what he did,” she said.
She was asked when it was that Crum allegedly made the statement about Jennifer.
“I would say 1990,” she said.
She admitted she’d told investigators that she believed Crum’s admission, but then seemed to say she didn’t.
“You took him seriously?” asked defense attorney Jenna Finkelstein.
“No,” Buckner said. “Because he was drunk.”
Detective George Loydgren, a cold case investigator for the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, testified that Crum Sr. became a suspect in Jennifer’s killing after he was charged in the Pasco rape case.
The detective questioned Crum’s family and friends. He also sought help from men in the Pasco County jail who were housed with Crum when he was awaiting trial for the rape.
One of them, Kraig Constantino, agreed to meet with Crum and try to get him to talk. Loydgren placed on him two recording devices — one taped to his body, another sewn into his jail uniform.
Constantino was placed into a holding cell with Crum in the New Port Richey courthouse. The resulting recording, which spanned more than four hours, was largely inaudible due to echoes, static and distance.
Much of what was discernible in their conversation was irrelevant to the murder case, Loydgren said. But the detective picked up one distinct statement that he said he heard Crum say.
“I got two victims,” he said. “One’s a little bit f—ed up in the head and is in a facility. And the other one’s a cold case from back in like ’92.”
Loydgren said there were no cold cases in Hernando County in 1992. The only cold case from that era was Jennifer’s.
The jury heard only a portion of the recording, which was difficult to understand.
They never heard from Constantino, who is serving a life sentence for kidnapping. Before testimony began Wednesday, prosecutors told a judge he’d become uncooperative and they decided not to call him as a witness.
When Loydgren later interviewed Crum Sr., he denied killing Jennifer. But he also denied he was guilty in the 1992 rape case for which a jury convicted him.
State prosecutors wrapped their case Wednesday afternoon. The defense called no witnesses. Closing arguments are expected Thursday morning before the jury deliberates.
