Mother Guilty of Murdering Daughter, 5, Found Stuffed in Bag and Encased in Concrete 37 Years Ago By Chris Spargo

A jury in Georgia convicted a woman of murdering her daughter 37 years after the child’s remains were discovered by authorities.

Evelyn Odom is now facing the possibility of life in prison after a Dougherty County jury found her guilty one charge of felony murder, cruelty to children, conspiracy to conceal the death of another and concealing the death of another.

Those charges all stem from the murder of 5-year-old Kenyatta “KeKe” Odom, whose body was wrapped in blankets, stuffed into a bag and then placed in a container that was encased in concrete and hidden in the woods, according to a release from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The young girl’s remains were first discovered in Ware County on Dec.21, 1988, and an autopsy determined the manner of death to be homicide, but the medical examiner could not determine the cause of death.

Authorities were unable to identify the young girl at the time, so she became known as “Baby Jane Doe.”

At one point, the GBI launched a national effort to identify the child by comparing her to children who had been reported missing across the country, but the effort didn’t yield a match.

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In 2019, the GBI — working with local law enforcement and forensic-genealogy firms — built a family tree for the child. Investigators traced leads to the Albany area after a local newspaper found near the scene suggested a connection. In 2022, a tip from a member of the public finally enabled them to identify the girl whose remains had been discovered in the woods decades earlier.

This then led to the arrest of both Odom and Ulyster Sanders — the man who was Odom’s live-in boyfriend at the time of the child’s death.

Sanders, now 61, previously entered a guilty plea on charges of concealing the death of another person and false statements.

Both he and Odom, 56, will be sentenced later this year.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.