# Cold Cases That Were Solved With Help From Unsolved Mysteries

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 8 Aug 2025, 26 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1003900805.mp3

Join me as we the true crime cases of the crimes of Edward Zakrzewski and the murder of Jennifer Odom. First, we unravel the horrifying case of Edward Zakrzewski, a man whose brutal crimes shattered the image of a picture-perfect family and left an unforgettable stain on Florida's history. Then, we explore the heartbreaking murder of Jennifer Odom, a vibrant young girl whose mysterious disappearance and tragic fate gripped the nation and took decades to solve. Further, we discuss how an appearance on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries helped to solve these cold cases. 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 Edward Zakrzewski, Jennifer Odom, true crime, Florida murders, unsolved mysteries, murder, Edward Zakrzewski case, Jennifer Odom case, family homicide, missing children cases, 1990s true crime, Florida true crime, true crime podcast, cold case, Zakrzewski family murder, Jennifer Odom murder, tragic disappearances, shocking murder cases, investigative podcast, true crime storytelling, high-profile murder cases

## Transcript

[0:00] On the evening of July 31st, 2025, inside Florida State
[0:05] Prison, 60 year old Edward Zakarzewski lay strapped to a
[0:09] Gurney as the clock neared 6:00. He had spent nearly 30 years
[0:15] condemned, and now he was about to get the big DP for a crime
[0:19] that had shattered his family and horrified his community back
[0:22] in 1994. In a final statement,
[0:26] Zakarzewski sarcastically thanked Floridians for carrying
[0:29] out his execution in a cold and efficient manner, saying he had
[0:33] no complaints. The story of Edward Zakarzewski,
[0:37] the man who had brutally slain his wife and two young children,
[0:41] finally reached its conclusion 31 years after the attacks.
[0:47] Edward Zakarzewski the Second was on the surface, an ordinary
[0:52] husband and father. Before his deadly crime, he was
[0:55] AUS Air Force Sergeant, living with his family in the coastal
[0:58] Panhandle town of Mary Esther. Years earlier he had met Sylvia
[1:04] while stationed overseas in Korea and the 2 married and
[1:08] started a family. His wife was 34 years old and
[1:13] they had two children together, Edward Zakarzewski the Third,
[1:17] nicknamed Kim, age 7, and Anna, age 5.
[1:23] By early 1994, however, the marriage was faltering, and
[1:27] Edward even warned a neighbor that he would rather eliminate
[1:30] his family than let his wife leave him.
[1:35] Sylvia had decided to leave Edward and file for divorce,
[1:39] planning to take the children back to her native South Korea.
[1:43] On the morning of June 9th, 1994, Edward discovered his
[1:47] wife's intentions and became enraged.
[1:51] During his lunch break that day, he purchased a machete and also
[1:55] gathered A crowbar and rope, hiding these items in the
[1:58] family's bathroom in preparation for a violent confrontation that
[2:04] evening. He lay in wait for his wife and
[2:06] children to return home and resolved to do the unthinkable.
[2:12] When Sylvia and the kids returned to their Okaloosa
[2:15] County home that night, Edward unleashed unfathomable violence.
[2:20] He first attacked his wife in the living room, striking Sylvia
[2:24] repeatedly with the crowbar and then strangling her with the
[2:27] rope until she was unconscious. With Sylvia incapacitated on the
[2:32] floor, Zakarzewski turned his rage to the kids.
[2:36] And for your mental sanity, I'm going to leave it at that.
[2:42] The outside world wouldn't learn of this atrocity for several
[2:45] days. When Zakarzewski failed to
[2:48] report for duty, the authorities performed a welfare check.
[2:52] What they found was a scene of unfathomable horror.
[2:56] They discovered the three bodies stacked in a bathtub in the
[2:59] family home. Zakarzewski himself was nowhere
[3:03] to be found, and in the immediate aftermath, it wasn't
[3:06] clear if he was even still alive.
[3:11] Little did investigators know that within hours of committing
[3:14] the atrocities, Edward Zakarzewski fled Florida.
[3:19] He drove to Orlando and caught a flight to Hawaii's remote
[3:22] Molokai Island, hoping to disappear far from the crime
[3:25] scene. In Hawaii, he adopted the alias
[3:29] Michael Green and found refuge in a secluded religious commune,
[3:33] where he did maintenance work in exchange for shelter.
[3:37] For about four months, the fugitive lived quietly under the
[3:40] radar, trying to pretend his old life did not exist.
[3:46] Meanwhile, Florida authorities quickly identified Zakar Zewski
[3:50] as the prime suspect and launched a nationwide manhunt.
[3:54] His case received a massive burst of publicity in October
[3:57] 1994 when the television show Unsolved Mysteries featured the
[4:03] Zakar Zewski case on air. At the time, Unsolved Mysteries
[4:08] was pulling 10 million viewers an episode in the United States
[4:12] and Canada. This meant that if he was still
[4:14] alive, it was almost certain that someone close to him had
[4:18] seen the episode or knew someone who had.
[4:22] And that ended up turning out to be the case here because
[4:25] Zakarzewski would be nabbed real quick.
[4:29] By chance, the family who had taken him in saw the broadcast
[4:32] and realized that their handyman, Michael, was actually
[4:36] The Wanted man they had seen. The very next day, October 15th,
[4:41] 1994, Edward Zakarzewski walked into a police station in Hilo,
[4:46] HI and surrendered to authorities.
[4:50] After four months on the run, the man who had slaughtered his
[4:53] family was in custody. Zakarzewski was extradited back
[5:00] to Florida to face charges related to his heinous crimes.
[5:04] While awaiting trial in jail. He even attempted to escape in
[5:08] August 1995 by trying to cut through a fence with another
[5:11] inmate, but guards foiled the plan.
[5:15] Rather than endure a full jury trial, he ultimately chose to
[5:19] plead guilty in March 1996 to all three counts.
[5:23] This spared him a trial on the question of guilt, but a
[5:27] separate hearing was held to determine his punishment.
[5:30] Notably, Florida's system to determine whether the guilty
[5:33] party is condemned is quite unusual compared to other
[5:37] states. In Florida in 1996, a jury would
[5:44] have to decide whether someone should get the big DP from the
[5:48] state. All 12 jurors must first agree
[5:51] the crime qualifies for it, but only 6 out of 12 need to vote
[5:56] for death to recommend that sentence.
[5:58] If fewer than 7 agree, the person automatically gets life
[6:02] without parole. This system is unusual.
[6:06] Most states require a unanimous jury for the death penalty.
[6:10] Florida's 7 juror rule was the lowest threshold in the country
[6:14] at the time, But more on that in a moment.
[6:19] Another aspect that's unusual about Florida is the limited
[6:22] ability of the judge to intervene.
[6:25] In most states, the judge has the authority to overrule the
[6:28] jury's recommendation. In Florida, the judge can't
[6:32] overrule the jury's decision except to condemn the guilty
[6:36] party, making Florida's approach both rare and controversial in
[6:41] how it handles capital punishment.
[6:45] In the penalty phase, prosecutors emphasized the
[6:48] heinous, cruel nature of the attacks and urged him to be
[6:51] condemned. Zakarzewski's defense, in
[6:54] contrast, pleaded for his life, citing his emotional distress
[6:58] and unstable mental state at the time of the attacks.
[7:02] He even boldly claimed that he chose a machete because he
[7:06] believed it would slay his family quickly and painlessly.
[7:10] This was an assertion starkly refuted by the medical
[7:13] examiner's testimony on the suffering the victims endured.
[7:19] After deliberation, the jury returned to split recommendation
[7:23] by a seven to five vote. They recommended condemnation
[7:26] for the slaying of Sylvia and his son, but for Anna, the jury
[7:30] was deadlocked at 6:00 to 6:00. Under Florida law, this later
[7:35] part was treated as a recommendation for life in
[7:37] prison on that specific offense only.
[7:41] The judge ended up over ruling the six to six deadlock and
[7:45] finding that the Zakharzewski patriarch would be condemned on
[7:48] all three charges. Notably, the judge cited the
[7:51] fact that Anna had to witness her brother being slain with a
[7:54] machete and presumably felt extreme terror awaiting what was
[7:58] next. The case then entered a long
[8:03] appellate journey, as every single capital case does these
[8:06] days, even when there's no meaningful question of guilt or
[8:09] innocence. Over the next two decades,
[8:12] Zakarzewski's convictions and sentences were reviewed multiple
[8:15] times, but every court upheld the outcome.
[8:20] The Florida Supreme Court affirmed his sentences in 1998,
[8:24] and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in
[8:28] 1999. Throughout the 2000s, additional
[8:32] state and federal appeals were filed and rejected, leaving the
[8:35] sentences in place. By 2016, after 20 years in the
[8:41] Gray Bar Hotel, Zakarzewski had run out of standard appeals and
[8:45] was essentially awaiting his call to the chopping block.
[8:51] As I mentioned earlier, under current Florida law at least 8
[8:55] out of 12 jurors must vote for a death sentence, whereas
[8:58] Zakarzewski's fate had been sealed by a seven to five vote.
[9:03] In 2017, Florida briefly required unanimous jury
[9:07] recommendations, and he sought a new sentencing under that rule.
[9:11] However, the state Supreme Court ruled the change was not
[9:14] retroactive to older cases like his.
[9:18] His lawyers later argued that executing him despite the non
[9:21] unanimous jury recommendation would be unconstitutional, but
[9:25] the courts disagreed. On July 30th, 2025, the US
[9:31] Supreme Court rejected Zakarzewski's last ditch request
[9:34] for a stay of execution, removing the final barrier to
[9:38] carrying out his sentence. With all legal avenues
[9:41] exhausted, the stage was now finally set for Edward
[9:44] Zakarzewski's long delayed injection.
[9:47] After years of legal wrangling and waiting, Florida Governor
[9:53] Ron DeSantis signed the warrant for Edward Zakarzewski on July
[9:56] 1st, 2025, scheduling his execution for the end of that
[10:01] month. In the weeks beforehand, anti DP
[10:05] advocates petitioned for clemency, arguing that executing
[10:09] a 60 year old veteran after so many years was unnecessary.
[10:14] They also noted that his sentence had only been
[10:16] recommended by a narrow jury vote.
[10:21] And honestly, to these people, I have a little piece of advice.
[10:25] Pick your battles and perhaps don't advocate for the guy who
[10:29] admitted to chopping apart his wife and kids.
[10:33] By this point, the 60 year old Zakhar Zewski had spent nearly
[10:37] half his life awaiting execution.
[10:40] And now that final reckoning had arrived.
[10:43] Shortly before 6:00 PM that evening, Zakhar Zewski was
[10:47] escorted into the execution chamber at Florida State Prison
[10:51] and strapped onto the Gurney. When the curtain was raised, he
[10:55] lay under a white sheet up to his chest with IV lines in his
[11:00] arms. 14 witnesses, along with several journalists and
[11:05] officials looked on from the viewing room, all prepared to
[11:09] see the penalty carried out by the state.
[11:12] Asked for any last words, Zakarzewski spoke in a calm yet
[11:16] defiant tone, expressing 0 remorse for what he had done.
[11:21] He sarcastically thanked the people of Florida and the
[11:23] government for executing him in an efficient manner.
[11:28] And with that, at 6:12 PM on July 31st, 2025, Edward
[11:34] Zakarzewski was no more. Anyway, just as a quick
[11:41] postscript on this one, this is one of the cases that has just
[11:44] absolutely pissed me off the most.
[11:47] The fact that this monster didn't even show any remorse in
[11:50] his last moments, even for what he did to his own kids, just
[11:54] made me absolutely sick. It also really made me question
[11:58] the people who were out there campaigning for the life of this
[12:01] remorseless perpetrator. I get that some people are
[12:05] fundamentally against capital punishment, but the idea that so
[12:09] much time and effort would be tossed into someone so
[12:12] irredeemable just makes me mad. And honestly, bringing up the
[12:17] fact that he was a veteran in an effort to try to win over some
[12:21] hearts and minds to his cause was really low as well.
[12:26] Basically, it seemed crass and manipulative, or at least that's
[12:29] my take on it. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here.
[12:36] Taking a quick moment to jump in to remind you to like and
[12:39] subscribe and to hit the notification bell.
[12:43] Also, remember to search up Lazy Chill True Crime wherever you
[12:46] get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow me
[12:48] there for more content. The podcast is updated regularly
[12:53] and I also occasionally include bonus content over there as
[12:56] well. It was a cool Friday afternoon
[13:02] on February 19th, 1993 in rural Pasco County, Florida. 12 year
[13:08] old Jennifer Odom stepped off her yellow school bus around 3,
[13:12] just a few 100 feet from her front door.
[13:15] She waved goodbye to her friends, slung her book bag over
[13:19] her shoulder and clutched her clarinet case as she began the
[13:22] short walk toward home. For Jennifer, an avid school
[13:26] band member, it was a routine end to the school day in the
[13:29] close knit community of Saint Joseph.
[13:32] This was a place where kids were safe to roam their
[13:35] neighborhoods, or so the community thought.
[13:39] But in the span of mere moments, that ordinary day turned into an
[13:43] unimaginable nightmare. By the time evening came,
[13:47] Jennifer Odom had vanished without a trace, and the
[13:51] peaceful innocence of that small Florida town was permanently
[13:55] shattered. When Jennifer failed to arrive
[14:00] home that day, her family immediately knew something was
[14:03] wrong. The school bus driver remembered
[14:06] dropping her off, and classmates recalled seeing Jennifer
[14:09] cheerfully heading on her way. Crucially, several children on
[14:13] the bus also independently reported an eerie detail that
[14:17] sent chills through investigators.
[14:20] They saw a faded blue pickup truck that had been spotted
[14:23] crawling slowly along the road, following behind Jennifer as she
[14:27] walked. That was the last known sighting
[14:30] of the 12 year old, and in a span of minutes, somewhere
[14:34] between the bus stop and her front door, Jennifer simply
[14:37] disappeared. Law enforcement was alerted and
[14:42] an intense search began before nightfall.
[14:46] The stillness of the rural afternoon gave way to the whir
[14:49] of police helicopters. Flashlight beams pierced the
[14:53] dusk as concerned volunteers joined deputies in combing the
[14:56] area. There was no sign of Jennifer,
[14:59] only the lingering dread that someone in that mysterious blue
[15:02] truck had snatched an innocent girl in broad daylight.
[15:09] All right, quick break. Knock, knock.
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[15:39] In the days that followed, a massive search operation
[15:41] unfolded across Pasco and neighboring Hernando County.
[15:45] Thousands of volunteers and law enforcement officers scoured
[15:48] roughly 60 square miles of terrain.
[15:52] They trudged through Groves, fields and wooded areas in hopes
[15:55] of finding any clue to Jennifer's whereabouts.
[15:59] Canine units sniffed for a trail and mounted patrols navigated
[16:03] rough Backcountry. The local media closely followed
[16:07] every development, broadcasting Jennifer's smiling school photo
[16:11] and turning her disappearance into a region wide concern.
[16:15] Despite the outpouring of community support, each day
[16:19] without answers felt agonizingly long for Jennifer's family and
[16:23] neighbors. Hope mingled with fear as
[16:26] searchers refused to give up, even as nights passed with no
[16:30] word. Finally, 6 heartbreaking days
[16:35] after she went missing, the search came to a tragic end.
[16:40] On February 25th, 1993, two volunteers walking through an
[16:45] orange Grove off Powell Rd. in southeastern Hernando County
[16:49] made a grim discovery. It was the lifeless body of
[16:53] Jennifer, and she had been left in the remote Grove roughly 20
[16:58] miles from where she'd been taken.
[17:01] I'm going to spare you the details here, but what happened
[17:05] was a horror beyond all imagination.
[17:08] In those painful moments, a burning resolve was immediately
[17:11] born to catch the monster responsible for this and make
[17:14] sure he faced the harshest justice Florida has to offer.
[17:20] From the very start, detectives had precious few clues to work
[17:24] with beyond the circumstances of Jennifer's disappearance.
[17:28] The faded blue pickup truck seen shadowing her route was the
[17:31] biggest lead. Police immediately publicized
[17:35] descriptions of that truck and appealed for anyone who might
[17:38] have seen it in the area to come forward.
[17:41] Every owner of a similar vehicle in the region became a potential
[17:45] suspect. Dozens of tips poured in and
[17:49] investigators chased them relentlessly, checking alibis,
[17:53] interviewing local residents, and comparing notes with other
[17:57] law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, however, the case
[18:03] ended up going cold, and investigators turned to Unsolved
[18:07] Mysteries to attempt to solve the case.
[18:10] Despite her case being prominently featured in a Season
[18:12] 6 episode broadcast in 1994, this did little to immediately
[18:17] solve her case. As a brief aside, to be clear,
[18:22] this isn't a case where unsolved mysteries directly led to the
[18:25] closure of the case. That said, the fact that it took
[18:29] her case from a local Florida story to an international story
[18:34] with massive public attention did potentially end up playing a
[18:38] factor. When it comes to cold cases, one
[18:42] of the biggest factors determining if they will be
[18:44] solved or not is how well known they are and how much attention
[18:49] the case has on it. Often times this is only
[18:53] achieved by the dogged persistence of the family
[18:55] constantly following up with investigators, but here there
[18:59] was another big boost even beyond that.
[19:04] Every time Jennifer's case has been rebroadcast or rewatched
[19:08] over the past three decades has been a dividend paid in the
[19:11] currency of attention. But anyway, that's enough of me
[19:16] ranting about the importance of covering cold cases.
[19:21] Two years later, in January 1995, a small development
[19:26] rekindled investigators hope in a rural area of western Hernando
[19:31] County, about 40 miles from Jennifer's home.
[19:35] A couple scavenging for scrap metal stumbled upon 2 weathered
[19:39] objects in the brush. They found a school book bag and
[19:43] a clarinet case. Astonishingly, these were
[19:47] identified as belonging to Jennifer Odom, items that had
[19:51] been missing since the day she vanished.
[19:54] The location of the discarded book bag and instrument case
[19:57] suggested the perpetrator had carried them for some distance
[20:01] and then tossed them. Unfortunately, while it was
[20:05] hoped that this may help crack the case wide open, nothing
[20:08] further happened at the time. Unbeknownst to many following
[20:14] Jennifer's case, an important clue to her mystery lay in
[20:18] another crime that had occurred a year before her abduction in
[20:22] January 1992. Just 13 months prior, a 17 year
[20:27] old girl in neighboring Pasco County had also been attacked
[20:31] shortly after stepping off a school bus.
[20:35] In that incident, the teenager was beaten and subject to the
[20:38] most disturbing form of assault, but she miraculously fought off
[20:43] her attacker and managed to survive.
[20:49] The similarities were chilling. A girl walking home from a bus
[20:52] stop in the same region attacked in broad daylight even back in
[20:58] 1993. Some investigators wondered if
[21:01] the predator might have struck before.
[21:04] However, at the time, there was no suspect in the 1992 case
[21:09] either, and the surviving victim could only offer a limited
[21:12] description of her assailant. Detectives collected biological
[21:17] evidence from the 1992 crime scene, but at the time, forensic
[21:22] technology was rudimentary compared to today.
[21:27] By 2015, DNA technology had leapt forward, and cold case
[21:32] detectives revisiting the 1992 assault decided to push for
[21:37] advanced analysis. This ended up turning up a
[21:40] sinister man named Jeffrey Norman Crumb, and as soon as he
[21:44] surfaced, the puzzle pieces from years past began clicking into
[21:48] place. Crumb had lived in the area
[21:51] during the early 1990s, and investigators soon learned he
[21:56] owned a blue pickup truck back then.
[21:59] He was also very familiar with the rural back roads and orange
[22:02] Groves where Jennifer had been taken and where her body was
[22:05] left. Perhaps most tellingly, the
[22:08] modus operandi of the two crimes matched almost exactly, and he
[22:12] had a dark and violent history. According to court records
[22:17] revealed later, several witnesses recalled Crumb
[22:20] bragging or hinting that he had slain Jennifer Odom years ago.
[22:27] And yeah, I'm not going to let that fact slip by without
[22:30] commenting on it. First of all, I've covered a lot
[22:34] of slayings where the case was broken because the person who
[22:37] did it decided to go brag to everyone about what he had done.
[22:43] These cases in the past have invariably involved 2 adult
[22:46] males where one claims he got the better of the other.
[22:51] I've never run into a case where the perpetrator is out there
[22:54] bragging about doing this to a kid.
[22:57] And that brings me to my second point.
[23:00] Who were these people he was bragging to, and why didn't they
[23:04] report this to the cops years prior?
[23:09] Piece by piece, a mosaic of evidence was being painstakingly
[23:14] assembled by law enforcement. With Crum serving two life
[23:17] sentences for the 1992 attack, detectives had ample time to
[23:22] prepare their best shot possible.
[23:25] Also, as you likely already know, the prosecution only gets
[23:28] one chance to present their best case due to the double jeopardy
[23:32] rule. These facts have dictated the
[23:35] glacial pace this case has advanced at over the years.
[23:41] On a summer morning nearly 30 years after Jennifer Odom's life
[23:44] was cruelly taken, the breakthrough everyone had been
[23:47] hoping for finally arrived. On July 27th, 2023, Geoffrey
[23:53] Crumb, now 61 years old, had been arrested and formally
[23:58] charged for the disgusting crimes against Jennifer Odom.
[24:02] As mentioned, he was already serving life in prison for the
[24:06] other violent crime, and he was transferred to the Hernando
[24:10] County Jail to face these new charges.
[24:14] As of the publishing of this video, this is where he remains
[24:18] still awaiting trial after all these years.
[24:23] Prosecutors in Florida made it clear that they intend to pursue
[24:26] the most severe punishment for this alleged perpetrator.
[24:29] As of today, Geoffrey Crumb remains behind bars awaiting
[24:34] trial on the charges for Jennifer's slaying and the other
[24:37] horrific acts he committed. Through his public defender,
[24:41] Crumb has signalled that he will plead not guilty and fight the
[24:45] charges, which is his right under the law.
[24:51] Jennifer Odom slaying is a story about loss, but also about
[24:55] unyielding persistence from her family and law enforcement.
[24:59] The case against Crum is overwhelming, and it remains to
[25:03] be seen if he will force this matter to trial or ultimately
[25:08] plead guilty. Unfortunately, given how long it
[25:11] takes to conduct an execution and given his age, he may simply
[25:17] force the family through an extremely difficult trial.
[25:21] The fact that he will never see the light of day again,
[25:24] regardless of the results of this case, may also be a factor
[25:28] in his decision making. At present, Geoffrey Crumb
[25:34] remains innocent of these specific charges against
[25:36] Jennifer until proven guilty in a court of law.

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