A jury on Tuesday recommended the death penalty for the man convicted of killing 12-year-old girl Jennifer Odom.
Jeffrey Norman Crum, 65, was found guilty last week on counts including murder and kidnapping.
The recommendation comes on the day Odom would have turned 46 years old.
"This case has never simply been about a criminal prosecution," state attorney Bill Gladson said in a news release. "For more than three decades, her family carried the unimaginable burden of not knowing who took Jenny from them and why.
"Last week, the defendant was finally held accountable for his atrocious crime."
On Feb. 19, 1993, she stepped off the school bus in Pasco County and waved to friends as she began walking around 200 yards to her home before disappearing.
Her body was found six days later in an abandoned orange grove in Hernando County.
Crum was arrested for Odom's death in 2023 after investigators eventually found similarities between Odom's case and one in 1992 that involved an an attack of a teenage girl in Pasco County. Crum was already serving two life terms in that case.
"Now we can finally breathe," Odom's mother, Renee Converse, said in the release. Jenny would be so proud of us, how tough and strong we were through this all."
The jury's action is just a recommendation, and now it proceeds to the next stage in sentencing under Florida law.
