Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Skeletons in the Closet

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

A scrapyard owner makes a gruesome discovery, which leads investigators to question a mother who may be killing her children. Check out our great sponsors! SimpliSafe: Go to simplisafe.com/coldcase and claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off your order with Interactive Monitoring! Join the EXHIBIT C online community by following WONDERY-EXHIBIT-C on Facebook or find them on the web at WonderyExhibitC.com and listen to True Crime podcasts on Wondery and Amazon Music! Progressive: Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Use your best judgment. Outside Bethel, New York, about a mile from where the original Woodstock Festival was held, is a scrapyard with the typical treasures found in that type of place. In March of 1989, a Volkswagen was the newest item to be added into the collection. The owner examined the cars inside and then popped the trunk where he discovered a suitcase. The owner had dealt with a lot of discarded items in his life, but never anything like what he found inside that suitcase.

When he unzipped the bag and opened it up, he found the body of a human baby. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I recall that the junkyard operator wasn't absolutely certain it was a human fetus when he first discovered it. And I believe his wife was a registered nurse. And she said, yes, that's a human fetus. Call the police. That was Roy Strever from the New York State Police. He responded to the call made by the junkyard operator. He learned that the Volkswagen had been abandoned by Diane O'Dell,

a local who recently left the area. The police tracked her down in Pennsylvania, where O'Dell said she knew nothing about any dead baby. Strever was skeptical. She just flat out denied that it was hers or that having any knowledge as to how it got into the trunk of her vehicle. Strever went to the area where Odell had lived and found a couple who said that they had rented a house to her. They told the investigator that when Odell moved out,

she left the suitcase behind. When the couple discovered what was inside, they called Odell instead of police and asked her to pick up the case. Streber then talked with Odell a second time. And once confronted with that, she acknowledged that she had, in fact, given birth to that child somewhere around 1972.

Odell told Streber that in 1972, at the age of 17, she was living alone in upstate New York. On top of that, she was eight months pregnant and scared. One day she took the bus to New York City to tell her father about her situation. Her father was not happy. And she said that later that night he had become intoxicated and gotten out a cat of nine tails and beaten her with it, including several strikes across her abdomen. That evening, she went home to Sullivan County.

And the next, she went into labor. But she stated that she went into the bathroom and gave birth to a stillborn child. And didn't know what to do with it. Eventually put it into this suitcase and carried it around with her for, well, I guess it was about 17 years. In 1989, Diane O'Dell's father was dead and couldn't be questioned. Strever ordered an autopsy, hoping science could provide some answers.

The remains, however, were badly decayed, and the M.E., David Winston, could only report that it was a full-term baby. As for the crucial question whether the baby was born alive or dead, Winston couldn't say for sure. So without that confirmation that the child had ever lived, we don't have any basis for any homicide charges. I'm thinking personally that her version of the event is probably somewhat self-serving and less than accurate, but without any real ammunition

to dispute it, it leaves you with nowhere to go with the case. No charges were filed, and Diane O'Dell left the area and some very ugly memories behind. When a storage unit is abandoned after a certain period of time,

the contents are auctioned off. In May of 2003, a storage auction took place on the edge of the city of Safford, Arizona. Tom Bright, a local resident, was the high bidder on lot number six. Everything in the storage unit was his, so he hauled it home and started examining his purchase. He opened a box labeled, Mom's. Inside, he found a garbage bag. Inside that, another bag. And inside that, a third. And I opened the third bag up, and it was a little orb about the size of a softball. And it was kind of leathery looking with white leathery looking grayish thing.

And right then I kind of had an inkling of what it was. And I said, oh, Christ. And I yelled at my grandson. I said, Robert, call 911. Have them send a sheriff's deputy out here. I think I found a baby. That was Tom Bright. Diane Thomas was the officer that took the call.

I have two children, and I have seven grandchildren, so it was very disturbing thinking that this baby was actually a human baby. I kind of wondered what happened to him. Diane Thomas and the other deputies went through all of the boxes from the storage area. They discovered a second and a third baby. My initial thought was someone was having miscarriages and maybe a young girl in a home and not knowing what to do. The bodies were taken to the morgue, and Dr. David Winston reported that the remains were dry and crumbling. So x-rays offered the best chance of examining the infants without destroying evidence. Winston immediately noted the bones were fully developed,

indicating the babies were carried to full term. Because of decomposition, however, Dr. Winston couldn't tell whether they were born alive or dead. Here's Dr. Winston. You've got three basically term infants with no bony abnormalities found hidden in three separate boxes. So you're thinking that something bad happened to these infants and somebody was trying to hide something.

Dr. Winston left the cause of death blank. But Diane Thomas started to form a theory. Once he told us that they were full-term babies, that kind of made me start thinking towards possible homicide. Some of the other items left behind

in the storage shed included a pile of old receipts, bills and letters all belonging to one person, a woman named Diane O'Dell. She had left the state of Arizona and lived in Pennsylvania, so Thomas booked a flight east to talk with O'Dell was living in Tawanda, Pennsylvania. She was a mother of eight children and had a job at the local drugstore. On May 17th, Detective Thomas found her at the drugstore and asked if they could have a private conversation.

No emotion, no inquisitiveness as to, why are you talking to me? What have I done in Arizona? That would be my initial thought if somebody from New York came to talk to me, is what is this about? She never once asked us anything like that. After agreeing to be questioned at the police station,

Diane O'Dell denied any knowledge of the remains found in her storage space. What he found and what we continued to find after we were called were three dead babies. Three babies? Holy cow. I would have no idea. I'm sorry, I wish I did.

Diane maintained that she had no connection to the babies that the investigators had found. The next day, Detective Thomas was joined by Detective Bruce Weddle, also from Arizona. And I said, you have the answer to why these babies were in the bags, and we don't intend on going back to Arizona until we find out why they were stored in these boxes and left in Arizona.

And I guess maybe that kind of clenched at her, and she said, fine, they're mine, and it was more than 10 years ago, and started talking about it. Here's some audio from the interview. The first one occurred as a rape. I went the whole nine months, didn't see a doctor, didn't have any medical attention at all. Odell said that the three babies found in the storage shed were from three separate pregnancies

in the early 80s. In each case, when the labor pain started, she went to her bathroom to deliver them. She said that each time she blacked out during the final push. I pushed and went back. That was it. I don't know if the baby cried. I don't... I have no knowledge of that. When she woke up from those three separate blackouts, Odell claimed the babies were dead. Detective Thomas did not find Odell's story to be even close to credible.

She knows the consequences, I would think, of having to deliver your own child by yourself. One that you haven't had any prenatal care, don't know if there's going to be any complications whatsoever. I didn't buy that story at all. Although Thomas had a lot of problems with Odell's story, the statements by themselves were not proof of a crime. Also, Odell claimed the babies were born and died in Kanianga Lake, New York,

and the Arizona shed was merely a depository. For Thomas, it meant the case was out of her jurisdiction. So she contacted the New York State Police and talked with Thomas Scalepi. It was just too coincidental, too suspicious. And in fact, knowing, in light of knowing, that she has eight other healthy children that are no physical problems at all. So the key was going to be this interview with Miss Odell. To make a case for murder, Scalepi needed Odell to say that her babies were born alive.

When asked, she told the story of three separate stillbirths, but added a twist at the end. When she recovers, there's baby number one laying on the floor between her legs with several inches of a towel down the baby's throat. At that point, the baby was cold, was not breathing. Being a father and a grandfather, I just couldn't conceive a newborn infant swallowing several inches of a towel as she's telling us that. Odell then told a similar story for the other two babies. Baby number three is the interesting one. She tells us that she took the baby with her, crawled into the bedroom, laid next to the bed on the floor, and cuddled with this baby for a considerable amount of time. That, to me, was significant.

I felt there was some bonding there between her and this particular baby for whatever reason. Feeling like he was getting closer to the truth, Scalepi questioned Odell further, especially about the third baby. She tells us that that baby gasped and let out a cry, which would indicate that the baby is alive and breathing. That's when the investigation changes. It goes from being inquisitive as to finding out what happened to these three babies

as to now we're happened to these three babies as to now we're looking at a possible homicide investigation at this point. Odell eventually admitted that all three babies found in Arizona breathed and cried. She never told Scalepi exactly how they died, but logically, it appeared that Diane Odell was somehow responsible for their deaths. She was arrested and charged with murder for the deaths of the three infants found in the Arizona desert in a storage shed. During the trial, five of O'Dell's living, healthy children attended. The jury seemed to be the most convinced of Odell's guilt by the photos of the crime scene.

They returned a guilty verdict in less than a day. I have to give credit to Detective Scalepi and Detective Thomas for supporting the victims in a case where their mother was the perpetrator. From the time Miss Odell told us that the babies gasped and cried, I was convinced that what we were looking at here was a homicide. So I feel that after 30 years, the babies got their due. It's like she knew she didn't want these babies. She knew that. I really believe she knew she did not want these children,

and that was the way to get rid of them. Diane O'Dell was sentenced to 25 years to life for the three infants discovered in Arizona. As for the infant found in a suitcase in New York, no charges were ever filed. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me, at Brooke Giddings on Twitter, and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group, Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash realcrime.