1974-10-20 Murder

Anthony Cluett, 13 (some reports say 15) was murdered on October 20, 1974.

His body, bludgeoned and mutilated, was found in Point Pleasant Park.1

James Odo was found innocent a year later. In 1976 he raped his nine-year-old niece. In 1981 (age 36) he was convicted of the first-degree murder of a five-year-old girl — a child who had looked to him as a kindly father. He told the court of satanic murder rites in Montreal that had left him possessed by the cult’s priestess, of time travel and of voices in his head. He also declared that he had lied to another court to escape conviction in Cluett's murder, who had been spread-eagled, tied to two trees and disembowelled. That left the 1981 jury with the puzzle of when to believe an admitted liar, one who moves regularly in and out of states of psychotic delusion.2