After 16 years, Missouri inmate admits to murder nobody knew took place

After 16 years, a Missouri prisoner confessed to a murder nobody knew was committed.

Odessa Brown, who is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after another murder conviction, wrote a letter to the Muskogee, Okla., district attorney, saying she wanted to accept responsibility for a 1994 murder, The Kansas City Star reported.

At the time of the killing, Brown was reportedly living in Muskogee and held a job where she cared for an elderly woman. She had been battling an addiction and on a “very hot” August day, she took an extension cord and choked the 83-year-old as the lady watched TV so she could steal a ring she eventually sold for $20 worth of crack cocaine.

“On TV you see someone getting strangled and in a matter of seconds they’re dead,” she said, The Star reported. “No, in real life it does not happen that way. It takes effort and it takes time.”

The woman was buried and Brown knew “I had gotten away with it,” the report said.

The next year, thinking that she could “get away with it again,” Brown killed a 66-year-old man in Kansas City, the paper reported. She insisted that she was innocent, but was convicted and eventually confessed.

Brown reportedly had a difficult time during that part of her life. She was caught up with crack cocaine, lost her job, was in and out of rehab and had her kids taken from her by authorities, the paper reported.

In prison, she said she began thinking clearer and in 2010, she “heard the Lord’s voice” tell her it’s time to write the letter, the report said.

“Once I dropped the letter in the mailbox I felt such a sense of relief,” Brown said, according to the paper.

Earlier this year, Brown pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and her sentences will run concurrently.

“I have no regrets at all,” she said. “I trusted in God and he told me it would be OK.”

Click here to read more on this story from The Kansas City Star.