Dianne Odell's wasn't the friendliest face behind the deli counter where she worked, but she conscientiously raised seven children on a limited income, according to friends in Pennsylvania.
The children were tired of moving, tired of switching schools. Still, one night the family mysteriously pulled up stakes again, without a word to the northern Pennsylvania couple who had befriended them.
"All they took with them was what they could take in the car," said Linda Milligan of Montrose, whose contractor-husband employed Odell's common-law husband, Robert Sauerstein. She said she often watched the children and bought them gifts and clothing during the 18 months the family spent in the area.
As odd as the January 2002 move seemed, no one suspected that the children's mother, Odell, might have a past that included the deaths of four newborns — or that she allegedly kept three of the corpses for at least a decade before abandoning them in a storage shed.
Odell, 49, was charged this week with killing those three babies in upstate New York in the early 1980s, after the bodies — wrapped in towels and blankets and two at least partly mummified — were found in a box in the shed in Safford, Ariz.
Investigators say Odell told them the babies discovered died shortly after birth. Their deaths were never reported to police.
"I was never really close with my mom, and I don't want to comment," Michelle Lee Odell, 22, of Windsor, N.Y., one of three adult daughters from Odell's first marriage, said this week.
Authorities found Odell — whose previous addresses reportedly include Utah, Arizona, Texas and New York — living with Sauerstein and the children in Rome, Bradford County, near the New York state border. She was arrested after she crossed the state line to be interrogated about the babies' bodies.
The bodies underwent preliminary autopsies in Arizona and will undergo further examination by a state police "team of forensic experts."
The team will likely include Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally known forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner for the New York State Police, according to New York State Police Capt. Wayne Olson.
Experts said the prosecution's job will be made much easier if autopsies turn up similarities in the way the babies died. Odell told police she first became pregnant in 1972 but said her father beat her and caused the child to be stillborn. She said she put the body in a plastic bag and then a suitcase.
In 1989, New York authorities discovered the infant's remains in a car at a junkyard. By then, Odell's father was dead, and no charges were ever filed. With the discovery of the three infants in Arizona, the case is being reopened.
Odell delivered the three alleged victims between 1981 and 1984, according to officials in Arizona. She told investigators those babies died shortly after their births, officials said.
"There's got to be some reason in that time span of years, that she must have thought that it was better off for the kids not to be alive," Milligan said. "It might have been the man she was involved with, or something she was involved in."
Much of Odell's past is murky. Her mother, whom she lived with at times from 1981 to 1984, is dead. Police have yet to interview family members and friends scattered across the country, investigators said.
Since 1984, Odell had five children with Sauerstein. Those children, all under 18, are living with him in Rome. Sauerstein's phone is out of service.
Milligan described Odell as a conscientious mother who stretched the family's limited income and welfare benefits to provide for them.
"I just can't see her doing it maliciously, not the way she was with her children," said Milligan, who described the youngsters as smart and polite. They included five of the Sauersteins' own children and two toddlers described as grandchildren they were raising, she said.
But some Kauneonga Lake residents described Odell as "stern" or "coarse."
Jeffrey Strohl, who lived across the street and helped Odell get a job at a Montrose grocery store, said she was let go within a month. Odell argued with supervisors and customers alike, he said.
"Say you ordered a pound of ham sliced thin. She would slice it thick, and say 'That's what you said,' " Strohl said.
"He (Sauerstein) seemed like a likable fellow," Strohl said. "To be honest, I think he might even be surprised by all this, because I never got a wrong impression on him."
Milligan's 15-year-old son, Leslie, said the Sauerstein children were tired of moving. He was close to one of the children, a boy who was his age but was two years behind him in school because of the moves.
"He didn't want to move (again). He said he wanted to stay here," Leslie Milligan said.
"They just said they would move from house to house because of debt," he said. "That's what Dianne said."