PLATTE CITY, Mo. — Brittany Costello says she’s been given a second chance at life.
The 23-year-old Parkville, Mo., woman was left for dead December 26, 2011. That’s the day she woke up in her apartment with her chest cut open,and her intestines hanging out.
“I just looked in the mirror and I was just staring at myself and I was touching it and I was like is this a dream or is this real,” said Costello.
She had been disemboweled and left for dead, but Brittany says she heard the voice of God, “just whispered in my ear saying Brittany you’re not dying today.”
Costello managed to crawl across the hallway to a neighbor for help and woke up five days later in Liberty Hospital. She had lost 7 pints of blood. When she woke up from a medically-induced coma she told detectives she had been drinking with a high school buddy named Quintin O’Dell.
Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd told Fox 4 “I believe that Quintin O’Dell may have been a serial killer in the making.”
Zahnd said 23-year-old O’Dell not only confessed to Brittany’s attack, but to the mysterious murder of Allisa Shippert six months earlier.
“The evidence from his initial killing of Alyssa Shippert, was very, very limited. He had pulled her into the river….the river had washed away much of the evidence.”
Zahnd said if Brittany hadn’t survived, it’s possible the Shippert murder might still be unsolved. Instead O’Dell pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder. He’s now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
email: rob.low@wdaftv4.com
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