Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Adrian Jones: ‘The boy who was fed to pigs’

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

The abuse and murder of young Adrian Jones is one of the most shocking crimes against a child imaginable. The 7-year-old’s body was found in a pig stye, where his father and stepmother threw the corpse to be eaten by swine. Kansas City reporter Jessica McMaster, whose investigative reports revealed details of Adrian’s year-long torture inside a house of horrors, joins Nancy Grace in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. 41 Action News digs deeper and gets answers about what happened to Adrian Jones. Investigator Jessica McMaster now uncovered exclusive evidence. He was just a typical little boy, just full of life. Adrian's dad and stepmom abused him for months. He just had the most amazing smile. His whole face smiled when he smiled. Never before seen video takes us inside Adrian's last moments. And you can see the look of nothing in his eyes. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. In what

prosecutors call the most heinous crime they've ever seen. As soon as I opened iCloud I saw pictures of Adrian and his abuse. So you eat out of the trash because you keep on getting cold because you're outside? In this video, you can hear Heather's harsh words towards Adrian and a lack of compassion for a desperate little boy. The last days and hours of Adrian's life spent stripped and confined to a shower stall, left outside overnight to stand in a filthy pool. The boy who was fed to pigs. The boy who was fed to pigs.

You know, when I was in law school, I went to law school specifically to become a felony prosecutor. I thought I had seen the worst of the worst, but I never thought I would put those words into one sentence the boy who was fed to pigs and it reminds me of the first time I guess it was a rape or a rape slash murder case I prosecuted and the words the defendant had used at the time of the incident, the crime, words I had never said out loud before, ever. Such horrible, horrible curse words. Just horrible slurs on women, just awful, using the Lord's name in vain. And I remember in my opening statement, standing up

in front of the jury and letting it fly. The F word, the C word, the P word. The only thing I got hung up on was I could not say the Lord's name in vain. But, you know, what's bad about that was then the second time I had to say it, it kind of rolled off my tongue. Then the third time, then the fourth time. And at the end of 10 years, you know, I was numb to it until I, you know, had the twins and I didn't want them to hear that kind of language. But these words here, the boy that was fed to pigs, it still tastes bad in my mouth to say it. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. And with me today is an incredible guest.

Our guest is Kansas City reporter Jessica McMaster with KSHB Channel 41, an awesome reporter who, like many of us, has had to wade through the muck every day, hopefully wearing hip boots so you don't bring it home and get it on your living room sofa or your carpet. She is the reporter who did this incredible three-part series of this little boy, his last months on earth, and her investigation of an apparent defect Department of Family and Children's Services cover-up. And because of Jessica McMaster's hard work,

we learn the state legislature is considering Adrian's law to change how defects works in response to Jessica McMaster's reporting. Jessica, I'm so happy to meet you, even though it's only over the airwaves and under horrible conditions. One day, I'd like to meet you and sit down and have a cup of tea with you. Thank you for being with us. Likewise. Yeah. Thank you, Nancy. It's good to be able to talk with you.

I'm just a little overwhelmed at the incredible change that you are bringing about in this world, which is so woefully in need of change. I want to talk to you about this little boy. Tell me about your investigation of Adrian Jones. This goes back to November 2015. I was actually pregnant, very pregnant with my daughter. When we got news, it came over the scanners that police had gone out to a home in Kansas City, Kansas and found a child's remains. I remember that day. We're just, you know, reporter mode. You're just, you're getting all the information you can. You're trying to learn more. At that time, we didn't have any idea who this person was, who this little boy was, and what he had lived through. But then slowly,

we started to learn that he had been abused by his father and stepmother, and that eventually he was killed by them, and his lifeless body was tossed in a livestock pen. Oh, and I gotta tell you something, Jessica. People that have not been on farms don't get it. And nor should they. But when you say you are a pig, if you have ever been around pigs, no offense to our piggy friends, but they are disgusting. And they are sometimes huge. They will eat anything and a lot of times on farms they have

them living in muck like in mud kind of it's horrible i mean for people the pigs apparently love it but for people and i'm looking at this picture one picture specifically and he has on a little white hat and he is smiling this beautiful smile that's my favorite picture of him and it's a soccer t-shirt and he's so beautiful in this photo if you told me he was a girl i would believe it he has the most beautiful little features now when my son was a baby Jessica I thought he's just beautiful I thought he and Lucy were equally beautiful like a little seriously a little angel this little guy looks much like that a beautiful little nose a gorgeous little bow for a mouth his eyebrows are just perfectly like someone painted them on and not

that all children are beautiful this just get it just beautiful it's just having a hard time think he's easy to fall in love with that someone fed this kid to pigs put him in a pig sty what happened why would they do this jessica i don't think that we'll ever know and that's honestly i think it's the hardest part for us and it's really been the hardest part for our viewers because you give them this information and a normal everyday person tries to rationalize it you try to make sense of it because you need an answer. You need to be able to rectify this, but you can't. There's no good reason for it. You know, there's, he was the only boy, you know, but you, there's just, there's really no way of knowing how anyone or why anyone would do anything like this. I wish we could give people that answer. I wish I had that answer so that I could sleep.

I don't know if this happens to you, but I wish I could forget this. I wish I could erase this from my mind. I wish I never knew about it. But the thing is, now I do know about it. And I ask myself every single day, what am I going to do about it? Now I know. Here's the problem. Instead of whining about it and crying about it, what am I going to do about it? That's what I need to know right here's the problem instead of whining about it and crying about it what am i going to

do about it that's what i need to know right now jessica i'm overwhelmed at how you dug into the story so you go out on a story and for all you all you know essentially is that his remains were found. You go out there and you find, what do you discover? I want to hear how your investigation unfolds. This has been something that I've been working on, like I said, for about a year and a half. And what, you just start collecting little pieces of information. You have former babysitters telling you

that they witnessed him having to stand for long periods of time with his hands in the air and it made them uncomfortable and they thought that it was too extreme. And then they say, you know, that they called child services because they were concerned. One babysitter tells me that she was there when child services visited the home, you know, so then you talk to her. And then I got in touch with Adrienne's grandmother, Judy Conway, and I had been talking with her off and on. And I also talked to her and then I got in touch with Adrian's grandmother, Judy Conway. And I had been talking with her off and on. And I also talked to the woman who owned the home that the Joneses

lived in. And she was a key person in getting us the information that we really needed because the Joneses had surveillance cameras in every room of the house. They watched Adrian's every move. And aside from that, they also documented his abuse. For whatever reason, it was like they were proud of what they were doing to him. And Heather uploaded it to her iCloud account. Grandmother starts telling me that there's video of this and she has it and there's photos. And that's not something we got from her right away. Mike was supposed to go to trial, but he ended up pleading a week before that occurred. So they didn't really want to talk until that had happened. Once Mike decided that he was going to plea, they came to me and said, you know, I have this

information. I want to talk to you about it. So we went and we sat down with grandma and the homeowner. And then as some time passed, they decided that it would be important to share those photos and videos with us. And then, you know, we put a lot of decision because you didn't, you knew how traumatic it was for us to see it and how devastating it was to see images of Adrian with handcuffs on and left outside for him to have to stand overnight in a filthy pool that the family would use. And he wasn't fed and just horrific, horrific stuff that you can't even make up in your wildest nightmares. And so that's how it really all unfolded. And when you were watching these videos, we just found out exactly what they did to him. And then we also discovered that there was another adult living in the home

because you can see him in the video and you can see Adrian hiding from that adult. So there was all this information. And then we, of course, have been trying to get his records from Kansas Department of Children and Families ever since he died. In the state of Kansas, there's a law that states after a child's death or a near fatality, that information becomes a matter of public record. But what we found is that information's rarely being released. These children who are abused and nearly killed or killed just kind of wind up in a file and their stories are never told. And there's really no accountability for this public agency. You know, I have been screaming this. With me is Jessica McMaster's incredible reporter.

I have been screaming about DFACS, Department of Family and Children's Services, CPS, Child Protective Services. There are different names across the country. Be held accountable for dropping the ball and not doing their job and children dying. Jessica McMaster is telling me that DFAX was in the home and they let the child stay there until the child is killed and fed to pigs. I don't like saying it, but this is the truth. And what is going to happen to those DFAX workers? They just go right along, fat, dumb, and happy like nothing happened. That is not okay.

It's not okay. Your report blows the lid off of it. You know, I have been yelling about this since 1998 when I went on the air at Court TV. I don't know why no one wants to hold them responsible. This child is dead because of the parents, the father and the stepmother, and because defects look the other way. Why did they leave him in the home, Jessica? I wish we knew, but we still don't. We don't have the file. That's one of the file. You know, that's one of the things that we need. That's one of the things that Adrian's grandmother really needs.

I mean, she'll tell you there's no closure. There's no fixing what happened to her grandson. But to know exactly how many calls were placed, you know, so, you know, a judge sealed the file. But there's various reasons why we found that these files aren't being released. Because we put in a generic request for, since the law was enacted, how many media outlets have put in a request for cases like Adrian. And of 15 requests, we've found two. Only two have ever been fulfilled. So despite the law. What is a number we can call?

What is a website we can go to to let our voices be heard? This is a horrific discovery. Police called to a home in Kansas City, Kansas for a domestic dispute. Wow, can you imagine that? When they get there, a woman tells them if they look around, they'll find the remains of a little child. Officers find a seven-year-old little boy remains in a pig pen. He lived at the home with six brothers and sisters, his father and stepmother, Heather Jones, and the community really didn't know much about the children because the parents had kept them away under the disguise, the pretense, that they were being homeschooled.

Well, Jessica McMasters didn't take it at face value, and she continued to dig. This story made headlines all around the world. What's amazing is that not only would they abuse the child, they would take pictures and video of what they were doing. That's amazing. As soon as cops open up an iCloud, they find pictures of the abuse. It's awful. And it was right there, house of horrors. As Jessica was just saying, cameras in every room. They monitored the boy's every move. They documented as his health deteriorated, like they were proud of what

they were doing to them. How has this affected the other children and where are they? The other children right now are in foster care. Grandma does have some contact with them and I think that they're going to therapy and doing the best they can. But I don't know how you can see this because there is evidence that they witnessed Adrian's abuse and be the same. I'm not the same hearing about it. So living under that roof, I just can't imagine what that must be like to try and cope with that and move on from that and make sense of what mom and dad did. There are pictures of him looking gaunt and malnourished. In one video, you see someone crack open the little boy's face with a broomstick. Outside surveillance shows, and I haven't even been

able to bring myself to watch it, the little boy's hands and feet handcuffed, and he's forced to stay outside, and he's looking around like he knows he's being watched and he tries to use his mouth to pick up what looks like a bowl and eat what was in it. The stepmother comes out starts lecturing him and telling the other children Adrian's eating a bowl of applesauce that has bugs and dirt in it. Why are you doing that? Because I keep on getting cold when I'm out here. it just goes on and on i just can't even look at it i can't even look at it anymore tell me about the bill tell me what kansas is going to do to to change this it's very early so the day after our three-part series aired, I went to our state's

capital and I just started talking to any and every lawmaker I could find. And many of them actually were very receptive with the issues with our story, the issue of not being able to get the records. The part that they really responded to was that other adults seemed to maybe have known about what was happening to Adrian, and yet we still all know how this ended. And so they were really responsive to the fact that there was another adult living in the home. And so one state representative said, I'm going to introduce a bill tomorrow that says if you're an adult living in a home where a child is being abused, you are required to report that abuse and you can be held criminally responsible. Because right now, there's the mandatory reporter law, which includes

professionals, teachers, doctors, nurses, people like that. But it doesn't include any other adults or any other family member other than mom and dad. So that's the first step. They are listening to the issues with DCF with not being able to get those records released. And I know that there's a state senator who's looking into that and she has the research department looking into that. Because as you know, they got to do their research because they want it to pass and they got to figure out how to write up the bill and how to introduce it. So we haven't gotten there quite yet with that portion, but that's the goal. The first step is just who's in the home.

I don't think it's that far-fetched because teachers and educators are under a deity to report abuse. And you stand by and let a child be abused this way. I had to close down the story. It was hurting me so much to look at that picture of him out being forced in the water to stand out in the water overnight with his head poking up above the water, and they would take pictures of it.

I usually don't say this, but I'm glad he's in heaven now because it's better than where he was. A lot of people are saying that. And since law enforcement didn't know what was happening and DFAX did nothing to save the boy, the rest of his life would have been like this until he would be tortured for how many more years and then die. So I would rather just die now than be tortured for a couple of more years

and then die. I'd rather go on to my holy father than stay in what his life was. I just don't understand how defects drop the ball, why they didn't take him out of the home. But you know what I learned, Jessica? I was about five years into it. You've taught me a lot. Maybe I can teach you something I learned the hard way.

Five years into prosecuting at Intercity Atlanta, and I would torture myself about why why why why of course and finally I said why ask why why ask why stop asking why because I'm never going to know why people do the horrible things they do I'll never understand it. And I'll just torture myself trying to figure it out. But what I can do is change it or try to change it, which is what you are doing. You have to because you're right. Otherwise, you're just left being tormented. Jessica, please tell our listeners where they can find your reporting. And it's fairly easy. If you just go to KSHB, that's K-S as in Sam, H-B as in boy.com. If you scroll down the page and click on the investigators tab, you'll find our series under

there with the rest of our investigations. And the stories are all linked to each other. As my father always said, believe you me, I will be calling that number. I will be hitting that website because I do not want this beautiful boy's death to be in vain. And hopefully the Kansas legislature will get off their rear ends and do something. And I will leave it at that. And we actually have those links in the story to how you can contact our Kansas legislators. The links are right in the story there. Jessica McMasters, thank you for being with us. Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart podcast.