Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Social workers ignore years of red flags before Adrian Jones death?

Episode Date: May 26, 2017

Unsealed records reveal Kansas social workers and police were suspicious about how Adrian Jones’s stepmother abused the child for years before he was starved to death and fed to pigs. In this episode, Nancy Grace speaks to Kansas City TV reporter Jessica McMasters about the case and urges you to pressure Kansas and Missouri prosecutors to consider charges against officials who might have ignored warning signs that should have saved the boy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Adrian's dad and stepmom abused him for months. He just had the most amazing smile. Never before seen video takes us inside Adrian's last moment. You can see the look of nothing in his eyes. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 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.

New records show what the state of Kansas knew before the death of little 7-year-old Adrian Jones. We learn as early as 2011, DCF had allegations of Adrian's abuse. Hundreds of red flags. They should have known? That's just not good enough. They should have known? That's just not good enough. They should have known? Oh no. They knew. Kansas Department of Children and Family Services records show that police, doctors, social workers, they were all aware of the horrific abuse a little boy, Adrian Jones, suffered before his brutal death, his horrible death. Why did they let him die? And why is everybody afraid to call for criminal charges against defects workers that knew this child was in danger.

I've had it. I've had it with a whole kit and caboodle. This seven-year-old boy, beautiful baby boy, is dead after suffering years of horrific abuse. With me now on Crime Stories is the reporter that cracked the whole thing wide open. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. And if you are a parent, if you ever hope to be a parent, or if you even care about children. This is going to make your blood boil. With me, Jessica McMasters with Action 41 out of Kansas City, KSHB. Jessica, thank you for being with us. 2,000 pages were just released detailing how caseworkers, doctors, social workers, police, they all knew what this boy was going through. This is a crime. Jessica, start at the beginning. What do you know? I think the most interesting thing about reading through the several pages is that Kansas did identify the stepmother,

Heather Jones, as a threat to the children almost immediately after Michael received custody of his three kids. And it started, he got custody in September of 2011, within a couple months, Heather took his youngest child, who was under the age of three, because Adrian was three and was older than this child, to the emergency room and said that that child had fallen down the stairs. Well, this child had internal bleeding, bruises on her face, and she took the child there because she had been having seizures. And she told, Heather told doctors that Adrian, at three years old, pushed the child down the stairs. But the doctors didn't buy it. They said that the injuries did not match up with falling down carpeted stairs.

Heather then came back and told them. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, think about it. How do you get all of those blows, those bruises to the face and head, from a fall down what, maybe seven or eight stairs, plus internal bleeding? Uh-uh, that's not right. I've heard that stare excuse about a thousand times too many. Go ahead. She then came back and said that Adrian also hit that child with a wooden rod.

So at that time, they did start investigating her for abuse. And Kansas social workers told Michael, Adrian's father, that she was not allowed to have contact with the children, to which he told them that he was not with her anymore, that he thought she was on drugs and had been acting erratically. He also said that things seemed to happen to the kids whenever they were in Heather's care. So it appears that he was suspicious of her as well in the very beginning

and maybe not participating. But then when they moved to Missouri, when they crossed that state line, there's no documentation in the Missouri record that those social workers were informed about the safety plan involving Heather. So when they went to the home, it's not clear if those social workers knew that she wasn't supposed to be there

and she was at their first visit. Your story details all of this, including the surveillance footage that captures the last day of this little boy's life. What is caught on surveillance footage? So this is at the point when they bounced back and forth between states, and he ended up dying in Kansas. And it's just unimaginable stuff.

They kept him confined to a shower stall for the very last month of his life, stripped of his clothes. He would stand for hours with his hands above his head. They starved him. And eventually that shower stall became his coffin. That's where he died and they left him there for a couple of weeks before disposing of his body to pigs. But they had, you know, some of the surveillance footage shows him sneaking out of the shower and getting water. He's handcuffed out in the backyard at night, left in a dirty, filthy pool overnight.

At one point, you can hear one of the children. That's the thing. You can see the video of him out in the pool up to his neck overnight. Mm-hmm. Yes, that's one of the most heartbreaking. They actually kept a video log of all their torture of this little boy. Yeah, like they were proud of it. What did you say? You can hear one of the other children saying something?

So they had the surveillance inside the home and would be watching Adrian outside. But while they're watching it on one of the monitors, it appears Heather would also be recording it with her phone. And you can hear Heather talking to one of the younger sisters, talking about how Adrian is eating out of a dirty bowl of applesauce and things like that. And you can hear one of the kids saying, Adrian's about to start crying again, which just tells me he was out there crying every night. Oh, you know what?

I can hardly, I can hardly stand to even hear what was being said. The grandmother of the boy now wants all the records unsealed and wants the truth about his death. But what is incredible is that they actually kept a log on surveillance video of how they brutalized the little boy. And amazingly, in all of these documents that we have just obtained, the little boy, Adrian, tells social workers and deputies that he was being beaten and tortured.

I mean, what happened with that? He told them what was happening according to your story. Why didn't they act? On the Missouri side, the first time they visited the home, according to child welfare experts that we've spoken to, because obviously we need them to analyze these documents. I'm no expert in that field. But she says that first visit to the home after a hotline call came in

with concerns over the children, a safety plan was not put in place. That was on the Missouri side. So when that social worker got called out to the home again a couple months later, she started noticing, okay, maybe this kid is in real trouble. And at that time, Adrian had showed her markings on his wrist and said that it was from his dad taking him up. So she put over a request to the juvenile office to have him removed from the home. However, according to the expert we talked to, the juvenile office could not remove him from the home because they had not shown reasonable efforts as in putting a safety plan in place and offering the family services first.

So she had to do that first but michael and heather jones the little boy's killers told the state they did not want him they did they did not want their son but the state left adrian in their care they did right yes yes and and and the little boy had many visits with DFACS, Department of Family and Children's Services, many visits. Several, several. And so it's just with a huge domino effect. It was the initial, the expert says, had Missouri been notified that Heather was not supposed to be in the home, then the juvenile office would have been able to remove

him when that request was placed because that would have shown reasonable effort but that evidence wasn't there you know what i'm hearing i'm hearing blah blah blah blah blah dead seven year old boy blah blah blah blah blah boy beaten to death blah blah boy starved that's all that matters because during one meeting the social worker spoke with Michael and Heather about allegations that they were torturing their children and the employee reports that she never saw Adrian hello and they lied and said that Adrian was with his uncle so she makes the whole report with not even seeing the little boy. She leaves the home, and she was directed by the sheriff's office to never go there again without law enforcement. Right.

I mean, even the cops say, according to her, that this guy, Michael, is bad news and not to go out there with two officers, that he had an arsenal of guns, and that there was something not quite right. But they leave the little boy there to get killed. I mean, Alan Duke, help me understand why this boy went through this and was killed. They knew about it. It's a 70 mile drive between Kansas City, Missouri, and Topeka, Kansas. So, Jessica, it seems that these people were able to avoid the supervision simply by moving across the state line and then 70 miles down the highway. That's the bottom line, right? It is. It is.

The moving back and forth, but like you said, there was so much documentation. The police officer on the Kansas side before they moved to Missouri said that he could confirm that Adrian was punched with a closed fist because when Heather took that baby to the hospital, doctors also noticed that Adrian had a black eye. Quote, sometimes he kicks me on the back of my head and little bone come out. My daddy keeps hitting me in the head and punches me in the stomach. And my mom keeps pulling on my ears and it really hurts. She keeps being mean to me. The little boy is saying to the social workers, Mommy and Daddy can't feed me.

I have to sleep without a pillow and blanket. I just, I just don't understand how these people are walking scot-free, how they can live with themselves, how they can look in the mirror in the morning and see their face. I don't understand it. I mean, is there any repercussion at all, Jessica? Other than for Michael and Heather, you know, no. I mean, neither agencies are willing to sit down and talk about the case. There has to be an open conversation, an open and honest conversation. You mean nobody's getting fired? Nobody's at least getting fired? I mean, I think they should go to jail. They stood by and let this boy get tortured when he was begging for help, telling them how he was being abused.

The doctors knew about it. The police knew about it. Social workers knew about it. And they let the boy die. They let him die. They might as well have pulled the trigger themselves. Why aren't there criminal charges? Why aren't they at least being fired, Jessica?

We're hoping to get answers. We're still pushing. I was just asking for interviews again the other day. You know, it has to be a discussion. We don't know anything. I mean, we don't even know what the basic policies and procedures are because nobody in those agencies is willing to talk. I'm going to pause and thank our awesome sponsor, our partner in today's podcast, Simply Safe.

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And what, if anything, is Mark Dupree doing about this? I only spoke with him briefly because, again, his office doesn't often meet with us either, and he also has not really sat down to talk about the case. But when I spoke with him, he did attend a hearing for Adrian's act. And when I spoke with him there he said the bottom line is that the agency is underfunded oh my stars that's like saying a killer is unemployed the phone number for the wyandotte county district attorney is 913-573-5000. Repeat, 913-573-5000. Alan, could you please include that in our CrimeOnline.com summary of our interview with Jessica, please,

as well as their email address. And who, may I ask, would be the Kansas... Wyandotte County, is that in Kansas? Oh, that's the Kansas side. That's Kansas, yeah. That's where Adrian died. So who would the Kansas Attorney General be? I'm looking it up right now.

Derek Schmidt. I'll pull it up right now. Derek Schmidt. Derek Schmidt. Okay, this would be a fun thing for him to look into. Kansas Attorney General since 2011. Okay, let's not trash him until we see what he can do about this. All right, let's give him a chance before we say anything like he's been in office since 2011

and what, if anything, has been done. Phone number is toll free, 888-428-8436. And you can click online to send an email. I think I'll do it right now. What are you doing about the Adrian Jones debacle? What are you doing about Adrian Jones murder child services are responsible too. Let's see what happens. Probably nothing, right? But we can try, right? We can try.

We don't try. We can keep trying. Then we're just keep trying then we're just as bad we're just as bad if we stand by and do nothing they need to review their interstate communications their procedures for notifying outside the state an agency they need better communication and in this day and age can't they at least tweet it? Can't they put it on Facebook? Whatever. One agency needs to talk to another and follow somebody across state lines. We've got 50 different state agencies. If they're not communicating with each other, you've got 49 opportunities to get away from the people who are about to catch you. Right. And it does appear that Missouri was having phone conversations with Kansas, letting them know that they're bouncing between states and things like that,

but there's no record, again, that there needs to be some kind of a database, some kind of a data link. We've got it for all other crimes, it seems. I mean, if you are arrested for a sexual offense, the national registries... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The Kansas child services were responsible too. It's not just Missouri. Didn't the child services in Kansas know what was happening, Jessica? Yes, everybody had documented. I think the file is in total 10 years long.

They have a 10-year history with these children. Oh, it's disgusting. It's disgusting. Okay, we have the knowledge. We have the power to at least try and affect change. If we don't try, then it's on us. I mean, yes, they're wrong. The boy is dead, and it is horrific.

Jessica McMaster is bringing it to light. She is bringing it to our attention. Now, what are we going to do with the knowledge that we have? Nothing. You're just going to listen to this podcast and sit back and go, wow, that's awful. No. Act. Act. Make the call. Send the email. Demand justice or else Adrian Jones' murder will have been in vain if no one acts. We sit by and let this continue to happen. They are just as responsible. They knew what was happening to this child and they let him be murdered and did nothing.

Nothing. And I can tell you this much. It may not work. It may not amount to a hill of beans. But I'm doing something. God help me. We are doing something. Jessica is trying.

Alan is trying. I am trying. Crime online, crime stories, we're trying. I want trying. Crime online, crime stories, we're trying. I want justice. I don't want this boy to be just another statistic. Because somewhere and police and doctors and social workers until they die. Mark my words. Count on it. So we don't act now. It will just happen over and over and over.

That is what I learned from all my years as a prosecutor. Jessica, I am so grateful to you as much as I hate, I absolutely hate hearing these details. I hate it. But I'm grateful to you and I'm grateful for what you're doing. And again, if you're not there when a fire starts, who will be there to save your home? With SimpliSafe home security, your smoke detectors immediately alert emergency services at the first sign of a fire. Get 10% off your system today at SimpliSafe.com slash Nancy. That's SimpliSafe.com slash Nancy. Nancy Grace Crime Stories. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.