May 10, 2017 • 21 mins
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.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Forty one Action News dig steeper and gets the answers
about what happens to Adrian. Jump Investigator Jessica McMaster now
uncovered exclusive evidence. He was just a typical little boy,
just full of life. Adrian's dad and step mom abused
him for months. He just had the most amazing smile.
His whole face smiled when he smiled never before seeing.
Video takes us inside Adrian's last moment, and you can
(00:27):
see the look of nothing in his eyes. This is
Carme Stories with Nancy Grace and what prosecutors call the
most heinous crime they've ever seen. As soon as I
opened eye cloud, I saw pictures of Adrian and his abuse.
So you eat out of the trash? Could you keep
on getting cold? Could youre outside? In this video you
can hear heather and harsh words towards Adrian and a
(00:47):
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 two pigs,
The boy who was fed two pigs. You know, when
(01:09):
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
(01:32):
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,
(01:54):
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 like, could not say the lord's
(02:16):
name in vain. But you know what's bad about that
was then the second time I had to say it
kind of rolled off my tongue. Then the third time,
in the fourth time, and at the end of ten 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
(02:39):
that was fed to pigs. It's still tastes bad in
my mouth to say it. I Nancy Grace, this is
Crime Stories, and with me today is an incredible guest.
Our guest is Kansas City reporter Jessica McMaster with k
s h BE Channel forty one, and awesome reporter who,
(03:05):
like many of us, has had to wade through the
muck every day, hopefully wearing hit boots so you don't
bring it home and get it on your living room,
so on your 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
(03:26):
of an apparent de Facts Department Family Children's Services cover up.
And because of Jessica McMaster's hard work, we learn the
state legislator later is considering Adrian's Law to change how
defects works. In response to Jessica McMasters reporting, Jessica, I'm
(03:51):
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,
thank you, Nancy. It's good to good to be able
to talk with you. I'm just a little overwhelmed at
(04:11):
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 two thousand fifteen. I was actually pregnant, very pregnant
(04:35):
with my daughter when we got news that 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,
(04:58):
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.
And I gotta tell you something, Jessica. People that have
(05:19):
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
(05:39):
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 as smiling this beautiful smile. That's my
(06:04):
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,
(06:27):
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 him on.
And not that all children are beautiful, this just gets
just beautiful. It's just having a hard time, fink. He's
(06:50):
easy to fall in love with that. Someone fed this
kid pigs, put him in a pig Stye, what happened?
Why would they do this? Jessica, I don't think that
will 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 him this information
(07:10):
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
(07:33):
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 in my mind. I
wish I never knew about it. But the thing is,
now I do know about it, and I asked myself
every single day, what am I going to do about it? Now?
(07:54):
I 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.
(08:18):
You go out there and you find what do you discover?
I want to hear how your investigation unfold. 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
(08:39):
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's 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 Adrian's grandmother, Judy Conway,
and I had been talking with her off and on.
(09:01):
And I also talked to the woman who owned the
home that the Jones has 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
(09:21):
aside from that, they also documented his abuse. For whatever reason,
they would just it was like they were proud of
what they were doing to him, and Heather uploaded it
to her eye cloud 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.
(09:42):
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 plead um, they came
to me and said, you know, I have this information.
I want to talk to you about it. So we
went in and we sat down with grandma and the homeowner,
(10:02):
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 thought
into what we were going to share with our viewers,
and it was a lot. It was a really tough
decision because you didn't you knew how traumatic it was
for us to see it and how devastating it was
(10:23):
too 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
(10:44):
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
(11:05):
he died. You know, in the state of Kansas, there's
a law that states, you know, after a child's death
or you know, a near fatality, that information becomes a
matter of public record. So but we what we found
is that information is rarely being released. These children who
are abused and nearly killed or killed just kind of
(11:26):
wind up in a file and their stories are never told,
and there's really no accountability for this public agency. You
know it's I have been screaming this with me, is
Jessica McMasters incredible reporter. I have been screaming about de
Facts Department, Family Children's Services, uh CPS, Child Protective Services.
(11:50):
There are different names across the country. They held accountable
for dropping the ball and not doing their job and
chill ldren dying. Jessica make Masters telling me that Defects
was in the home and they let the child stay
there until the child is killed and fed to pigs.
(12:11):
I don't like saying it, but this is the truth.
And what is going to happen to those DEFECTS 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 for since when I went
(12:36):
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. You know,
(12:58):
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 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 these
We found that these files aren't being released because we
(13:19):
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 fifteen requests we've found two,
only two have ever been fulfilled. So despite the law,
what is the number we can call? What is a
(13:39):
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
(14:05):
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 home schooled. Well,
(14:31):
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 in video of what they were doing.
(14:52):
That that's amazing. As soon as cops opened up and
eye cloud, 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 boys,
every move they documented as his health deteriorated, like they
(15:17):
were proud of what they were doing to them. How
is this effect of 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 and doing the best they can.
But I don't know how you can see this because
(15:37):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:23):
and eat what was in it. The stepmother comes out,
starts lecturing him and telling the other children, Adrian's eating
a bowl of apple sauce that has bugs and dirt
in it. Why are you doing that? It just goes
(16:45):
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 change this. Very early so, the day after our
three part series aired, uh, I went to the our
state's capital and I just started talking to any and
every lawmaker I could find, and many of them actually
(17:08):
were very receptive with the issues with our story, the
issue of not being able to get their 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
(17:29):
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, you know, there's the Mandatory Reporter law,
which includes professionals, you know, teachers, doctors, nurses, people like that,
(17:50):
but it doesn't include any other adults or any other
family member other than mom and dad. So 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,
(18:11):
as you know, they got to do their research because
they wanted 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,
(18:31):
and you stand by and let a child be abused
this way. I 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
(18:53):
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 de facts did nothing
to save the boy, had 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
(19:13):
would rather just die now than be tortured for a
couple of more years and then die, Rather go on
to My Holy Father than than stay and what his
life was. I just don't understand how Defects dropped 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
(19:33):
can teach you something I learned the hard way. Five
years into prosecuting an inner city Atlanta, and I would
torture myself about why, why, why why? And finally I
said why, ask why? Why? Ask why? Stop asking why?
Because I'm never gonna know why people do the horrible
(19:54):
things they do. I'll never understand it, and I'll just
torture myself trying to fee gure 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
(20:16):
it's fairly easy if you just go to k S HB.
That's k S is in sam h B as in
boy dot com. If you scroll down the page and
click on the investigator's 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
(20:39):
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 our
how you can contact our kinds legislatures, legislators. There are
(21:01):
the links are writing the story there, Jessica McMasters, thank
you for being with us. Nancy Grace Crime Stories, signing off,
goodbye friend,
Forty one Action News dig steeper and gets the answers
about what happens to Adrian. Jump Investigator Jessica McMaster now
uncovered exclusive evidence. He was just a typical little boy,
just full of life. Adrian's dad and step mom abused
him for months. He just had the most amazing smile.
His whole face smiled when he smiled never before seeing.
Video takes us inside Adrian's last moment, and you can
(00:27):
see the look of nothing in his eyes. This is
Carme Stories with Nancy Grace and what prosecutors call the
most heinous crime they've ever seen. As soon as I
opened eye cloud, I saw pictures of Adrian and his abuse.
So you eat out of the trash? Could you keep
on getting cold? Could youre outside? In this video you
can hear heather and harsh words towards Adrian and a
(00:47):
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 two pigs,
The boy who was fed two pigs. You know, when
(01:09):
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
(01:32):
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,
(01:54):
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 like, could not say the lord's
(02:16):
name in vain. But you know what's bad about that
was then the second time I had to say it
kind of rolled off my tongue. Then the third time,
in the fourth time, and at the end of ten 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
(02:39):
that was fed to pigs. It's still tastes bad in
my mouth to say it. I Nancy Grace, this is
Crime Stories, and with me today is an incredible guest.
Our guest is Kansas City reporter Jessica McMaster with k
s h BE Channel forty one, and awesome reporter who,
(03:05):
like many of us, has had to wade through the
muck every day, hopefully wearing hit boots so you don't
bring it home and get it on your living room,
so on your 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
(03:26):
of an apparent de Facts Department Family Children's Services cover up.
And because of Jessica McMaster's hard work, we learn the
state legislator later is considering Adrian's Law to change how
defects works. In response to Jessica McMasters reporting, Jessica, I'm
(03:51):
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,
thank you, Nancy. It's good to good to be able
to talk with you. I'm just a little overwhelmed at
(04:11):
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 two thousand fifteen. I was actually pregnant, very pregnant
(04:35):
with my daughter when we got news that 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,
(04:58):
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.
And I gotta tell you something, Jessica. People that have
(05:19):
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
(05:39):
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 as smiling this beautiful smile. That's my
(06:04):
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,
(06:27):
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 him on.
And not that all children are beautiful, this just gets
just beautiful. It's just having a hard time, fink. He's
(06:50):
easy to fall in love with that. Someone fed this
kid pigs, put him in a pig Stye, what happened?
Why would they do this? Jessica, I don't think that
will 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 him this information
(07:10):
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
(07:33):
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 in my mind. I
wish I never knew about it. But the thing is,
now I do know about it, and I asked myself
every single day, what am I going to do about it? Now?
(07:54):
I 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.
(08:18):
You go out there and you find what do you discover?
I want to hear how your investigation unfold. 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
(08:39):
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's 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 Adrian's grandmother, Judy Conway,
and I had been talking with her off and on.
(09:01):
And I also talked to the woman who owned the
home that the Jones has 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
(09:21):
aside from that, they also documented his abuse. For whatever reason,
they would just it was like they were proud of
what they were doing to him, and Heather uploaded it
to her eye cloud 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.
(09:42):
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 plead um, they came
to me and said, you know, I have this information.
I want to talk to you about it. So we
went in and we sat down with grandma and the homeowner,
(10:02):
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 thought
into what we were going to share with our viewers,
and it was a lot. It was a really tough
decision because you didn't you knew how traumatic it was
for us to see it and how devastating it was
(10:23):
too 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
(10:44):
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
(11:05):
he died. You know, in the state of Kansas, there's
a law that states, you know, after a child's death
or you know, a near fatality, that information becomes a
matter of public record. So but we what we found
is that information is rarely being released. These children who
are abused and nearly killed or killed just kind of
(11:26):
wind up in a file and their stories are never told,
and there's really no accountability for this public agency. You
know it's I have been screaming this with me, is
Jessica McMasters incredible reporter. I have been screaming about de
Facts Department, Family Children's Services, uh CPS, Child Protective Services.
(11:50):
There are different names across the country. They held accountable
for dropping the ball and not doing their job and
chill ldren dying. Jessica make Masters telling me that Defects
was in the home and they let the child stay
there until the child is killed and fed to pigs.
(12:11):
I don't like saying it, but this is the truth.
And what is going to happen to those DEFECTS 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 for since when I went
(12:36):
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. You know,
(12:58):
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 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 these
We found that these files aren't being released because we
(13:19):
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 fifteen requests we've found two,
only two have ever been fulfilled. So despite the law,
what is the number we can call? What is a
(13:39):
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
(14:05):
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 home schooled. Well,
(14:31):
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 in video of what they were doing.
(14:52):
That that's amazing. As soon as cops opened up and
eye cloud, 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 boys,
every move they documented as his health deteriorated, like they
(15:17):
were proud of what they were doing to them. How
is this effect of 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 and doing the best they can.
But I don't know how you can see this because
(15:37):
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
(16:02):
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
(16:23):
and eat what was in it. The stepmother comes out,
starts lecturing him and telling the other children, Adrian's eating
a bowl of apple sauce that has bugs and dirt
in it. Why are you doing that? It just goes
(16:45):
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 change this. Very early so, the day after our
three part series aired, uh, I went to the our
state's capital and I just started talking to any and
every lawmaker I could find, and many of them actually
(17:08):
were very receptive with the issues with our story, the
issue of not being able to get their 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
(17:29):
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, you know, there's the Mandatory Reporter law,
which includes professionals, you know, teachers, doctors, nurses, people like that,
(17:50):
but it doesn't include any other adults or any other
family member other than mom and dad. So 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,
(18:11):
as you know, they got to do their research because
they wanted 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,
(18:31):
and you stand by and let a child be abused
this way. I 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
(18:53):
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 de facts did nothing
to save the boy, had 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
(19:13):
would rather just die now than be tortured for a
couple of more years and then die, Rather go on
to My Holy Father than than stay and what his
life was. I just don't understand how Defects dropped 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
(19:33):
can teach you something I learned the hard way. Five
years into prosecuting an inner city Atlanta, and I would
torture myself about why, why, why why? And finally I
said why, ask why? Why? Ask why? Stop asking why?
Because I'm never gonna know why people do the horrible
(19:54):
things they do. I'll never understand it, and I'll just
torture myself trying to fee gure 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
(20:16):
it's fairly easy if you just go to k S HB.
That's k S is in sam h B as in
boy dot com. If you scroll down the page and
click on the investigator's 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
(20:39):
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 our
how you can contact our kinds legislatures, legislators. There are
(21:01):
the links are writing the story there, Jessica McMasters, thank
you for being with us. Nancy Grace Crime Stories, signing off,
goodbye friend,
Host
Nancy Grace
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