Records: Slain boy told authorities about abuse

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An emaciated boy whose father later killed him and fed his remains to the family’s pigs told Missouri authorities two years before his death that his dad and stepmother were abusing him, state records show.

Adrian Jones was 5 in July 2013 when he told a Missouri Children’s Division worker and a police officer that his father would kick him so hard on the back of his head that a “little bone come out,” according to agency records released this week to media outlets in response to an open records request. The boy’s remains were found in November 2015 on the family’s Kansas City, Kansas, rental property after officers responding to a report of domestic abuse learned the then-7-year-old boy was missing.

The boy’s father, Michael Jones, a 46-year-old bail bondsman, was sentenced Monday to life in prison for killing Adrian. Adrian’s stepmother, 31-year-old Heather Jones, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty last year. Neither is eligible for parole for at least 25 years.

An attorney and spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Social Services didn’t immediately return phone and email messages left by The Associated Press on Thursday seeking comment about the state records that show Adrian had reported being abused.

Adrian told a Missouri child-welfare case worker who went in mid-2013 to the family’s home in Plattsburg, near Kansas City, that “daddy kicks me,” the records show. The boy added that his dad “keeps hitting me in the head and punches me in the stomach and mom keeps pulling on my ears and it really hurts.”

The Joneses “always lock me in my room. I have to sleep without a pillow and blanket,” the records quote Adrian as saying. He added that his stepmother “keeps being mean to me.”

The nearly 460 pages of documents released by the Department of Social Services, which includes the Missouri Children’s Division, show that while the Joneses denied abusing Adrian or other children in their care, state welfare officials found in 2013 that “a preponderance of evidence” suggested the boy had been neglected by being locked in his bedroom. Investigators and medical staff found no visible signs of physical abuse, the records show. A county juvenile officer suggested the family be provided more services, but the family then moved to Kansas.