A Kansas lawsuit over the 2015 murder of a 7-year-old boy says the state’s child welfare agency should have starved and tortured him and removed him from an abusive home before feeding his body to pigs. The company agreed to pay $1 million to settle the lawsuit.
Gov. Laura Kelly and top leaders in the Kansas Legislature approved the settlement in a brief public meeting Tuesday after conferring privately for 30 minutes with Kris Kobach, the state attorney general’s chief of staff. The lawsuit, filed in 2017 by the boy’s mother, maternal grandmother and adult sisters in Wyandotte County in the Kansas City area, was scheduled for trial in District Court in April 2025.
Adrian Jones was living with his father, Michael Jones, and stepmother, Heather Jones, in Kansas City, Kansas, at the time of his death. Both men are serving 25-year life sentences for the boy’s murder, and authorities have privately watched the boy being assaulted and locked naked in a shower room for several months as his condition worsens. It was announced that the incident was recorded on camera.
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The Kansas Department of Children and Families received reports of abuse in the years before Adrian’s death, but his last physical contact with Adrian was based on more than 2,000 pages of records released by the agency in 2017. It was almost four years before his death. Records show the three frequently traveled between communities in Kansas and Missouri.
“This has been a long journey for Adrian’s family,” said attorney Matt Burch, who is representing the family. “The most important thing for the family was to hopefully make a change and prevent something like this from happening in the future.”
Michael Jones is seen in this undated file photo provided by the Wyandotte County Detention Center in Kansas City, Kansas. Kansas will pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit over the 2015 murder of 7-year-old Adrian Jones, who authorities say was starved and tortured before feeding the boy’s body to pigs. Announced. Governor Laura Kelly and top leaders in the Kansas Legislature approved the settlement in a short public meeting on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, after consulting privately with the Attorney General’s Office. Michael Jones was Adrian’s father. (Wyandotte County Jail, via AP, File)
The family’s lawsuit says the state and social workers could have “intervened and rescued Adrian at any time during his long and unimaginable ordeal,” but they “chose to act like indifferent bystanders.” insisted. Kansas authorities claimed frequent travel made it difficult to monitor the boy.
Kansas Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Kansas City-area Democrat and one of the lawmakers who approved the settlement, said Wednesday that the state legally bears “tremendous responsibility” for what happened. He said he believed that
But Kelly told reporters Wednesday at the state Capitol that the problem is not the potential damages from the lawsuits, but that the lawsuits distract from the “mission at hand” to improve the child welfare system. he said.
“It really had to do with not wanting to resolve the issue and spend time litigating in court, which could definitely take months, even years.” she said.
A resolution approving the settlement released Wednesday indicates the department will pay half of the settlement, with the other half coming from a special state fund that covers damages from lawsuits.
Lawyers involved in the lawsuit and their employees did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday. Kobach’s office also had no comment.
The Democratic governor and Republican-majority legislative leaders approved the settlement in a public meeting that totaled less than five minutes before and after the closed-door meeting with Chief Deputy Attorney General Dan Burrows.
Kelly read out the title of the lawsuit before voting, but following long-standing standard practice, neither she nor any lawmakers publicly discussed the details Tuesday. No formal follow-up information is usually released to the general public.
On Wednesday, state Rep. Susan Concannon, a Republican from western Kansas who chairs the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Child Welfare Oversight, said of the $1 million settlement, “I’m a little surprised it wasn’t more.” “There is,” he said.
The boy’s death sparked a multi-year legislative overhaul of the child welfare system. In 2021, Adrian’s Law established Commissioner Concannon, who requires police officers and caseworkers to visually observe children who are victims of abuse or neglect.
The state is also working to improve training for doctors to recognize abuse and provide “comprehensive” services to troubled families.
Birch said she and her family hope that through this lawsuit and the 2021 legislation, “these children will receive more attention.”
Adrian’s family also filed a lawsuit in 2017 against state officials in Jackson County, Missouri, which is also in the Kansas City area. The lawsuit was settled in 2020, but details were not immediately available and Burch said he could not comment.
Adrian’s body was found in a pig pen at his father and stepmother’s rental property in November 2015 after police responded to a domestic violence call. Heather Jones accused Michael Jones of beating and strangling him, according to an affidavit and search warrant later released by authorities.
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According to court records, the Joneses used increasingly harsh methods to control the boy’s behavior, including tying him to an inversion table, handcuffing him and administering electric shocks with a device called a zap enforcer. It is said that he used He also suffered from “extreme hunger,” according to court records.
