Adrian Jones, 7, had been tortured most of his childhood by his father and stepmother.
Answering to a report on domestic disturbance, the police came to discover Jones’ unimaginable pain. It had been covered up with his stepmother claiming that the kid’s father tried to shoot her, but police dug in deeper and revealed details about Adrian’s abuse.
Adrian was born to Michael Jones and Dianna Pearce, living with his biological mother at first before being transferred over to his father’s.
Adrian’s father was not with his mother, he married Heather Jones, who became Adrian’s stepmother. The couple was living together alongside seven other children.
When the police arrived to the scene, they realized that Adrian had been missing for months now, unveiling remaining pieces of the boy. They also realized that there were several surveillance cameras that had been set up all over the house, which contained footage of the boy’s torture.
The other children were taken out of the house for their protection and safety. His father and stepmother were arrested, and the landlady asked to provide any media they captured from their cameras.
Images revealed that they did actions such as locking him in a shower, forcing him to stand in a swimming pool with water up to his neck, being handcuffed, being tied up, starved, blindfolded, and even being forced to sleep outside in the cold.
They didn’t even mention his name, limiting his identity to “the boy,” and his body was not functioning properly after the abuse.
After starving Adrian to death, the couple brought pigs and threw Adrian’s body to them because they had not fed them.
Even though there were other children were living with Adrian, the abuse went unnoticed. In previous years, Adrian told a Children’s Division employee of an instance of his father abusing him.
“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… Mommy and Daddy can’t feed me.”
He was still not removed, and Heather and Michael refused to co-operate when the child welfare system tried to give him intensive home services. Anonymous sources say that “the mom beats the living daylights out of the kids for no reason.”
The parents were charged with first-degree murder, pleading guilty and sentenced to life in prison.