Police records indicate that authorities were called to the home of a slain Kansas toddler at least six times in 2020, including a call from her own grandparents who were worried about her safety.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, 3-year-old Olivia Jansen was found dead on Friday evening, buried in a shallow grave only nine blocks away from a Kansas City home she lived in with her father and his girlfriend. Howard Jansen III and his girlfriend, Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick, have been arrested for the child’s murder.
The calls to police were all pertaining to welfare checks and child abuse concerns, Fox 4 reports. Olivia’s grandparents said that she could have been saved if authorities had taken the calls more seriously, adding that Jansen has an explosive temper and was involved in drugs.
“I was concerned because I knew they did drugs heavily,” Olivia’s grandmother, Elisabeth Jansen, said. “I knew that she would be around the drugs. I knew there would be people looking for them because they owed money.”
Elisabeth added that she hadn’t seen Olivia in months when she saw a concerning post about suicide on Kirkpatrick’s Facebook page. The post prompted her to call the police herself, but after authorities knocked on the door at Kirkpatrick’s home, they left when no one answered.
“I said, ‘This woman is taking care of my grandchild,’ and I said, ‘She has put on Facebook that she wants to end her life,'” Elisabeth said.
An autistic eyewitness who was out doing yard work on Friday morning spotted a silver SUV parked by the walking trail off of near 34th Street and Steele Road on Friday morning at around 7:45 a.m. The eyewitness didn’t know how to report the incident but told another neighbor what he saw after he spotted what appeared to be the same SUV on the news, Fox 59 reports.
The eyewitness told the neighbor he saw the SUV in the area for around 10 minutes before “two people got in and took off and peeled off down the street.”
“I said, well you need to go call the TIPS line or something, and he was like, ‘I don’t know how to go about that,’” the neighbor said. “So I said, ‘I will take care of it.’ So that’s when I went directly to the police barriers they had up on South 42nd and Gibbs, and I told an officer and they took it from there.”
Authorities found the little girl buried in a shallow grave with bruising on her face. Although the official autopsy results have not yet been released, Fox 59 reports that she may have been beaten.
Both suspects are facing charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child endangerment, and unauthorized control of a dead body. They remain behind bars at the Wyandotte County Detention Center.
Olivia’s biological mother was behind bars on unrelated charges when the incident occurred and is not considered a suspect in the child’s death.
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[Feature Photo: Olivia Jansen/Handout]
