Olivia Jansen: Grandparents say 3-year-old begged to be with them and was 'always so unhappy to go home'
KANSAS CITY, KANSAS: The grandparents of a three-year-old girl who was found dead after her disappearance had sparked an Amber Alert have said that her death could have been prevented if social services had intervened. MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported how Olivia Jansen's body was found hours after her father, Howard Jansen III, walked into the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department on Friday, July 10, and filed a missing person report.
When questioned, Jansen, 29, told investigators that the last time he saw his daughter was at 11 pm on Thursday, July 9, when he went to sleep at his home on the 4400 Block of Gibbs Road. He said when he woke up the next morning at 5:30 am, he found the door to his house was open and his daughter gone. KCPD spokesman Tom Tomasic said they heard "several stories throughout the day" and that "none of them made sense." Authorities made a breakthrough in the case when they received a tip that a young girl's body had been found not far from 34th and Steele Road and positively identified her as Olivia.
Now, Olivia's grandparents have spoken out against social services and claimed that the three-year-old would have been alive had they taken their complaints seriously. They said they had not seen their granddaughter in months. Speaking to KMBC, Howard Jansen II, her grandfather, said, "Torture, torture, they kept her from us … we called DCF (Kansas Department for Children and Families) … we knew it was bad but we didn't know what we are learning now."
Olivia's grandmother, Elisabeth Jansen, told KSHB41, told KSHB that she last saw Olivia in March and that the three-year-old told her she did not want to go back home to her father. "She was always so unhappy to go home," she said. "She would frown and say, 'You love me? You’re not mad at me? I come back? I come back?' (sic) and I told her 'I will hurt anybody who that keeps you away from me.'"
She said she raised concern for her granddaughter's wellbeing with the KCPD, and eventually, the DCF last month but that nothing was done. "Because they wouldn't do anything other than knock at the door – and so I was on the phone with them June 22 for 23 minutes telling them everything I could think of to tell them, and then they sent me an email on Thursday that I can send them more stuff but for me to know they wouldn’t be contacting me."
Jansen II was arrested on July 10 and is facing charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child endangerment, and unauthorized control of a dead body. His girlfriend, Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick, was arrested a day later and is facing the same charges.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree urged the community to come forward to the police if they knew about a child abuse victim and promised to prosecute Jansen III and Kirkpatrick to the full extent of the law. "If you know of a child being abused, if you hear of a child being abused, regardless if you are a mandatory reporter, I ask you to make the call," he said, before adding, "You have my word that this office will do everything in our power to receive justice for baby Olivia and for this family."