How Did Olivia Jansen End Up In a Ditch and Bruised All Over???

How Did Olivia Jansen End Up In a Ditch and Bruised All Over???

It was July 10th at 8:30 a.m., and Howard had just walked into the Kansas City Police Department. He was there to report his daughter, three-year-old Olivia Jansen, as missing. Howard hadn’t seen his daughter since the night before, and the front door of their home had been found open that very morning. Where had Olivia gone?

Just so you’re aware, today’s case is a child case. This is the story of Olivia Jansen. Olivia was born December 22nd, 2016, in Kansas City, Kansas. Her biological parents are 29-year-old Howard Jansen III and Whitney Purvis. When Olivia disappeared, her biological mother was actually in prison for an unrelated hit-and-run charge.

Olivia, like most three-year-olds, was very talkative, energetic, ambitious, and sometimes a little bit bossy, but she had an adorable lisp, her family said about her. Her radiant personality and beautiful blue eyes could light up any room. Some of Olivia’s favorite things were Peppa Pig, Frozen, and Trolls—what three-year-old doesn’t love those things?

Whitney and Howard had split prior to Olivia disappearing, so not too long after, Howard met a new woman, and her name is Jacqueline Kirkpatrick, Jackie for short—that’s what I’ll be calling her throughout the video. The two of them fell in love pretty quickly and moved in together. On social media, they looked very in love and they looked like a happy blended family.

Not too far into the relationship, the two of them got engaged, and they were supposed to be married on July 4th, 2020, though I don’t think that ended up happening. So Jackie had three other kids, and Howard had Olivia and an older daughter. They all lived together, except I believe Olivia’s older sister might have lived with her biological mother; I couldn’t find much information as to where she lived, but the other children lived with Howard and Jackie.

On July 10th of 2020, Howard said that he woke up at 6:30 in the morning and he went into Olivia’s room to check on her. At that point, he didn’t see her there and got worried. He then walked out into the living room area to see if maybe she had fallen asleep on the couch or was out there. Olivia wasn’t there either, but Howard did notice that the front door to the house was somehow open.

Two hours after he had discovered that she’d gone missing, he reported it to the police. Two hours is a long time if a three-year-old is missing; a lot can happen in two hours. I would have called the police immediately, so that right there is a little bit suspicious. When Howard first reported it to the police, he said that the last time he had seen Olivia was the night before around 6 p.m. However, he did later change his statement and said that the last time he had seen her was around 11 p.m. the night before.

Almost as soon as Howard reported Olivia missing, an Amber Alert went out for the little girl. She had been last seen wearing a pink and purple pajama top, purple pajama bottoms, and she had her brown hair up in a ponytail. Soon, many members of the community were out searching. The police had drones searching, off-road vehicle searching, they brought canines into the scene—everybody was trying to find Olivia.

It had already been two hours since she went missing, so at this point, if she was gonna be found alive, they needed to find her, and fast. At 5:30 p.m. that night, the search was called off. They had found Olivia—unfortunately, not alive. She was found about nine blocks away from her home in a shallow grave that had been covered up with leaves and sticks. Someone had dumped off her body and buried her very quickly, like they were in a rush.

When she was found, she was wearing the same pajamas that she had last been seen wearing. She also had large bruises on her head and her face; she looked like she had been badly beaten. The medical examiner later noted that Olivia also had lots of bruising on her arms and legs, and she had lacerations and a severe brain bleed. The brain bleed was her ultimate cause of death.

At this point, no one knew how Olivia’s body had gotten there or what had happened. So the first thing the police did was talk to the parents, as they were the last ones that had seen Olivia. And when they started speaking to investigators, their stories were not adding up. Jackie was also refusing to let the police search her car at this point—why else would you not let the police search your car unless you have something to hide?

Now, DCF had a case open on Olivia. Olivia’s grandparents—Howard’s father and stepmother—were the main people that had been calling CPS. Olivia’s step-grandmother’s name is Elizabeth. A few months prior to this, Elizabeth had seen on Jackie’s social media that she wanted to kill herself, so she called CPS. She said, “Hey, my daughter is living with this woman, she’s one of her primary caregivers, and she’s saying these things online, so I’m worried about my granddaughter.” Reasonable!

She placed this call in June; Olivia was dead in July, and Elizabeth had not seen Olivia since March of that year, which made her suspicion grow even more. DCF responded; nothing was found, so no more came of the investigation, and eventually, that was dropped.

One of the other reasons for Elizabeth’s great concern is that she says that she’s known Howard since he was only two years old, and she says as he got older, he had become vicious and had even started to hurt small animals when the animals would make a mess in the house. She said that Howard needed to be pulled away because he was so physically abusive with the animals.

Howard’s biological mother and Olivia’s grandmother, however, says the exact opposite, and so she never saw him hurt animals and she doesn’t think that he had anything to do with it. So who really knows? I feel like the stepmother is probably more right, because a lot of moms will do anything to protect their kids even in a situation like this, so I’m kind of swaying more towards the stepmother’s side.

Not too long after that first call to DCF, Elizabeth reached out again to the Kansas City Department for Children and Families. She reported at that time that she suspected Howard of using drugs, and she was worried because Howard had a very short temper. Howard was drug tested; he only ended up testing positive for THC, and they don’t do anything about weed being in your system—you’re not going to get your kid taken away for that. So Olivia was left to live in the home; they hadn’t found evidence of anything else.

Howard and Jackie were pretty upset that Elizabeth had called DCF on them again, so they decided they were not going to allow her to see Olivia anymore, and they kept Olivia from her. Before Jackie and Howard decided to cut off that contact with her grandmother, Olivia would often go over there to visit and have sleepovers with her grandmother, who she loved. However, she was always so unhappy to go home when her stay was over, and she would ask her grandmother, “You love me? You not mad at me? I come back, I come back.” And at one point, she even begged to live with her grandparents.

This sounds so much like the last case that I did on Noah Cuatro—given to the parents that are abusive, taken away from the loving grandparent that would have been an amazing home for them. It’s crazy, crazy all throughout the United States, apparently.

So Elizabeth knew that Olivia was not in a good situation, but she didn’t know how bad the situation actually was. She had many times pleaded with DCF to remove Olivia and give her to her. Even though there was a lot of concern about Howard and his drug use and his short temper, it’s said that a lot of the beatings actually came from Jackie. She was Jackie’s stepdaughter or soon-to-be stepdaughter, and Jackie already had her own kids, so it was the Cinderella effect—when the stepchild is treated worse than the biological children. And for that reason, so I’m not saying that Howard had nothing to do with it, but from what I have gathered, it sounds like Jackie inflicted the majority of this.

It was revealed that Jackie would often put Olivia in a dog kennel, and she would hit and slap her even in front of other people. She would also often force Olivia to stand in the corner for hours on end. One time when a friend had visited the house, he says he saw Jackie feeding Olivia soap—and so much soap that she was vomiting from it, because she was also starving Olivia. She said the food in the house was for her kids and not for Olivia, so there’s the bar of soap.

The other children that were in the house with Olivia told authorities that Jackie would often hit Olivia in the back of the head and bang her head into the walls. There were actually a few holes found in the walls throughout the house where she had done this to Olivia.

Once authorities started hearing about all the DCF calls, they had also found some new information in regards to Olivia’s death. An eyewitness from the morning that Olivia disappeared had also come forward to speak to authorities. He had seen something that morning that he thought was a little off. He said that he saw a silver SUV parked by the walking path around 7:30 a.m. on Friday—one hour before Olivia’s father reported her as missing. He then became concerned after seeing video of a silver SUV allegedly belonging to Jansen’s girlfriend in a news story about Olivia’s disappearance.

He also said, “I thought it was really weird. I was only there for about 10 minutes, and then two people got in and took off, and it peeled off down the street.” So that’s why Olivia was found in such a shallow grave; they did this in 10 minutes.

When this first happened, CPS did not want to release their records of Olivia’s case. They eventually did release these documents, and in it, it says that two anonymous people had called back in February of 2020 to report suspicions of child abuse. One of the calls said that Howard had hit her in the leg, and there were concerns that the leg might be broken. The second person that called in February said that Jackie had hit Olivia. The agency went and checked everything out, said that they didn’t see any bruises, and then the person who had called in the tip recanted it later, so nothing came of that as well. So there’s two visits, two different concerns—both of them they said, “Nope, everything’s good, it’s all set, whatever,” didn’t find anything, okay.

There was also a log of the time that Olivia’s grandmother had called DCF to report suspicion of Howard’s drug use as well as saying that he had a bad temper, so there’s record of that as well. And then there’s also another record on June 30th that DCF set up a video call to check in on Olivia, and this was because Olivia and Jackie were out of town for some reason. So if they wanted to have it, then they had to do a video call—not the best idea in this kind of case, but they didn’t think that there was enough allegations of abuse, they thought that it was a lower risk, so they did the video call.

While the DCF worker talked to Olivia on this call, she noted that Olivia was simply excited for the 4th of July and was in good spirits. DCF also said that the video call was completely appropriate. Elizabeth Jansen, Olivia’s grandmother, was not happy with the fact that there was a video call. She said, “Don’t you think that’s a warning sign? I haven’t even seen my granddaughter since March, and now just a video call?” However, they did say that the family was just a family in need of assessment and it was not an emergency situation like child abuse accusations would be. But there was accusations a while ago; they just never found anything of it, so I guess they wiped their slate clean, and um, I don’t—I don’t know.

In addition to the eyewitness who had seen the silver vehicle peel off, neighbor’s cameras also caught some things around the time that Olivia was reported missing. They caught Jackie backing up out of the driveway at 6:48 a.m. It also recorded Howard cutting through a neighbor’s backyard at the same time. Then it sees Howard and Jackie leaving together in the vehicle at 7:15, and then returning only 34 minutes later. This was the time that they were dumping off Olivia’s body and burying it. So it was only 34 minutes, and then they arrived back home, and then Howard notified the police, and the Amber Alert was sent out from there. So that’s why it wasn’t reported until a few hours later, is because they were doing other things at the time.

Jackie and Howard were put under arrest; there were too many suspicions against them at this point. The story didn’t make sense; they looked guilty. So on November 3rd of 2021, Jackie pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder, one count of child abuse to a child under the age of six, and two counts of interference in regards to the investigation of Olivia’s death. On December 20th, 2021, Jackie was sentenced to 31 years for her role in the abuse and death of Olivia. In her plea deal, Jackie agreed to testify against Howard.

On March 25th, 2020 [sic], Howard was charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a child, three counts of aggravated assault to a child, three counts of aggravated endangerment of a child, and interference with law enforcement. Howard Jansen was sentenced to 29 years in prison. Initially, he was charged with first-degree murder, but then it was dropped down to second degree once he took a plea deal of his own. I’m not sure what the plea deal consisted of, however.

During court proceedings at the Wyandotte County Courthouse, some of Olivia’s family read out loud Victim Impact statements. At one point, they actually had to clear out the courtroom because it was getting just so emotional in there. Olivia Jansen’s grandmother, Vicki Sandin, said this about Olivia while in court: “I just want everyone to remember her for what she was. She was a precious baby; she was happy and full of joy. I just ask everyone to remember her for who she is and not the people who took her life away from her”—which is absolutely how we should be remembering all of these victims.

A huge memorial where the community left candles, flowers, balloons, and stuffed animals popped up across the street from where Olivia’s body had been found. There was also a big vigil put together in Olivia’s memory. Her funeral was held on Friday, July 17, 2020, at the Maple Hill Cemetery—make me happy—and even her mother was able to attend virtually from jail.

It was never released the exact way that Olivia had died that day, besides the fact that it was some sort of blunt force trauma to her head as she had the brain bleeding. Olivia was such a sweet and loving little girl whom her mother and grandparents adored; she is missed by many people. I feel like you can even see in this picture when Jackie and Olivia are standing together—look at the top of Olivia’s head, it looks like there’s a big bruise up there. I mean, I’m not sure, it could just be the lighting, but it’s the only picture I see of them together, too.