Parents on a Drug Binge Toss Their Son in a Dumpster
Parents on a Drug Binge Toss Their Son in a Dumpster
Jackson Manson was born on July 16, 2018, in Southern California to parents Adam Manson and Kiana Williams. From the very start, the newborn didn’t have the best upbringing. He was born to drug-addicted parents, and the family lived at the Upward Bound House, a shelter in Culver City for families experiencing homelessness. Kiana had prior run-ins with the law as well. On June 11, 2016, her estranged husband served her with a restraining order. The couple had been married for 10 years and shared three children together—two sons and a daughter.
In the order, he outlined how Kiana had chosen drugs and a gang lifestyle over her family, and the couple had become estranged the year prior. He claimed that on that day, he called her to come do their children’s hair. Upon arrival, Kiana allegedly began boiling grease on the stove, and an argument ensued. According to the man, Kiana started yelling and cursing. He claimed he kept telling her that she needed to leave, after which she threatened to harm their children. He then proceeded to toss Kiana’s things over his balcony so that she would leave, and tossed her phone to her once she was outside. Angered, Kiana proceeded to break the man’s living room window and threatened to have her friends shoot up his house. Charges related to the restraining order were eventually dropped, but due to the incident and Kiana’s ongoing erratic lifestyle, she lost custody of her three children and was ordered by a judge to pay child support to her estranged husband. It’s unclear if Adam too had a past criminal history, but what is known is that he liked to use aliases and went by the surnames Jackson and Owens whenever it suited him.
Very early on, Social Services became involved with the family. Ariana Herrera, the housing manager at Upward Bound, contacted the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), concerned about the conditions in which Jackson was living. She said there was trash, rotting food, and drug paraphernalia scattered all throughout the family’s housing unit, as well as ashes and cigarette butts on the floor near the baby’s bouncer. Ms. Herrera contacted the shelter’s program manager and subsequently met with Adam and Kiana to express her concerns about the deplorable living conditions prior to contacting DCFS. However, when Jackson’s parents found out about the call, they took him and fled the shelter, afraid the baby would be taken from them.
On January 3, 2019, Jackson’s parents were found in a blue 2006 Chrysler PT Cruiser with a missing bumper that they had stolen from the Upward Bound House. They were subsequently arrested on suspicion of auto theft. It should be noted that some reports have indicated that they were in a stolen U-Haul truck; however, Jackson wasn’t with the couple when they were taken into custody. They claimed he was in the care of a woman named Stephanie Johnson, which was later proven to be a lie.
While Kiana remained in jail, Adam was released in error due to using one of his many aliases. Later that same month, eligibility worker Vicki Lee from the Department of Public Social Services contacted the DCFS hotline to report that there was a reasonable suspicion of abuse after Adam spoke with her in January and denied having any contact with the baby or Kiana since November 13. Adam denied that the baby was his son, despite being listed as the father on Jackson’s birth certificate, and he reported that Kiana was in jail and that the boy might be with her new boyfriend. He even went as far as to suggest that Jackson might have been sold to the Mexican Mafia.
However, in a jailhouse interview with supervising DCFS social worker Christina Herrera, Kiana claimed that she wasn’t sure where the baby was, but that the child might be with Adam. According to Ms. Herrera, Kiana told her that she was sorry for what she had done and that she wanted to go into a drug treatment program. She noted that she was a daily drug user, her family had been homeless, and Jackson had not been seen by a doctor. On January 25, unable to locate the baby and with his parents giving inconsistent explanations as to his whereabouts, DCFS reported Jackson missing.
Following an investigation into addresses that Kiana had provided to Ms. Herrera…
“And Pat and Jeff, that stolen car in the parking lot about 150 yards away from where I am—this could be a break that really could help them out in this bizarre case. Jackson Manson is six months old and missing since New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t with his parents, Adam Manson and Kiana Williams, when they were arrested a few days later.”
“I don’t think they hurt the baby. I really don’t. I really believe that they have him, you know, somewhere, and they just refuse to tell. That’s the problem police are facing. Jackson is missing, his parents have been in jail for more than a month and refuse to say where he is.”
“I mean, it’s scary. I could never imagine my daughter going missing. I don’t know what the circumstances are.”
Manson, Williams, and their baby lived here—a Transitional Living Center for Families in Culver City. They were here when Sandy moved in with her family last September.
“I never saw anything other than that little boy being showered with love and affection. That’s all I ever saw. They were very doting parents. They would come downstairs with their baby, and the mom always had the baby. They loved the baby.”
But where is the baby? Culver City police believe Manson and Williams stole this PT Cruiser from the place where they lived in Culver City. Police found that Cruiser in South Los Angeles. Manson and Williams were known to hang around Slauson and Crenshaw in South LA, and that’s where Jackson was last seen on December 31. His father was arrested on January 2, and his mother was arrested on January 3. They’ve been in jail since then. The question is, where was Jackson then?
“I never saw anything that was disturbing or that would make me think that they would do anything hurtful to the baby. And where is Jackson now? I’m having a really hard time in my heart believing that they would do anything wrong.”
However, what happened to baby Jackson wasn’t a mystery for very long. In a strange turn of events, Adam and Kiana were charged with child abuse resulting in death in the case of five-month-old baby Jackson and held in lieu of a $5 million bail. But what happened here, and where was he? According to Adam, Jackson was with someone—possibly even the Mexican Mafia. However, in another interview room, Kiana began talking. She told authorities that Jackson died on December 31, 2018—six weeks after the family fled the shelter and three days before they were found in the stolen vehicle and arrested.
Eyewitness News learned that the child’s mother confessed to the crime, but police had yet to find the missing boy. However, they believed there was evidence to suggest the boy’s remains were somewhere inside the Corona landfill.
According to Kiana’s statements to police, she and Adam were using meth at the King Motel in South Los Angeles and passed out. They claimed that after they woke up, Jackson was completely unresponsive, and they soon realized that he was dead. According to Adam, Jackson was hot to the touch, his limbs were limp, and he was not breathing. Kiana claimed the couple attempted CPR, but it was already too late: Jackson was dead.
According to the couple, they never called the police out of fear that they would be arrested for their son’s death. They told detectives they rented a room for a second night and continued to smoke. Kiana shared details about how she wrapped her son’s lifeless body: she dressed the little boy in a blue onesie set of pajamas that had red accents on the cuffs, wrapped him in a gray blanket, and then proceeded to stuff his lifeless body inside a black trash bag, followed by a pillowcase. She then placed her son in a black Adidas duffel bag, and finally inside a maroon-colored rolling suitcase. The pair claimed to have scoped out several sites to dump Jackson’s body before settling on a dumpster located behind the Sears store at the Baldwin Hills Plaza in Crenshaw.
Culver City detectives were able to track down the sanitation worker who did the pickup. Through a Spanish interpreter, trash truck driver Martin Ramirez testified that he arrived at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall at about 6:30 a.m. on January 15. He said he found a burgundy suitcase with black stripes, which stood out to him due to the foul odor it was emitting and because the dumpster was designated for green trash only.
A cadaver dog detected the scent of human remains on a bed in the motel room and in the back of the stolen PT Cruiser driven by the couple, which was consistent with Kiana’s statement. Investigators believed that Jackson’s remains were located at the 1,300-acre El Sobrante Landfill in Corona, California, but at least three searches turned up no sign of Jackson’s body.
Air 7 HD was overhead as investigators and police dogs searched the massive El Sobrante Landfill in Corona for the remains of Jackson Manson. It was sure to be a painstakingly slow process trying to find the remains of a six-month-old boy inside a landfill that processes 70,000 tons of trash every week.
“We have over 20 personnel out at the landfill right now. We’re being helped out by the landfill personnel themselves.”
Jackson Manson was last seen with his parents, Adam Manson and Kiana Williams, on New Year’s Eve inside this PT Cruiser—a car that police believe the parents stole from a homeless shelter where they were staying. They were later arrested, but according to Culver City police, they’ve been uncooperative with the search for their son.
“They should have never had the child, so never been given back their child. They’re two recovering addicts.”
Adam Manson’s sister says for a while she believed the baby was with a friend. “Now that we’re here, it’s more… and as the days have gone by, it just doesn’t make sense, honestly.”
This is the same Riverside County landfill where Fontana Police found human remains back in 2010. Then, it took them three months to find missing pregnant teenager Aniceto Escamilla in a search area authorities described as massive—200 yards by about 50 yards and about 60 feet deep. Nine years later, investigators were searching the El Sobrante Landfill for remains once again. They believed Manson and Williams placed their son’s body in a dumpster not far from the Crenshaw Mall. The trash from that dumpster was brought out to this landfill.
“A lot of it doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of lies, there’s a lot of non-truths here. It doesn’t make sense.”
Aunt Gina Manson also says that she talked to her brother on the phone shortly before the boy went missing. She says he was in tears; he admitted that he just couldn’t care for his child. She says she agreed to care for the boy, but he never called back for them to make those arrangements.
On April 22, 2019, after consulting with Waste Management, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, and experts from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Culver City police called off the search for Jackson Manson. According to an official police statement: “We make this decision with a heavy heart after an exhaustive investigation was unable to narrow down the possible location of Jackson’s remains within the landfill to a point that would make continuing the search reasonable.”
On September 26, 2019, 34-year-old Adam Manson and 32-year-old Kiana Williams each pled no contest to felony child abuse resulting in death and were sentenced to six years in prison. As of the date of this recording, neither parent is listed in the California Department of Corrections database. In fact, Yurgi was able to locate Adam on social media. Apparently, he’s been active online since August 27, 2021, which means that at the very least, he only served a small fraction of his six-year sentence. In his pictures, it appears he’s back to smoking and drinking in motels and hanging out in Las Vegas, all while his infant son is rotting away in the garbage.
At this point in our episodes, we normally say a few words about the victim and share burial details as well as the funeral arrangements that their families lovingly planned for them. We don’t get to do that for Jackson. His parents tossed him away like a piece of trash, and his final resting place is a landfill. We never got to know anything about Jackson because he was still a little baby. He’ll never grow up to go to school, make friends, or go to prom. He didn’t even get to celebrate his first birthday. In my opinion, the paltry six-year sentence that was handed down—the one his parents didn’t even actually have to serve—is not justice. Do you agree? Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
