Vanessa
Martinez
October
21, 2011 - January 8, 2012
Find
A Grave Memorial
What chance would you
give a child, born with Cocaine and Meth amphetamine
in their system?
The chances would be fairly good, if that child never
had to be with the people who were
responsible for her condition in the first place. In
our society, children are taken away from drug addicts
and then
given back to them without so much as a blink of an
eye. Five days before Christmas, Vanessa was two
months old and she
and her mother were going to live together for the
first time since she
was born. Just three short months later, Vanessa's
precious little body
would be found in a shallow grave, no one had even
reported her missing.
After she born with drugs in her system, Vanessa and
her older sister
were taken away by Child Protective Services and place
in a foster home. Olivia Martinez, who was 20 years
old at
the time and Jonathan Kesterson, who was 26 at the
time, both tested positive for enough Cocaine that it
was
obvious they were regular users of this drug. Both of
these "parents" agreed to go to drug counseling as
well as parenting
classes and the couple would be allowed to visit the
children two times a week.
Doctors were keeping an eye on Vanessa and no signs of
withdrawal from
the drugs, was ever noticed, though she did sleep a
lot, was slow to respond and was very quiet. Vanessa
was
healthy and the visits were going well and at times
she was said to be clingy with her parents,
caseworkers said
she and her sister Dominique, were bonding really well
and that the
family seemed to be loving and caring. This would not
explain the
warning signs which were also there.
CPS reports say that the couple had personal
struggles. The couple had
each grown up with alcoholic parents and
Olivia had been forced to do Meth as a child, they
both left New Mexico
where they said the situation was bad. When the
children were born, Jonathan signed their birth
certificates,
becoming their father, legally. The couple worked
though at times, CPS says one or the other was the
"breadwinner" of the
family. During the next two months, they both passed
their drug test and went to church and CPS reported
that
Jonathan was a hard worker who just wanted to be a
father to his children and by December, CPS had been
talking
about getting the family back together. On December
20th, the children went to live with their parents and
Johnathan asked that the case against them be closed,
CPS agreed to close the case 30 days before they were
supposed
to:
"It
is unfortunate that
her CPS caseworker moved so fast that this writer
was advised of
services
ending
without being
able to have closure with this client"
Counselor
- Arizona
Families First - January report
By the time this report was made, Vanessa was already
dead.
On April 12, Jonathan was arrested and though it was
not related to the
death of Vanessa, Sheriff's deputies found out he'd
made comments about the death of Vanessa in January.
Jonathan's story was that he went for a jog on January
8 and when he got home, the baby was dead. Olivia told
Sheriffs
that she was working at a night club the night before
and Jonathan told her that Vanessa was having
hard
time breathing. When Olivia told the story again, she
changed it and said that Jonathan had squeezed
Vanessa's ribs very
hard and also had beat on her because she
was fussy and keeping him awake, she also stated this
was NOT the
first time he had beat on the baby.
Jonathan didn't change his story at
all. Jonathan and Olivia told authorities that they
did not report the
death of Vanessa because they were afraid of losing
their other
daughter. The couple were arrested and facing charges
of
first degree murder, child abuse and concealing a
body. Investigators
were told that Vanessa was buried in a
shallow grave in the desert. Cadaver dogs would find
her buried under
two feed of dirt, under a Mesquite tree.
Jonathan would never make it to court since in July of
2012, he was
found in his cell with a bed sheet wrapped around his
neck, he was dead.
Christy and her husband Joey feel like they failed the
girls:
"We
felt
like that was what we were supposed to do, is to
help them and we
didn't help"
Christy
Martin
"They
just
tried to get the parents back with their kids and
move on to the
next kids
and
hope
it works out"
Joey
Martin
- Former Foster Parent For The Girls
A
former Detective predicted that there
would be more deaths as a result of what he called
a "case closing
spree"
by CPS:
"You're gonna come up with some issues down the
road and if you don't
investigate
it now, then you' investigate it later when it's
at a serious injury,
or a death"
Michael Orozco - Child Crimes Detective
UPDATE:
In November of 2013 Olivia Paige Martinez, who was
22 years old at the
time and having plead guilty to manslaughter, was
sentenced to to 10
1/2 years in prison.
Death
Occurred in the
state of Arizona
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