Jayden Robker was found dead in a KC pond. His autopsy, police file leave out key details
A year after police said there was no foul play in the death of 13-year-old Jayden Robker of Kansas City, an autopsy report finally released by medical examiners leaves unanswered questions as to how Jayden died, and police records reveal investigators did not interview family members after he was found dead.
Despite unusual circumstances surrounding his death and allegations of abuse in the home before and at the time of his disappearance, no one was ever charged in Jayden’s death. Investigators provided little explanation of how they determined no foul play was involved, and for more than a month the medical examiner refused to release the autopsy, saying the record was closed when it had been open for nearly a year.
Jayden was last seen alive on Feb. 2, 2023, on surveillance video outside a QuikTrip gas station less than a mile from his home, trying to sell Pokémon cards.
He was found dead in a pond about a mile from his home in Kansas City’s Northland on March 10, 2023. Family said he left home after school to ride his electric skateboard and sell Pokémon cards, but never returned.
Jayden’s body was eventually found with the help of a Kansas City Police Department drone in a wooded area near Northwest Englewood Road and North Broadway in Gladstone. According to the Gladstone police case file, he was found wearing the same clothes he was reportedly wearing the day he went missing. Investigators found a wallet in his pocket containing eight to 10 Pokémon cards and $12.
Near the pond, investigators found a navy blue jacket, a sock and a pair of broken sunglasses. In a dive operation, investigators found a firearm in the southwest section of the pond, the case file said.
Jayden went missing two years after he had first alleged abuse by his stepfather, according to state child welfare records. The records also show that around the same time Jayden went missing, a second child accused the stepfather of abuse.
The Star reached Susan Deedon, Jayden’s aunt, by phone in November. She said having no answers about how he died all this time has been hard on his family.
“I just feel like there’s been zero accountability,” Deedon said.
The Star received the Gladstone Police Department’s case file for Jayden’s death the day after the request was made. But the six-page file details little information about how police determined there to be no foul play.
The case file includes no interviews with family members, does not detail a search for witnesses or mention state-documented accusations of abuse in the home.
Capt. Karl Burris with the Gladstone Police Department said this was because KCPD and social services had already conducted an extensive missing person investigation prior to Jayden being located.
That investigation — conducted while it was still a missing person’s case — included interviews of multiple family members, attempts to locate witnesses and details of searches for Jayden. The departments shared relevant information, like interviews with family, Burris said. Gladstone detectives kept in close contact with Jayden’s mother after the teen’s body was found, but Burris said those contacts are not considered interviews.
“There is no definitive answer as to how Jayden passed,” Burris said. “The forensic examination could not determine a cause of death … no other evidence was discovered that would lead to the conclusion that foul play was involved.”
Three months after The Star requested KCPD’s missing person case file on Jayden, the department has not yet provided the file. Capt. Jake Becchina, a spokesperson with KCPD, said in an email Dec. 17 that the department had been working on redacting areas of the file that are not public record.
A Missouri State Highway Patrol Dive Team incident report listed “drowning” in the “injuries” section, though medical examiners never determined that to be the official cause of death.
In the report, an officer said he searched the pond for evidence related to the “drowning.” The search came up empty.
Autopsy details an “undetermined” cause of death
The official cause and manner of Jayden’s death are “undetermined,” according to the autopsy. Manner of death, in an autopsy report, is a determination of how a person died.
The autopsy explained that Jayden’s body was extracted from a pond and he was pronounced dead at the scene. It also said the pond was up to approximately 6 feet deep and ice was reported on the pond around the time of Jayden’s disappearance.
The autopsy said body decomposition was consistent with the location and timeline for which the body was found, and showed no evidence of internal or external trauma that would point to foul play.
Alan Martinez, the doctor who completed the autopsy, declined interviews with the media about the case.
Diane Peterson, chief medical examiner in Johnson County, Kansas, reviewed Jayden’s autopsy report at The Star’s request. She said that an “undetermined” cause of death is made by a medical examiner when there is no clear evidence of something that could become fatal in a person.
“There’s nothing in there that necessarily points to (Robker) drowning,” Peterson said. “Dr. Martinez … called it undetermined because he had nothing definitive to point one way or the other toward any cause of death.”
Peterson said that when she reviewed Jayden’s autopsy, she, too, saw nothing that pointed to a definitive cause of death. And when the manner of death is also undetermined, she said, there is no clear indication of how a person died.
“Or, sometimes, manner of death might be undetermined if a person is between an accident and suicide, like, for example, in an overdose or something like that,” Peterson said. “Maybe they’re between two (causes), but they don’t know which way, and it’ll be called ‘undetermined.’”
“So either you have no idea, or you have some idea but you can’t pick one — either way (it’s) undetermined,” she said.
Peterson said there is nothing in Jayden’s autopsy that could help medical examiners indicate if he died before or after coming in contact with the water. The autopsy did reveal a small hematoma on the back of Jayden’s head, but it was not associated with any skull fractures or internal head trauma, the report said. Hematomas are a collection of blood that forms inside the body, usually due to an injury.
“Due to decomposition … of the body, assessment of this apparent scalp trauma is difficult” the autopsy summary said, indicating that the hematoma could have happened after Jayden was already dead.
Forensic Medical of Kansas and Topeka initially refused to release the autopsy report, which is a public record under state law, in response to multiple requests from The Star in September and October. It had been completed since April 4, 2023.
The agency cited the provision for jeopardizing an investigation in its response, claiming investigations were ongoing in relation to Jayden’s death. But all police investigations were closed by December 2023 according to records from the Gladstone Police Department, Kansas City Police Department and Missouri Department of Social Services — Children’s Division.
The Gladstone Police Department claimed the autopsy was sealed by the medical examiner due to Jayden’s age. But there is nothing in state statutes that gives the examiner that power.
After The Star confirmed all investigations were closed, and sent records of the closed investigations to Forensic Medical, the medical examiner did finally release Jayden’s autopsy — more than a month after the initial request.
Delayed information, few answers
Capt. Karl Burris, a spokesman for the Gladstone Police Department, said Jayden’s case was tragic and difficult for everyone involved.
“Since it’s not a crime, since it’s involving a juvenile, I really … don’t have a whole lot of comment about it,” Burris said. “It was just a terrible, terrible thing.”
The six-page case file provided by Gladstone police included summaries of anonymous tips, but few other details of the investigative process. The case file did not include police interviews with family members apart from one encounter with Jayden’s stepfather, Eric Givens, and mother, Heather Robker, soon after the medical examiner determined there was no foul play involved in Jayden’s death.
At the time, Givens told police he was relieved to hear there were no findings of foul play. Officers offered Heather Robker resources, the case file said, then left the residence. The case file does not specify what resources were offered, or include any conversations with other witnesses or mention police searching for potential witnesses to the death.
The Gladstone case file also does not mention the state-documented accusations of abuse by Givens or whether police interviewed family about the accusations.
Burris said Gladstone police handled the case the same way they would handle other cases. The department worked with other agencies who started investigating when Jayden went missing, he said.
But Gladstone police did not conduct their own independent interviews of family members.
“We work closely with DSS and the Children’s Division,” Burris said in an email. “We strive for open communications with DSS to avoid further traumatizing families with duplicate interviews, while ensuring we both are getting all the information we need for our investigations.”
Detectives were also unable to find evidence of foul play throughout their investigation, Burris said.
“We could find absolutely no evidence of any kind of crime surrounding his actual death,” Burris said.
Timeline of a mystery
When Jayden first went missing, KCPD issued a missing persons bulletin four days later. Heather Robker and missing person advocates initially criticized the delay in alerting the public.
KCPD said the bulletin was delayed while officers worked to obtain a recent photo of Jayden from the family.
Jayden was seen at a QuikTrip at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 2, 2023, less than a mile from home and the site where his body would be found more than a month later. Heather Robker, police and a manager at the convenience store have said Jayden was seen on surveillance video visiting the bathroom and then heading east past the Family Dollar next door.
Local advocates, nonprofits and Jayden’s family led volunteer searches up to the day his body was found by police.
But more than a year before he was found dead, Jayden ran away from home and told a Gladstone police officer he was being abused by his stepfather, Eric Givens. The Missouri Department of Social Services looked into the allegations and twice closed its assessments after finding no evidence of abuse, according to state records. Both times, Jayden was living with other family members by the time the case was closed, DSS records show.
According to state records dating back to 2021, Jayden’s mother, Heather Robker, declined state services after the assessments and Givens refused to cooperate with the state agency.
Once a case is concluded, the Children’s Division of Social Services no longer has the authority under state law to follow up with the family except in instances where additional services were accepted, a spokesperson from the agency told The Star last year.
Experts and advocates inside the child welfare system have also raised concerns about whether Missouri DSS’ focus on keeping families together has left children in unsafe environments.
Recent reporting from The Star revealed at least seven children died while living in their biological homes since February 2022, not including Jayden. The Children’s Division is believed to have been informed about problems in at least four of those families before the deaths occurred.
Deedon told The Star that Heather Robker refused to sign guardianship papers prepared by the state. Jayden had been living with her brother Derek at the time.
Reports to DSS require varying levels of follow-up from the agency, depending on whether it is classified as an assessment or investigation. According to state statutes, an assessment is when the agency works to determine if abuse or neglect has occurred, and an investigation is when there is an indication that a crime may have been committed against a child, and the agency needs to collect physical and verbal evidence.
Following Jayden’s death, his mother and stepfather moved away from the Kansas City area. The Star has not been able to reach Jayden’s mother Heather Robker or stepfather Eric Givens for comment after multiple attempts over several months.
Jayden’s uncle, Derek Robker and other loved ones previously told The Star they feel the Department of Social Services failed Jayden, regardless of how he ended up in the pond.
Derek Robker said he feared Jayden was living in an unsafe home environment prior to his disappearance.
Derek Robker said Jayden came to live with him for about eight months after one of the two times he ran away from home. While living with him, Derek Robker said, Jayden did not want to talk about the situation with his stepfather, who married his mother in January 2021.
Derek Robker said he was vocal with Social Services about his concerns.
“I told them, ‘Something’s going to happen if he goes back to this home,’” he said in an interview with The Star last year.
Records released by Social Services also showed that, around the same time Jayden went missing, another child accused Givens of abuse. At that time, the agency opened an investigation.
In an interview with The Star last year, Heather Robker said she felt like she and Givens had been wrongly placed “under the microscope.”
“I kept telling people, ‘Something is wrong,’” she said at the time. “My son did not run away. Someone took him or did something to him.”
But Social Services records indicate she did tell state investigators that Jayden had run away from home, and that the agency was later given several different stories as to his status.
Since then, authorities have said little about Jayden’s death, other than there was “no foul play” suspected, and that the case was “tragic.” How Jayden ended up dead is still a mystery.
“I don’t understand how (Children’s Services) has reports how (Jayden was) saying he doesn’t want to go home because he gets beat; how he’s with my brother and then they force him back home because Heather refused to sign guardianship papers,” Deedon said.
Deedon said she has not kept in contact with her sister, Heather, who she feels has not taken accountability for family circumstances leading up to Jayden’s death.
“You know, the system let him down,” Deedon said. “His mother let him down, first and foremost — that’s her responsibility. But then, the system let him down by not making sure he was safe and that he would stay safe. And then the police department, FBI, whatever, let him down by not getting him justice.”
The medical examiner’s office told Social Services officials in March 2023 that Jayden’s autopsy showed no signs of trauma, according to state records.
The small hematoma on the back of Jayden’s head could have been caused by a fall if he tried to walk or skateboard across ice in the area, officials said at the time. But the autopsy noted the hematoma could have also happened after he died.
X-rays found no healing fractures or other internal damage.
The medical examiner’s office told Social Services they didn’t know how long he had been in the water, but said it’s possible he had been in the pond since the time he first went missing.
“It’s just a train wreck and I feel like Jayden never got justice,” Deedon said.
Previous reporting from Jenna Thompson, Andrea Klick and Anna Spoerre contributed to this article.
This story was originally published December 30, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
