One of many photos Lily Jones’ father, Zephrum Jones, took of himself and his daughter after the death of her mother, Andrea Weiler. Jones and Weiler had only split about eight months prior to her death and no provisions were in place for Lily’s custody…except that Jones is on the birth certificate as her father, according to friends who have seen the certificate.
CLAY CO.—A tragedy in mid-April was made even more disastrous just three weeks later when a Clay County father had his parental rights violated by his daughter’s grandmother.
Lilian (Lily) Jones, age 2, was left without a mother after Andrea Weiler, 25, died three days following an ATV accident in Jasper County at that time.
The baby was staying with her father, Zephrum Jones, 30, that weekend per a joint agreement between the parents that had been in affect for the past eight months, since Weiler and Jones had split up after six years and when they were both living in Vincennes, Ind. Jones had moved back to Flora, and Weiler had recently moved to Newton when the tragic accident occurred.
As the baby’s legal surviving parent, Jones immediately stepped up to the plate and began to make a life for his toddler.
However, all that came to a crashing halt when the little girl’s maternal grandmother refused to return her after a visit Jones allowed her to have during the first weekend in May.
Now, facing an unnecessary guardianship case in Clay County circuit court, Zephrum Jones is doing everything he can to get Lily back home.
But it appears that the grandmother, Sherrie Kittle, is driven by something more than just concern for the little girl, as court documents show; and a judge has already deemed that the matter can’t be resolved on any kind of emergency basis after Jones attempted to get his daughter back, first through law enforcement, then with a petition for Order of Protection.
Now it appears to be a matter of who has more money and can hold out the longest in a court battle for probate, a sad state of America’s litigious nature, even when it comes to the best interests of an innocent child.
Accident, charges
The situation began on Saturday, April 13, 2013, when Weiler was hanging out with her new boyfriend, Derek Stanciu, 26, of Newton, in a rural Jasper County area.
The two were riding on a 2008 Polaris Razor all-terrain vehicle on County Road 1300 North, a half-mile east of Illinois Highway 130 shortly after 5 p.m. when Stanciu “lost control” of the ATV after it went off the right side of the road and into a ditch. When he attempted to get the ATV back onto the road, Weiler was thrown from it. She was not wearing a helmet, and suffered severe head injuries as a result.
Weiler was taken to St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital in Effingham but was transferred to Carle Clinic in Champaign.
She survived for three days but on life support. The family (her mother Sherrie Kittle and sister Jesteen Weiler) made the decision to pull the life support on April 16.
Andrea Weiler was an organ donor and her loved ones at least had that aspect of the tragedy to comfort them.
On Monday, April 15, Stanciu was charged in Jasper County circuit court with Driving Under the Influence, Illegal Transportation of Alcohol, Improper Lane Usage and Improper Operation of an ATV on a Highway.
His driving abilities seemed questionable to begin with, as his Facebook page held a photo of an overturned ATV in a field dating back to December 2012, and remarks about it minimized the seriousness of such a thing.
The photo remained even after the accident that lead to Weiler’s death.
Friends rally around full-time father
After being only an every-other-weekend father for the previous eight months, Jones found himself being a full-time daddy once again to little Lily.
The little girl, by all reports, while missing her mommy and wondering where she was, nevertheless adjusted quickly to the new arrangements.
Jones’ friends, knowing how he still loved his ex-girlfriend Andrea and how traumatic the entire event was for him, asked the public for assistance for Lily so Jones could continue to work (for a construction company) and raise his little girl in the most comfortable way possible.
The public responded by donating clothing, baby items, furniture and funds, mainly through Jones’ best friend, Erin Workman.
Many questioned why Jones didn’t have the sought-after items to begin with.
His friends responded that he did, but didn’t have the appropriate sizes of clothing for Lily to be going into warm weather, as she of course didn’t fit into last year’s summer clothes; and there seemed to be a problem with collecting her items from Weiler’s family members.
No one knew how much of a “problem” was about to develop.
Took baby to funeral
Court documents show the progression of escalating incidents between the deceased woman’s family and the baby’s father.
On April 17, Jones recounted, in court paperwork filed May 7, that he let Jesteen Weiler see his daughter.
“She was to be home at 10:30 a.m.,” he recounted, noting that he texted Weiler in the morning with “no answer. Texted her at 10:30 and called, no answer.”
He noted in these documents that he “didn’t want Lily going to the funeral.
“Andrea’s mom Sherrie called, said she has Lily and she’s taking her. I said no, bring her home. She made me feel bad and I agreed to let her go because it was closed casket.”
But, he noted, when he himself arrived at the funeral, he discovered it was open casket.
There’s no indication of how the baby reacted to being in the presence of her deceased mother, whom she could easily see if taken within the vicinity of the casket.
Problems brewing
On April 23, court documents noted, Jones again allowed Lily to see her aunt and “again she was not where I left her. She was now in the care of Sherrie. She was supposed to be home and wasn’t.
“I called, no answer. Finally a text from Jesteen saying she was with her mom and she’ll bring her home when she’s done.”
The two incidents, and the questionable activities that ensued, lead up to the first weekend in May.
On May 4, court documents note, “I once again let Jesteen watch Lily cause I had to be out of town working for two days. Sherrie called, said she had Lily, wanted to keep her ’til Monday.”
On Monday the 6th, Jones wrote, he was supposed to meet Kittle at the McDonald’s in Flora so that he could pick up his daughter.
“I get there, Sherri is there, her husband, and Jesteen’s new boyfriend and no baby,” Jones stated in court documents. “She (Sherrie) informs me I need a lawyer and that I wasn’t getting my daughter. I call police, state police and state’s attorney and no help. Also Sherrie took her and got temporary custody behind my back.”
Law, courts of no help
Both chief law enforcement officers in the pertinent jurisdictions, Sheriff Jim Sulsburger and Flora Police Chief John Nicholson, were contacted by either Jones or his relatives and questioned as to what could be done to get the little girl back to her father. The Jones family was told that it was a civil matter and that kidnapping/abduction didn’t apply under the circumstances; Disclosure was told the same, even though there was no order in place indicating that the Kittle/Weiler group had any kind of visitation rights and the fact that Jones was the closest blood relative to the baby.
Jones was advised to gather up pertinent paperwork, including the baby’s birth certificate which clearly had his name on it, as well as a statement (affidavit) of paternity that he’d provided when he and Andrea Weiler had split up eight months before, and go to the courthouse in Clay County to request an order of protection from both Kittle and Weiler. He did so on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 7.
Because Clay County didn’t have a judge available on that day, however, the matter had to be conducted by phone. Judge Daniel Hartigan was in Jasper County on that day and heard the OP telephonically…and decided against Jones because there was “no apparent emergency” and “it appears to the court to be a custody dispute”…even though neither Kittle nor Weiler had any custodial rights, directly via a court order or indirectly via a last will or testament of Andrea Weiler, in place.
Probate petition filed
Had Hartigan issued an order of protection and ordered the baby returned to her legal parent on the 7th, what happened on the 8th may not have happened at all; or at least, it likely wouldn’t have happened the way it did.
On that day, Kittle, with the assistance of one of Clay County’s least favorite attorneys, Mary Beth Welch Collins (who ran unsuccessfully for state’s attorney in 2008), filed a petition for guardianship under a probate case in Clay.
In the petition, Kittle claimed that the minor child (Lily) resided with the grandparents, and that Jones “has indicated to (Kittle) that he believes that he is the father of the minor child, but there has never been a paternity case filed to establish his parental rights.” Immediately thereafter Kittle listed Jones as the “nearest adult relative of the minor child,” but called him “alleged father.”
While this is standard fare for guardianship probate cases, apparently Welch-Collins was asleep in the part of lawyer school that indicates paternity if a man’s name is placed as “father” on a birth certificate…and holds as legally binding even if the man ultimately ends up NOT being the biological father as it does if he IS.
The real deal: a settlement
However, the next paragraph in the probate case is probably the most telling.
There, it states that “(Kittle) anticipates that (Lily) will receive settlement proceeds from a wrongful death claim against Derrick (sic) Stanciu, as a result of the wrongful death of the minor child’s mother from injuries sustained in an accident on or about April 13, 2013.”
The petition goes on to state the necessity of having a guardian of Lily’s estate appointed so that “there is an individual having authority to execute any and all documents necessary to effectuate the settlement on behalf of the minor.”
In other words, either via an insurance claim or an actual wrongful death petition in Jasper County circuit court, Sherrie Kittle is going after money; money which she, as guardian of Lily’s estate, will have and “manage on behalf of the minor prior to the minor attaining the age of majority” (age 18).
Friends of Jones’, when this part was explained to them, asked Jones (on behalf of Disclosure; Jones chose not to speak with the publication’s staff) about any wrongful death suit or settlement, and advised that he’d “never even thought of it” until it was brought to his attention.
All he was concerned about, he said, was providing a stable and comfortable environment for his baby.
Blowing up the ‘facts’
Kittle’s petition then began blowing up the facts a bit overmuch.
She claimed that prior to Andrea Weiler’s death, the “alleged father…had visited with the minor approximately three times in the past year, had never paid child support on behalf of the minor child, and had/has never established paternity.”
Friends of Jones’ know for a first-hand fact that he’d seen his daughter more than three times in just the eight months he and her mother had been split, as they’d been around him during visiting weekends with the baby (when Jones and Weiler first split, he had to return to the area to stay with his mother temporarily, and Lily came to stay with them as many as three times a month).
As to the rest of it, they couldn’t state one way or the other (except to note that he did indeed provide diapers/sundries to Weiler on behalf of the baby), but the very existence of the birth certificate speaks for itself.
Reaching back more than a decade for ‘unfitness’
But Kittle didn’t stop there.
She brought up a recent DUI Jones had received (2012), which was resolved April 22 of this year when Jones opted to enter a guilty plea in exchange for a negotiated sentence, set to be carried out May 31.
The DUI is a misdemeanor, but of course in order to enhance the drama, Kittle, via Welch Collins, doesn’t mention that, but instead brought up other misdemeanor charges he faced from the same November 2012 traffic stop, which resulted in two separate misdemeanor counts of obstructing identification and drug paraphernalia.
These misdemeanor charges are the first Jones has faced since 2007; at that time, he had a misdemeanor cannabis charge in Clay. Prior to that, he had cannabis/paraphernalia and criminal trespass in Clay in 2004.
But Kittle/Welch-Collins decided to reach back even further—fourteen years.
They brought up 1999 Fayette and Clay county charges, including one Theft conviction that sent Jones to prison for a couple of years.
All of this, they are inferring, combines to make him unfit.
They included “statements” Jones allegedly made about obtaining all of Andrea Weiler’s property “since it was now Lily’s property” and that he had contacted the Social Security Administration “to see how much money the minor child is entitled to each month” (which is actually his right to do, as surviving parent, but apparently Welch-Collins slept through that part of lawyer school, too.)
Subterfuge on the part of grandma?
The situation is all the more exacerbated by the indications friends of Jones’, who are also mutual friends with Kittle and Weiler, have heard the two women make about baby Lily.
It appears that Kittle has no real intentions of maintaining guardianship status once she gets it, if she gets it; instead, she has expressed her intention of turning the baby over to Weiler to raise.
Weiler has little legal standing to petition for guardianship as an aunt of the child (at least, less than a grandparent); however, Weiler has a little bit of baggage of her own as regards the court system: her own felony conviction, this one over drugs, and occurring a year ago in Clay County.
In fact, Disclosure published this article about her in the April 2012 edition:
“A Rinard woman working as a Licensed Practical Nurse has been charged with taking pain pills from a patient. According to documents filed in the case, Jesteen Marie Weiler, 26, of Rural Route 1, Box 142, Rinard has been charged with Unlawful Acquisition of a Controlled Substance alleging that on or about April 8 at 2:45 a.m. while working at the Flora Gardens Care Center she unlawfully acquired possession of hydrocodone prescribed for Robert Turner, a former resident of the center, and purportedly destroyed the medication but actually destroyed aspirin so that she could use the hydrocodone for her own use.
It does not appear as if Ms. Weiler was taken into custody.”
Weiler took a plea to the charge in August of 2012; there, she was ordered 30 months conditional discharge (meaning she’s currently on it), to take drug treatment, and to pay a phenomenal $2,582 in fines and fees, of which she’s only paid $975. So as a convicted felon, she couldn’t battle a genuine father in court…but apparently her mother will, then turn the child over to her if she gets her.
Another fundraiser in the offing
Interestingly, Weiler’s children are offspring of a man, Zeb Lewis, whose brother is a Clay County deputy, Elam Lewis. Such association might be why Weiler believes the whole thing might work out to her favor.
In the Order of Protection filed against her by Jones, Jones pointed out that the Kittles, Weiler and Billingsley were “acting in an intimidating manner.”
“Sherrie said ‘We can do this the easy way’,” Jones wrote in his petition. “She said ‘they’ were getting custody of Lily and that I could maybe get visitation.”
Unfortunately, as it stood as of press time, Jones was unable to afford an attorney to fight and get his daughter back, and because the petition for guardianship was filed, it’s no longer as easy as walking in to a courtroom and showing a judge a certified copy of a birth certificate bearing his name as the father: Because attorneys make all the rules, it’s possible that Jones may have to actually go through a DNA test in order to prove that his daughter is his, and such tests cost money, as do attorneys, for which Jones hasn’t yet been able to raise the funds.
So friends of Jones’ are considering holding another drive to get baby Lily home to her father, at least attempting to raise enough funds to get an attorney to intervene on his behalf and get the birth certificate in front of a judge to establish his standing as Lily’s father.
There have been no future court dates set in the probate case as of yet; be watching Disclosure’s website for details on any upcoming activity to help Lily Jones.