This week marks one year since a crime
that left our community in grief.
The murder of 6 year old
Eli Hart by his own mother.
Tonight, a CARE 11 investigation
goes beyond the headlines and
finds the child protection system,
and not just the mom is responsible.
A warning.
Now this report contains graphic content.
Nikita Kromberg walks to her
car at 3:00 AM to go to work.
A stalker with binoculars watches.
She's that outside our home.
In the middle of the night,
Nikita and husband Stephen
were fostering a little boy.
6 year old Eli Hart had an infectious
laugh and gap tooth smile, Just
so energetic and happy and joyful.
Eli lived with them for 11 months after
police found him naked standing in a
home amidst garbage and decaying food.
His mother, Julissa Fowler,
had a history of severe drug abuse,
delusions and mental illness.
She now sat in a car watching
the boys foster home.
Nikita tried to confront her.
The car sped away.
You know she's presenting
very unstable behavior.
You tried to warn people.
CPS warned them many times.
Julissa was scheduled to have
Eli move home with her on a
trial basis two days later.
Instead of being alarmed,
records show Dakota County child Protection.
CPS made the decision to have Eli move
back with his mom two days early.
There is no tire there. All right.
Five months to the day later,
police stop Julissa. Her car shattered.
I have a broken windshield and I'm
missing a tire because of the kids
were shooting at my car at some
what looks like blood in there.
It's not blood. It's deer meat.
I had a big bag on.
There's a farm around here that
does do meat and hamburgers,
shotgun shells all over.
Yeah, holy, we got a body.
All right, let's cover it.
Carol Levin investigates the Eli files.
We have a little bit of Eli here.
From ashes to artwork,
Eli's foster parents cling to
reminders of the boy they believe
child protection could have saved.
It's a system that needs to be changed.
Carol Levin obtained hundreds of never
before seen CPS emails and texts,
along with videos in case reports
that revealed not a few but
a myriad of failures.
To protect Eli. This
is one of the most shocking failures
of child protection that I've seen.
Dee Wilson has worked nearly
50 years in child welfare.
Usually he cautions against the
temptation of applying 2020 hindsight,
but this is one of the actual
most unforgivable, completely
unnecessary child maltreatment desk.
For years, Julissa made what she
herself admitted were faults,
abuse claims against Eli's father Tori
and use them to seek Protection Orders
so Tori could not have contact with Eli.
When Julissa had a severe mental break,
Dakota County Child Protection,
not yet knowing if dad was safe,
placed Eli with Nikita and Steven,
Julissa's cousin.
Eli was with family.
He was loved.
During the eleven months Eli
lived with Nikita and Steven,
records revealed Julissa missed
and tampered with drug tests,
was arrested for stealing
needles and pain meds,
stopped going to therapy and was so
disruptive got kicked out of drug testing.
Supervised visits with
Eli went poorly in one.
On October 27th,
Julissa dug her fingernails into a
social worker's hand and threw garbage
on her despite concerns Beth Danner.
The child protection worker
in charge of the case granted
Julissa unsupervised visits.
When he would come back from Helisa's,
his hair would be matted.
His hair would be really greasy,
so she wasn't bathing
him or brushing his hair.
Clothes would stink.
It was terrible.
In contrast, Eli's dead.
Tori also began getting visits,
when with him, CPS found the boy
was happy and well cared for.
Tori filed in court for custody,
but under Minnesota law,
the dad's family court custody case
had to be paused until the mom's
child protection court case was over.
Dakota Child Protection could
have filed for a transfer of
custody to give Eli to his dad,
but despite all the red flags,
decided to give Julissa more chances.
There wasn't a single green flag or
yellow flag that who Lisa had given.
They were all red flags.
The very first day the boy
went back to his mom, C PS:.
Was warned in an e-mail from Eli's
school how teachers are all addressing
large concerns flagging Julissa's speed
and reckless driving in the school
parking lot Over the next five months,
records reveal Eli's caseworkers took
Julissa off drug testing did not confirm
she was going to required parent counseling,
and when a teacher reported
Eli said his mom hurt him,
did not even investigate.
Are any of those decisions acceptable?
No. That is a definition of
child protection that has already
gotten kids killed and is going
to get a lot more kids killed.
One of the last times the
social worker laid eyes on Eli,
she sent a text saying I can't
imagine what she's putting
that child through right now,
but they did not think he was
being physically abused.
So close the case. Shotgun
shells all over? Yeah, 10
days later, the same day police
processed a car with a shotgun
riddled body in the trunk,
the CPS worker who didn't yet
know about the murder entered
her final notes in Eli's file.
There were no protection issues that
required ongoing child protection,
placement or involvement. I
truly believe that if CPS had
done their job and protected Eli,
he would still be here today.
Dakota County Child Protection
declined an interview,
citing state law about the
confidentiality of their case data,
as did Eli's dad, who's filed a federal
lawsuit against child protection.
There's so much more to these Eli files
than we could possibly fit in this broadcast.
To go more in depth,
you can read my reporting partner
Brandon Stalls Expose on care11.com.