From staff reports

news@joplinglobe.com

Both of the hot-line calls placed to the state Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services in the past seven years in reference to Rowan Ford were for head lice, state documents show.

Reports of the hot-line calls came to light in the wake of the 9-year-old Stella girl’s rape and murder earlier this month. Authorities believe she was abducted from her home in Newton County, and raped and killed in Barry County. Her body was disposed of in McDonald County.

Because the girl’s stepfather, David Spears, is one of the men accused in the crimes, authorities were eager to find out whether the hot-line calls in the past might have had something to do with any abuse of the child in the home.

Newton County Prosecutor Scott Watson earlier this week subpoenaed any records the state’s child-welfare system had on Rowan in light of information he received that child-abuse hot-line calls had been placed to the state regarding the girl before her murder.

Watson said Thursday that finding out the problem had been lice gave him a “sense of relief.”

“Frankly, I’m happy to hear that,” he said. “It puts aside any doubts if the division failed to act appropriately.”

The first of the two calls was placed in March 2000, when Rowan was living in Neosho with her mother, Colleen Spears, then Colleen McCleod, and her husband at the time, Adam Chicanowski. The second call was placed in January 2006, when Rowan, her mother and David Spears were living at the family’s current address in Stella.

After both of the hot-line calls, state investigators met with Rowan and her parents, and did not find evidence of any intentional neglect, according to the documents.

The names of the people who placed the calls were redacted for confidentiality purposes.

In the March 2000 report, the investigator attributed the presence of the lice in Rowan’s hair to the family’s “limited lack of resources” and limited “knowledge of existing services in the area.”

In the January 2006 case, the state was contacted because Rowan had “chronic head lice” and her last five absences from Triway Elementary School in Stella were because of lice. The person who made the report acknowledged that Rowan’s family usually had the problem resolved so that she could be back at school the next day.

The investigator also noted that the family was closely bonded, had good communication skills and two working parents. Both David and Colleen Spears worked at the Wal-Mart in Jane at the time, according to the report.