A 4-Year-Old Was Buried Under the House. A Foster Family Says They Warned the State.

A welfare check on a 6-year-old girl in Aberdeen, Washington, led detectives to a question no one had asked in more than a year: where was her little brother? On June 4, 2026, Aberdeen police arrested Jacob Scott Bevins, 36, after investigators say he admitted that his 4-year-old son, Aiden Scott Bevins, had died and that he had buried the boy beneath the house. The remains had been recovered weeks earlier, on May 15.

Bevins was booked on suspicion of second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, unlawful disposal of human remains, and making a false or misleading statement to a public servant. At his first court appearance on Friday, June 5, a Grays Harbor County judge granted prosecutors a 72-hour hold while formal charges are weighed. He has not been convicted of anything; the account below comes from the probable-cause statement and investigators.

What turns a private horror into a public question is this: Aiden was not invisible to the state. A couple who fostered him from ages 1 to 3 say they begged child-welfare authorities not to return him to his biological parents — and say they were ignored.

• ~1 year — the length of time investigators say Aiden had not been seen by relatives before his remains were recovered · Source: KOMO News / KATU probable-cause documents
• 72-hour hold — ordered by a Grays Harbor County judge on June 5, 2026 while prosecutors decide on formal charges · Source: KATU, KOMO News
• 3+ contacts — times former foster parents say they reported concerns to CPS and DCYF before Aiden was returned to his biological parents · Source: Law & Crime, KIRO 7

According to court documents reported by KOMO News and KATU, the case began on May 12, 2026, when Aberdeen police responded to a reported missing-child complaint involving Bevins’ 6-year-old daughter. Officers quickly determined the girl was safe with her mother and that the dispute was custodial, not criminal. But during follow-up, detectives realized something else: Bevins’ 4-year-old son, Aiden, had not been seen by relatives in more than a year.

Asked where the boy was, Bevins told detectives Aiden was staying with a relative out of state. When investigators reached that relative, they were told the child had never lived there — the relative said they had never even met him, according to the probable-cause statement reported by KATU. On May 15, Aberdeen detectives and the Washington State Patrol Crime Scene Response Team recovered Aiden’s remains, which court records describe as having been placed in a plastic tote wrapped in a garbage bag and buried on the property.

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Investigators say that when a detective asked Bevins directly whether Aiden was safe, he shook his head no, then admitted the boy had died and that he had buried him beneath the house, according to court documents reported by KING 5. His explanation of how the child died changed over the course of questioning. Bevins first said he had struck the boy on the head; later, after being read his Miranda rights, he said he had been chasing Aiden toward the bathroom when the child slipped and hit his head.

A child-abuse expert pediatrician who reviewed the findings concluded the injuries were not consistent with the accidental fall Bevins described, investigators said. These are allegations contained in charging documents; Bevins is presumed innocent unless and until he is convicted.

A preliminary postmortem examination was conducted on May 19 at the Thurston County Coroner’s Office. According to KING 5’s review of the court documents, the examination found extensive injuries: multiple fractures to the ribs and shoulder blades, a mix of recent and older healing wounds, and what investigators described as thermal or burn marks on the head, ribs, and extremities. The coroner attributed the death to forceful trauma.

The pattern of injuries — some healed, some fresh — is the detail that moved this from a single tragic moment to a suspected history of abuse. The reviewing pediatrician concluded the wounds could not have been self-inflicted and were inconsistent with the father’s account of an accidental fall, according to the documents reported by KING 5 and KIRO 7.

“I can't explain to you the anger that I feel. Everyone failed him.”

Magali Lopez, former foster parent of Aiden Bevins · via Law & Crime / KIRO 7

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Aiden was not a stranger to Washington’s child-welfare system. Gary and Magali Lopez, who say they fostered him from roughly ages 1 to 3, told KIRO 7 and Law & Crime that they raised concerns repeatedly when the state moved to reunify Aiden with his biological parents. The Lopezes say they contacted Child Protective Services, Aiden’s social worker, and their foster agency, and that after the reunification they called the Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) at least three times. The boy was returned anyway.

DCYF, the cabinet agency responsible for foster care and reunification decisions in Washington, sits under the governor. The agency has not publicly detailed its prior contact history with the family, and confidentiality law sharply limits what it can say while a criminal case is pending. But the central claim from the people who knew Aiden best is unambiguous: the warnings existed, and the child died anyway.

Aiden’s death has revived a fight over Washington’s Keeping Families Together Act, passed in 2021 and effective July 2023. The law was intended to reduce foster-care placements and racial disproportionality by raising the legal bar for removing a child from a home. Critics — including the family’s own state representative — argue it has made it harder to keep at-risk children with safe foster parents.

Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Dist. 19), whose district includes Aberdeen, told reporters the law was “meant to keep a child from a troubled home in the custody of extended family, rather than go straight into foster care,” but said that “in practice this law has had the reverse effect” — limiting the ability to place a child with good foster parents and instead keeping “these children in homes with parents who are deeply troubled.” Advocates of the law counter that family preservation, done right, protects children, and that under-resourced caseworkers, not the statute alone, drive bad outcomes.

“In practice this law has had the reverse effect. It's kept these children in homes with parents who are deeply troubled.”

Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Dist. 19), on Washington's Keeping Families Together Act · via The Daily Chronicle

A 72-hour hold is a procedural step, not a charge: it gives prosecutors three judicial days to file a formal information or release the suspect. The Grays Harbor County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, led by Jason Walker (D), must now decide which counts to bring and whether to seek to hold Bevins without bail at his arraignment. As of this writing no bail amount has been set publicly.

Two questions will outlast the criminal case. First, what the coroner’s full report concludes about how and when Aiden died. Second, what — if anything — DCYF and the Legislature do with the warnings a foster family says it delivered, repeatedly, before a 4-year-old was buried under a house in Aberdeen. Civic Intelligence will update this page as charging decisions and any state review are made public.

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