Just adding to this, we haven’t been privy to know who even tried to get custody of the minor children. Is there a chance that the M’s/R’s didn’t even petition for any type of custody of any of the children? Who was Reader trying to keep the youngest two from in court?
When it comes to S, despite what KR2 said about HMR’s wishes, S had an established biological father. A minor child will most times be placed with a bio parent over any other petitioner unless that parent has been deemed unfit or is in police custody. K was essentially an orphan with an “unknown” father.
In addition, it seems CRob had no issues when it came to custody of CBR.
IF JW was a suspect or a “laser focus” early on, can one assume CRob would’ve been as well as she was at FR’s until 1030pm on 4/21/16? We’re talking mere hours before the murders occurred and CRob was at one of the murder scenes for an extended period of time with two of the victims. IF and only IF she was treated as a potential suspect, authorities never took B away from her.
My point is-kids are not routinely taken from the surviving parent when the other parent dies unless there is immediate cause to do so . The two children who were placed in state custody after the murders were the two who were complete orphans. Yes, K has a father but at the time she legally did not. R was an orphan as well with both of his parents deceased. S & C(B)R were not legally orphaned.
The perfect example of this is Josh Powell. Josh Powell the named person of interest in his wife’s disappearance but retained custody of his children. It wasn’t until 2 years later and unrelated charges of child pornography surrounding Powell’s father that lead to the children being taken away and even then, that



was still allowed supervised visits with the minor children.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/US/josh-powell-loses-custody-amid-child-porn-investigation/story?id=14628030
Disappearance of Susan Powell - Wikipedia