Court doc details death of adopted girl buried in Rose Hill

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Court doc details death of adopted girl buried in Rose Hill

Sitting in a recorded interrogation room, a young girl became upset as she tried not to answer questions from a female detective about how her sister, who would eventually be found buried in the backyard of their Rose Hill home, went missing, according to an affidavit released Friday in the case.

After the detective left, the girl told her father, Joseph Schroer, how her mother, Crystina Schroer, stuffed her 6-year-old sister in a box; she would be allowed out after 10 minutes, but, because she kept moving, Schroer stacked a crib, heavy blanket and more boxes on top of it, the court record says.

Being crammed into a box, even a dog kennel, was a common form of discipline Schroer visited upon her adopted children, according to the affidavit.

Kennedy Jean Schroer, who was born Natalie Garcia but had her name changed when the Schroers adopted her and her two sisters in 2019, stopped moving, the record says.

Crystina Schroer eventually kicked the box to let her out, but Kennedy’s body fell out, limp and blue, the girl recalled when she later told the detective the true story a few days later, according to the affidavit.

Kennedy was killed in December 2020.

Her body was found about four years later, in September 2024.

Kennedy’s body was in the fetal position inside two ****** plastic bags, buried in the backyard in an area of the Schroers’ ****-de-sac home in an area the family stopped maintaining.

After Kennedy was found, Rose Hill police chief Taylor Parlier said the remaining children, who were all under 13, had been removed from the home.

Schroer, 50, has been charged with several counts, including first-degree *******, child abuse, theft by deception, making false Medicaid claims and criminal desecration of a body.

Joseph Schroer, 53, has been charged with multiple counts of aggravated endangering of a child, making false information, Medicaid fraud and interference with police.

The affidavit has been released in the wife’s case; an affidavit has not yet been released in his.

Kennedy was only discovered in September 2024 after Crystina Schroer took a “bunch of pills” and tried to kill herself, which led to first responders going to the home, the affidavit says.

Crystina told officers that another daughter had killed Kennedy and that, after she drove around with her body for several hours, she buried her in the backyard, the records say.

Less than two weeks before the girl’s body was found, a Kansas Department of Children and Families social worker went to the home after a report that a “sister killed the other sister,” the affidavit says.

Crystina Schroer told the social worker that she didn’t need to see the children to check on their ********, which led the worker to close the case because of “insufficient evidence,” the affidavit says.

The 44-page affidavit provides the most detailed account of what the siblings allegedly endured: Rationed meals, monitoring of the children’s movement with cameras throughout the house, torture, isolation from each other and from the outside world.

The affidavit also characterizes Crystina Schroer as a person with a gambling addiction who told outlandish stories about the children being disturbed in order to get higher reimbursements from the state.

The Schroers also kept collecting monies designed to support Kennedy, even after her death, the affidavit says.

Here is what else the document says:

Adoption

A couple of people the Schroers fostered, either officially or unofficially, said that things seemed normal when they were there but started to take an odd turn after they left then came back to visit.

One person who stayed with them for his senior year in high school said he was treated well, but when he went back to visit on Christmas in either 2017 or 2018, he “felt out of place and got a strange feeling” and had not been in contact with them since.

A friend told the detective that she started to notice a change in Crystina Schroer around the time of the COVID pandemic. The children were always in trouble, forced to stay in their rooms and never allowed to leave the house, the friend said.

A woman who lived with them when the woman was 17 described the Schroers as a loving couple who would work through their issues. But things were different when the woman moved back into the house from October 2023 to March 2024.

Schroer told the woman that she wanted to send the children away to boarding school. The children were not allowed to go outside or play, the woman said.

“They never went to a doctor’s appointment and were pulled out of school and home schooled,” the affidavit says. “DCF and TFI (assume The Family Initiative) never came to visit the home.”

The woman thought about making a report to DCF, but didn’t.

“The foster kids were in their rooms 24 hours a day for seven days a week,” the affidavit says. “Crystina would make them lay on the floor without a pillow or blanket, completely still without being able to move for several hours at a time. Crystina would give the kids a piece of bread with a jelly packet for a meal.”

Schroer told the woman and her friend that Kennedy had gone back to the state.

The document doesn’t say where Joseph Schroer thought Kennedy went, but that he did get a text from his wife that day “that something was going on at the house, but (Crystina) had it under control.”

The court record, which has redactions in it, stated that someone had been choked and that someone was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric facility.

Crystina Schroer left the home with Kennedy, but didn’t return with her. After returning home, a child “said her mother showed her photographs on her phone of children strapped to beds and told her they were tortured, and she would be next.”

The mother also would “tell all the girls that (redacted) was burning in a fire in hell and if they were bad, they would burn too,” the affidavit says.

One witness told police how, when he was 16, he ran away from home after he “flipped” out and attacked Schroer after it sounded like she was drowning another child.

“(Redacted) was in the shower on her knees, and she was asking her mom to stop and was crying,” the affidavit says.

Texts show Schroer also became more agitated.

In a Jan. 9, 2023 text about a bowl broken by her biological child, Schroer told her husband that: “IDC (I don’t care) if she told you or not, I about punched her in the face. I’m done, these girls have me on edge. I’m going to kill everyone soon.”

Witnesses said Schroer’s gambling problems put a financial strain on the home and caused issues in the marriage. Witnesses told police that Schroer had to shuffle money around from different accounts and was “always needing money due to her bank accounts being locked up,” the court document says.

Gambling and money problems

Police searching the home found bankruptcy papers.

She had “lifetime totals” of nearly $4.2 million in “Coin In” from slot machines at 7 Clans First Council Casino Hotel, the document says. That means her playing, including winnings that could have been reinvested and losses, accounted for the nearly $4.2 million.

Her jackpots at the casino totaled nearly $362,000.

She gave her husband $200 of each of his paychecks for an allowance and kept the rest, which included the largest reimbursements for their fostering and adoptions.

One witness, who had worked as the St. Francis Ministries foster care worker assigned to the Schroers, said Schroer kept detailed records about what the children did so she could get higher reimbursements.

It included allegations that the kids smeared their ****** around the house, beat the dog and hurt themselves and each other.

“I can tell you this, she reported a lot of things I never saw,” the worker told police. She gave “me enough information that I could adjust any of those rates as high as the top rate.”

Schroer would call them “crack whores” and “call them insane” but she had “never seen any of those kids acting in that manner, ever.”

Schroer also apparently did not favor Kennedy among the other girls.

“I got the distinct impression that (redacted) was the least liked, it did not surprise me what I found out,” she said. “(Redacted) was just disregarded, like she was just not interested in her at all.”

The worker added: “I did tell my supervisor that I did not know how to take (Schroer), she spoke about the kids like they were things in the house, like lamps … there was not a lot of warmth except toward the babies.”

There were other monies the Schroers collected after Kennedy died as well.

“Crystina and possibly Joseph signed documents” to the state that allowed them to accept over $23,000 in USAA monies on behalf of Kennedy, the document says.

There was also roughly another $3,828 in Medicaid money for Kennedy that they received after her death, the document says.

Internet searches

Within a month of Kennedy’s body being found, searches being made on Schroer’s phone included: “how to overdose on pills,” “Signs of sociopath in a 4-year-old child,” “get arrested and can’t afford lawyer,” “can I donate my body to science,” and “culpable deniability vs. plausible deniability,” the document says.

The document says messages from October 2020 to September 2024 show a “history of physical, mental and emotional abuse to the entire Schroer family, by Crystina, to include:”

Besides one paragraph, the roughly next 2.5 pages are redacted. After that, it says: “Crystina constantly tells Joseph through text messages between 2021-2024 that he chooses the adopted girls over her and that she doesn’t want them anymore and wants to get rid of them.”

She also gave differing information to health and school officials, telling the Rose Hill School District that the children had to be removed from the school because one of them was sick and the others could bring an illness home, while telling health officials that the girls were kicked out for disruptive behavior.

“Crystina reports violence by (redacted) and (redacted) to SCMH, which SCMH does not independently verify and begins to medicate the children accordingly,” the document says.

It says “handwritten notes, corroborated by testimony of social workers, show that Crystina was fabricating medical ailments against some or all of her foster children in order to prescribe medications to them and increase her per diem stipend per child.”

Some of the affidavit also points to Joseph Schroer’s involvement.

Husband aware

“Crystina admits to starving the children in order to gain their compliance, using food as a weapon. Crystina chastises Joseph for placing a bucket inside a closet where some of the girls were placed, in order for them to ******** in the bucket but instead they chose to ******** on the floor of the closet,” the document says.

Crystina She also texted her husbong on Jan. 16, 2023, about putting one of the children in the dog kennel to sleep that night, the document says.

The children were put in different kinds of boxes as punishment, the document says.

One child told police that she and another sister were once forced into a box together, where she had to get in first so the other sister could get on top.

“(Redacted) said it got hard to breathe in the box, it became hot and they were sweating together,” the document says. “(Redacted) said the punishment would last 10 minutes, as long as they stayed still and didn’t make any noise. When they were allowed out of the box, it felt amazing to get out, breathe and have a chance to cool off.”

She said she was 9 the last time she was put in a box; she was 11 at the time of the interview. She remembers another time being in the box with items put on top in Crystina’s closet, the document says.

Being locked in a box stuck with them.

In January 2025, a new foster parent of the girls emailed a case worker a photo of a storage box they were using to store Christmas decorations. One of the girls girl “freaked out” and started screaming, “please do not make us get in the boxes, please, please we will never fight again,” the foster parent said.

It took over an hour to calm the girls down. After they did, they pointed to the edges of the box, where the lid goes, and said “those really hurt when the door is closed and locked.”

A ****** storage box, matching the one the foster parent sent, was found at the house where the girls lived in the 1400 block of Meeker Court. It was in the basement storage room, full of clothes, the document says.

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