A Kansas couple has been charged with a abuse, torture, and murder of their 6-year-old adopted daughter, who was found last fall dead and buried in their back yard — where her body had been for about four years.
Crystina Elizabeth Schroer, 50, was charged with murder, aggravated kidnapping, child abuse/torture, theft, forgery, Medicaid fraud, and desecration of a corpse, the Rose Hill Police Department said. Her husband, 53-year-old Joseph Shane Schroer, was charged with child abuse/torture, liability for crimes of another, interference with law enforcement, theft, and Medicaid fraud.
Police were called to the Schroer’s home in September 2024 and began the months long investigation. In the course of executing a search warrant on the property, cadaver dogs alerted to several areas and, ultimately, investigators found “the decomposed remains of a human child … in a trash bag.”
DNA testing revealed the child was the Schroer’s adopted daughter, Kennedy Schroer, whose birth name was Natalie Garcia. A post morten remport from the Sedgwick County Forensic Science Center determined the little girl died from homicide by probable suffocation.
The Kansas Department of Children and Families previously said that the girl was born in 2014 and adopted from foster care in November 2018, the Topeka Capital Journal reported. Investigators believe the girl was killed in late 2020.
