Buried in Plain Sight: How a Child Vanished While Kansas Child Welfare Looked Away
Six years old. That is the age when Kennedy Natalie Jean Schroer slipped out of view. By late 2020 no teacher saw her, no doctor examined her, and no caseworker laid eyes on her. On paper she was still alive. In the backyard she was not.
Kennedy was born Natalie Marie Garcia. Kansas removed her and two sisters from their biological family and placed them with Crystina Elizabeth Schroer and Joseph Shane Schroer in Rose Hill. The adoption was finalized in 2019 and her name was changed to Kennedy Jean Schroer. What followed is a case study in how a child can disappear while the systems that claim to protect children keep paying bills, closing files, and declining to answer basic questions.
Investigators now believe Kennedy died in late 2020 at age six. No one called 911. No coroner was notified. No school flagged a missing student. No pediatrician asked why a child had not been seen. The house kept its secret and the state kept sending money. For nearly four years adoption subsidy payments and Medicaid benefits continued as if Kennedy were eating, learning, and growing. She was not. She was under the dirt behind the house, wrapped in a trash bag and buried about two feet down.
The first crack in the secrecy came only because the story wobbled. On August 30, 2024, someone reported to the hotline that one sister had killed another. That is not what happened, but it was close enough to the truth that any competent system should have pulled the thread. A Kansas Department for Children and Families worker went to the Schroer home on September 3. Crystina did not allow the worker to see the children. She told the worker the girls told stories and that everyone in the adoption world knew her. The worker accepted it. The report was marked screened out for insufficient evidence. No law enforcement partner insisted on seeing the children. No supervisor demanded a follow up the next day. A child fatality rumor landed in the intake queue and died there.
One week later the charade collapsed. On the night of September 10 officers responded to a person in distress call at the Schroer home. While managing the mental health crisis, police learned there might be a body buried on the property. By the afternoon of September 11, after clearing dense brush and probing the ground, officers found human remains in a black plastic bag roughly 23 inches below the surface. DNA testing confirmed what the facts already screamed. The child was Kennedy. The Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center later ruled the death a homicide and listed the cause as probable suffocation. The bones were too decomposed to hold obvious injuries, but the story told by a surviving sister and the facts recovered by police were enough. Kennedy died after being confined in a box during a punishment and smothered under piled weight. She was six.
Arrests followed in February 2025. Prosecutors initially charged both parents with murder and a long list of companion crimes. In July and October the pair entered no contest pleas. Crystina pleaded to second degree murder, child abuse, making false information, and felony theft. Joseph pleaded to two counts of aggravated child endangerment and one count of Medicaid fraud. The state is seeking restitution of roughly twenty seven thousand dollars for the subsidy and medical payments that continued long after Kennedy was dead. Sentencing is scheduled for November and December.
Those courtroom outcomes matter, but they are not the whole story. What happened to Kennedy is not only a crime scene. It is a mirror held up to a child welfare model that repeatedly hides its own mistakes behind confidentiality and contracts.
Start where the system claims to be strongest. Screening homes. Kennedy and her sisters entered the Schroer house through a licensed foster and adoption pipeline. Kansas relies on private agencies to recruit, screen, and support foster and adoptive homes. The state signs the checks and owns the outcomes, but much of the work is handed off to contractors. We do not know which contractor approved this home because the records are sealed. We do know that the adoption closed the file. Once parental rights were terminated and the adoption decree was signed, oversight ended. There was no regular proof of life for the child who continued to generate monthly subsidy payments. There was no periodic visit to confirm that a young school age child was actually being schooled. There was no flag when Medicaid kept paying for a child who never visited a clinic. The absence of ordinary contact points created the perfect blind spot. Homeschooling can be legitimate. In cases like this it becomes cover.
Move to the hotline decision that should haunt DCF. An abuse report in late August 2024 claimed a child was dead. The response was a single visit where the adult who would later plead to murder refused to produce the children, and the agency walked away. That is not a training issue. That is a culture issue. The default posture was trust the adult and protect the agency. The default posture should have been lay eyes on the children first and ask questions later. At a minimum the worker should have insisted on seeing each child, should have called law enforcement partners, and should have returned the next day if blocked. Instead the case was screened out as insufficient. One week later officers exhumed a body in the yard.
Then comes the secrecy. After the discovery, reporters sought the DCF records that would show what the agency knew and what it did when the August report arrived. The agency released a brief summary of old involvement with the biological family and nothing on the September visit. Kansas law allows DCF to release basic facts in a child death caused by abuse or neglect once there is a substantiated finding. The agency hid behind the phrase ongoing investigation. That phrase may keep lawyers happy. It does not keep children safe. When the public cannot see failure, the practices that produced it do not change.
The financial piece is ugly and simple. The state paid money for a child who did not exist in the world anymore. Adoption subsidies kept flowing. Medicaid kept counting Kennedy as enrolled. The couple allegedly filed forms and made statements that kept the fiction alive. The fraud did not trigger a cross check because Kansas does not require routine verification that an adopted child receiving subsidies is alive and in care. The state treats adoption as a closed chapter and finances it on the honor system. In most families that trust is deserved. In a small number of cases like this one, that trust becomes a shield for cruelty and a cash stream for the people committing it.
The educational vacuum tells the same story. Kennedy was not on school rosters by late 2020. After the adoption there was no requirement for a periodic educational check up by the placing agency or the state. No one in authority asked where she was learning or whether she was learning at all. The longer a child remains invisible to schools and clinics, the longer an abuser can operate without risk of discovery. The systems that could have created visibility did not.
Even in the end the facts rely on a child’s courage more than on adult diligence. A surviving sister told investigators what happened. She described the storage box, the piled weight, the cries that went silent, and the body that turned blue. Her account, together with the clandestine burial, was the backbone of the homicide case. The coroner could only say probable suffocation because time had erased soft tissue markers. The sister’s testimony supplied the detail that bones could not. That is bravery, but it is also indictment. The truth should not have had to ride on a child who had already lived through a nightmare.
There is a narrow view of this case that focuses on individual evil. There is a correct place for that view. Crystina Schroer pleaded no contest to killing her daughter and hiding her death. Joseph Schroer pleaded no contest to endangering children and defrauding the public. They will be sentenced and they will owe money. But the broader view asks how a six year old can vanish for nearly four years while a network of public systems continues to log payments and close reports. That broader view points at a model that outsources accountability, that tolerates extraordinary staff turnover, that treats adoption as an exit rather than a transition, and that uses confidentiality to avoid scrutiny whenever a decision goes sideways.
Kansas is not unique. States across the country depend on privatized case management and thin public oversight. Turnover among front line workers is high. Caseloads are heavy. Budgets get steered to investigators and away from services that stabilize families and make removal less likely. When a child dies, agencies respond with hiring announcements for more investigators, not with investments in mental health, school stability, and real in home support. When contractors fail, the state blames the contractor and the contractor blames the state. Meanwhile the child is gone.
Kennedy’s story should force concrete changes that are not complicated. Require visual verification of children when the hotline allegation involves a death or disappearance. Require proof of life for any child who draws an adoption subsidy. Tie that verification to school or medical touch points so that it is not just a form in a drawer. Flag long gaps in medical claims and school enrollment for children who are supposed to be homeschooled and require a check. End the practice of screening out death related tips without law enforcement contact. Publicly release a plain language fatality summary within days when a child is found dead and abuse is suspected, and include in that summary who made which decisions and why. Keep the confidentiality that protects living children, but stop using it to hide the choices of adults who are paid to decide.
The dates in the criminal case are stark. Adoption in 2019. Death believed to be late 2020. A hotline report at the end of August 2024. A welfare check marked screened out on September 3. A body unearthed on September 11. No contest pleas in the summer and fall of 2025. A restitution order for about twenty seven thousand dollars. Sentencing still to come. These dates describe a child who slipped through every checkpoint that should have made harm harder and discovery quicker.
Kennedy was more than a case number. She was a little girl who should have been learning sight words and riding a bike and making a mess at the kitchen table. Instead, a punishment became a death and a backyard became a grave. The systems that claim to defend children did not prevent it, did not notice it, and did not explain it in a way that invites public learning. That is not protection. That is bureaucracy.
When officials speak about this case they use phrases like complex investigation and ongoing review. The complexity here is not hard to name. No one insisted on seeing the children when it mattered. No one required proof of life while money kept going out. No one built a feedback loop between schools, health care, and subsidies that would have thrown a bright red flag. That is not complex. That is a list.
Kennedy will not benefit from any of it. Two surviving sisters are now wards of the same state that promised safety before. Their futures will be decided in rooms where documents are sealed and the public is kept outside. The very least Kansas can do is to tell the truth about what went wrong and to change the rules that made it possible. A small child vanished from every network of adult eyes that is supposed to notice. A grave in a backyard kept the secret for nearly four years. The secret should end here.
