Authorities found and identified the decomposing body belonging to a young Kansas girl in the backyard of her adopted family’s home, where it had been slowly rotting since her death four years ago, investigators said.
Rose Hill police officers discovered the child’s remains while responding to an unrelated call to the family’s home earlier this month and on Friday, the department announced that the body was identified as Kennedy Jean Schroer, who would have been around 6 years old when she originally died in November 2020.
The Sedgwick County Forensic Science Center, which made the ID, was unable to determine a cause of death due to the decomposition of the body. Police said the forensic preliminary report noted no visible injuries.
Officers had gone to Kennedy’s family’s home on Sept. 10 to respond to a report of an adult there possibly barricaded and threatening to harm themself, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
While they were at the home, “information was developed of a past homicide” and they uncovered human remains in the backyard, Rose Hill police chief Taylor Parlier said, according to the local paper.
Police have not made any arrests in the case yet, sparking calls for justice from Kennedy’s biological mother.
“We understand that many in the public might be confused how an arrest in this case has not
been made. That is completely understandable,” the Rose Hill Police Department said in a press release.
“What we would like to convey is that we have one chance to gather as much information as possible, to find out what happened to this child and to tell her story. While we understand the desire to hold persons accountable, we need to get this correct and not fast.”
The department says releasing too much information may appear to implicate some people who were not involved. Police said that Kennedy’s adoptive parents have been forthcoming with investigators so far.
Christa Helm, who claims to be Kennedy’s biological mother, told KSN that she lost custody of her three daughters in 2018, and that they were all taken in by the Schroers in 2019.
Helm had hoped that her children would have a chance to pursue a better life outside her custody and is still trying to rationalize how things could have gone so wrong.
“The state of Kansas has failed my kids, and I want them to get the proper therapy and love they need from their real family, where they belong,” Helm told KSN.
Helm took her fight to Parlier, who said that she pled such a powerful case that the department collectively feels as if they are tied to Kennedy and her investigation forever.
“We’re all humans; It’s easy to look at people in uniforms as robots, like becoming numb over the course of the years. I can promise you that nobody involved in this case is numb to these events,” Parlier told KSN.
“As this has been said multiple times, this is not normal for Rose Hill, but this is not normal for New York City or Philadelphia or Chicago; this is an abnormal event, and as a result, it’s affecting people in those ways.”
The Rose Hill School District confirmed Kennedy’s kindergarten enrollment in 2020, but revealed that her adoptive parents withdrew her to explore homeschooling.
The future custody of Kennedy’s two sisters is still up in the air as the investigation continues. Helm said that the family is exploring legal counsel and that she hopes to bring them both home.
