Homeschooled to Death: The Mary and Elwyn Crocker Jr. Torture Case

December 20th, 2018. Effingham County Sheriff's deputies show up at a house in Guyton, Georgia, asking about two kids nobody's seen in years. The father tells them the kids are with their mom in South Carolina. Then he breaks. Takes them to the backyard. What they find under bags of cement and two years of pine straw will haunt this community forever. One of those kids died right around her fourteenth birthday. And the man who buried her had spent the last few weeks listening to children's Christmas wishes at the Rincon Walmart, wearing a Santa suit.

The Santa Claus Who Buried His Children: Inside the Crocker Family Murders

Guyton, Georgia sits about thirty miles northwest of Savannah in Effingham County. Pine trees everywhere, lots of space between houses, the type of place where people move specifically because they want privacy. And in 2018, the family living at 450 Rosebud Place weaponized that privacy in the worst way possible.

December 20, 2018: The Discovery That Shook Effingham County

December 20th, 2018. That's when investigators finally made it through the door. What they found was a crime scene that had been operating for years, and two children buried in the backyard. One of them, Mary Crocker, had died in late October, right around the time she should have been celebrating her fourteenth birthday. The other was her older brother, Elwyn Jr., who'd been in that ground since November 2016.

Two years. The family had been living their lives, walking over that grave, for two entire years. When people asked where the kids were, the adults had their stories ready. Military academy. Living with mom in South Carolina. Homeschooling. Whatever lie worked for whoever was asking.

The Walmart Santa With a Horrifying Secret

Here's the detail that makes your brain short circuit. Mary's father, Elwyn Crocker Sr., had a job that December. He was working as Santa Claus at the Walmart in Rincon. While his daughter's body was decomposing in his backyard, he put on a red suit and listened to other people's children tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Parents brought their kids to sit on his lap. One neighbor, Ronald Howe, told reporters later he couldn't process it. This guy had been Santa, and all these families had their kids on his lap, and nobody knew.

Five Adults, Two Dead Children: The House at 450 Rosebud Place

What makes this case so devastating is that five adults participated. Elwyn Crocker Sr., the father. Candice Crocker, the stepmother. Kim Wright, Candice's mother. Mark Wright, Candice's brother. And Roy Prater, Kim's boyfriend. Five adults who could have stopped this at any moment. Five adults who chose not to.

The Dog Cages in the Kitchen: How Mary and Elwyn Jr. Were Tortured

Investigators found dog cages in the kitchen. Mary and Elwyn Jr. were kept in those cages for extended periods, sometimes twenty four hours straight. They were naked, bound with zip ties. When their bodies were recovered, both were wearing diapers. These were teenagers. Mary was thirteen when she died. Elwyn Jr. was fourteen. The adults put diapers on them and let them soil themselves.

The text messages recovered from the defendants' phones tell you everything. These people documented what they were doing. They took pictures of the kids in the cages. Candice Crocker sent messages about making Mary's food taste bad so she wouldn't want to eat it. There are texts expressing hope that Mary would get sick. This was calculated, systematic torture.

James Crocker: The Survivor Who Was Forced to Participate

There was a third child in that house. James was about eleven when this all came to light. He has cerebral palsy. Family members told investigators the only reason James survived is because the adults were collecting disability checks for him. SSI payments every month. James lived because he was profitable.

He was also forced to participate in the abuse. Investigators say a relative made James hit his sister Mary with a frying pan. You're a kid watching your siblings get tortured and murdered, and then they make you hurt them too. James eventually testified about what happened in that house, and his testimony is crucial to the prosecution's case.

The Gaskins Connection: A Family Curse of Violence

Elwyn Crocker Sr. is related to Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, one of South Carolina's most prolific serial killers. Gaskins was executed in 1991. He was a cousin to Crocker's grandfather. Israel Pattison, another cousin, has talked publicly about what he calls a family curse. He describes this strain of violence that gets passed down through generations. Pattison witnessed Elwyn Sr. being beaten and abused when they were kids. Court records confirm that child welfare workers investigated abuse of young Elwyn Sr. decades earlier.

Pattison broke the cycle by learning about trauma. Elwyn Sr. went the other way. He recreated what was done to him, probably worse.

How Georgia's DFCS Failed Mary Crocker

The system had multiple chances to stop this. In 2012, the Division of Family and Children Services opened an investigation after the family moved from South Carolina to Georgia. The children stayed in the home. In 2013, Mark Wright was charged with cruelty to children for hitting Elwyn Jr. hard enough to leave substantial bruising. The charges were dropped with a no contact order. Nobody enforced it. He kept living in the house, kept abusing Elwyn Jr., and eventually helped bury him.

The Homeschool Loophole That Let Two Children Vanish

January 2014 is when Elwyn Jr. vanished from the system. His parents pulled him out of sixth grade and filed paperwork to homeschool. In Georgia, that's all it takes. The school loses track of the child completely. No oversight, no home visits. Elwyn Jr. died in November 2016. For the next two years, the family told people he was at military school or living with his biological mother.

The "Too Old" Report That Could Have Saved a Life

In 2017, someone called DFCS to report that Elwyn Jr. had been abused. DFCS looked at the report and decided not to investigate. Their reasoning? The alleged abuse happened a year earlier. They deemed the information too old to be actionable.

At the time of that call, Elwyn Jr. was already dead. He'd been buried for months. Mary was still alive, still being tortured. If DFCS had sent someone to investigate, they would have asked to see Elwyn Jr. The family couldn't produce him. Everything would have unraveled. Mary would have been removed. She would have survived.

Mary Crocker spent another year in hell before dying in October 2018. She was pulled out of South Effingham Middle School that same month. By the end of October, she was dead. The family claimed she was being punished for stealing food. A starving child desperate enough to try to eat, punished for survival.

The Investigation: How Deputies Found the Bodies

A relative contacted the Sheriff's Office directly in December 2018. This person specifically told investigators they believed Mary was deceased. That language mattered. This was a death notification, and it triggered an immediate response.

Deputies arrived at 450 Rosebud Place on December 20th. The adults stuck to their rehearsed story. The kids are with their mom. But investigators saw through it. Elwyn Sr. broke first. He admitted the children were dead and took deputies to the backyard.

Mary's grave was newer, covered with cement bags and trash. Elwyn Jr.'s burial site had two years of debris camouflaging it. Elwyn Jr.'s remains were mostly skeletal, but forensic anthropologists found healed fractures and signs of growth arrest. Evidence of chronic, long-term abuse. Mary's body still showed soft tissue trauma, ligature marks from the zip ties, the diapers.

The Legal Battle: Death Penalty Case Against Elwyn Crocker Sr.

The legal process has been slow. Roy Prater pleaded guilty to murder and concealing a death in February 2020. He's cooperating, awaiting sentencing. Candice Crocker took a deal in October 2020. Murder, torture, sexual battery, false imprisonment. Life without parole in exchange for testifying against her husband. Mark Wright pleaded guilty in early 2025 to second degree murder and child cruelty. Eighty years. Kim Wright pleaded guilty in September 2025. Life without parole.

Elwyn Crocker Sr. stands alone. Georgia is seeking the death penalty. The prosecution will paint him as the architect who manipulated his family into participating. They'll use the Santa Claus evidence to demonstrate his capacity for deception. The defense will argue the Gaskins curse narrative, talk about his childhood abuse, try to present him as damaged rather than monstrous.

Georgia's Child Welfare Crisis Exposed

After the bodies were found, Georgia investigated DFCS. A Senate probe and independent audit reviewed cases from 2018 to 2022. They found that DFCS failed to properly assess and respond to safety threats in eighty four percent of cases. The policy that killed Mary Crocker was symptomatic of a completely broken system.

Mary Crocker would be in her twenties now. She died at thirteen, buried in her own backyard by the people who were supposed to protect her. Elwyn Jr. never made it past fourteen. James carries all of this. The trial for Elwyn Crocker Sr. is still pending. And somewhere, a kid with cerebral palsy is trying to build a life from the wreckage of 450 Rosebud Place.