In a huge SWAT raid involving 20 police vehicles, authorities in Oklahoma arrested four people over the murders of two Kansas women who had vanished on March 30.
Investigators said Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, vanished while traveling from Kansas to Oklahoma to pick up Butler’s children, aged 6 and 8, for a weekly visitation from their custodian grandmother’s home.
The grandmother, 54-year-old Tifany Adams, was among the four people arrested over Butler’s disappearance and death.
Adams’ boyfriend Tad Cullum, 43, and her friends Cole and Cora Twombly, aged respectively 50 and 44, were also arrested on two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder.
Detectives believe the victims were shot to death after finding pools of blood next to their abandoned vehicle around 1,000 feet off Oklahoma State Highway 95.
Butler and Adams were in the midst of a bitter custody battle as the mother’s killing came ten days after she filed a petition to have more time with her children.
