Share and Follow
A grandmother accused of killing two Kansas women amid a child custody battle searched “taser pain level” and other phrases that give insight into the womens’ horrific deaths, court documents reveal.
Grandmother Tifany Machel Adams, 54, her boyfriend Tad Bert Cullum, Cole Twombly and Cora Twombly all face two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of 27-year-old mother Veronica Butler and visitation supervisor Jilian Kelley, a 38-year-old preacher’s wife who was also a mother.
Their motive, investigators posit, was to get custody of Butler’s two children. Wrangler Rickman, Adams’ son, had custody of the children but was confirmed to be in an Oklahoma rehab facility when the women disappeared. Butler was allowed supervised visitation with her children every Saturday, and was likely to be granted unsupervised visitation during an upcoming hearing, per court documents.
Butler and Kelley were last seen alive on March 30 as they set off from Hugoton, Kansas to a court-supervised visit with Butler’s two children in Oklahoma.
A search of local gun shops later showed that Adams had purchased five stun guns on March 23.
On April 3, the Twombly couple’s daughter reportedly told police that she was told her parents, Adams and Cullum were responsible for Butler and Kelley’s deaths. Adams had provided the other three with burner phones, she said, so they could communicate discreetly about their plans.
The four belonged to a religiously-affiliated anti-government group called “God’s Misfits,” Fox News Digital previously reported.
Before the women were last seen on March 30, the 16-year-old said that she’d overheard conversations between the four suspects about how “Butler [was] not protecting her children from her brother… in reference to a sexual abuse allegation.”
Pictured are Cody and Cora Twombly, whose 16-year-old daughter’s statement to police helped seal their arrests in the murders of Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley (Texas County Sheriff’s Department)
The 16-year-old said that her parents told her they would “not have to worry about [Butler] again,” and that the two may have been placed in a well, per court documents
“[The 16-year-old] asked why [Kelley] had to die and was told by Cora that [Kelley] wasn’t innocent either, as she had supported Butler,” investigators wrote.
The group’s plan was initially to “throw an anvil through Butler’s windshield while driving, making it look like an accident because anvils regularly fall off work vehicles,” Cora told the 16-year-old.
The minor named a fifth party involved in planning the women’s deaths that has not yet been arrested.
OSBI investigators found records that Adams had purchased the three prepaid cellphones. Tracing the previous locations of the phones led detectives to “fresh dirt work” covered with hay, where the women’s bodies were found.
Although the womens’ bodies and causes of death are pending a medical examiner’s report, OSBI said, there is “no chance” Butler and Kelley are still alive.
“This case is tragic,” OSBI spokesperson Hunter McKee told KFDA. “You have two people who are dead and four people who committed an absolutely brutal crime.”
