Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Mothers Found Dead in Rural Oklahoma

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There was a lot of questions from the public, was there any danger to the public? And I think from the get-go, once we arrived on scene, and we gained a little bit of information, we felt this wasn't a random deal. All right. Four people arrested and charged in the murders of two moms in Oklahoma. We have gruesome details in the deaths of Veronica Butler and Jillian Kelly. You have two people who are who are dead and for people that committed an absolutely brutal crime.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. These two moms from Kansas, Veronica Butler and Jillian Kelly, had been missing since March 30th. Police had said they traveled from Kansas to Oklahoma to pick up Veronica's children, but never made it. When state agents found the car the women were driving, they said it showed signs that there had been foul play, but Butler and Kelly were nowhere to be found. Court documents say that blood and Butler's glasses were found in and around the vehicle.

Starting point is 00:01:17 We can say that the evidence that was discovered inside of that abandoned vehicle and around it were able to help our investigators determine that there was foul play involved and then led to the progression of this investigation. The Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation announced that Tad Burke Cullum, Tiffany Adams, Cole Twombly, and Cora Twombly had each been arrested and charged with two counts of murder and kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. An affidavit filed to support the charges says that Veronica Butler was involved in a fierce custody battle for her two children with Tiffany

Starting point is 00:01:51 Adams. Adams is the mother of the man with whom Butler shared those two children. Butler had asked Jillian Kelly to supervise her court-ordered visitation with her children on Saturday, March 30th. That's when they were traveling to meet the children. Court documents related to the custody battle between Adams and Butler showed that it had been contentious since 2019 and that Adams and her boyfriend, Tag Column, had made death threats. And a hearing this week may have made that custody battle even more contentious because Veronica Butler was expected to win

Starting point is 00:02:25 visitation rights unsupervised with her children. Questions were raised at a press conference about why law enforcement was so tight-lipped over the last two weeks. This is the way that our investigators work. This is what you have to do in order to get the job done, everybody involved in order to catch those responsible. Now, along with death threats, the affidavit says that Tiffany Adams' phone revealed she searched for several things, including taser pain level, gun shops, prepaid cellular phones, and how to get someone out of their house. The affidavit also states that the Twombly's, Tiffany Adams, and Tad Callum were part of a religious anti-government group called God's Misfits. The affidavit says the Twombly's 16-year-old daughter told agents that she overheard a group conversation in which the adults were discussing their feeling that Butler was not protecting her children from her brother regarding an abuse allegation involving sexual assault. The Twombly's daughter is also quoted as telling investigators that the group tried

Starting point is 00:03:29 to kill Butler in February, but that was unsuccessful. Cora Twombly is accused of telling her daughter they had planned to throw an anvil through Butler's windshield to make it look like an accident, but she never came out of her house. And we'll have more details from that affidavit coming up here in just a bit. I want to bring in Joe Giacalone to discuss this case. He's the host of the YouTube channel True Crime with the Sarge, also a retired cold case sergeant from the NYPD. Joe, there is some wild, wild stuff in this affidavit. We have a group of people, these four people accused of concocting a conspiracy to kill these two women because they were concerned, allegedly, about Veronica Butler not protecting her children from her brother regarding a sexual abuse allegation.

Starting point is 00:04:19 So we've got talk about these people being involved in some type of anti-government, anti-religious, anti-government organization. There is a lot going on with this case. Yes, certainly. There's a lot to unpack, even from the very beginning when you saw what transpired in regards to this incident where this car basically gets either forced off the road or something happens to them and they end up on this dirt road, so to speak. But yeah, there's a lot to talk about here. And moving forward, this is going to be a pretty big topic in regards to some of these anti-government movements, sovereign citizens, you name it, whatever you want to call them. It's not something new. They've been around for a long time.

Starting point is 00:05:10 But I think this case is going to put them on the map in certain locations and law enforcement is going to be taking a very close look. It sounded like law enforcement received quite a bit of information from the get go from family member and friends. They said that during the press conference, there is a custody dispute between Veronica Butler and Tiffany Adams that goes back to 2019. And there apparently were a, there's a trove of court documents supporting all of this and all of the allegations and that Tiffany Adams was making death threats to Veronica Butler. And she wanted to keep those children, it sounds like. So we've heard about these custody disputes becoming really contentious and sadly ending like this in the past. Sure. I mean, if you want to take a look at a case that's very similar to this, the Piketon massacre, right? I mean, very similar to this. Yes, Pike County. Yeah, very similar to this. And you also see how also, you know, I'm sure they

Starting point is 00:06:00 didn't really say it, but, you know, the internet records and the cell phone records, the text messages, all those kind of things helped investigators. But, yes, the tips that they got from the public, they were very open about that. Not open about anything else, but they were open about getting information from, you know, either relatives or friends, I guess. And that said, listen, I guess you need to take a hard look about what's going on here. And you could kind of tell that investigators were on top of this, who they thought or suspected right away, just based on their silence. I know a lot of people were upset about that, but I was trying to explain to people they don't want to spook anybody. So they're just playing this very close to the vest. And that is something that is

Starting point is 00:06:39 always very frustrating to people like me. It's my job to go out and find the news, get the news, report the news, talk about the news, analyze the news. And the public gets frustrated too. But the cops said, this is what we do. We can't just put everything out there. We can't say anything. We have to get the bad guys. Well, it makes law enforcement's job more difficult if they give out too much information. And I know specifically from the reporters and the journalists out there, this is really frustrating because you're trying to break a story and tell everybody about it. But there's always certain clues that you should ask if it's not brought up is, is the public in danger, right? Because that kind of gives you the clue about where law enforcement is headed with the investigation. And sometimes when I'm watching these presses and the reporters do get a chance, just like today, to ask questions, I'm shouting at the TV going, ask this question. But nobody seems to, you know, kind of get on to those. But yes, law enforcement understands something. If they put

Starting point is 00:07:45 out a thing and say, well, yes, we know all about the custody battle and we want to make sure that, you know, these people are brought to justice. Well, listen, you have a chance of destruction of evidence, you know, even whether it's hiding the bodies further or bringing them to another location or destroying cell phones and, you know, deleting things, right? You keep people off guard and that's the idea behind it. So people go, oh, we're not even suspected by this, just play it cool. And then you have surveillance on top of that too. So it's really important that they keep certain key things from the public. I want to take a minute to tell you all about an exciting new channel we just

Starting point is 00:08:21 launched. It's called Law and Crime Interrogations. This channel is devoted to authentic, shocking footage showing detectives uncovering the truth behind a crime, which means you get to see what happens firsthand instead of hearing about it in court. From the moment killers cracked to the most elaborate cover-up schemes, Law and Crime Interrogations puts you right in the middle of the investigation of high-stakes crimes. Check out the description of this video for a link to Interrogations, and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any new uploads. You always talk about the importance of the cell phone evidence, the electronic evidence,

Starting point is 00:08:58 and we have a lot of talk about burner phones in this affidavit. They went out and bought prepaid cell phones. Those are the burner phones so that they couldn't be traced, but law enforcement eventually found those according to the affidavit. Also, they say that Tiffany Adams on her phone searches, they did an extraction. They say she searched for things like taser pain level, gun shops, prepaid cellular phones, and how to get someone out of their house. So this is another case in which cell phones, electronic data, cyber evidence is very important to cracking the case. Yes, and this is the first place that law enforcement is heading to, right? So the cell phones thing, and listen, unfortunately, or actually fortunately, people haven't learned

Starting point is 00:09:46 from the Long Island serial killer case that these burner phones are no longer, you know, as advertised with the new technology and the new ways that law enforcement and the access has it and an engine. As soon as you see federal agencies like the FBI or sometimes even the Secret Service get involved, that's all about cell phone data and that's all about analyzing it and downloading it and getting

Starting point is 00:10:09 that information. And if you recall at the presser, I forget who the individual was, but he did thank the public sector for getting on top of these subpoenas and warrants and getting them that information really fast. So it's just an indication about how much information that they had at their fingertips almost immediately in this investigation, which led us to this point right now. One of the things that's really disturbing in here is the fact that we have a 16-year-old child who was a witness to all of this. And it sounds like she gave a lot of information to law enforcement. She is not identified in these documents by name,

Starting point is 00:10:50 but by initials. And she is the child of the Twombly's. And she said that on March 29th, the day before Veronica Butler was scheduled to visit her children, have that supervised visitation, that Cora and Cole Twombly left in a pickup truck and said they were going on, quote, a mission. And that when they came back, they said things didn't go as planned,

Starting point is 00:11:13 but they instructed the 16-year-old to clean up the truck. And they said that they would not have to worry about Veronica Butler any longer. Really, really damning evidence and really disturbing to have a child, a teenage girl, a witness to all of this. Well, yeah. And it's also, for lack of a better adjective, dumb on their part, right? So you have somebody who's at 16 years old that doesn't understand really what's probably happening, or maybe they felt that she was indoctrinated in their beliefs so much that she would just be willing to follow orders and do things. But, you know, there's different at 16, you have different kinds of 16 year olds. Right. So the issue comes down to some more mature than others.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Some have gone through a lot. Some understand that. But fortunately, that she has come forward and she'll probably end up in like protective custody somewhere and eventually going, you know, be put in another location. As a matter of fact, they had asked, you know, where she was, I believe, at the presser. And they just said, well, you know, basically an undisclosed location right now. And they're going to have to keep her safe because she's going to be an integral part of a trial if it does take place. Well, if it does take place is the question. And we're still very early on in this investigation. So we'll see where it unfolds and where it leads.

Starting point is 00:12:30 But very sad that these two women are presumed dead. They're still in the process of making those identifications. The bodies were located on Sunday in a rural area. The police are not saying much more than that. So Joe Jekyll, thank you so much. We appreciate you coming on as always. Anytime, Anjanette. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here next time.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Mothers Found Dead in Rural Oklahoma

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Mothers Found Dead in Rural Oklahoma

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.