Custody Battle At Center Of Missing Kansas Moms' Killings: Authorities

One of the four people arrested Saturday on suspicion of murder and kidnapping in the May 30 disappearance of two Kansas moms was in a custody battle with one of the victims, authorities said in an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost. Their bodies were found Sunday.

Authorities on Monday confirmed the deaths of Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, who disappeared on their way to pick up Butler’s 6-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son from their paternal grandmother, Tifany Machel Adams, 54, for a birthday party, authorities said. Butler never showed up, and relatives later found her abandoned car by a desolate stretch of highway across the border in Oklahoma and called the police.

Adams; her boyfriend, Tad Bert Cullum, 43; and married couple Cole Earl Twombly, 50, and Cora Twombly, 44, were arrested Saturday on suspicion of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in connection to Butler’s and Kelley’s disappearance.

The four were involved in a religious anti-government group called God’s Misfits, Cora Twombly’s daughter told investigators, according to the affidavit.

Investigators said they found “evidence of a serious injury” inside and near Butler’s car, including blood on the road and a broken hammer near Butler’s glasses behind the car. In Butler’s purse, they said, they found a pistol magazine but no sign of the gun.

A court had ordered that Butler, whose ex-boyfriend, Wrangler Rickman, had custody of their children, have supervised visitation with their son and daughter on Saturdays, and Kelley was scheduled to supervise the visit on March 30, investigators said. Rickman was in a rehabilitation facility at the time, and Butler told relatives she’d arranged to meet Adams that morning at an intersection known