An Oklahoma judge sentenced a grandmother to two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the grisly slayings of her estranged daughter-in-law and a pastor’s wife.
Tifany Machel Adams, 56, entered a no-contest plea in October to charges she murdered Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, both of Hugoton, Kansas.
Adams of Keyes, Oklahoma, was also sentenced on Monday to two five-year sentences for unlawful removal of a dead body and two seven-year sentences for unlawful desecration of a human corpse. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Investigators believe Adams and daughter-in-law Butler were engaged in a custody dispute, which Adams decided to settle with murder.
On March 30, 2024, Butler and her friend Kelley, wife of pastor Heath Kelley of Willow Christian Church in Indianola, Nebraska, were traveling to Oklahoma for a supervised visit of Butler’s children. The journey was cut short when they were ambushed by Adams’s boyfriend, Tad Bert Cullum, and three other individuals: Cole Earl Twombly, 51; Cora Twombly, 45; and Paul Grice, 31.
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The two women were attacked with a hammer, stun guns and knives. Their bodies were put into a freezer secured with yellow straps purchased from Tractor Supply and buried deep in a farm pasture. The grave was covered with a concrete slab.
KSNW-TV Ch. 3 reported that when the bodies were uncovered, investigators found a lasso-style rope wrapped loosely around Butler’s waist. She had 30 cuts and stab wounds to her head, neck, shoulder, back, torso, hands, arm, and thigh, indicating she tried to fight back, according to a medical examiner’s report
Adams, Cullum, the two Twomblys and Grice were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, online records show.
All five people were all part of a religious group named “God’s Misfits.” They met in homes and had strong anti-government beliefs, according to local news reports.
Adams is the first to receive a sentence. Cullum is set to go to trial in Texas County, Oklahoma, on Oct. 19. Cole Twombly’s trial is scheduled for Feb. 22, 2027. Cora Twombly and Grice accepted plea deals in exchange for their testimony.
According to The Kansas Reflector, Adams was not accused of doing the actual killing, but purchased burner phones, stun guns and other items, planning the whole thing.
Independent Christian Church ministers in Kansas encouraged people to pray for the criminals.
In a service held the morning the women’s bodies were found, Dave Mason from First Christian Church Hugoton said Willow Christian Church pastor Heath Kelley was concerned about the people who killed his wife.
“He’s asking us to remember them in prayer,” Mason said. ““So pray for those people. It may be hard.”
Sheila Stogsdill is a freelance print journalist and digital reporter, primarily covering crime issues for KSN/KODE.
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8 Responses
Part of the article reads “They met in homes and had strong anti-government beliefs, according to local news reports.” What does politics have to do with this case? Leaving politics out is a good practice. Your team does great reporting, but letting politics seep into your reporting tends to detract from your otherwise solid work.
Don,
This is actually a critical part of understanding who these people are – and the sentiments and mind-sets that they are functioning with. There are very significant mind-sets that are present in these environments – in which religion is a key element – and which drive people into justifying such twisted behavior (cf American religionists justifying Joshua’s slaughtering of innocent children and stealing peoples lands, etc., ad nauseum).
Rather we need to be thoroughly apprised of exactly the “politics” or ideology or whatever you want to call it that result in such heinous crimes.
Greg
I disagree. The fact that their religious beliefs were deeply influenced by political factors is extremely relevant to the motivations for their murders of these women. Clearly their “spirituality” was of a deeply carnal and pernicious brand, and it is more than relevant for that to be exposed.
The political fact is the reason this group of people were connected. Otherwise, we would wonder how and why they got together to do something this heinous.
I have to disagree with you, Don. I think politics, may have quite a bit to do with it. Would you object if The Roys Report uncovered link between a pro abortion protester, and a radical left-wing group?
Judging by the violence in this case they sound like political nut jobs. I do agree with you that the article is poorly edited to back that up.
Don. It depends. The nature of the crime demonstrates a comprehensive departure from what any government or local community morality might expect or demand. That local people and then local reporting might reach for the metaphor of “anti-government” to express that departure, isn’t unreasonable. Then again, planned brutal violence such as we have in this crime, is the antithesis of what is involved in politics worthy of the name; one might say the crime involved ungoverned primal violence. The granular detail of motivation and self-justification, on the part of those doing this crime, is a huge part of that crime.
Methinks that their strong anti-government stance may be part of their particular theological worldview. It forms a legitimate aspect of their extreme actions.