A 55-year-old Oklahoma woman who prosecutors say orchestrated the ambush killing of two Kansas mothers — including the mother of her own grandchildren — has pleaded no contest to murder and related charges.
Tifany Adams, known locally as “Grandma Tifany,” entered the plea this week in Texas County District Court, admitting to her role in what authorities called a “premeditated and cruel” double murder carried out on Easter weekend in 2024. Adams pleaded no contest to two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of unlawful removal of a dead body, and two counts of unlawful desecration of a human corpse.
The victims, Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, were reported missing on March 30, 2024 — the day before Easter — after they left Hugoton, Kansas, to pick up Butler’s children for a court-supervised custody visit across the state line in Oklahoma. When they never returned, an extensive search began across rural highways and farmland.
Two weeks later, investigators found their bodies inside a chest freezer buried in a field about 10 miles south of Elkhart, Oklahoma. Both women had been stabbed to death.
Court documents say the murders stemmed from a bitter custody dispute between Butler and Adams’ son, who had primary custody of Butler’s two young children. Butler had recently petitioned for expanded visitation, a move investigators say triggered the deadly plot.
Adams and four others — Tad Cullum, her boyfriend; Cora and Cole Twombly; and Paul Grice — were charged in the killings. Prosecutors said the group belonged to an anti-government religious sect called God’s Misfits, which authorities described as a “self-styled prayer circle” that had grown increasingly militant.
Investigators say Adams was the ringleader. She allegedly bought burner phones, stun guns, and other supplies, then lured Butler and Kelley to a rural intersection under the pretense of a child exchange. There, the women were ambushed, murdered, and later buried.
Autopsy reports revealed that Butler had been stabbed nine times, with 21 additional defensive wounds on her hands. Kelley — a court-appointed visitation supervisor with no personal connection to the custody dispute — was stabbed nine times as well.
Two of Adams’ co-defendants, Grice and Cora Twombly, have also pleaded guilty, avoiding death sentences in exchange for life terms. The remaining two defendants, Cullum and Cole Twombly, are awaiting trial.
For prosecutors, the plea brings a grim measure of closure to a case that shocked communities across Oklahoma and Kansas. “This was a calculated, cold-blooded act,” one investigator told local reporters. “The fact that it came from someone the victims trusted — a grandmother — makes it all the more horrifying.”
Legal experts say Adams’ plea likely spares the state years of appeals and millions in trial costs. “The death penalty in Oklahoma carries a long, expensive appellate process,” said criminal defense attorney Mark Idler. “By taking life without parole, prosecutors guarantee she’ll die behind bars — and spare the victims’ families the ordeal of reliving the crime in open court.”
For the families of Butler and Kelley, the sentencing next month will be their chance to confront the woman who plotted the deaths of two mothers — one of them her own grandchildren’s.
In the words of one local official, “There are no winners here. Only a community forever marked by the evil that called itself ‘Grandma Tifany.’”
