by Jamie Burch, ABC 7 News
The mother of Veronica Butler, one of the two women killed in the Oklahoma panhandle over a bitter custody battle, filed a wrongful death suit against the five suspects.
Amanda Verner is suing for “medical and burial expenses, mental pain and anguish, and grief and loss of companionship.”
Butler and Jilian Kelley were headed from Kansas to Oklahoma to pick up Butler’s children for a birthday party when they went missing March 30.
Their bodies were found buried in a freezer on April 14.
Tifany Adams, Tad Cullum, Cole and Cora Twombly, and Paul Grice are charged with kidnapping and killing them.
One big revelation is Verner claims Adams, the children’s grandmother, used her position on the Cimarron County Hospital Board of Directors to “falsify hospital records to push the narrative that (Butler’s) brother had sexually assaulted the children,” and that she did so “to gain full custody and control of the children.”
Cora Twombly and Grice both pleaded guilty and have agreed to testify against the other three.
