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Remains identified as 2 missing Kansas women at center of Oklahoma murder case
Remains found over the weekend in Oklahoma have been identified as two Kansas women who went missing last month, authorities confirmed Tuesday. Their disappearance prompted a murder investigation that has led to four arrests.
The victims were identified by the state medical examiner as 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said Tuesday on social media. Official causes of death were not immediately given.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones, along with everyone throughout their community,” the agency said.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol
Butler and Kelley were reported missing March 30 under suspicious circumstances, OSBI said, when the vehicle they had been traveling in that day was found abandoned on a highway in Texas County, Oklahoma, just south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border.
At the time, a missing persons alert from Oklahoma Highway Patrol stated that Butler and Kelley had been “traveling to pick up children” before they vanished.
On Saturday, 43-year-old Tad Bert Cullum, 54-year-old Tifany Machel Adams, 50-year-old Cole Earl Twombly and 44-year-old Cora Twombly were all arrested on first-degree murder charges in the deaths of Butler and Kelley.
The bodies of Butler and Kelley were found a day later in rural Texas County, OSBI disclosed.
According to an unsealed affidavit, Adams is the paternal grandmother of Butler’s children and the two were involved in a custody battle. Callum and Adams were in a relationship, the affidavit said.
According to authorities, all four suspects belong to an anti-government group called “God’s Misfits” that regularly met at the Twomblys’ home and other locations, and they had allegedly tried to kill Butler before, according to a teenage witness who spoke to investigators.
Adams, who had allegedly searched the internet for gun stores and “taser pain level,” purchased five stun guns at a local gun shop a week before the two women disappeared, the affidavit said. Investigators also found that Adams had bought several “burner” phones and “all three phones were at the area where Butler’s car was located and the last known location of Butler and Kelley,” the affidavit read.
Blood and a broken hammer were found near the abandoned vehicle, the affidavit stated.
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CBS News
McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.
