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Missing Kansas women confirmed dead, kids safe, 4 charged with kidnapping and murder
GUYMON, Okla. (AP) — Authorities on Monday confirmed the deaths of two Kansas women who went missing on a trip to Oklahoma to pick up children for a birthday party.
Two bodies were recovered in rural Oklahoma, a day after four people were charged with murder and kidnapping. Authorities say 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley, of Hugoton, Kansas, were driving through the Oklahoma panhandle to pick up Butler’s children for a March 30 birthday party in Kansas. They never showed up.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation on Monday described an intense effort to find them, protect the children and arrest suspects without violence.
OSBI spokesman Hunter McKee said Butler and Kelley are dead, and that the four defendants were responsible for the women going missing, but would not confirm that the bodies found were identified as the missing Kansas women, pending a report from Medical Examiner’s Office.