Authorities suspect “foul play” after two Kansas mothers traveling in Oklahoma disappeared and the car they were driving was found abandoned in a remote part of the Sooner State panhandle.
Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley went missing Saturday in a “rural” part of Texas County near Interstate 95 and Route L, according to the Oklahoma State Office.
Investigators revealed Wednesday that further analysis of the circumstances of their disappearance revealed “evidence pointing to foul play.”
Butler, 27, and Kelley, 39, traveled just 16 miles to pick up Butler’s 6-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, who lived with his ex-mother-in-law in Eva, Oklahoma. according to ABC 7.
While the women never arrived to pick up the children, Butler’s ex-husband found the car on the side of the road near a school where Butler had graduated in 2015, according to the report.
The car was found about three miles north of Eva.
Kelley — herself a mother of four — was suspected of traveling with Butler to help resolve a custody issue, sources familiar with the matter told NewsNation on Wednesday.
Oddly enough, the school near where the woman disappeared and the one Butler graduated from, Yarbrough School, began operating under a lockdown status Tuesday, according to a Facebook post.
The Texas County Sheriff’s Department also issued an endangered missing person advisory for both mothers.
The mothers were both members of the First Christian Church of Hugoton, Kansas, and were said to be more “acquaintances” than “friends,” according to NewsNation.
Kelley, a pastor’s wife and community church secretary, reportedly regularly participates in volunteer work, including directing the church’s children’s programs, according to ABC 7.
Her husband, Heath Kelley, former pastor of Hugoton, recently moved to become the new pastor of Willow Christian Church in Nebraska.
The congregation is asking the community to continue to publicize the disappearance and to pray that the two women will be found.
“Please pray that Jillian and her friend Veronica are safe and found soon. God, please bring these women home to their families who worry so much about them,” the church wrote in a Facebook post Monday.
A friend of Butler’s told ABC7 they hoped the women would be found, but understood the chances of finding a missing person diminished after the “first 24 to 48 hours.”
“It’s really hard to deal with knowing that someone I’ve been in contact with since I was 16 (has gone missing), it’s been really difficult,” the source told the outlet.
The Oklahoma State Bureau said it has made “no arrests” at this time after suspecting the mothers disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
“There’s every reason to believe they could be in danger,” the bureau’s public information officer Hunter Mckee told ABC News Tuesday.
“It was a very rural area. They are nowhere to be found. … The fact that we haven’t had contact with them for so long.”
New York Post
