(Texas County, Oklahoma) – Authorities in Oklahoma, Tuesday afternoon, said the Office of the Oklahoma Chief Medical Examiner has positively identified the two deceased persons found in from Texas County, as 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley.

Their bodies were found Sunday, a little more than two-weeks after the women went missing while traveling from Hugoton, Kansas to pick up Butler’s children in Eva, Oklahoma, from a children’s birthday party but the women never reached their destination.

Their vehicle was later found abandoned on a rural highway in Texas County, Oklahoma, about 11 miles south of Elkhart, Kansas, on the Oklahoma-Kansas state line, three miles short of where they were supposed to pick up their children.

Kelley was the wife of a former youth pastor in Griswold (IA).

In the court documents, investigators state they discovered Butler was in a “problematic custody battle” with suspect Tifany Adams’ son for the custody of Butler’s two children. Adams is the grandmother of Butler’s children and mother of the kids’ father, Wrangler Rickman, who has legal custody, according to the documents. The custody battle between Butler and Rickman began in February 2019, according to the documents.

On March 30, the day of Butler and Kelley’s disappearance, Kelley was chosen to supervise Butler’s court-ordered custody exchange with Adams at 10:00 a.m. local time.