Pastor's Wife and Second Woman Go Missing While Driving to Pick Up Kids - Police Suspect They're 'In Danger'
Authorities in Oklahoma are looking for two women who mysteriously vanished last week in a remote part of the state’s panhandle.
One of the women is the wife of a Kansas pastor and the other woman is a friend of the family.
According to numerous reports, Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, departed on Wednesday from Hugoton, Kansas, near the state’s border with Oklahoma, in order to pick up children.
They never arrived at their planned destination.
Two women from Kansas go missing in Oklahoma https://t.co/M7GXmGWZP6
— KSN News Wichita (@KSNNews) March 31, 2024
The vehicle the women were traveling in — Butler’s blue Kia, according to KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas — was later found abandoned along a desolate part of Texas County, Oklahoma, just a few miles south of the Kansas state line.
The county is bordered by Kansas to the north and Texas to the south.
ABC News reported Monday that the women were on the way to pick up Butler’s children for a birthday party.
The ABC report is below:
After three days without a location on the missing women, police in Texas County contacted the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation for help.
An official with the OSBI told Fox News the agency is desperately searching for the women.
“We believe they are in danger because we have not heard from them in, coming up on three days now,” Hunter McKee, the OSBI’s public information manager said.
Hunter added, ”Where their vehicle was last seen was a very rural area of the state as well. We have not found them yet. We are doing everything we can.”
According to KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, the vehicle was found south of Elkhart, Kansas, in remote Texas County near Highway 95 and County Road L – an area that doesn’t receive a lot of traffic and which is surrounded by prairie.
The nearest population center is the town of Guymon but the two women were headed for a place near the rural community of Eva, Oklahoma, according to KSNW-TV in Wichita, Kansas.
Police believe both are “in danger” the OSBI has said.
According to Fox News, Kelley is married to Heath Kelley, the pastor of the Hugoton First Christian Church.
Due to the mysterious case, the school system Butler attended as a teenager went on a modified lockdown on Tuesday, KSNW reported.
The school Butler graduated from, the Yarbrough School, is so small that the missing 27-year-old was the only senior in her graduating class in 2015.
In a message to families, Yarbrough Superintendent Jim Wiggin said, “First and foremost, we are praying for the safe return of Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley.”
“Veronica is a Yarbrough graduate with the Class of 2015,” Wiggin added. “I remember her graduation ceremony very clearly, as she was the only senior graduating that afternoon. She was a class of one that year. I joked about her being the top of her class and well, the bottom also.”
Wiggin added he chose to lock down the school due to the mysterious nature of Butler’s disappearance and also the fact that the vehicle she was last seen in was found close to campus.
Texas County is one of three counties that make up Oklahoma’s remote panhandle – a large area populated by fewer than 30,000 people.
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