God’s Misfits, from left, Tad Cullum, Tifany Adams, Cole Twombly, Cora Twombly and Paul Grice, are accused of killing two Kansas women. (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation)
The latest chapter in the God’s Misfits story has been revealed, adding to our knowledge of how two Kansas women were murdered the Saturday before Easter last — they were stabbed to death — but contributing little to our understanding of why .
It’s an existential question about good and evil that lies at the cold heart of every horrific act of personal violence. It transcends motive, because motive can be understood as a lust for money or revenge or some other kind of gratification. The why that haunts us is about whether evil is the absence of good, like cold is the absence of heat, or if human beings are tragically predisposed to wickedness.
If so, how could a loving God allow such things?
While these philosophical questions have been debated since at least the time of Plato with no definitive answers, in the Oklahoma panhandle such matters are sometimes approached by back roads evangelists with the tools at hand. As recounted by one newspaper columnist in 2001, one of these rough panhandle preachers told a story about giving a ride to a couple of hitchhikers who were disinterested in hearing the gospel. So he pulled a pistol from beneath his seat and put the barrel to the head of one of the young men.
“Where would you go,” the preacher asked, “if I pulled the trigger?”
The story says much about the culture of the panhandle, an area once called “No Man’s Land” and so sparsely populated that “rural” hardly does it justice. It’s a region that is equal parts fierce individualism and brimstone. Jay Grelen, who wrote up the story for the Oklahoman, said the pistol-wielding pastor was the first preacher he met in the panhandle.
It’s a story that may be familiar to the five defendants accused in the murders of the Kansas women. Members of an anti-government Christian prayer group who called themselves God’s Misfits were in court Sept. 18 for a hearing on a prosecutor’s motion to combine their cases. Each of them faces the same set of charges: two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder.
If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
The defendants are: Tifany Adams, 54, and her boyfriend Tad Cullum, 43, both of Keyes, Oklahoma; Cora Twombly, 44, and her husband, Cole Twombly, 50, of Texhoma, Oklahoma; and Paul Grice, 32, also of Keyes.
They are accused of killing Veronica Butler, who was in a bitter custody dispute with Adams, and Jilian Kelley, a court-approved child visitation supervisor. The women were on their way March 30 to a children’s birthday party, but they never arrived. Butler was 27 and Kelley, the wife of a local pastor, 39. Both were from Hugoton, Kansas, about 40 miles northeast of where their car was found abandoned, near a remote stretch of road just south of the state line in Oklahoma.
Much blood, a broken hammer, and Butler’s glasses were discovered on the roadway near the car, according to a probable cause affidavit. Kelley’s purse was found with a pistol magazine inside, but no gun.
An intensive search for the women followed, and their bodies were found April 14 in a chest freezer that had been buried in a farm pasture about eight miles from the abandoned car.
Four of the Misfits were arrested before the discovery of the bodies. In affidavits, authorities alleged Adams, a grandmother of the children in the custody battle, organized the ambush of the women by purchasing stun guns, burner cellphones, and items used in the kidnap and murder plot. Details of the plot emerged when the 16-year-old daughter of Cora Twombly, referred to only as “C.W.” in court records, told investigators what her parents had described about the killings.
The fifth defendant, Grice, was arrested April 24.
“Grice, in part, stabbed and killed Butler, sliced his hand badly with the knife, and accompanied the bodies of Butler and Kelley to the burial site,” a court brief alleges. “He threw his clothing, stun device, and the knife used to kill Butler, in the burial site. His clothing found in the burial site contained his and Butler’s DNA.”
The other person to wield a murder weapon, according to the court documents, was Cullum.
“Cullum, in part, got permission from the landowners to dig the hole for the burial site and dug the hole with his skid steer the day before the murders,” the brief alleges. “He stabbed and killed Kelley and drove the bodies … to the burial site. He put his clothing in the burial site and buried Butler and Kelley inside a freezer in the previously dug hole. His clothing, found at the burial site, contained his and Kelley’s DNA. The accessories to the knife, found at the burial site, were found in his home.”
Although not specified in the brief, the “accessories” to the knife might be its sheath, packaging, or other related material. Taken another way, it strikes me, the term could be used to describe the Misfits themselves.
Adams, the brief stated, had “purchased burner phones from Wal-Mart which were used by the conspirators to communicate. She purchased the stun devices at Standard Supply. One of the stun devices (was) found in the burial site. She purchased the yellow straps that were placed around the freezer containing the bodies of Butler and Kelley at Tractor Supply. She purchased the pants that Cullum put in the burial site. Adams hated and despised Butler and wanted her dead.”
There are few clues in the backgrounds of either of the Misfit couples that would help us understand the charges against them. But Grice, the fifth and youngest Misfit, wrote a disturbing political manifesto and filed it in his local district court in July 2023. I wrote about Grice’s document and his “sovereign citizen” beliefs a few months ago.
The manifesto seems out of character for a somebody who was once recognized as a hard-working and talented young rodeo star.
In the October 2009 issue of “Western Horseman,” Grice was featured in a full-color photo spread called “Growing Up Rodeo.” The lead photo shows him standing next to his horse, thumbs looped in the pockets of his jeans, his cowboy hat pulled low, staring out of the frame to a presumed horizon. It is a beautiful image and in it the young Grice stands straight and true as the Marlboro Man, but without the cigarette.
The photo is titled “The Long Gaze West.”
“At 17, Paul Grice is a veteran working cowboy, having earned pay for ‘day work’ on horseback since he was eight-years-old,” writes the story’s author, Tim Keller.
Grice used the money from his day work to buy a Quarter Horse called Bueno, and he hoped to win a youth rodeo buckle.
“Until his family’s move to Roy, NM, this year, Grice grew up in Kenton, Oklahoma, a short ride from the Colorado and New Mexico state lines,” Keller wrote. “Paul will continue working cattle on ranches, though if he can swing it he’d like to take time out to attend ranch management school at a north Texas college.”
But just two years later, Grice was involved in a shocking animal cruelty case.
Grice was among five young men who in 2011 used a Ford diesel pickup to drive over and kill four pronghorn antelope in a pasture about 15 miles south of Raton, New Mexico. A few of the antelope were pregnant. In addition to being run over, the antelope were shot with rifles and shotguns.
The district judge in the case, John Paternoster, called the crimes an act of “antelope terrorism,” the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. Some of the defendants were employees of the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico, but it’s unclear whether Grice was employed there as well.
Grice initially was charged with two counts of unlawful hunting, according to the case file from state court, tampering with evidence, giving alcohol to a minor, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. In a plea deal, the unlawful hunting and alcohol charges were dropped in exchange for no contest pleas on the felony delinquency and tampering charges.
This is what I’d ask Grice if I had the opportunity: What happened in the two years between the feature in “Western Horseman” magazine and the antelope terrorism case? How does a young man who is an exemplar of a cowboy culture that prides itself on its work ethic, integrity and helpfulness to others become, by the age of 31, someone who is charged with one of the most horrific crimes in the Oklahoma panhandle?
I’ve written Grice in jail to ask just that question. I doubt that I will ever get an answer, considering the gravity of the case and the fact the judge has instituted a gag order.
But there may be a clue to the mystery that is Grice in that story recounted by Grelen, the one in which the panhandle preacher holds a gun to the head of a hitchhiker and asks him where he thinks he’ll go if the trigger is pulled.
The preacher was Rance Grice, Paul’s father.
“Pastor Grice and his family live in the log-cabin parsonage next door to the church, where — in summer — they raise the windows for service,” Grelen wrote.
Paul, 8 at the time, was “born in cowboy boots.” Two years before, Paul and his older brother helped their father “track a mountain lion that was killing goats.” The cat weighed 107 pounds, while Paul weighed just 46.
Rance Grice died in 2015, age 73.
The four older Misfits had their cases combined by the judge, at least through a preliminary hearing that has been set for Dec. 17, according to the court docket. Part of the state’s argument in combining the cases is that it would be unduly harsh to force teenaged “C.W.” to testify 10 times — five for the preliminaries and five for the trials — when the evidence against the defendants is so similar.
But Paul Grice, in a separate hearing after the consolidation motion was granted, waived his right to a speedy trial and preliminary hearing. This means he won’t appear with the others in December. It might also signal that Grice is seeking to separate his defense from the others, or that he’s looking for a plea deal. District Judge A. Clark Jett set Grice’s next court date for Feb. 19, 2025.
Whatever evidence may be forthcoming in the prosecution of God’s Misfits, it is unlikely to answer the eternal question of evil. That is best left to the philosophers, theologians and poets. What the rest of us must wrestle with, like Jacob in the desert, is the evidence of what one human being can do to another.
We may never answer the question of why .
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