Missing Women’s Case Now Includes Missing Court Records
Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley are missing.
Butler, 27, and Kelley, 39, live in Hugoton, Kansas, a city of 3,747 north of Oklahoma’s panhandle, about 39 miles from Guymon.
The pair set out on Mar. 30 to collect Butler’s children in Oklahoma and return to Kansas for a birthday party. They never arrived.
Their car was found in Texas County, about 11 miles south of Elkhart, Kansas near the state line. That’s about 40 minutes southwest of Hugoton on U.S. 56, the road that leads from Hugoton to Boise City.
Texas County officials turned the investigation over to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, who said what they found in the car lead them to believe foul play was involved.
If you’ve been following the story, you know all that. Here’s what you might not know:
Butler had a relationship with Wrangler Cole Rickman that produced two children, a son born Dec. 18, 2015 and a daughter born Apr. 2, 2018. The unmarried parents split shortly after their daughter was born. The court in 2021 award sole custody of the children to Butler, but Rickman appealed. On Aug. 5, 2022 the Civil Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling.
At trial in Cimarron County, Rickman, a farm hand, complained that Butler moved and changed jobs frequently without notifying him and that she had made numerous unsubstantiated complaints about him to state authorities in Oklahoma and Kansas. Butler, a nurse, showed that after some disruption after the split she had settled into a consistent home and job.
“We acknowledge both of these very young and immature parents presented conflicting testimony about the other parties’ inappropriate behavior and choices,” Presiding Judge Robert D. Bell wrote. “Nevertheless, the evidence reflects both parties are attentive, loving and fit parents.”
The Cimarron County case referenced in the appellate decision is FP-2019–1. That’s pertinent because no case with that number appears in the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network records. A curious Oklahoma City attorney who had seen the file shortly after the women went missing called the court clerk to ask why it vanished and was told it had been sealed. The clerk declined to produce an order sealing the case.
Also missing is WH-2023–00001. The Christian Post wrote that motion included allegations by Rickman’s mother that the children had been sexually abused while in Butler’s care. That can’t be confirmed because ta search for that mation no returns no results.
The Oklahoma Open Records Act specifies that a public record that becomes part of an investigation must remain a public record.
The public records in Cimarron County also reveal that Wrangler Rickman and Kersten Kistler, both of Boise City, were married on July 31. In an April 1 Facebook post, Kersten Rickman, neé Kistler, said she had left Rickman.
The records show that Wrangler Rickman was charged on Nov. 16 with being a felon in possession of a firearm, pleaded no contest, and was sentenced to six years, all suspended, an placed on probation.
The records further show that on Feb. 21, Rickman was arrested and charged with Domestic Assault and Battery in the Presence of Minors and Public Intoxication, which prompted the district attorney to ask the court to revoke Rickman’s probation. The charge was for attacking his mother in law.
Those aren’t all of Rickman’s woes. On Mar. 18, an Enid law firm won a default judgement for $52,614.67 for unpaid legal fees dating to Nov. 20, 2020.
On Mar. 25, less than a week before Butler and Kelley disappeared, the court released Rickman, ordering him to check into a six-month inpatient rehab program at the Salvation Army in Oklahoma City, and requiring the Salvation Army to notify the court if Rickman left before the treatment concluded.
That’s where the paper trail ends. The documents from the Cimarron County custody trial could shed some light on the matter, but they’re disappeared without explanation. Oklahoma Watch will update that story as soon as we get some answers from Cimarron County.
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On this date in 1976, the NFL expansion team in Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers, drafted their first player, Lee Roy Selmon from the University of Oklahoma.
Ciao for now,
Ted Streuli
Executive Director, Oklahoma Watch
tstreuli@oklahomawatch.org
