CrimeCon 2024: Murder, Money, Mayhem in Rural America
NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield & Brian Entin on God’s Misfits Cult
All Crime Con coverage comes with Trigger Warnings.
Cults got a lot of attention at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville. Among those deceitful organizations discussed by journalists, survivors, and psychologists, was one that might not be a household name the way Charles Manson’s The Family or Scientology are. NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield and Brian Entin conducted an investigation into God’s Misfits.
| *Note: | When NewsNation (owned by Nexstar Media Group, Inc.) started, the public was told this would be the kind of coverage missing in mainstream journalism. Non-partisan. A tagline, “News for All America.” Now, in 2025, their real message pops up when you visit the website with big letters: One Nation Under God. They’ve also poached some ABC anchors like Elizabeth Vargas and Dan Abrams; once decent reporter turned clickbait disaster, Geraldo Rivera; Chris Cuomo; and none other than former Trump Press Secretary, Sean Spicer. Doesn’t seem as unbiased as they pretended be. |
Now Back to the Coverage of Another Cult:
God’s Misfits became headline news in connection to the double homicide of Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, of Hugoton, Kansas.The details of the murders are graphic. They were bludgeoned with a hammer, put in a freezer, and buried in a hole ten feet deep.
Suspects were identified plus the mastermind was known as “Grandma Tifany“—real name Tifany Adams, 54. The cult, God’s Mifits, was founded by “Squirrel” as an anti-government organization in Oklahoma. Four members were arrested for kidnapping and murder1. They are Adams; Tad Bert Cullum, 43; Cole Earl Twombly, 50; and Cora Twombly, 44. The fifth suspect, Paul Jeremiah Grice, 32, confessed to fatally stabbing the women2.
These murders were because of a custody fight to raise two children in the cult. According to Banfield, NewsNation prefers to gather as full a picture as possible when it comes to respects victims and children. Tifany Adams is the biological grandmother of the two children in the dispute.
Adams was chair of the Cimarron County Republican Party. At the time of her arrest, she was wearing a red “Praying for Trump” shirt2.
When Butler and Kelley went missing, the search began and journalists from all over were looking for the scoop.
“You have to pounce on the story even in the middle of the night, but you have to realize these people are armed,” Brian Entin said.
Adding to the investigation for The Banfield Show, Laura Ingle went on location to shoot B-roll (footage that fills in the gaps to give background and establish location). She said she was scared by a dark-colored truck because another team was threatened by the cult members and a dog. They were out in the middle of nowhere where the only building besides where the cult lived was an abandoned gas station.
“Always have a flight plan to get in and out,” Ingle said. “These people do not like the media.”
Banfield, Entin, and Ingle painted a picture of how desolate and isolated this family was located. The family lived next to an old school which was used for their meetings. Entin realized that as a reporter trying to get information, he wasn’t blending in well. He showed up with a rented Ford Mustang quickly labeling him as an outsider.
In the footage of Banfield’s interview with “Squirrel,” he said those people are not serving the same God. He said their group is quite small and they were acting on their own.
This cult may have been getting away with other crimes, one can speculate. Tad Bert Cullum was business partners with Municipal Judge Vincent Forbes. The panelists described the scene during the raid. Forbes was there and had a shotgun put in his face. He was forced to resign later.
Other Sources:
1 AP/CourtTV, “‘God’s Misfits’ held in killings of Kansas women over custody battle,” April 15, 2024
2 The Oklahoman, “Grandmother accused of orchestrating two murders laughed after ambush, key witness says,” December 18, 2024
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.