John Jefferson
Inset clockwise from top left: Kendra Battelo (Bureau of Indian Affairs), Colby Sheppard (Enid Police Department); Devin Harris, Charles Jordan, and Victor Battelo (Garfield County Detention Center). Background: The area near the house where Sheppard’s remains were presumably found (Google Maps).
A woman has been missing for years and now one man is dead in Oklahoma — the result of a presumed reprisal killing, police say.
For now, however, any fatally violent connection between the vanished and the slain remains speculative and unproven.
This week, three men were arrested for the man’s murder.
And more arrests may be coming.
Timelines are fuzzy, uncertain, and somewhat contradictory.
Kendra Nicole Battelo, 26, was last seen alive on July 5, 2022, in Enid — a medium-sized city roughly 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. The woman’s mother said she last spoke with her daughter two days after that, around midnight, according to the Enid News & Eagle.
She was formally reported missing on July 12, 2022.
Then, police say, a woman reported that Battelo knocked on her front door to ask for a glass of water in Pawnee — which is some 65 miles due east of Enid — on July 20, 2022. After seeing a Facebook post about Battelo being a missing person, the woman called the police.
Battelo is described as around 5’9″ tall, 120 lbs., with brown eyes, dimples, and short-cropped black hair — as well as a preference for wearing wigs of various colors. Family members say she often travels to Bristow and has substance abuse and mental health issues.
Colby Dennis Sheppard, 27, was last seen at a Pizza Hut in Enid on Dec. 27, 2023. He was reported missing by his family on Jan. 4.
While police never publicly identified Sheppard as a person of interest in the Battelo case, online sleuths frequently posted that he was the woman’s boyfriend — and that she was seen with him at or around the time she disappeared. Additionally, those same sleuths reported that Battelo had a pending domestic violence case against Sheppard that was subsequently dismissed due to her absence. Sheppard, for his part, was reportedly questioned by police on numerous occasions.
In any event, the implications appear to have piled up into a savage urge — at least three men are believed to have acted on the idea that Sheppard was both Battelo’s kidnapper and killer.
On Tuesday, human remains believed to belong to Sheppard were found in the cellar of a house on North 12th Street in Enid.
“Evidence suggests Mr. Sheppard was killed in retaliation for his rumored involvement in Kendra Battelo’s disappearance in 2022, though detectives have not found any evidence to support the allegation,” The Enid Police Department said in a press release.
Detectives were said to be “acting on information” obtained during the Sheppard missing person investigation. While police believe they know who the body found in the cellar belongs to, formal identification is pending from the Garfield County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Law enforcement did not say how the man was killed.
On Wednesday, Victor Battelo, 45, and Charles Jordan, 55 were charged on complaints of murder in the first degree — though both were already in custody on unrelated charges. Later in the day, they announced that Devin Harris, 35, was arrested and also charged with one count of first-degree murder in the Sheppard case.
The investigation is ongoing, police said, and additional suspects are presumed to be involved with Sheppard’s death.
Law enforcement is presumably no closer to finding Kendra Battelo.
“Just come back and come home,” the missing woman’s cousin told the News & Eagle last summer. “We love her tremendously.”
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