BORN UNDER CROSSED STARS
What would be the odds that you could lose not one, but two of your children to murder?
For a family in Kansas the odds were not high enough as two sisters both died at the hands of merciless killers almost twenty years apart.
The mother, Cherri West’s nightmare began on October 12, 1999. That’s when her 10-year-old daughter, Pamela Butler was rollerblading outside of her Kansas City home when a stranger grabbed her and threw her into his pickup truck.
Butler’s older sister, Casey Eaton, then just a young teenager was a witness. She ran screaming after the truck. A passerby got the vehicle license plate number, but the man got away.
Later that evening, the custodian of the Grain Valley Christian Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and his wife saw a suspicious white truck with a Missouri license plate number parked in the church lot. The custodian’s wife wrote down the plate number and noticed an afghan in the front seat of the truck. They contacted the police after seeing the kidnapping story on the ten o’clock news, and informed them of the location of the truck. When the police arrived at the church, the truck was gone.
The truck was found abandoned the next day in Kansas City, Missouri. It was registered to Keith Duane Nelson. A police dog that had been provided with some of Pamela’s clothing was dispatched to Nelson’s mother’s house, and alerted to an afghan found inside the residence. That same day a large manhunt for Nelson commenced. Â
On October 14, a civilian employee of a police department spotted Nelson hiding under a bridge.  After he was spotted, Nelson went into the river and attempted to get away. When he made it back to shore, he was surrounded by railroad workers who detained him until the authorities arrived.
The next day the police found Butler’s body in a wooded area behind the Grain Valley Christian Church. Subsequent investigation revealed that Pamela had been raped and then strangled to death with wire. The DNA in seminal fluid obtained from Pamela’s underpants matched Nelson’s DNA.
A few days before snatching Pamela, Nelson had attempted to abduct Michanne Mattson, 20.  The pretty medical student fought for her life, refusing to enter his truck even though she had been handcuffed. After hand-to-hand combat that seemed to go on forever, Mattson escaped.
Keith Dwayne Nelson, 45, was executed by lethal injection August 28, 2020. It was reported that Nelson, at his hearing in 2001, showed no remorse and unleashed a "profanity-laden tirade" in court. Pamela's mother and sister Terri attended the execution.
Cherri West and her daughter Casey Eaton grieved Butler’s loss in the 18 years that followed during which, Eaton became the mother of four children.
A few months before her death, 34-year-old Casey Eaton had gotten out of the Armourdale neighborhood where her sister had been killed. She had moved to Mound City, which was 75 miles away. Her mother had bought a home there within the last year. However she did not stay away long, and in February she returned to the Armourdale area and took a job at a Subway store in Shawnee. One of her daughters Angelica Eaton, also worked there.
Casey was the mother of four, and had one grandson.
Casey hooked up with a 41-year-old man named Enemencio C. Lansdown, and they lived in a rental house at 911 Kansas Avenue, in the heart of Armourdale. The house was not too far from a park named after her slain sister.
Angelica worked the day shift and Casey worked at night. On the day of her death she had worked until 10 PM. Less than two hours later she was found shot to death in a truck parked outside the home.
After an investigation and a brief standoff, police arrested Enemencio Lansdown. He was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with her death.
Lansdown had a lengthy criminal record and was on Kansas Sex Offender Registry. He was convicted of attempted aggravated indecent liberties with a child. The victim in that 1997 incident was 14 years old.
In 1998, his wife Evelyn divorced him.
​According to court records he was convicted of aggravated battery in 2004, he was sentenced to prison for eluding a police officer in 2014, and he was charged with leaving the scene of an accident with injury in 2016.
A Wyandotte County judge bound Enemencio Lansdown over for trial. He had several outstanding warrants. On July 28, 2017, he pled no contest and was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.
From the beginning the police were silent on a motive.
In 2018, he was sentenced to 20 years and seven months in prison.
In 2021, the federal government filed a 3-count indictment against Lansdown charging him with "forcible assault of a federal officer, use of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and felon in possession of a firearm."​