Obscure Occurrences : The Murder of Kylan Schulte and Crystal Turner

  Completely different in a thousand ways but similar where it mattered, Kylan Schulte (Aged 24) and Crystal Turner (Aged 38) were an unconventional match made in heaven. Kylan was tall, young and engaged in stereotypically feminine things whereas, Crystal was shorter older and more concerned with motorbikes and red meat. As an old saying goes, opposites attract and their personalities just complemented one another's so well that they made a great couple. However, one thing that was common in between them was that they were both free-spirited nomads who actually lived out of their van and drove from campsite to campsite never settling in one spot for too long.

 Their bond was bulletproof and in Kylan's own words, she credited Crystal with saving her life prior to their meeting back in 2019. Kylan was going through a very dark period with her brother Makian losing his life after knocking on a friend's window in the middle of the night. His friend mistook him for a burglar and shot him through the window. She had also just gotten out of an abusive relationship and was struggling to recover mentally and emotionally when she met crystal during a hike in Moab, Utah.

 The two instantly bonded over their love of nature and their mutual troubled pasts. Crystal herself had struggled with addiction and homelessness prior to meeting Kylan. Needless to say, they both helped to raise each other up. They married in a treehouse on April 20th, 2021 vowing to spend the rest of their lives together but their togetherness lasted much shorter than anyone expected.

 Just four months later, on August 13th, both Kylan and Crystal were at woody's tavern in Moab socializing with some friends. Surveillance footage shows the newlyweds at the bar laughing and joking around and during that time Kylan told her friends about a creepy man who had been lurking around their campsite and bothering them. She didn't elaborate much further and only said that they were planning on moving to a different campsite to get away from him. Ominously, Kylan also sent a text to another friend and in a jokey manner said that “If anything happens to us, we were murdered”

 The couple was last seen that night leaving the bar at 9:30 pm and the following morning both Kylan and Crystal failed to turn up for work. After several days of no contact, Kylan's father Sean Paul called up one of their friends, a woman named Cindy, and asked her to check up on the pair to make sure everything was alright. Cindy began searching for the two missing women around Utah's La Sal mountains. On August 18^th, she was making her way down to a creek whilst on the phone with Sean Paul. “I saw a body in the water and I immediately turned away”, said Cindy and “I just kind of shut down inside and I started rambling apparently talking about the water how pretty it was what a beautiful location it was. I finally convinced myself that I had to look and confirm that there was a body there because I wanted it to be logs or tree limbs you know anything. But what I was seeing, I finally turned around and looked and I said Sean, I found a body” are her words. Sean Paul's worst fears were confirmed right there and then lying face down in the creek or skyline, he had just lost a second child. Crystal's remains were discovered nearby.

 Their bodies revealed that they had both been shot multiple times, mostly in their backs suggesting that they had tried to run from their killer. They were both found undressed from the waist down though, there was no evidence of rape. Detectives combed the scene and the couple's campsite and nothing appeared to be stolen. After a short investigation, they announced that the wider public wasn't in any danger. Many believe that they only made that announcement not to deter tourists. A private investigator would later reveal that the Police actually had an audio recording of the slayings and that they were keeping secrets.

According to the investigator, the audio had been recorded at 11 35 am on august 14^th, the morning after Kylan and Crystal were last seen. The audio clearly featured the sound of gunshots and female screams. It's unclear how the authorities came into possession of this audio or indeed who recorded it. However, after the investigator made that announcement, the police confirmed that the audio did indeed exist. Although it is yet to be released to the public, even without hearing it we can guess that the two women weren't slaughtered under cover of darkness after leaving the bar.

 Suspiciously a young woman by the name of Gabby Petito had also been killed in broad daylight at that same camping site the very same month that Kylan and Crystal were killed. She was killed by her fiancé Brian while the pair drove around the country and lived out of their van. Brian wrote a confession in his notebook before ending his own life a month later. The parallels between these two cases led the police to focus on Brian as a suspect in Kylan’s and Crystal’s slayings although, unbelievably there was absolutely no evidence that linked him to their deaths.

 It turned out that both incidents that took place around the same time in the same location were simply a coincidence. So, who did kill Kylan and Crystal? Although, we don’t know the exact answer, in May of this year a huge announcement was made by the authorities. Adam Pinkusiewicz a man who worked at the same McDonald's as Crystal was formally identified as a suspect in the case. Adam had confessed to a friend that he was the one who had killed the newlyweds, a confession that has only just been brought to the police's attention now.

 Adam actually mentioned details about the slaying that were only known to the investigators and he has also confirmed to have been in the mountains at the time of the incident. If Adam is the man responsible then, unfortunately, he escaped justice at least in court within weeks of the slayings. He fled Utah and actually ended his own life. As of now, the case is officially still open but with this new breakthrough, the creepy man that Kylan mentioned may have finally been identified. We can only hope that the case can be solved and that both of their families can find some closure.