Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
No Arrests In Same Sex Couple’s Moab Campsite Slaying After Nearly Seven Months
“I literally cried every single day," said Cindy Sue Hunter, a friend of Kaylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, describing the aftermath of the unsolved double murder.
The unsolved double murder of Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, who were gunned down at a Utah campsite last summer, continues to perplex investigators more than half a year later.
Seven months after the mysterious pair of shootings, no arrests have been made in their deaths.
The case has not only flummoxed county investigators, but it has increasingly haunted those who knew the Utah couple, particularly as more time passes without any arrests.
“I literally cried every single day," Cindy Sue Hunter told PEOPLE.com, describing the turbulent month following Schulte and Turner’s murders.
Hunter is the close friend of Schulte and Turner who discovered the couple’s bodies on Aug. 18, 2021, in a creek near the campsite after they’d been fatally shot.
"I saw Kylen's body in the water and I immediately turned away," Hunter recounted to the magazine.
Hunter made the gruesome discovery while assisting Schulte’s family in helping to locate the two women, adding that she was drawn to the area after spotting the couple’s silver Kia nearby. While she was scouring the campground, Hunter was simultaneously speaking to Schulte’s father, Sean-Paul Schulte, on her cell phone.
"I started rambling, apparently, talking about the water, how pretty it was, what a beautiful location," she said. "And 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,” Hunter stated. “And I can't see her face because of where she's at and how she's laying.”
That moment, she added, has been painfully — and permanently — tattooed in her mind.
“I knew it was Kylen,” she added. “I just didn't want to admit it was Kylen yet."
Schulte, 24, and Turner, 38, had been shot to death, an autopsy later concluded, officials said.
"I was getting ready to turn on Warner Lake turnoff," Hunter said of her decision to look where she did. "And, at that point, it was like the universe was just screaming at me, 'You need to go straight and you need to hurry. Please. You need to hurry. Please go straight, go straight…So, I stopped my car, and backed my car up and I went, 'Oh, there's campers down there.' I thought I was going to find more campers that I could ask, 'Have you seen the girls?'"
State investigators and the FBI are assisting local authorities in the pair of unsolved murders. Officials declined to release additional information this week.
“We don't have any updates or new information at this time about this case,” Joe Dougherty, the director of public affairs for the Utah Department of Public Safety, told Oxygen.com on Thursday afternoon.
In February, a person of interest was ruled out as a possible suspect in the double murders. The Moab man in question, who had been staying near the campsite where Schulte and Turner were slain, initially couldn’t provide investigators a concrete timeline regarding his whereabouts at the time of the suspected killings.
The Grand County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately respond to Oxygen.com’s questions surrounding the ongoing investigation this week. A spokesperson for the FBI also refrained from commenting on the active case on Thursday.
