A suspect has been identified in the case of a newlywed couple found shot to death at a Utah campsite last summer, but authorities revealed he died by suicide shortly after the killings.
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Kylen Schulte, 24, and Crystal Beck Turner, 38, were discovered suffering gunshot wounds on August 18, 2021 in the La Sal Mountains in Grand County, Utah, the sheriff’s office said at the time. They were killed just four months after they got married in April.
The couple, said to be living a bohemian lifestyle in a converted van, told friends about a “creepy guy” who had been lurking around their campsite just days before their deaths.
Adam Pinkusiewicz was identified as the suspect in their deaths Wednesday by the Grand County Sheriff’s Office.
In the probe, authorities learned that Pinkusiewicz was in the La Sal Mountains and Moab, Utah, at the time of the killings, but he “had left the State of Utah shortly after the homicides, and then later committed suicide,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
Grand County Sheriff Steve White told NBC News that Pinkusiewicz died Sept. 24, about a month after the killings.
Pinkusiewicz, who worked at a McDonald’s that Turner also worked at in Moab, was initially a person of interest in the investigation. The sheriff’s office made “numerous attempts” to locate and interview him, the release said.
Prior to taking his death, he told someone that he had killed two women in Utah and “provided specific details that were known only to investigators,” officials said.
Though he has been identified as the suspect, the case remains ongoing and evidence — including Pinkusiewicz’s recently seized car — continues to be processed.
Officials are asking that anyone with information regarding Pinkusiewicz or his vehicle, a 2007 Yaris, to contact the Grand County Sheriff’s Office.
Days before going missing, Turner and Schulte met friends at a local bar and told them they were worried about someone camping nearby.
“They said they needed to move their campsite because of some creepy guy at their campsite,” Schulte’s aunt, Bridget Calvert, previously told NBC News. “These are outdoors girls, and they’re independent and confident. And for somebody to make them feel uncomfortable, it had to be a very valid discomfort.”
