As she drove around Utah’s La Sal Mountains on Aug. 18, 2021, searching for her missing friends,Crystal Turner and Kylen Schulte, it was almost as if something greater than herself was shaping Cindy Sue Hunter’s thoughts and propelling her actions.
“I was getting ready to turn on Warner Lake turnoff,” Hunter tells PEOPLE, “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.'”
Hunter remembers “catching a glint of silver light” coming from her left side, and, as she was driving over a cattle guard, decided to head towards it. “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?'”
Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner.Courtesy Bridget Calvert
“I saw Kylen’s body in the water and I immediately turned away,” recalls Hunter. “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]. 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.”
Hunter continues: “I finally turned around and looked and I said, ‘Sean, I found a body. And I can’t see her face because of where she’s at and how she’s laying.'”
Schulte’s father wanted to know whose body it was, and Hunter told him she couldn’t tell. “I knew it was Kylen,” she now confesses. “I just didn’t want to admit it was Kylen yet.”
Adds Hunter: “The [next] 34 days, I literally cried every single day.”
Co-workers in Moab had reported the newlyweds missing on Aug. 15 when both women failed to show up for their shifts. The love-struck couple —married only four months earlier— had been living out of their van, moving from one campsite to another with their beloved pet rabbit, Ruth.
For more on the murders of Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, and the continuing search for their killer,subscribe now to PEOPLE,or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands now.
The scene at a vigil held for the missing couple days before their bodies were found.Alison Harford/Moab Sun News
Investigators have yet to make an arrest, but have declared their commitment to solving this case. A number of potential suspects have been identified and cleared, and now, there is speculation the women weren’t killed the night of Aug. 13, but the next morning — in broad daylight.
Detectives have confirmed that an audio recording from Aug. 14 has been recovered, and that includes the sounds of gunshots.
But in much the same way a tourist unwittingly captured video footage of Petito’s van, leading investigators to her body, Schulte’s father and private investigatorJason K. Jensenbelieve the key to finding the couple’s killer could lie within somebody’s memory card.
“If somebody had their dash cam on while driving along La Sal Mountain Loop Road” in mid-August, “maybe their camera” captured evidence that could lead to the killer, says Jensen, who’s been reviewing satellite imagery from the area around the time of the murders for clues.
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“When someone drives on La Sal Mountain Loop Road, what they’re seeing below them is the Colorado River, Arches Park, Canyon Lens Park, the Moab Canyon,” Schulte’s father tells PEOPLE.
“So, if someone is driving that road, and they’re filming on their cell phone with their cell phone in their hand — not on the dash but in their hand — they’re going to aim it towards the canyons, towards the sunset, they got a picture of the girls’ campsite. If anyone has a glimpse of the girls’ silver Kia in the shot, and there’s a second vehicle, then boom.”
The case remains active, and investigators ask that anyone who may have any information about the killings call them at 435-259-8115.
source: people.com
