Moab murders: Utah suspect’s ‘significant other’ knew about slayings for months and kept quiet, police reveal

Utah investigators released their final update in the August 2021 murders of two Moab women found shot to death at a campsite outside town.

Newlyweds Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, 24 and 38, were found dead on Aug. 18, days after they were last seen alive.

Adam Pinkusiewicz, an early person of interest, was labeled a suspect earlier this year. Police found the 45-year-old drifter dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Waterloo, Iowa, on Sept. 24, 2021.

An examination of his phone turned up “extreme signs of racism” and anger problems, according to authorities, as well as fantasies about rape and murder. 

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Schulte’s family previously said Pinkusiewicz had a known “animus” toward lesbians, although investigators revealed Thursday he was in a same-sex relationship himself with a man who knew about the murders and did not come forward until police tracked him down earlier this year.

Authorities did not identify the “significant other” during Thursday’s briefing but said he was not in Utah at the time of the murders and the two had split up several months earlier. Pinkusiewicz reached out to him after the murders and traveled to Iowa to see him, investigators said. 

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They said he told them Pinkusiewicz had confessed to him about the murders and that he knew crime scene details that had not been made public – including that Schulte and Turner had been shot inside of a tent and moved outside to where Moab resident Cindy Sue Hunter found their remains four days later.

As Fox News Digital has reported, Schulte and Turner were last seen alive on surveillance video at Woody’s Tavern in downtown Moab on Aug. 13.

On the following morning they were killed at a remote campsite up a mountain outside town.

A nearby surveillance camera at the Whispering Oaks Ranch picked up the sounds of gunshots and screams at 11:48 a.m. on Aug. 14. Authorities previously declined to release the recording, saying it was integral to the ongoing investigation, and made it public for the first time Thursday.

Investigators said that they determined Critical Defense rounds found in the victims helped had likely been fired from a Glock 9mm.

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At 12:54 p.m. on the day of the slayings, a Toyota Yaris resembling Pinkusiewicz’s was seen driving away from the campground. Investigators said it seemed out of place because that is not a typical off-road camping vehicle.

Police had a series of early ideas as to who may be responsible, but they ruled out most except for the “creepy camper” theory, regarding a man Schulte and Turner told friends made them uncomfortable in a series of encounters at their campsite, and the idea that the shootings grew out of an argument with a threatening co-worker.

Pinkusiewicz is now believed to be both the creep and the disgruntled co-worker, investigators revealed Thursday.

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He had a history of arguments with management at McDonald’s where Turner also worked. Days before the murders, he got into a spat with a female manager who told him he needed to work faster, making comments about her sexuality and threatening to “kick her a–,” police said Thursday. She was so uncomfortable that she left and had another manager fill in.

He was fired, never returned to work after the shootings and left behind his final paycheck.

Investigators said they do not believe he ever confronted Turner directly before the murders but that co-workers heard him complaining about her making sandwiches at the restaurant for Schulte when she wasn’t working. They were scheduled on different shifts, and due to COVID-19 mask regulations, she may not have even recognized him, according to authorities.

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Police deemed Pinkusiewicz a person of interest early on, but when they went to interview him, he was not at his address.

By Aug. 27, 2021, Pinkusiewicz arrived in Waterloo. On Sept. 24, local police received a call from a motel reporting his death.

Grand County investigators discovered his car was sold there in December and reached out to their Waterloo counterparts, learning then of Pinkusiewicz’s of death.

Although records show Pinkusiewicz had purchased a Glock 9mm, the likely murder weapon, he killed himself with a .357 revolver — using Hornady Special Critical Defense rounds. Because his death was ruled a suicide months before Grand County deputies had tracked Pinkusiewicz’s footsteps to Waterloo, police there released his property to his family, including cellphones that police later examined in connection with the Schulte-Turner case.

A bag of bullets found in his car was not documented and destroyed by local law enforcement, authorities said.

He also left behind a suicide note which mentioned being fired by “lefty liberal bosses” for not working “fast enough,” according to Grand County investigators. 

The note also revealed the existence of his significant other – who at that point had not come forward to investigators with details about the crime. 

Pinkusiewicz’s male partner was not interviewed until March 2022, according to Jason Jensen, a private investigator hired by Schulte’s father. 

When detectives finally interviewed him, he was “very forthcoming,” authorities said. He told them he kept quiet because he was afraid of Pinkusiewicz and did not know about the suicide.

Authorities said Thursday that they believe if Pinkusiewicz were still alive, they’d have enough evidence against him to secure a conviction. 

However, since he is dead, they announced an official closure to the case – leaving open the possibility that they would reopen the investigation if new information emerges in the future.