When a lesbian couple was murdered on a remote trail in Moab, Utah, it reinforced one gruesome truth: for the LGTBQ+ community, the great outdoors can be a deadly place.
The night before Crystal Turner and Kylen Schulte went missing, five days before their bodies turned up riddled with bullets, the newlyweds chatted with friends at Woody’s Tavern in Moab, Utah, a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts that sits at the doorstep of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.
That night, the conversation turned to a strange encounter the couple had over the previous few days. At some point that week, Schulte and Turner were lounging in a hammock at their campsite—which they described in general terms to their friends as a free spot in a dispersed area off the La Sal Loop Road close to Warner Lake—when a “creepy guy,” as Oster and Hannum remember the couple describing him, pulled up. He got out of his car and howled like a wolf at the women.
“The outdoors is absolutely not a safe and inclusive place for the queer community,” says Pattie Gonia, a queer environmentalist drag queen who advocates for inclusivity in the outdoors. “The outdoors as a culture is rooted in whiteness, white supremacy, cis culture, straight culture, and it’s built on making any marginalized person feel unsafe.”Our public lands do have a long, dark history of racism, exclusion, and violence against minorities.
Emerald LaFortune, a queer whitewater and fishing guide in rural Idaho, hesitates to be forthcoming about her sexual orientation in wild spaces. “I wish I could put that Progress Pride Flag on the bumper of our F-150. I want other queer folks to know they aren't alone out there,” she says. “But when I pull off on some dirt road in middle-of-nowhere Idaho to camp for the night, the risk, especially as a queer woman, just isn't worth it.
The Sheriff’s Office put out a warrant on September 20 for Verizon, asking for all cell phone records from August 13 to 15 within a two-mile radius of the tower nearest the couple’s campsite. The warrant describes a gruesome crime scene: Both women were found in the creek, “undressed from the waist down, one had on a bra that was raised to expose her breasts, the other was dressed only in a tank top.
From August to May, little information was made available to the public, and until the case is adjudicated most of the records are sealed. But for seven months, Jensen and Sean-Paul pursued their own investigation. As a means to crowd source leads and keep the case alive, family members and friends launched the Facebook page “Remembering Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner,” which by May 2022 had more than 10,000 members.
Pinkusiewicz had long been on Sean-Paul’s shortlist: Early on at the clue booth, Sean-Paul had heard that Pinkusiewicz had gotten into scuffle with Turner when she came into the McDonald’s kitchen off-shift to make some food for herself and Schulte. “Why are you back here? You don’t have the right to be back here!” he belligerently screamed at Turner. At the time, Merry Woodruff, a manager at McDonald’s who witnessed the episode, thought it was odd that he was so upset.
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