The Moab Campsite Murders

Today we're starting outside of Moab, Utah, where two women warned their friends about a creepy man near their campsite, and then suddenly stopped texting back. What happened next became one of the most disturbing cases in the entire state of Utah's history. Then we're heading to Vermont where a missing hiker case became so mishandled that it didn't just devastate one family. It forced an entire state to change its laws. If you like the show, please leave us a five star review right now. My goal is to get the show to 10,000 five star reviews, and we're not even close. I appreciate all of you so much. And listen on if you dare. Listen to me, be very careful around strangers when you're in a national forest, especially at night. Case in point, late on Friday, August 13th, 2021, two women drove back into the mountains outside of Moab, Utah after telling their friends about this mysterious man they had met near their campsite. Hell, they'd even given this man a nickname, the creepy man, and according to the women, this man was watching them and just getting way too close to their campsite and that obviously made them extremely uncomfortable. Once the women went back to their camp, their text messages to their friends started to get very dark. Apparently, the creepy man was still there, but this time he had moved even closer. And to make matters even worse, now he was starting to wander around their campsite in complete darkness, and that's when the text messages stopped. And it sounds crazy in hindsight, but at first, no one actually knew whether this silence meant anything. Cell service in these mountains can be very unreliable at times, and Kyle and Shelty, in Crystal Turner, the two women, had spent much of their lives completely off grit. 24-year-old Kyle and Shelty was born in Vale, Colorado, to her parents, Sean Paul, and Valerie. But then she grew up mostly around the towns of Wolf Point and Billings, Montana, and her friends and family always said she was this bright, free soul who tried to stay positive no matter what life threw at her, and honestly, it threw a lot at her. So there's little public information about this next piece of Kyle and story, but apparently, at one point, it seems that she actually had a daughter who ended up passing away shortly after birth, and I want to be extremely careful when talking about such a sensitive topic, but that obviously sounds very, very devastating. And sadly, Kyle and would suffer another major loss on May 17th, 2015, when she found out that her younger brother, Mackie, was accidentally shot and killed by one of his friends. Mackie was only 15 years old, and look, this whole thing was just a misunderstanding apparently, and it turned into a tragedy that completely shattered the family. And Kyle and took it especially hard, because Mackie wasn't just her little brother, he was her best friend. After this awful tragedy, friends said that Kyle and seriously struggled with living in Montana, I mean, there were just so many dark memories there, and so at the end of 2015, she and her father moved to Moab Yuta to kind of start fresh, and that's when she met Crystal Turner. Now, Crystal was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to her parents, Obie and Beverly Turner, she was 38 years old, and just like Kyle and she also understood loss from a very young age. Her father died in 1988, when she was just a child, and then later in life, she would lose one of her brothers and two of her half brothers as well. Her mother said that she was tough, independent, and kind of a tomboy growing up, someone who could absolutely hold her own if she really needed to, she loved Harley Davidson motorcycles, and presented this rather rugged exterior. I mean, you probably know people like this, right? But I don't want to give you the wrong picture there. At the same time, people constantly talked about how warm and funny she was, and Crystal was also a mother with a son and two daughters from a previous marriage back in Arkansas, but eventually her path led her to Moab Yuta, and again, that's where she ran into Kylan while on a hike, and their love story only heated up from there. By 2019, they were officially together as a couple, and they were pretty much inseparable. They shared this love for the outdoors, they shared a desire to live off grid, and they also shared in each other's grief of course. They lived together out of a converted camper van and spent much of their time camping in the desert surrounding Moab. They ended up getting married in 2021, and they just lived this simple van life, you know, often moving from one campsite to another, always staying kind of on the outskirts of town. And over time, the couple became very familiar faces in this small little town, and though it almost seems like they like kind of ran away from their old lives, and are now living this weird life out in the desert in Moab, I want to be clear that's not what happened. They were still checking in and speaking to their families on the phone quite regularly. Kylan's father said, for instance, that they never went, you know, more than a few days without making contact, which made it, you know, that much more concerning when no one could get a hold of either one of them on the night of August 13th. You see that evening, Kylan and Crystal had set up camping in the Lasal Mountains, which is this remote area that's anywhere between like 20 to 30 miles from downtown Moab. And I've actually been to this area before, and so you can trust me when I say that it has no real luxuries or amenities of any kind. It's absolutely beautiful up there. It's an amazing area, but it's not the kind of place where you want something to go wrong. After Kylan wrapped up her shift at the Moonflower Community Co-op, she met up with Crystal at a place called Woody's Tavern. The couple enjoyed a few drinks, and they also caught up with a couple of their other friends there. The group laughed and talked and kind of kept to themselves mostly. Nobody suspicious approached them. Nothing really that noteworthy happened, but like I mentioned, at the top of the episode, one thing, one particular thing kept coming up all night long. Kylan and Crystal mentioned that the man they called the Creepyman was camping near them out on Lasal Loop Road. In look, nicknames are a huge part of the outdoor community, and trust me when I tell you that the Creepyman is about the last nickname that anyone should ever want to be known by. I mean, there is absolutely no coming back from that, but it 110% sounds like this guy had earned the title. Anyways, the details of their, like, exact interactions with the Creepyman were pretty vague, but the discomfort behind their words was not. And so once the group finished their drinks, everyone said their goodbyes right around 9.30 pm, and then Kylan and Crystal drove back out into the wide open desert towards their campsite beneath the dark cliffs and the winding back roads outside of Moab. And one thing I want to note here, probably something that you're wondering about is that it wasn't clear to me why they went back to that exact campsite, knowing that the Creepyman was probably still there. If you're familiar with this story, and you know why this, why this is the case, please leave a comment because this drove me crazy the entire time that I was researching honestly. I mean, maybe they felt committed to that particular spot for some reason, maybe they already had gear set up there, or maybe they had already paid for it, maybe it was like a pay site. Whatever the reason, their night was somehow about to get much creepier than it already was. As the night went on, and the couple went back to their campsite, they were kind of like continuously texting their friends and kind of keeping everyone updated on how their camping trip was going. And at first, the messages seemed very normal, but of course the conversation ended up taking a strange turn because they wrote that the Creepyman was back. According to these text messages, this man had suddenly moved his vehicle much closer to Kyle and Crystal, and one text message even described him walking around in the darkness like carrying clothing and food. I even saw one source, and I cannot confirm this, but one source even said that the Creepyman had started howling at the women through the trees. I don't know if that's true, but clearly the women were becoming extremely uncomfortable with the situation, but at least for a while, they just stayed there and they kept texting with their friends and family. But then, almost out of nowhere, those text messages stopped. There was no explanation. There was no goodbye or goodnight. It was just silence, total silence. Now, despite the abrupt end to the text messages that the girls were sharing with their friends and family, this silence didn't really seem all that alarming. After all, it was getting late at the time, and the two women were camping in this remote area where a cell service could be unreliable at best. And so, and again, you have to remember that both Kyle and Crystal were known for living this somewhat nomadic lifestyle. And so, disappearing off the grid and not responding to text for a few days wasn't entirely out of character for them. However, as Friday night turned into Saturday, and then Saturday turned into Sunday, this radio silence, this lack of communication started to feel increasingly unusual. And by the morning of Monday, August 16th, people were seriously beginning to worry. Crystal never showed up for her shift at work that day, and when her manager tried to contact her, well, the manager got no response. And then, Kyle and also failed to appear for work, And that's when friends and family really start started to put the pieces together and realize that no one had heard from either Crystal or Kylin since late Friday night. The whole situation had grown into something much more serious than two campers simply spending a few extra days off the grid. Their friends thought back to that fateful night at Woody's Tavern, and one of them even went back through their text messages, and when they did this, they were reminded of a very ominous message from Kylin and Crystal that now had a much darker meaning. The girls literally wrote, quote, "If something happens to us, we were murdered." So by Monday afternoon, that particular text message no longer sounded like a nervous worst-case scenario or some kind of dark joke. It sounded like a literal warning, and just like clockwork later that very same afternoon, both Kylin, Shulti, and Crystal Turner were officially reported missing. This was obviously the first step in order to eventually find the women, but investigators immediately ran into a major problem, and that was that no one knew the exact spot where they had been camping. They knew it was somewhere along Lasal, Luprode, but that didn't exactly narrow it down enough to provide any solid answers. You have to remember that the extended wilderness surrounding Moab is absolutely massive. There's tons of National Forest, there's tons of Bureau of Land Management. This area is made up of countless miles of rugged desert terrain, as well as some high elevation forest. It's got a ton of remote campsites, miles and miles of winding dirt roads, and of course, very isolated backcountry trails. All that to say is that Kylin and Crystal could have set up camp in, like, so many different spots. And again, because they lived this nomadic van life lifestyle, well, investigators didn't have a permanent residence to search, or any other obvious locations that could provide any answers. As two more days passed, very little media attention was given to this case, and search efforts remained relatively limited. However, the couple's friends and family knew that they couldn't afford to just sit there and wait around for answers, time was slipping away, and so they took matters into their own hands, and they started to retrace the women's movements, following up on any leads that they could possibly think of, and desperately searching for clues that might reveal what had happened before it would be too late. And that brings us to August 18th, five days after anyone had heard from Kylin or Crystal, then a family friend named Cindy Sue Hunter decided to search one of the camping areas where she suspected the couple might have been staying. However, before she did this, she actually checked the local McDonald's parking lot, where Crystal worked and often parked her silver Ford a connoline van, and it's a good thing that she checked here because to her surprise, that van was sitting there in the parking lot completely untouched. And then a few hours later, Cindy found herself driving along Lissaloup Road, while talking on the phone with Kylin's father. They were both running through all of the different scenarios and listing out all of the places that they'd already searched with nothing to show for, but then, as Cindy drove past a place called Whispering Oaks Ranch to kind of mindlessly gazed out into a break in the trees along the road, and that's when her heart suddenly sank. You see, Cindy saw something, something that she just knew wasn't meant to be there deep in the woods, and so she pulled over onto this dusty turn around, and she stepped off into the wilderness. She walked just a few steps deeper into the woods towards this mysterious object, and that's when she saw the exact thing that had made her heart skip a beat. It was Kylin and Crystal's silver Kia. Cindy was actually still on the phone with Kylin's father when this happened, and after realizing what she had found, he actually immediately begged her to get out of there. I mean, the campsite around the car looked pretty normal, but clearly there was something off with this whole situation and the vibe and the silence of the area. I mean, they weren't that far from the road, but again, this is a super remote area, and there was no sign that anyone had even been there for like days. However, Cindy did not listen to Kylin's father. She kept looking around, and that's when she noticed something near the creek just outside of the campsite. And as she walked closer, the reality of what had happened began to set in. Kylin's father was still begging her to get in the car and drive away, and just called the police for crying out loud, but Cindy's curiosity, in her hopes of finding her friend, well, it was just too strong. And so she was dead set on figuring out exactly what had happened, but of course, as she took just a few more steps towards the creek, she realized that maybe she should have listened to Kylin's dad after all, because in that moment, she realized that she was standing over the body of Kylin Schulte. I'll spare you the details because it's quite gruesome, but it was evident that Kylin was deceased and had died from multiple gunshot wounds. And so Cindy sprinted back to her vehicle. She turned around sped away and immediately called 911. And when the police arrived shortly after, they also discovered Crystal Turner's body nearby in a very similar state. And so just like that, the once peaceful little campsite had morphed into one of the most disturbing crime scenes in all of Utah's history. As investigators began to process this awful crime scene by the side of the creek, they had a representative who spoke to the local news and confirmed that both women had been shot multiple times. And that representative also stated that they were actively searching for a suspect and that one of the women's cell phones was also missing from the campsite. But then the representative said something else that actually rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. They said that there was, quote, "no ongoing danger" to the community. And like, that didn't make much sense at all. I mean, two women were just brutally murdered at a remote campsite, and there was no information on who did it or why they did it. I mean, for all the public knew there was still this unknown killer roaming around the woods in streets of Moab, right? No arrests had been made, no clear motive had been established, and the last known messages from Kylin and Crystal suggested that they had been frightened by this strange man lurking around their campsite shortly before they disappeared. And so how exactly could the police say that the public wasn't at any risk? This was a not-so-great start to the investigation, and from that point on, it actually seemed like the authorities were chasing leads and theories all over the place in an attempt to win back the public's trust and to get to the bottom of this horrible, horrible attack. And so the police began asking around to figure out whether anyone in the area had heard, I don't know, gunshots or screams on the night that the two women went missing, and it turns out that a wedding had actually been taking place at a nearby cabin in the area. But surprisingly, nobody at this wedding remembered hearing anything weird at all, and I only bring this up because it's actually a perfect illustration of a growing trend during this investigation. This was the first of many dead ends that this case would eventually run into, but just because there were dead ends didn't mean there was any progress. Or, for that matter, any suspects. Someone that police paid attention to was a 27-year-old Moab man whose identity has actually never really been released publicly. Apparently, on August 17th, just one day after Kyle and Crystal were first reported missing, this mystery man was pulled over by law enforcement. The officer who pulled him over described the encounter as deeply unsettling, and that this mystery man's demeanor made him so uneasy that he actually chose not to issue a speeding citation, fearing that taking his eyes off this man even for just a second to write the ticket could be too risky. But, after Kyle and Crystal were discovered the following day, that bizarre traffic stop now had a whole new layer of suspicion, and so investigators secured a warrant to search the man's vehicle, and they later questioned him at his workplace, which was the Moonflower co-op, and you might recall that is also where Kyle worked. And so, this wild connection made investigators wonder of course, could this mystery man have been the creepy man that the two women had been talking and texting about. So it turns out that before getting a job at the co-op, the mystery man had apparently visited it quite frequently, and when he was questioned by the authorities, he even admitted to having seen Kyle in there. In fact, at one point he reportedly gave another cashier a single rose, and when questioned about his interactions with Kylin, the man's responses were unclear at best. According to the officer who interviewed him, the man appeared to be dealing with some possible untreated mental health issues, which of course made it difficult to get any clear, consistent answers during questioning. And while this man's name has never been publicly released, several sources that I came across indicated that he had no prior criminal record. members also described him as someone who frequently lived out of his vehicle, and I also found sources that claim some women in the area felt uncomfortable around him because of unwanted attention he allegedly directed towards them. In fact, one local business owner had reportedly asked him to leave her store once due to concerns about his behavior. And so all of this obviously looks very bad, and it was a promising lead at the time, but even though there was this weird overlap between the man and Kylin both working at the moon flower co-op, it turns out that employment records later revealed that the man had not started working there until August 16th, after Kylin had already gone missing. And another key aspect to this case that I haven't specifically called out yet is that since Kylin and Crystal were a lesbian couple, a lot of people believed that they were targeted specifically because of their sexuality and might have been the victims of a hate crime. However, when the mystery man was questioned about his views on sexuality and all that stuff, he said that he hadn't even realized that Kylin was married and allegedly insisted that he had no issue with gay people. Now despite the bizarre traffic stop, the link to Kylin's work and this man's recorded issues with women will say, he denied any involvement in the killings. He insisted that he wasn't the creepy man. But to make matters even more suspicious, this mystery man wasn't actually able to provide a solid alibi between August 13th and 15th. Apparently, he could only confirm that he had been sleeping in a spot on a dirt road that was roughly 102-300 yards up La Salle Loop Road from the Moab Overlook, which you might recall just so happened to be along the route that Kylin and Crystal would have passed while returning to their campsite. Officials now realize that they needed to check out this area immediately. When they arrived at the mystery man's campsite, they reportedly found two blankets and a jacket that appeared to have a blood stain on it. The jacket was immediately collected as possible evidence, but frustratingly, after testing and forensic analysis, the authorities determined that the apparent blood was not actually connected to the murders of Kylin and Crystal, and the man was ultimately cleared of being involved. So remember what I said about Dead Ends? Yeah, but while this mystery man might not have been guilty, the internet was also looking for the real identity of the creepy man, and they had already set their sights on another extremely well-known person of interest. So at the time, many people speculated about a possible link to the famous Gabby Petito case. It's a case that I'm sure most of you have heard about, but if you haven't, I actually did a deep dive on it in a previous video, and so Gabby Petito was a 22-year-old travel blogger who disappeared in August of 2021, right around the same time as Kylin and Crystal, and this happened while she was on a road trip in a campervan with her fiance, Brian Landry. Now tragically, her remains were later found in Wyoming, and of course her death was ruled a homicide by strangulation. After returning home without Gabby and then becoming the focus of this investigation, Brian Landry would go on to dramatically disappear and was eventually found dead in Florida. In possession of this strange notebook that indicated he claimed responsibility for Gabby's death, the whole case captured the entire world's attention for months on end, and people have often connected it to Kylin and Crystal's case because the timelines really do overlap in some pretty insane ways. Most of all, Gabby and Brian had been driving around Moab in their campervan and police actually responded to a domestic altercation involving them on August 12, which was just one day before Kylin and Crystal were last seen, but what really makes things crazy is that when the police finally pulled Gabby and Brian over near Arches National Park, they realized that the actual domestic altercation had occurred in the parking lots of the moon flower co-op. So online rumors quickly fueled theories that Kylin might have been working at the moon flower and was the one who witnessed the altercation between Gabby and Brian and ultimately called the police about it. Some folks even wondered whether she had been targeted by Brian as a result. Other people speculated that Brian may have encountered Kylin and Crystal directly, I mean, maybe Brian himself was the creepy man that was lurking around their campsite. Now there are certainly a lot of strange coincidences between those two cases, but despite the attention that these theories received, investigators found no evidence connecting the murder of Kylin and Crystal to Brian Laundry. The manager of the moon flower co-op later confirmed that Kylin was not actually working at the time of the incident between Brian and Gabby and it was actually another witness who called 911, but like even if there's no connection, it is crystal clear that August of 2021 was a very dark month for the town of Moab, like man, wow. As time ticked by so many more theories about Kylin and Crystal's murder were floated around the internet, some have tried to tie the case to the earlier shooting death of Kylin's brother, Mackie and of course, while it's just tragic that both siblings died as a result of gun violence, there's really nothing else in common that connects the two cases in any real way. Another theory points to drugs, but there's also no indication that the women were involved in anything beyond some occasional marijuana use, and nothing has ever turned up that suggests any drug related motives. But how about a robbery gone wrong type of scenario, I mean, the missing cell phone might help back up that claim, but nothing else was taken from the campsite. I mean, would someone really do all that damage just for like a cell phone? Investigators truly considered every single possibility, but without any additional evidence pointing in the direction of the robbery thing, that wasn't really going to check out. The theories just kept piling up, but we wouldn't get our next official break in the case until months later in December of 2021, when investigators announced that they were looking for a specific type of ammunition connected to the killings. They revealed that they were trying to track down 9mm Hornady silver bullet casings, which likely became relevant through forensic findings during the autopsies, if, you know what I mean. Investigators suggested that the shooter may have intentionally collected spent casings from the scene in an effort to avoid leaving behind any evidence, but even knowing the killer might have been extra careful, investigators were hopeful that any remaining casings could still be a crucial way to find fingerprints or match the ammunition to a possible weapon, anything to get them closer to finding the creepy man. And then one month later, in January of 2022, police were able to make a separate announcement that they had narrowed down Kylin and Crystal's official death date to August 14th, which was the day after they were last seen. Their time of death was estimated to be around 11.35 am, and the medical examiner reported that while both women died from multiple gunshot wounds, they had not been SA, despite being discovered looking like partially undressed. And look, it's good that they were finally making some progress in this investigation. It's good that they were starting to learn some more things. But for Kylin and Crystal's loved ones, this still wasn't enough. I mean, they weren't actually ending closer to finding the killer. Theories kept flying around. Some people began speculating that the creepy man was actually a man named John Freeman Coles, a convicted sexual predator who had escaped from a Kansas psychiatric facility and was believed to be camping in national forests and national parks across the west. So some people wondered if he had been on like a crime spree or something, but the police never appeared to give this theory much weight. However, investigators did end up scrutinizing Cindy. Remember Cindy, the friend who actually discovered the bodies of Kylin and Crystal? Well, she said that the police seized her phone and treated her like a serious suspect, even her word that she might ultimately be blamed for the crime, even though she never like technically was. And while I understand that the police have to do their due diligence, that one didn't really make sense. But as the months went by without a named suspect, the public started to fear that this case might go cold for good. However, everything started to change when well-known television personality Duane, dog The Bounty Hunter Chapman announced that he would travel to Moab in early May of 2022 to assist in the investigation, and no, by the way, I'm not making that up. Now if any of you aren't already familiar with Dog The Bounty Hunter, here are three important things that you have to know. Number one, he's a bit of a colorful character. Number two, he's a little bit controversial, and number three, he has the worst theme song of all time. fugitives, right? And so Kylin's father really just appreciated that someone with such a big profile was jumping in and bringing attention to a case that really hadn't gone anywhere yet. Dog reviewed the case, he visited the crime scene, he held some press conferences, he encouraged witnesses to come forward, and he publicized a reward for information that could lead to an arrest. And to be clear, Dog the bounty hunter didn't have like an official role as part of, you know, law enforcement or the investigation, but he did use his public personality and his investigative team to generate some tips. Ultimately, he didn't really break the case, but I don't know, maybe his presence alone might have been exactly what Moab needed, because right after Dog came to town, the investigation would end up flipping on its head on May 11th, the authorities announced that they had finally identified a suspect, like a real suspect. Adam Pinkowitz was a 45-year-old drifter who had been living out of a vehicle in the Moab area around the same time of the murders. And after investigators looked into him, it became clear that he had some undeniably bizarre connections to Kylin and Crystal. Turns out that years earlier, Adam had apparently worked at the same McDonald's as Crystal, and some former co-workers reportedly described him as bad news, and constantly warned others to stay away from him. Detectives also looked into claims that he had expressed hostility towards gay people in the past, which of course brought back the possibility that Kylin and Crystal may have been targeted as part of a hate crime. Hell, Dog the bounty hunter even interviewed one co-worker who told him that Adam had once referred to Crystal as bossy. And to make matters even more suspicious, Adam left Utah right after the murders. He quit his job without warning. Hell, he never even picked up his last paycheck, and then he just kind of disappeared without a trace. And as if this entire situation couldn't get even more suspicious and alarming, well, when the police held a press conference to name Adam as the primary suspect, they stated that he had allegedly admitted to a friend that he had killed two women in Utah. And look, I mean, I guess plenty of people have admitted to crimes that they didn't actually commit, either for attention or just because they're messed up, I don't know, but what made Adam's confession much more believable is that according to witnesses, he revealed details about the crime that had not been made public. And so when all of this evidence started to stack up, it looked like they had finally found the creepy man. Authorities were convinced that Adam was was almost certainly responsible for the brutal shooting deaths of both women and for leaving their bodies near the creek, you know, in their campsite that fateful night. And so investigators were obviously looking to track him down for some questioning, but by the time that Adam Pinkowitz was officially named a suspect, there was one massive problem. And that was that he had been dead for months. Authorities later announced that Adam had taken his own life in late September of 2021, just just a few weeks after Kylin and Crystal had been killed. However, neither his body nor his 2007 Toyota was found until the following May. And if investigators were correct about Adam's involvement, the person that that they believed was responsible for the deaths of Kylin and Crystal, well, he would never be questioned, he would never stand trial or face any justice for what happened on LaSalle Loop Road. In the months that followed, investigators examined Adam's vehicle for potential evidence and asked the public for assistance in piecing together his whereabouts, you know, during the time I got to say, I mean, this sounds wrong, but I think you'll know what I mean, like this was really an unsatisfying end to this case. Like I said, there was never any justice. And I believe it's this feeling that has left some people convinced that the mystery of who killed Kylin and Crystal hadn't actually been solved. Dog the bounty hunter himself even publicly questioned this theory and claimed that several people he spoke with pointed to an entirely different suspect. However, I could not find any source in which he publicly identified who he believed the real killer was. He only suggested that it might not have been Adam and that the police might have named the wrong person. And look, dogs confusing statements about this just added yet another layer of uncertainty to this already jumbled case, but that also might just be the way that dog does business. He obviously has a personal interest in proving that he's the only one that actually knows what happened or how to ultimately solve this particular case. But beyond dogs antics, there is one detail that still continues to bother a lot of people following this case. So the night they went missing, Kylin and Crystal repeatedly talked about the creepy man near their campsite. They also talked about him in the days before their disappearance and ultimate death. But in all of their their text messages and their conversations with their friends, they never actually identified this man by name. And remember, if Adam had worked with Crystal to the point where Adam even had an opinion about her, and if they had been living around Moab for some time, it's pretty hard to understand why neither woman seemed to recognize him. Wouldn't they have said something like my creepy former co-workers lurking around our campsite instead of just saying the creepy man is lurking around the campsite? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we're ever going to get an answer to that question and so many others surrounding this case. After months and months of uncertainty, Kylin's father, Sean Paul, said he felt a little bit of relief once investigators announced that they believed they know who killed Kylin and Crystal. But again, if Adam Pinkowitz was in fact the creepy man, it makes you wonder why this case technically remains open to this day. Kylin and Crystal's loved ones are still looking for the same thing they've wanted from the very beginning, some certainty, some closure. They've heard all of the crazy theories and now they just want some clear answers about what actually happened out there in the forest. My heart goes out to them and I really hope that all of you can show them some love in the comments as well. Kylin and Crystal's story is terrifying because someone finally did call for help but only after the worst had already happened. But in Vermont, that call came while there was still time and honestly that's what makes what happened next so hard to forgive. In the winter of 2012, a young man vanished in the frozen wilderness of Vermont. It all started as just a simple hike, but somewhere along the way things went terribly wrong. At first, it just seemed like your typical missing hiker case, right? But I promise you that this story is unlike anything you've ever heard before and I say that because what they found in those woods wasn't just heartbreaking, it was so shocking that it literally forced an entire state to change its laws immediately. This story has never been told on YouTube before, at least as far as I'm aware. And by the time that you hear the end of it, you're not just gonna be shocked, you're gonna be straight up pissed off. Now, if you couldn't tell from my my shirt right here, well, I'm from Vermont. I don't live there anymore, but I did back in June of 2020 and it was right around then that I went for a hike on the Koolie Glen Emily Proctor Loop, which lies within Green Mountain National Forest. This hike is about 13 miles and while I was on it, I had no idea that roughly eight years prior that very same trail that I was on was the setting of one of the most frustrating cases in all of national forest history. So with that said, let's take a virtual trip right now to my home state for months. In January of 2012, 19 year old Levi Duke close decided to go for a last minute solo hike on the Emily Proctor Trail in Green Mountain National Forest. Well, I say that, but I guess technically it was a solo hike, but maybe technically it wasn't and I say that because Levi did bring the family dog which was named Duke along with him. So I don't know, he was the only person anyways. So just like yours truly, Levi grew up right at the front door of Green Mountain National Forest, but after graduating high school, he decided to explore some different scenery. He actually went and spent a few months in Nepal over the summer and then he headed to Portland, Oregon to start his freshman year of college at Reed College. After his first semester at Reed, Levi went back to Vermont for winter break, excited about his new experiences and his new friendships that he made at school. I'm sure those of you that went to college, you can understand this. You do this semester then you come back and you're just full of opportunities and possibilities. And so this winter break offered him a chance to kind of of just pause after all that stuff and just reconnect with his roots and his hometown. And in an effort to do this, Levi decided to go for a hike. At 12.30pm on January 9th, 2012, he leashed up Duke and he began to lead him up the Emily Proctor Trail. And again, speaking as someone who has hiked this very same trail before, it's not an easy hike per se, but it's definitely not extreme either. In fact, for Vermont standards, this is my opinion. I would say that it's pretty tame and for Levi, this hike really shouldn't have been much of a problem. You see, it's really important for you to know that Levi was an athlete. He was fit, he had a pretty good amount of hiking experience, maybe not on this particular trail, but on plenty of similar trails in the area around his hometown. The temperatures were a little bit unseasonably warm, you could say, on January 9th, 2012. And before Levi set out, he told his younger brother a vague overview of what his plans were going to be. And so those two factors combined with Levi's level of fitness should have made his hike a safe, if uneventful, ordeal. And that's why, when Levi's mother and returned home from work around 6 p.m., she was shocked to find that Levi hadn't returned home from his hike. And immediately had this like gut feeling that something was wrong. And unfortunately, that gut feeling was deadly accurate. So on January 9th, 2012, Levi's mother and arrived home from work right around 6 p.m. And she was very alarmed that Levi clearly had not returned from his hike. And so she quickly began kind of analyzing his stated plans in her head, desperately searching for any excuse as to why Levi was still out there, why he wasn't home yet. Levi had stated that he was going to be hiking the Emily Proctor Trail. However, he didn't really make clear what his actual destination was. There's no mountain peak at the end of the Emily Proctor Trail. It basically just connects with the long trail, there's a shelter there as well. And so Anne wasn't really sure if Levi had just kind of hiked up the Emily Proctor Trail and then turned around. Or if he was planning on completing the much more ambitious, cooling Glenn Emily Proctor Loop hike. In addition to that confusion, Anne also wasn't sure what gear clothing or food and water that Levi had taken with him. She had no idea if Levi was equipped to spend a cold winter night outside and frankly Anne didn't really plan on waiting around to find this out. And so Anne called her sister-in-law who is named Kathy and the two of them came to a very sobering conclusion. By this point it's now 8 p.m. Levi is still nowhere to be found and though it had been warm earlier in the day, the temperature outside was now dropping very very fast. It's important to note that even if it's warm down in town, down in the valley, up in the mountain the temperatures can still be deadly cold. In a last ditch effort of hope Anne enlisted the help of a friend who actually lived very close to the Emily Proctor Trailhead. This friend drove the short distance over to where the trail starts to see if Levi's car was still parked there. Because if it wasn't, then maybe he was okay and he was just on his way home or something like that. When Anne learned that Levi's car was in fact still parked at that trailhead, she now knew without a shadow of a doubt that her son was still up on that mountain somewhere. This was the final straw for Anne and it's what pushed her to do the thing that every parent dreads the most. She picked up her phone, she dialed 911, and she reported her son missing. Now the state of Vermont handles search and rescue missions a lot differently than most states. So instead of these missions being taken up by like state game wardens or local fire departments or volunteer search and rescue organizations, these missions are instead spearheaded by the Vermont state police. So recognizing the urgency of an overdue hiker potentially stranded in freezing conditions. As soon as the state police got the call, they immediately dispatched to the Emily Proctor Trailhead. They also immediately informed the local fire department in the town of Ripton and they called out for any assistance that they could get from other local volunteer search and rescue groups. And thanks to these efforts within an hour and a half of Anne's initial 911 call, there were two search teams ready at the trailhead. One search team was going to hike up the Emily Proctor Trail, which was Levi's known direction of travel. And the other team was going to hike up the Cooley Glen Trail in case Levi had actually decided to complete that 13 mile loop. Because the state police understood the urgency of the situation and because they immediately formulated an effective plan, they gave Levi, who was likely stranded or injured, but still alive, the highest probability of survival. The only problem, however, was that everything I just told you about the state police's response was complete fiction. I made it up. Now I'm sorry, I'm sorry for lying to you folks, but the reason that I just made up all of that stuff about the police's response is because that basically would have been the best case scenario, and I want you to contrast it with what actually happened after Levi do close was reported missing. And once again, just be warned, I think by the end of this video, you're probably going to be pretty pissed off because the way that the Vermont state police handled the search for Levi was incompetent at best and extremely negligent at worst. So let's go into the actual story of what happened. So Ann calls 911, and right after she did this, she formed a makeshift search party of her own, which consisted of her sister-in-law Kathy and three others, people that were both friends and family. By the time that they all arrived at the Emily Proctor Trailhead, it was just before 10 PM. You know, this is about an hour and a half after Ann had called 911. And yet when they arrived, there were no searchers or no police officers, literally zero people on scene at the trailhead yet. But that was about to change. So right as the group before was about to actually begin their search, a lone state trooper pulled into the dark cold parking lot. Ann and Kathy hoped that this meant the official search, you know, the ones by the professionals, not just the family thrown together, they hoped that this meant the official search was about to be launched, or at the very least that this officer would maybe join them in their last minute search. After all, time was of the essence here. It was cold, Levi could easily freeze a death, and the quicker that boots were on the ground searching for him, the higher the chances of his survival. However, despite all of that and much to Ann and Kathy's surprise, the only thing that this state trooper did was give them a warning. Well, actually, he gave them two warnings. First, he informed them that another officer would be coming by shortly to kind of inspect the scene, whatever that means. And secondly, he warned them not to search for Levi. He said it was safer and wiser to leave that to the experts, which is reasonable. It's understandable at the very least. But after giving these warnings, the state trooper drove away. He left, leaving Ann, Kathy and the rest of the group completely perplexed at what to do. I mean, they were told not to search themselves, but they weren't given any information about when the official search would actually be started. And the son was somewhere potentially dying on the mountain at that very moment. And they had four people at the trailhead ready to search. And yet they were told to just wait, like wait for what? It obviously didn't make any sense. And so the group ignored the officer's directions. Kathy stayed at the trailhead in case Levi emerged or other officers and searches arrived. And the rest of the group decided to go up the cooly Glen Trail. Again, hoping that if Levi had decided to do that loop, they would be, you know, hiking the loop in the opposite direction and they would have a higher chance of kind of intercepting him along the way. The group hiked a few miles into the dark Vermont wilderness, but eventually they came to the crushing realization that they had chosen the wrong trail. By the time that they reached the intersection with the long trail, there were zero foot prints in the snow, meaning that it would have been impossible for Levi to have been there. And the thing you have to understand is that when they were deciding on which trail to search, they basically had to make a 50/50 decision. And tragically, and through no fault of their own, of course, they simply chose the wrong trail. At 12.30 a.m. now, on January 10th, another state trooper arrived at the Emily Proctor Trailhead and began to speak with Kathy. Four critical hours had now passed since Anne's initial 911 call, and I'm sure that Kathy felt some relief when this officer arrived. Some relief that helped had finally gotten there. But of course, this hope was quickly crushed when Kathy realized that this trooper's main focus was not to go actually find Levi, but rather to get her to fill out a missing person's form and kind of just start with that. So while this was happening, Anne and the rest of her group returned to the parking lot, and they reported that Levi had not been located on the Kool-Aid Glen Trail, which therefore meant he must be stranded somewhere on the Emily Proctor Trail. That's what all logic and reason pointed to, and you would think that when confronted with this information, the state troopers would have immediately began hiking up the Emily Proctor Trail, or at the very least, they would have called in the local ripped-and-fire department who always had search and rescue volunteers on standby. You think that they would get somebody up that mountain immediately, but they did. It quickly became clear to Anne that the state troopers had zero intention of doing any of those things. And so with this realization, Anne decided that she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands, and so she resolved to hike up the Emily Proctor Trail herself. And in one of the most astonishing twists in this story so far, the state troopers told Anne that if she tried to continue searching for her own son, they were going to be placing her in handcuffs and taking her to jail. At this point, it was almost 1am. Levi hadn't been seen since he started his hike at 12.30pm the previous day, and an official search still had not yet been authorized. The troopers were kind of at the trailhead just messing around, doing bureaucratic stuff, filling out forms, stuff like that. There was no official search declared, but that did soon change. The police finally declared an official search, and they then immediately informed Kathy and Anne that the state police do not conduct searches at night. This meant that the search wouldn't start until the following morning with the troopers beginning their shift at six in the morning. And so completely defeated and facing arrest and Kathy and the rest of their group were basically left with no choice but to just return home. As the temperature continued to drop, Levi was still up on the mountain somewhere. And by the way, just to add insult to injury, one of the state troopers had filled out a search urgency form and marked that there was no hazardous weather predicted, which is insane. It's the winter, it's night, you're in the mountains, it's freezing cold, and tragically, and obviously the very next morning, everyone would learn that that search urgency form was the understatement of the century. It's still unclear to me why the Vermont state police refused to search for Levi in the darkness. I guess that they would probably cite safety as the reason and assuming that's true, you would think that they would have at the very least started the search as soon as it was light enough to see without a headlamp, right? Like, why would you waste any time? But of course, that's not what happened here. In fact, the three state troopers and the one search dog that would be tasked with going to find Levi didn't even arrive at the Emily Proctor Trailhead until eight in the morning. By this point, it had been almost 12 hours since Anne's 911 call, and the official search was only now just getting started. This group of state troopers did eventually start climbing up the Emily Proctor Trail, and for the first few miles, things seemed pretty normal. They slowly made their way up the icy and snow covered path until a very horrifying site stopped them in their tracks. It was now 12 pm, almost 24 hours since Levi had first started his hike. And so their discovery started with the dogs. So again, these troopers had a canine with them and their dog kind of noticed something up ahead. He was kind of alerting, but at first the officers couldn't really tell what was going on. The thing, the Duke Close's family dog Duke came wandering down the trail. And at this point, the troopers knew that they were closing in on something. And so they continued hiking for just a short distance further. When all of the sudden this group of Vermont state troopers came upon the deceased body of Levi Duke Close. He was located less than three miles from where his vehicle was parked down in the trailhead, less than three miles from the very same trailhead that Anne and the rest of her group had been at the night before. And chillingly, on Levi's head was a headlamp, a headlamp that was still lit up from his struggle to survive his hike back down from the night before. And so after confirming that Levi was no longer alive, the troopers kind of secured the scene and they built a fire. They did their best to rescue Duke, you know, trying to keep him close to the fire, trying to keep him warm. And then they turned their priorities from a rescue mission into an investigation. It wasn't immediately clear how or why Levi died. And so one of the state troopers continued up the trail kind of following Levi's tracks to try and get some more answers. Levi's tracks continued all the way to the Emily Proctor Shelter, at which point they turned and followed the long trail north. This indicates that Levi may have been attempting to hike that Kuli Glen Emily Proctor Loop after all, but at some point he had decided to turn around. Levi's backpack was found along the long trail, but that didn't really yield any additional evidence. Though the tracks did continue on, the state trooper eventually decided to kind of call it and turn around so that he could make it back down before daylight ended. Once again, it's brutally cold on the spine of the green mountains. And I can only imagine that as all of those troopers fought off the cold during their investigation and the body recovery, the importance of a swift search surely must have set in. I mean, I really wonder if they realized in those moments that they had blown it. But then again, you know, I don't know exactly what they were thinking, but I do know, however, what the public was thinking when they learned the story of Levi too close. And folks, it really was not pretty. There was some initial confusion about Levi's cause of death, because at first the state police reported that he had broken his leg and then he'd like tried to drag himself down the trail before eventually dying. But at some point the police actually redacted this statement and said that Levi had not actually broken his leg. And so the exact details that led up to his death are still a bit unclear to this day. But the cause of death is the exception to that. The cause of death was crystal clear and it was hypothermia. Hypothermia is a dangerous condition that occurs when the body loses heat faster than it can produce it, which leads to confusion, shivering, a slowed heart rate, and of course death, if not treated quickly. Levi was probably rushing back to his car, kind of trying to make it back before darkness set in. And he ended up injuring himself to the point where he couldn't walk anymore. We don't know what the injury was, but he probably tried to slide down the trail as far as he could. And eventually he just couldn't go any further and hypothermia set in. Now, I've obviously placed a lot of blame on the police in this story and I'm going to be coming back to them in just a second here. But right now I do want to make one very important thing clear, which is that Levi made some very poor choices in his clothing and his gear on this hike to the point where it very well likely cost him his life. And I don't say that to blame him or to shame him, we all make mistakes. But Levi was found wearing cotton clothing, which is a very big no-no when it comes to winter hiking. I'm sure some of you know this, but in case you don't, cotton absorbs moisture. It dries really slowly and it doesn't insulate when it gets wet, which increases the risk of hypothermia for any hiker who is wearing it. And in addition to that, Levi was very clearly not planning on being in the woods for very long because he had no backup clothing to change into, he didn't have like an emergency blanket or any other gear that could have kept him warmer for longer. And again, I'm in no way trying to disparage Levi. I myself have made all of those same clothing mistakes on Winterfield. hikes before. I literally summited Vermont's highest mountain in the winter while I was wearing cotton clothing back in high school. I was just lucky and I lived to tell the tale. I just think it's important to mention Levi's clothing and his gear choices because it is a massive takeaway, a lesson if you will from this case and I hope that by mentioning it at least one of you will be safer next time that you're on trail. He definitely made some bad choices with his gear and his clothing and those certainly played a very very big role in this story. But I have to say that despite those choices, there's still a very very high chance that Levi would have survived if the Vermont state police had acted even halfway competently after receiving ANS 911 call. And thanks to media coverage of this case, including many pieces by a writer named Cindy Hill, the Vermont public and Vermont lawmakers were pissed about what happened. Levi's uncle was quoted saying, "I must reiterate that the Vermont state police definitely blew it in the case of my nephew Levi." Now, I am far from an expert on hypothermia, but my understanding is that it takes some time to set in, right? It's not like an immediate thing that happens. There's no way for us to know exactly what time Levi died, but it is very likely that if a search had been conducted on the night of January 9th, you know, shortly after Levi had been reported missing, he would have been found probably injured and very cold, but alive. There were multiple local and volunteer rescue teams that the Vermont state police could have called in to help launch a quick search. In fact, the Emily Proctor Trail is located in the town of Ripton, Vermont, and the Ripton Fire Department has training in search and rescue. I mean, they live there. They're intimately familiar with all of the trails that are in their forests, and their fire captain would even go on the record saying that if they had been contacted that night, they would have put boots on the ground to search for Levi immediately. And what's even more frustrating to me is that this would not have been a complicated search. Levi was reported missing very quickly. His car was found at the trail head. Everyone knew which trail he had taken. You know, it's not like there was a massive search area, and Levi could have been lost anywhere and would have taken, you know, days or weeks to find him. All it would have taken was like two or three volunteers to hike less than three miles up the Emily Proctor Trail by headlamp, and Levi most likely would have been found alive. But the Vermont state police never notified any local search and rescue groups about Levi's disappearance. And in an incredibly frustrating twist of events, when a few of those local volunteer groups were eventually notified, it was the next day, and it was only so that they could come help remove Levi's body from the woods. Levi's death opened up a massive statewide discussion about search and rescue. Once again, Vermont handles their search and rescue way different than most other states. Many people, including Kathy DuClose, called on the Vermont state legislature to strip the Vermont state police of its power to handle search and rescue altogether. There were a lot of investigations which revealed that many local search and rescue groups that were trained and an eager to help rescue lost hikers in Vermont had been rebuffed by the state police or just simply never utilized. I even found that at least one of these groups would just end up calling it quits and disbanding altogether. After over a year of press coverage, study committees, and debate between Vermont lawmakers, Governor Peter Schumlin signed a law that completely overhauled search and rescue procedures in the state. Though Vermont state police did ultimately remain in charge of search and rescue, this legislation mandated quick response times and coordination with local search and rescue groups, which again were the two biggest shortcomings in Levi DuClose's case. I want to make it clear that I'm not telling you this story just so I can rip on the police or whatever. There's plenty of that in today's society and I'm not trying to add to that noise, but I do think that you can be like the most back the blue kind of person out there and still acknowledge that the way the Vermont state police handled Levi's case was a complete and utter disaster. Now, this story took place over 13 years ago and as far as I can tell, confidence in Vermont's search and rescue practices has been largely restored. Vermont state police were very open to hearing criticism about their failures and they were very cooperative in changing their practices and so you've got to give them credit for that, but unfortunately, you know, as good as that is, it can't bring back Levi DuClose. Levi's mother Anne would express regret about calling 9-1-1 on the evening of January 9, 2012 because if she had called the local fire department instead, it's very possible that Levi would still be alive today. May he rest in peace, and my heart goes out to him as well as Anne, Kathy, and the rest of the DuClose friends and family. I encourage all of you to leave some love for all of them in the comments section. I love it when you guys are like super kind to the people I talk about in these stories. And if you're interested in learning more about this story, first I've linked an archive of articles by Cindy Hill who covered this story in way more detail than I did at the time. And second, I've linked to the book Desperate Steps by Peter Kick, which includes a fantastic segment on Levi's tragic story.