Dog the Bounty Hunter travels to Utah to investigate murders last summer of newlyweds

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Duane Chapman – better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter – has travelled to Moab, Utah to investigate the still-unsolved murders last year of newlyweds Crystal Turner and Kylen Schulte.

The women, who would have celebrated their first wedding anniversary last month, were found dead 18 August at a campsite outside of town. They’d suffered multiple gunshot wounds and sexual assault. Ms Turner was 38 and Ms Schulte was 24.

“Kylen Schulte’s father has invited our team to assist,” Mr Chapman wrote on his Facebook page, also announcing the trip on Twitter, where he added “#justice.”

Schulte’s father addressed the famous bounty hunter’s presence on a memorial Facebook page on Monday.

“Please don’t waste DOGS time on BS and autograph crap,” he wrote. “He is here (sic) to find a killer. If you have a real clue about a bad guy w a 9mm for God sakes call 833TELLDOG. IF YOU HAVE A TIP SPEAK UP.”

According to a search warrant, investigators found four casings from a 9mm gun at the scene of the crime, ABC4 reported.

The women were last seen on 13 August, reported missing on 16 August and discovered three days later by a friend, Cindy Sue Hunter, who knew the girls and Ms Schulte’s father.

Ms Hunter said she went looking for the women after receiving a phone call from Sean Paul Schulte, who lives out of state.

“He said ‘I just found out that there was a creeper dude that they were scared of. That they needed to move their camp,’” Ms Hunter told ABC4. “All of a sudden I had such a sense of urgency.”

She found the newlyweds’ campsite and was still on the phone with Mr Schulte when she spotted one of the women’s bodies “and I turned away.”

And she added: “I think something inside me didn’t want to acknowledge what I had seen so I was looking at the beauty of the creek and everything and talking to the father the whole time and I turned around again to make myself see and it was her.”

The FBI and state authorities were called in to help locals with the investigation, though the culprit or culprits remain on the loose nine months later.

The case was linked at one point to the disappearance of Gabby Petito, who’d been in the same area around the same time with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie. Moab police were called after the couple got into a domestic altercation near the Moonflower cooperative, where Ms Schulte worked as a cashier.

Ms Petito was later found dead and Laundrie, after going on the run, took his own life.

Dog the Bounty Hunter also joined the search for Laundrie last year and, in his post about his trip to Moab, wrote: “You may recall that Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito were in Moab around the time of the murders but no definite link between the two cases has yet been substantiated.”

The newlyweds’ murders have sparked multiple pages and theories on social media, and Ms Schulte’s family – in addition to making repeated appeals for people to come forward with information – also hired their own private investigator.

Locals in the Moab area, along with amateur internet gumshoes, have been working since last summer to memorialise the women and hunt down their killer. An effort is underway, for examlpe, to erect a billboard to bring more attention to the case, which many feel was overshadowed by the disappearance of Ms Petito.

Ms Schulte and Ms Turner are remembered fondly in Utah.

The 24-year-old “ was one of our main cashiers, just there every morning, just the friendliest person you could ever imagine,” co-worker Maggie Keating told The Independent last summer.

“She was always the sweetest to every person she interacted with.”