The father of a woman murdered alongside her new wife in Utah has said he is still holding his breath for a breakthrough after police revealed they have identified “persons of interest.”
Sean-Paul Schulte — whose 24-year-old daughter Kylen was slain alongside wife Crystal Turner, 38, in August — told Fox 13 that most of the public update last week was not new to the grieving families.
“I mean, we already knew Brian Laundrie wasn’t our culprit,” he said of the headline-grabbing part of Grand County Sheriff Steven White’s update to the double slaying in Moab.
Laundrie was last seen with his fiancee Gabby Petito — who was later slain — in the same city, at the same time as the newlywed couple was also last seen complaining about a creepy guy camping near them.
However, White said that “electronic transmission evidence” helped the FBI rule out Laundrie after they’d been “actively looking” at a possible link.
Schulte said that he is still steeling himself for potentially a long wait for justice even as the sheriff announced there were “persons of interest” for the double murder.
“I don’t think they’re going to call me today, but that’s because I’ve been holding my breath for six months,” Schulte told the local broadcaster.
“Do I want to let my breath out? Hell yeah…. But I’m still holding my breath over here,” said the dad, who already lost a 15-year-old son to shooting nearly seven years earlier.
He said he is awaiting a call saying, “Hey Sean-Paul, we have a match of fingerprints, we have a match of DNA, we have a match of ballistics, we have cell phone pings and no alibi.”
Only then will he “start to say, ‘Well, maybe it’s time for me to start to believe that we’re going to wrap this up,’” he told the station.
The medical examiner confirmed that Schulte and Turner — who also used the name Crystal Beck — were “shot multiple times” but had not been sexually assaulted, the update said.
They were last seen in a bar on Aug. 12 — the day before Laundrie and Petito were stopped by Moab cops during a domestic fight — and their bodies later found at a campsite by a friend who was looking for them.
Laundrie later admitted killing Petito in a notebook entry he wrote shortly before he took his own life, the FBI revealed Friday in its final report on the case.
