Dirty Deleting: Guilty

Dirty Deleting: Guilty

It all started on Tuesday February 22, 2022. I’d been following the unsolved murder (investigation) of a young LGBTQ+ couple, Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner. They’d been shot to death at their campsite just south of Moab, Utah on August 14, 2021.

Anyway, by late February, the investigation seemed to be going dry, or cold, or dry and cold (and from news reports, Utah is apparently suffering from a drought this winter). Lots of emotional roller coasters had carried me and other websleuths through pinnacle highs and dreary lows. Lots of drama and break-up-make-ups were going on within the websleuths’ community on Facebook and Twitter, the two social media sites I can tolerate enough to participate. (I mean websleuths in a general and vague way, as in those who are following the case – some are more engaged than others).

I’d been able to distance myself more and more from the case, in a sad way, because those intense relationships we form when we are trying to generate tips by combing through various social media profiles, news articles, photographs, and everything and anything we can get our hands on in the digital world, those intense relationships are sad to lose. But like any relationship, the intensity comes and goes. Just like with family. Just like with a romantic partner (at least in my experience).

And then on the 22nd, I happened to check into Twitter around 8:38 a.m. (since I log out of Facebook for the workday, as I find the amount of interaction Facebook requires to be extraordinary), and someone, a psychic, I think (we follow each other), had asked me in direct message (DM) whether or not I’d seen the article about “a suspect.” No, I hadn’t. Nope. So, I went and looked it up and was able to learn that a seal expired on a search warrant sealed back on August 18. Thus, the public could now get a close look into the investigation by studying the newly available warrant. After logging into my court document account, I downloaded the warrant and tried to digest the dramatic information it contained.

I won’t go into all the salient warrant details here, because they’ve been hashed over by various media providers: Fox13, ABC4, KSLTV5, The Salt Lake City Tribune, Law & Crime, and Court TV. But, from the juicily worded warrant, I created a few tweets, and Facebook posts, in available free minutes throughout the day. I also figured out five additional warrants had become unsealed, although, nothing as dramatic as the warrant which, in minute and painstaking detail, described a person of interest (including something about his non-pulsating carotid artery if I remember correctly). So, the 22nd was a crazy day flooded with information after a months-long dry spell.

However, on Wednesday February 23, I spent about an hour of my day deleting everything I’d posted from the juicy search warrant the day before. That’s because the Sheriff Department leading the investigation had issued a rare press release stating the warrants’ seals had been allowed to expire because the person named in the (juicy) warrant, had been cleared of the crime. So, the information in the warrants was old news they were saying. But on top of that, within the databases I work in, the warrants disappeared from public view. I thus deduced that they had been resealed.

Since various news outlets had run with the juicy warrant when it was public (a time-period lasting about 24 hours), I then had to make an ethical decision about what I could continue sharing in my own writing. Ultimately, I decided information that had been shared in the mainstream media was fine to continue sharing, but as far as fussy details from the now redacted warrants – best not to share that. This determination caused me then to delete an additional number of posts and replies in various social media conversations. (I’ve learned in recent months this is called “dirty-deleting”). Yes, I dirty-deleted my own writing. It happens.

I think I have my own writings smoothed out at this point, but I’m curious about the level of coverage those unsealed-for-24-hours-warrants generated from mainstream media. So, I think I will look into that.