A woman who told her family she was heading out to help prepare for a New Year’s Eve party instead met a brutal and unimaginable fate at the hands of two men she trusted as friends. The crime came to light in early January 2014, when a jogger running through a remote wooded area of Pennsylvania noticed something unusual along the trail: a pink Ugg boot, half-buried in mud.
Moments later, the runner spotted a small pink handbag nearby. Inside was an ID belonging to 23-year-old Ashley Kline, who had been reported missing days earlier. Ashley, who had a learning disability and brain damage caused by childhood lead poisoning, was described by her family as “happy and loving but naive and overly trusting,” with the mental age of around 15.
She had last been seen on December 30, when her father, Michael Kline, believed she was leaving to help a friend prepare for a New Year’s Eve party. When she didn’t return that night, he assumed she was staying over, something she often did. In reality, Ashley had agreed to meet Ryan Matthew Schannauer, a family friend she had known since childhood, as per reports in the Daily Express.
She believed he was taking her to see a movie. Instead, Schannauer and his accomplice, Adam Morning Star Lynch, drove her to the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, where prosecutors said they carried out a prolonged and savage attack. Ashley was beaten, raped, stabbed repeatedly, and set on fire.
A post-mortem later revealed soot in her lungs, showing she was still alive when she was burned. Despite eventually pleading guilty and avoiding the death penalty through a plea deal, neither man could fully explain why they committed the crime. Asked in court why he murdered someone he had known for years, Schannauer said quietly, “I don’t have an explanation for it.”
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Lechner told the court that Ashley’s trust ultimately led to her death. “I hope that Mr. Schannauer thinks about that every single day of his life,” he said. Investigators uncovered evidence tying both men to the murder, including Ashley’s broken necklace and a pink boot print inside Lynch’s car. Surveillance footage also showed a man matching Lynch’s description buying gasoline near the crime scene.
The final breakthrough came when Lynch’s girlfriend told police she had been present when the men returned to the area days later to attempt to burn Ashley’s body again. Prosecutors said Schannauer’s anger over Ashley rejecting his romantic advances fueled months of planning that led to her murder. “Schannauer admitted he doused her with gasoline and she was breathing when he did it,” Lechner told the court.
Both men were convicted of homicide, arson, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, and conspiracy. District Attorney Craig W. Stedman called it “one of the most horrific crimes we have had in our history.” More than a decade later, both remain in prison, serving life sentences with no chance of parole.
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