On Thursday, a 22-year-old from Iowa was arrested in the murders of three women he had no connection to

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Authorities conduct an investigation on 5 March into the deaths of two women a day earlier on a trail near Teasdale, Utah. Photograph: George Frey/AP

t a trailhead not far from the sprawling red cliffs and canyons of Utah’s Capitol Reef national park, two men went looking for their wives who were overdue to return from a hike on Wednesday afternoon.

They came upon a grisly scene. Natalie Graves, 34, and her aunt, 65-year-old Linda Dewey, had been killed and left in a parched creek bed, according to court documents. A Bureau of Land Management ranger responding to the area noted spent shell casings near their bodies. The white Subaru they had come in was missing.

The horrifying discovery set off a police search across three states, closed schools in Wayne county, Utah, and left a community in shock. Dewey and Graves appear to have been the final victims in a random spree of killings in which three people were left dead.

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Not far from where Graves and Dewey were found, a BLM ranger came across a Buick ‘concealed under a tree’. Photograph: George Frey/AP

Authorities announced on Thursday that they had arrested 22-year-old Ivan Miller of Iowa as a suspect in the murders. He has been charged with three counts of aggravated murder in the killings of Dewey, Graves and Margaret Oldroyd, an 86-year-old living in nearby Lyman. Police say Miller had no connection to the women.

“It was just so hard for us to believe. It was just so shocking,” Burke Torgerson, the mayor of Lyman and a relative of Oldroyd, told KSL News Utah. “What would make a young man do something like that – just randomly?”

It was the vehicles that led investigators to Oldroyd’s body and, eventually, to Miller.

Not far from where Graves and Dewey were found, the BLM ranger came across a Buick “concealed under a tree”, registered to Oldroyd; a live shotgun shell was found behind the car.

Deputies traveled to the 86-year-old’s home, a 20-minute drive from the trailhead. Investigators there found the grandmother’s body under a shed on the property, according to court documents.

Meanwhile, the husband of one of the hikers was able to track the key fob for the missing Subaru to Farmington, New Mexico. A license plate reader next located the vehicle in Colorado, and authorities there soon located it, abandoned, in the mountain town of Pagosa Springs.

Officers spotted a magazine with .45-caliber ammunition, and “what appeared to be 20 gauge shotgun shells”, which was a “[visual] match” to what was found at the trail crime scene, according to court documents.

Around 2.45am on Thursday, police came across Miller in an area near the vehicle. They took him into custody without incident, Lt Cameron Roden, a spokesperson for the Utah highway patrol, said at a news conference. The 22-year-old was carrying a .45-caliber pistol, according to court documents, as well as debit and credit cards and an ID belonging to the victims.

In an interview with law enforcement, Miller said he had hit an elk while driving in Utah and sold his truck to a local tow company. He had been on a cross-country road trip at the time of the killings, the New York Times reported.

The owner of a local auto parts store told KUTV that he had picked Miller up after the incident with the elk and that he seemed like a “normal person”.

Miller is said to have admitted to the killings, according to court documents, telling police that he stayed the night at a shed on Oldroyd’s property, snuck into her home the following day and fatally shot her as she watched television. Miller left in her vehicle, but didn’t care for the car, and went to the trailhead where he saw Dewey and Graves getting out of the Subaru, he said in an interview, according to police. He attacked the pair and dragged their bodies to a nearby ditch.

The 22-year-old said that he had needed money to get back to Iowa and told police that he had not liked to do it, but that it “had to be done”, according to court documents.

A brother told the Times that he was shocked by the violence, but that Miller had significant mental health issues.

Media reports indicate, that earlier this year, Miller was released on bail in Iowa where he had been arrested for allegedly breaking into a cabin in a state park.

The killings sent shock waves through Wayne county, where residents have begun tying pink ribbons to trees and signposts to honor Dewey, Graves and Oldroyd.

“Our family is dealing with the shock of the devastating loss of two members of our family who were bonding over the beauty of a hike in one of their favorite places on earth – cherished by them and the community, considered to be a safe sanctuary,” the family of Dewey and Graves said in a statement. “They were murdered. We cannot comprehend why this happened.”

Oldroyd was described by a neighbor as “the sweetest woman you’d ever meet”. Her cousin, Torgerson, told KSL News Utah: “If there was any person that was near sainthood on earth, it would be her.”

He lamented the circumstances around her death.

“Natural death is one thing, but to be taken this way is awful,” he said.