April Simpkins said police waited three hours to tell her that her daughter, former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst, had died.
Para Griffin/Getty Images
On the morning of January 30, 2022, April Simpkins received one last text from her daughter, former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst.
It's a message Simpkins shares in Kryst's memoir, "By the Time You Read This," which she helped finish following her 30-year-old daughter's death by suicide.
In the memoir, released on Tuesday, Simpkins recounted the painful day she received a text that read in part, "I'm sorry. By the time you get this, I won't be alive anymore."
"My brain couldn't register the words on the screen," she wrote. "I read them again and screamed from a place in my soul that I didn't know existed. My hands started shaking, and I couldn't catch my breath. This can't be real. I need all of this to not be real, was all I could think."
Frank L. Szelwach/Miss USA
After she read the message, Simpkins said her husband called the police in New York City, where Kryst had moved after she was crowned Miss USA in May 2019.
"The police told us that medics were on-site, which was the sliver of hope I needed," Simpkins wrote.
She said in the memoir that she booked their flights from South Carolina to New York and that they kept calling the police "again and again."
"Every time they told us they didn't have any updates, and medics were on-site," Simpkins recalled. "We were all waiting — waiting for the police to tell us she'd been rushed to the hospital, or she was in stable condition, or something. Anything."
Just as their New York-bound plane was taxiing on the runway, a call came from the detective informing Simpkins that Kryst had died.
"I don't remember the plane landing or getting into the Uber to ride to the hotel," she wrote of that day. "Hell, I don't even remember making hotel reservations. Our phones had been off during the flight, and when we landed and turned them on, they blew up."
"The police never told me how she died, so I was confused," she added. "How was it that people knew she was gone?"
Benjamin Askinas/The Miss Universe Organization
After she learned more about Kryst's death from the media, Simpkins said she questioned why the police had waited so long to tell her the news.
"By the time we contacted the police the morning of her passing, my daughter was already deceased," she wrote. "The police knew this yet had refused to tell us. Instead, for three agonizing hours, they told us medics were on-site, when, in reality, my baby was already with the medical examiner and the police were sharing information with a newspaper, not her family."
Simpkins also said in the memoir that she only found out about Kryst's suicide note when she read about it online.
"I learned about the note the same way the world found out about it: from a newspaper article," she wrote. "I couldn't understand why the police didn't tell me. How did a news outlet have information about a note left in her apartment?"
Simpkins said she "worked hard to move forward from the cruelty of the police withholding information" and instead focused on her daughter's final message.
"Every sentence was written to help me understand, to help me grieve," she wrote.
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Simpkins, who said Kryst had high-functioning depression for years, now works as a mental health advocate and ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She said losing her daughter has "reshaped who I am and who I want to be."
"My life's purpose has changed, and I realize more clearly my life's mission to continue to shine a bright light on mental health and wellness," Simpkins wrote in the memoir.
"My hope is if you are struggling with your own mental health, you find comfort in knowing that someone out there understands you and is boldly and publicly speaking out on your behalf."
The New York Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
