The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines (12 page)

On the opening night of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, a cast and crew of about forty teens rushed around taking care of last-minute preparations. A few parents, school personnel, and other adults drifted through the chaos. Thirty minutes before curtain time, most of the actors were in costume. A few were still sitting for their stage makeup. In the auditorium, people were already arriving and selecting their seats for the show.

Daniel paced back and forth reciting his lines in the hallway behind the auditorium. With glitter on his face and his hair teased large, he couldn’t wait to play his role of Oberon, the Fairy King. Down the hall, Daniel saw Rachel in costume for her role as Helena, talking to her mother. She appeared to have been crying. Daniel heard Rachel’s and Patricia’s voices rising. He gestured to one of the girls who had applied Rachel’s makeup to go rescue her. Mother and daughter were obviously in the middle of another fight.
Great timing
, Daniel thought.

Just then, Patricia’s hand slapped Rachel across the cheek. “Get your shit together, Rachel!”

Rachel’s eyes widened and she burst into tears as the crew member gently led Rachel away to repair her makeup.

***

No one suspected anything was amiss. Rachel’s Twitter traffic during the course of the three-day production was upbeat, reflecting her excitement and love of the stage. She sent a shout-out to Mikinzy for showing his support by being in the audience two nights in a row and bringing her flowers. Her enthusiasm peaked on November 3, the last day of the play. Rachel tweeted:
round three boys and girls, let’s kill it tonight!

Rachel’s good mood didn’t last long. Several area teens received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Clarksburg, about forty-five minutes from Morgantown. Grand jury subpoenas are supposed to remain secret, but Shelia and Rachel learned that Eric Finch, Crissy Swanson, and a teen named Aaron Roupe—all of whom had known Skylar through Shelia Eddy—were called to provide information.

Law enforcement was unaware Shelia and Rachel knew about the grand jury, but they did. The girls were upset and it showed in their tweets. Rachel’s
sick of being let down
and Shelia’s simple
F M FREAKING L
(FML is textspeak for “fuck my life”) were easy to decipher.

Later that day, Shelia’s tweets revealed sadness—although the remorse might have been feigned (
i would do anything to go back to the beginning of 2010 literally anything
). Could her tweets have been a reference to the fact that in 2010 Shelia still lived in Blacksville and Skylar was still alive?

Whatever the case, her sadness was short-lived. The next day Shelia was back to her old form and feeling cocky:
no one on this earth can handle me and rachel if you think you can you’re wrong
. This may have been meant as a warning for someone, possibly the police who were working the case.

The official transcript of the grand jury proceedings remains sealed; however, it appears to have been a fishing expedition of some kind. The fact that a federal grand jury was convened in the first place helps explain the FBI’s presence, since the FBI always works cases brought into federal court. Given all of this, the precise nature of the investigation remains obscure.

Was the grand jury looking for evidence of the bank robberies? Was Skylar’s disappearance connected to those bank robberies? Afterward, the subpoenaed teens said it seemed the grand jury was more about Blacksville drug traffic than either the bank robberies or Skylar’s disappearance.

But Shelia and Rachel clearly believed the grand jury was all about a girl—Skylar. For instance, Shelia tried to alleviate Rachel‘s worry in a November 6 text:
Mark said it was ALL gunna be about drugs.

By “Mark,” Shelia may have meant Mike Benninger, her attorney. Both girls’ parents had retained attorneys for them not long after police began questioning the two teens, in the late summer or early fall.

Rachel texted back:
okay how does he know that’s all this is about? im sure its more for me.

Shelia’s text replied,
because thats what the us attorney said their gunna follow the drugs to get to skylar.

If Rachel was worried about the federal grand jury being convened, that was nothing compared to what came next: the two girls learned that authorities wanted them to take a lie detector test, and neither teen was happy. It felt like the heat had been dialed up another notch.

Meanwhile, their Twitter enemies were happy to bring on even more:
Pretty little liars keep on lying!!
Josie Snyder tweeted. Then,
Ever seen the show I (almost) got away with it… They ALWAYS get caught may take a little but criminals end up behind bars :)

***

By the time the federal grand jury met, social media users around the state were fully engrossed in Skylar’s story. Becky Bailey’s late-night Facebook rants had become especially famous: many members on the TeamSkylar 2012 site loved reading them. The rants began after Bailey saw a Facebook posting about Skylar on July 6, 2012. It didn’t take long for Bailey to learn the pretty teen was Dave Neese’s daughter. She and Dave had gone to high school together.

Bailey poured out her frustration on Facebook, talking about the terrible dangers facing today’s children. One of the many topics Bailey vented about was the fact that no AMBER Alert was announced for Skylar. Dave’s former classmate promised the Facebook group she would continue to post until “Skylar is returned home safe and sound.”

Bailey was infuriated that AMBER Alerts could only be issued once law enforcement determined the abduction of a child met specific criteria. (AMBER is actually an acronym: “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”) She believed that missing teenagers—even those who left of their own free will—were still in danger. Bailey wanted every case of a missing teen to be scrutinized as under the lens of a microscope.

Before long, Bailey found a way to fix the AMBER Alert problem. On December 4, she posted her plan in an online petition. After providing some background on Skylar’s case, Bailey stressed that the first forty-eight hours after a child disappears are critical—whether the teen ran away or was abducted. She closed with a powerful appeal:

“I did this for Skylar, so she would have a lasting legacy. I did it for Dave and Mary,” Bailey said, “and the zillions of kids who slide through the cracks on a daily basis.”

Bailey’s plea struck a chord in the heart of every person who’s ever been a parent—and perhaps some who haven’t. Within a few short months, more than 23,000 people signed her petition.

Lori Swanson was pacing in the hallway of the federal courtroom of the Northern District of West Virginia, waiting to take her daughter home. Crissy Swanson was so nervous about being subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury she had asked her mom to drive her there.

Ever since she’d met Berry and Spurlock at the Dollar General store in Blacksville, Crissy had been terrified of this day. She remembered the meeting well. It began with a phone call from her mom: “Um, there are two state troopers out here looking for you.”

“Can you ask them why?” Crissy said. “’Cause I know I haven’t done anything.”

“They wanna ask you about the Blacksville bank robbery.”

“I don’t know crap about the Blacksville bank robbery. So send them my way.”

Lori did. The two plainclothes officers arrived at the Dollar Store, walked up to Crissy, and introduced themselves. She remembers them as Berry and Spurlock, who told her that if she lied “it’s gonna get you seven years in federal prison.”

“Okay,” she said, slapping her leg with her hand, and suddenly feeling quite warm. “I wasn’t gonna lie to you before, but now I’m really not. What do you want to know?”

Once she got down from the witness stand at the grand jury hearing, Crissy felt waves of relief roll over her. She knew she had been honest and forthright, which was all that mattered, all the United States District Attorney was looking for. She even thought her testimony had helped alleviate suspicions about Shelia, after the DA asked Crissy if Shelia would take a polygraph.

“Oh, Shelia will take a lie detector test,” Crissy said. “Why wouldn’t she? She has nothing to hide.”

When mother and daughter arrived back home in Fairview, Crissy got on the phone as Lori dialed Tara’s number.

“We called to let her know we were out of grand jury,” Crissy said, adding that she wanted to reassure Tara and Shelia that none of the questions had been too troubling. That was when Tara said something that made Crissy question the loyalty she felt for her cousin.

“I know I shouldn’t say this over the phone. I know they can hear me,” Tara said, reflecting her belief that the phone was tapped. “Shelia came out and said they were out in Brave that night.” The town of Brave lies about 3.5 miles west of Blacksville, just over the border in Pennsylvania.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Crissy said. Her anxiety instantly turned to anger. She knew exactly where that was—it was one of the darkest, loneliest stretches of road around. If the girls were out that way, and Shelia had lied about it all along … Crissy stopped the track her thoughts were taking. If Shelia had lied about that one thing, what else did she lie about? “You heard this from Shelia?”

“Benninger. He said Shelia had admitted that to him.”

They hung up not long after, but Crissy realized that Tara must be getting pretty tired of being stonewalled by Shelia, too. Nobody likes to be lied to.

“What is it, about two thirty right now, Mom? I’ve got to go home.” Crissy worked at an assisted living home in Fairmont, about twenty miles southeast of Morgantown. “On the way in, I’m calling Shelia. I told her I would. Then I’m not going to talk to her about it anymore. I’m not going to ask any more questions.”

“Good,” her mother said. “Because whatever’s going on, you don’t want that on you. Shelia’s lied once. You better just leave it alone.”

***

Crissy did as she promised—she called Shelia on the way to work. Shelia had only been out of school for about a half hour.

“Okay, I have you on speakerphone,” Shelia said. “Rachel’s here with me.”

“Grand jury went fine,” Crissy said. “I really don’t think anything’s weird. You know, they just asked me about the boys.” Crissy had gone back and forth about the question—was the grand jury really convened to look for drugs or Skylar? From the tone of the questions, it sounded like they were looking for drugs. Which is exactly what she told Shelia.

“Oh, okay. Whatever.”

“Shelia, don’t you tell your mom I called you right now, okay? Don’t say anything to her, but I want you to understand that you’re ruining your life.”

Dead silence came from the other end of the line. Finally, Crissy spoke up. The rumors and innuendo had eroded her faith in her cousin.

“This is going to destroy you if you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Even if you have nothing to do with this, you’re going to go to jail if you lie. You can’t lie.”

“I said I’m not lying.”

Crissy couldn’t tell if Shelia was angry, but she still wanted to help her friend—if she could. “Good, because why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you help Skylar come home?”

“I promise that’s all I have. I promise that’s all I know,” Shelia said. “I promise. I would tell you if there was something else. I promise I would.”

With that, Crissy felt like Shelia was leaving her no choice. “Okay, and if there’s anything else, I don’t want to know. I want you to tell the FBI.”

***

Shelia and Rachel were scheduled to take their polygraph exams in mid-December. Shelia would take hers at the WVSP detachment; Rachel’s attorney had arranged for hers to be at his Spruce Street office, in downtown Morgantown.

It is believed Tara drove Shelia to the detachment, and Shelia’s lawyer, Mike Benninger, met them there. He and John Angotti, Rachel’s attorney, had talked with their teenage clients—and their parents—in advance. Both men felt the girls were well prepared. Even if the questions strayed away from drugs and toward Skylar’s disappearance, Shelia and Rachel had maintained essentially the same story for five months now. Neither attorney was worried.

Shelia’s lawyer wasn’t the first person to talk with her about the polygraph. She and Rachel had repeatedly texted each other, discussing the procedure. Shelia also had a text conversation with Rachel in early November. At the time, that friend had asked Shelia where she would take the exam.

She should have been. Shelia did “fail” the polygraph. Twice. At least inasmuch as anyone can fail a polygraph. The test is really scored on a question-by-question basis. The outcome of a polygraph is ambiguous in several ways—that’s why it’s not usually used as evidence in court. Still, Shelia failed hers.

Rachel was another story. When the day for her polygraph arrived, Rachel was at her father’s South Park home, a little place near downtown Morgantown. Rusty tried to reassure his daughter as they got into the car that day. But it did no good. Just as they drove across the Pleasant Street bridge and stopped at the light on Spruce, Rachel jumped out of the car—one block away from Angotti’s office. She ran in the opposite direction, down Spruce. Stunned and trapped in traffic, Rusty was powerless to stop her. He watched his daughter run until Rachel disappeared down Spruce Street.

Somehow undetected, Rachel made her way upriver about a mile away, to a location where she would find safe haven from her parents and the police. The one place they would never look for her.

Tara’s office.

***

Rachel never counted on the determination of Gaskins and Berry. When they learned Rachel bailed on her polygraph, they acted decisively, quickly discovering that neither Patricia nor Rusty knew where she was. Still, the troopers believed Rachel’s actions showed guilt. They began checking all the places they suspected she might be. Their search ended late that night, when they found her with Shelia, hiding inside Tara’s car.

Berry was fed up. Alexis was home waiting, dinner was cold, and she was “mad as a wet hornet.” Gaskins was just as disgusted. They wanted nothing more than to yank Rachel from the car and take her to the office. Make the truant teen wait there until her parents showed up to take her home.

But they couldn’t. The minute Tara told them Rusty knew Rachel was with her, they couldn’t do a thing.

***

Whoever Josie Snyder was, she had very good sources. Even the police thought so. They followed her online harassment of Rachel and Shelia. Trooper Berry felt certain she knew something about the case. He tried and tried, without success, to get a warrant to learn her identity. That might be why Josie went dark for awhile.

Then after only stony silence since November 21, she came alive December 16 with a series of colorful tweets. They were addressed to Mia Barr, but everyone familiar with the case knew Josie’s subtweets were
really
for Shelia and Rachel.

At 6:31 that evening Josie tweeted:
failed lie detector. no shit no one gonna come out and say the truth how ya purposely od ur bff.

Josie clearly believed Shelia and Rachel had killed Skylar by causing her to overdose.

Josie tweeted again at 6:59:
oooh no no! Hiding from po po.

Nine minutes later, at 7:08, possibly in reply to a text message from Mia Barr, Josie’s third tweet was nothing if not ominous:
no but one failed, one hiding out so the one that failed doesnt take care of business like she has witnessed #bffscaredofbff.

There was no mistaking what Josie meant: she thought Rachel was in hiding so Shelia wouldn’t kill her.