The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines

by Berry, Daleen

  ***

  A few miles away in Star City, Mary Neese had taken the day off work—just in case. Because Skylar loved school, Mary and Dave thought she might return for the new school year. Mary had put in a request with her supervisor for time off, hoping for a miracle.

  But that never happened, and when The Dominion Post interviewed Dave, he said it was a crushing blow. What he didn’t say was that he and Mary both felt like they had a hole in their hearts.

  Chapter 18

  Two’s Company…

  “Leave me alone, Daniel,” Rachel hissed across the aisle in drama class. Daniel laughed, even though the situation wasn’t funny at all. Since Skylar left, he had learned laughing was easier than crying or screaming. School had only been back in session for one day, but Daniel was already tired of Rachel saying she didn’t know anything. She refused to talk about Skylar or her disappearance, but he was positive she had crucial information. After all, she and Shelia had been the last known people to see or talk to Skylar before she got into that strange car.

  “Right, like you just drove around for, like, an hour, then dropped her off. The most boring joyride ever.” Daniel was disgusted. Rachel kept telling him the same story, like her voice was a looped recording. When he first heard that Skylar had run away, Daniel didn’t believe it for a second. He had seen Skylar that day at Wendy’s, and she would have told him if something was wrong. No way Skylar would have run away without telling Daniel. He just knew it.

  “Shut up, Daniel,” Rachel said a little too loudly. Rachel had a flair for the dramatic.

  From the front of the classroom, Mr. Kyer stopped talking and glared at them.

  Daniel saw the glower, and chalked it up to Rachel being one of Richard Kyer’s favorites. Whenever anyone said that, Mr. Kyer insisted he didn’t have favorites. He said he treated all students fairly, but pushed the talented students harder than the rest.

  Daniel was leaving class when Mr. Kyer stopped him. “Daniel, you can’t be accusing Rachel of doing something wrong without proof. This is America and people are innocent until proven guilty. If you have other evidence, then you need to tell the police.”

  That was the problem: Daniel didn’t, though. He just had a gut feeling, based on how the girls were acting.

  Daniel decided to back off, but only for the moment. He had been missing his buddy Skylar for five weeks, and now that he had access to Rachel, he was going to get to the bottom of everything. Daniel wasn’t even going to try to get answers from Shelia. He’d never cared much for her. In fact, Daniel only hung out with Shelia because of Skylar. But Rachel, she would talk. Or else.

  ***

  As word of Skylar’s disappearance spread, the world outside the high school walls began to feel the effects of her loss. Parents thought about the torment the Neeses must be enduring. It was all too easy to imagine the horror of losing one’s own child someday, how terrible it would be if their own daughter or son disappeared.

  Communities grieve in their own ways. The grief must find a place to go, a way to find expression. A number of charity events were held around the greater Morgantown area the first few months after Skylar vanished. The Walmart in University Town Centre, where Dave worked, staged a candlelight vigil in August. T-shirts with Skylar’s name and picture were sold at the event, and $3,100 was raised for a “reward fund” established in Skylar’s name. People donated because they wanted to help and needed to do something—anything.

  A few weeks later the nearby town of Mannington hosted “Sky Ride,” a community gathering held in Skylar’s honor. Mary had grown up in Mannington, an old coal-mining town, along with her fourteen siblings. Practically the entire town turned out in a show of support. People jumped onto their ATVs and rode for hours around the local hills. Everyone brought a covered dish and after a long day in the sun, they broke bread together. And even more money was raised for the reward fund through an auction and a drawing. “Bring Skylar home!” was the day’s theme, and against all logic some attendees hoped that the missing teen might somehow show up. The wound of a missing child was a heavy burden for the small community.

  According to WBOY TV, one woman in attendance, a friend of the Neeses, wistfully recalled, “I remember Skylar from when she was just a little girl, four or five years old, and she was always running around with curls bouncing and she was just the cutest little thing. When I heard that it was her who was missing, it just broke my heart.”

  Fortunately, the hometown show of support gave Mary and Dave a respite of sorts. They smiled and laughed with friends and family, and actually felt lighter for a few hours. Even so, Skylar was never far from their minds. As dusk drew near and people began heading home, Mary and Dave returned to reality with heavy, aching hearts.

  ***

  Skylar’s baby curls were gone by the time she met Amorette Hughes, a fellow student in dance class. By then Skylar was coloring and straightening her fair hair so she would be a brunette like Shelia (of course, not long after, Shelia decided to go blonde herself).

  In the spring of 2012 Amorette was a senior, while Skylar was a sophomore. It turned out that Amorette was the perfect partner for Skylar, mainly because they shared a problem.

  “I had two best friends,” Amorette recalled, “and she had the two best friends. We were going through the same thing at the same time.”

  Having two best friends rather than only one may not seem like a problem. The resulting trio can be unstable, though. “Sometimes I would see that Rachel and Shelia would match,” Amorette said, “and Skylar wouldn’t. They’d both wear jeans and a pink shirt, and Skylar would be in yoga pants. My friends would do that to me.”

  Amorette and Skylar grew close throughout the 2011–2012 school year and would frequently confide in each other. They bonded while struggling with the same problem.

  They’re doing it again, Skylar texted Amorette one day, after Shelia and Rachel made plans that didn’t include her. Amorette encouraged Skylar to hang in there. And Skylar did the same for Amorette, whenever her dance partner felt sad and slighted.

  I know, let’s get together after school lets out, Amorette texted Skylar one day. We can be BFFs. Skylar thought it was a great idea. Somehow, though, they were too busy to connect that first month of summer vacation. Then it was too late.

  Amorette wished they had taken the time. She believed Skylar might still be alive if they had.

  ***

  The truth is, friction had already begun to develop among Skyler, Shelia, and Rachel during their sophomore year. For a brief period, Skylar and Rachel were close. Then they seemed to drift apart. Skylar even wrote about this in an essay for English class. There, she bemoans how much an unnamed friend had changed after getting involved with a boy. Skylar wrote that the widening gulf between herself and her friend—who was clearly Rachel—made her very sad. She didn’t name Mikinzy, either, but he was the boy her friend had gotten too wrapped up in.

  In truth, Skylar and Rachel were never as close as Shelia was with either girl. Skylar and Shelia’s bond went back almost a decade, but in some ways Skylar was losing her rank. She was becoming the third member—and odd girl out—of the trio. This may have been because Skylar was maturing more slowly than Shelia and Rachel—not mentally or emotionally, but physically. In some ways, Skylar was still a girl, but Shelia and Rachel—both sexually active—were young women. Skylar was turning into the “little sister” of the trio.

  “Skylar and Shelia were real close,” Amorette said. “And then Rachel came along. That happened with me and my best friend. We started letting another girl hang out with us, and then before I knew it, she kinda took my place.”

  Like so many of Skylar’s close friends, Amorette didn’t believe the rumors that were making the rounds that first week of school.

  “If she ran away, she would definitely tell me,” Amorette asserted. “I even told her [on Facebook and in texts] if you went to a party and messed up, it’s going to be okay. We’ll help you figure it
out. I never heard back, and I knew something must be wrong.”

  Chapter 19

  The West Virginia State Police

  If Morgantown residents thought they had heard all possible rumors surrounding Skylar’s disappearance, they were wrong. A brand-new cycle started when school resumed in Monongalia County.

  The story of what happened to Skylar wasn’t just hallway fodder at the two largest and most competitive high schools in town, UHS and MHS. It was also water fountain discussion at Clay-Battelle High School, where the Cee Bees were buzzing like crazy about where Skylar was. The teens wondered whether she could be hiding out in their end of the county.

  All through the first full week of class, rumors flew at warp speed through the county’s three high schools through talk, text, and tweet. The students had begun to talk about other possibilities. Someone had floated a rumor that Skylar had been to a big drug party in Blacksville, and something bad had happened. A boy had called her the night she snuck out to tell her about the party, and Shelia and Rachel had driven her there. Some variations of that story had the two teens abandoning Skylar after she got drunk. Other versions placed them at the party when Skylar overdosed, left with a boy, or got raped and murdered. Some teens said Skylar had hooked up with one boy in particular: Dylan Conaway.

  A third theory was starting to make the rounds, but only a few teens talked about it. Dylan had an older brother, Darek, the young man Gaskins and Berry had questioned after the Blacksville bank robbery. Theirs was the house that had been raided by a SWAT team. Police were rumored to be looking at him for the bank robberies in the region. Darek had also been indicted on five counts of third-degree sexual assault in September. That made law enforcement more suspicious of him.7

  Not only had Darek been at some of the parties with Dylan and his friends, at times Darek had even given Shelia, Shania, and Skylar a ride to them. Maybe that close association meant Skylar had discovered a solid connection between Darek and the bank robberies. Maybe Darek and Dylan had killed the teen, to keep her quiet. The Conaway boys were under an umbrella of suspicion—and they knew it.

  ***

  While the rumor mills were churning, Colebank and Spurlock were working day and night to discover what really happened to Skylar Neese. But Mary and Dave didn’t know that. As far as they knew, nothing was happening. So, eight days after Mary missed work in case Skylar came home, she exploded.

  Dave had never seen Mary as angry as she was on August 24—with good reason, he thought. Skylar’s parents were convinced from the beginning that Chief Vic Propst viewed Skylar as a runaway. That was her classification in the AMBER Alert system, after all. But Propst says he never thought Skylar was a runaway.

  After serving two tours in Vietnam, Propst held a number of jobs before settling on law enforcement. He started with the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department in 1986. When he retired, he was working on the narcotics task force. Propst became Star City’s police chief in April 2006. The veteran law enforcement officer gave Officer Colebank his blessing to pursue all leads and follow up her hunches. Still, after six weeks of hearing nothing, Mary and Dave were so frustrated they decided to pay the chief a visit.

  All the grieving parents had to go on were the terrifying rumors. Colebank assured them that all leads were being explored, but she could offer them little of substance. The case was incredibly frustrating; no solid information had yet been uncovered. The Star City Police Department—primarily Officer Colebank, but other officers as well—had logged more than 800 hours on the case in the previous six weeks. Still, for all their efforts, the cops had learned little.

  Colebank couldn’t discuss case details with Mary and Dave because it was an ongoing investigation. She had her own suspicions, but didn’t feel she could share them with the public. That included Skylar’s parents.

  Colebank didn’t want anyone doing anything rash, either. She and Dave had had a few long Saturday-morning talks and she was concerned about him. The dedicated officer still had no idea what had happened to Skylar, but she was certain Shelia and Rachel were key to the puzzle. The last thing Colebank wanted was for Dave to go off on a vigilante hunt—especially when there was no evidence to support her hunches.

  Being kept in the dark wasn’t even Mary and Dave’s primary gripe. The bigger problem was Jennifer Woodall Hunt—and the things she had been saying on Facebook. She seemed to know details she shouldn’t have known.

  As they prepared to visit the chief, Dave could tell by the fire in his wife’s eyes that Mary was furious. For a minute, he thought of Skylar and how wound up she could get when discussing a topic she was passionate about. More than anything else, Dave just wanted one more chance to debate with his daughter. It could be WVU football or greenhouse gases or even (God forbid) gay rights. The topic didn’t matter. He just wanted to see Skylar’s eyes flash like her mother’s again. One more time.

  That thought got Dave back on track. Got him thinking about the thumb drive he had been given by someone at work and had later passed on to Skylar for school. When he found the drive in Skylar’s room, he turned it over to Colebank. At the time he thought it might have information that would help the police locate his daughter. But Dave had forgotten the drive had survivalist literature, or some kind of crap, on it, with advice about how to disappear if one wanted to.

  Somehow, Jennifer Hunt knew about that information—and she had been posting it on Facebook. Her posts insinuated Skylar had used the information on the thumb drive to run away. Skylar was in hiding because she was afraid to come home. Or Skylar was off partying with friends.

  Mary and Dave couldn’t understand how Hunt would have known about the specific material on the drive—unless there was an informant. They just needed answers.

  Once inside the tiny police station they were determined to learn the truth, and the confrontation rapidly escalated. In response to their questions about what other police agencies were involved, Propst told Mary and Dave that he had called the state police at the outset of the investigation.

  “What about Jennifer posting on Facebook that the authorities think we’re hiding something?” Mary demanded, her voice getting louder.

  “Yeah, why would you tell anyone that? We’ve even agreed to take a lie detector test if you want us to,” Dave said.

  “Look, Dave, Mary, I understand why you’re upset,” Chief Propst began. But Mary cut him off.

  “You don’t know anything! It’s not your daughter who’s missing!” she said.

  “No, ma’am, it isn’t. But I know how hard these cases are on the parents, and how stressful they are for everyone involved. Including the police.”

  Suddenly, the emotional strain of the previous six weeks became too much, and the dam that contained all Mary’s emotions burst. All of her grief, frustration, and anger came flooding out. Accounts differ as to who started shouting first, but before long Mary and Propst had both raised their voices. Dave could only stand by helplessly and watch. Propst told Mary that if she didn’t calm down, he would have to ask her to leave.

  Mary didn’t calm down, and Chief Propst asked her to leave. By then, with the pressure from the previous six weeks suddenly unleashed, Mary couldn’t have stopped even if she wanted to.

  One important accomplishment came from the confrontation, though. The minute Mary and Dave marched out of the police station, Mary reached a decision. Her next action was fueled by anger, adrenaline, and fear for her daughter. Back at their apartment, a sobbing Mary began punching numbers on the home phone.

  “West Virginia State Police,” came the dispatcher’s voice.

  “Hello, I’d like to know if you’re investigating my daughter’s disappearance,” Mary said. “This is Mary Neese, and I want to know if you know anything about my daughter, Skylar.”

  The dispatcher put Mary on hold, and a Sergeant Kennedy got on the line. “I couldn’t say for sure if Chief Propst called us,” Kennedy told Mary. But then he did something that may have saved Mary’s sani
ty. Kennedy assured the distraught mother that his troopers would immediately take up the case.

  On Saturday, Mary and Dave told the world they had been kicked out of the police station by Chief Propst. And Jennifer Hunt insisted they were lying, that they were not kicked out. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Hunt also posted, It seems as though [Skylar] may have left for good reasons…. Many are questioning Dave and Mary’s intentions at this point (for good cause)…. For me this triggered suspicion immediately and The police are positive she is not dead and partying with friends.

  People were abuzz over the news and its meaning the minute they saw it on the TeamSkylar<3 group page. Once again, Mary and Dave felt like their private life was being turned into a public spectacle.

  No one seemed to know where Jennifer Hunt got her information. Hunt declined to discuss the case or her part in it. Ultimately, though, the negative public comments created discord among Mary and Dave’s supporters. Intentional or not, that discord caused lies, innuendo, and misinformation to spread.

  ***

  That same Monday morning, West Virginia State Police Corporal Ronnie Gaskins and Senior Trooper Chris Berry were chatting in the office they shared at the Morgantown Detachment. They were discussing various theories about the bank robberies they’d been working. The search of the Conaway house had turned up nothing. They were thinking another trip to Blacksville was in order, but Gaskins had a new idea.

  “You remember how Darek acted when I said that thing about burying bodies?” Gaskins said.

  “He got all worked up,” Berry said, nodding.

  “We didn’t know this at the time, but you know that girl who went missing? Star City girl. Been thinking about her.” He began shuffling through a pile of papers, intent on finding something.

  “Neese, I think.” Berry had kept half an eye on the case for the last month. “Skylar maybe?”