Pretty Little Killers

by Berry, Daleen, Fuller, Geoffrey C.

  Chief Propst also called State Police headquarters in Charleston twice, asking the agency to issue an AMBER Alert. But the alerts are issued only for abductions—a status determined solely by state officials. Since the surveillance tape clearly showed Skylar getting into a car voluntarily, both requests were denied. Instead, Skylar was classified as a runaway—not an abducted teen.

  Dave Neese had solid reasons to insist Skylar hadn’t run away. She left her contact lens container and lens solution behind, just as she did the charger for her TracFone. She left her window open and carefully placed her vanity bench outside to help her climb back inside when she returned.

  Most importantly, Skylar left Lilu—her dog and real best friend—behind. In elementary school, Skylar had begged her parents to let her have the tiny white ball of fluff after seeing one of her friends’ Bichons. Against their better judgment, Mary and Dave agreed, and the Bichon had become Skylar’s baby. Dave said again and again Skylar would never have left home for good without taking “that damned dog.”

  Lilu, Skylar’s dog and best friend.

  The FBI didn’t see Skylar as a runaway, either. In fact the federal agency gets involved in cases of missing juveniles when sexual assault, physical abuse, abduction, or internet crime is suspected. Since the FBI was working on an ongoing investigation an hour south of Morgantown, they wondered if the two cases could be connected. Aliayah Lunsford, three, vanished from her Lewis County home in 2011, a year before Skylar disappeared. The massive search for Aliayah lasted for weeks, but FBI agents continued working the case long after searchers went home. Sadly, the toddler has never been found. When they heard about Skylar, the FBI worried they might have a serial killer on their hands.

  In the beginning, only a few people helped Dave and Mary look for Skylar. Shelia and Tara came immediately. A friend of Mary’s from work brought copies of the MISSING flyers that were being posted on Facebook. More support began pouring in as the situation turned into a crisis. Shania Ammons and her grandmother, Linda Barr, offered their assistance. Dave’s aunt, Joanne Nagy, organized volunteers to cook meals for Dave and Mary.

  Ultimately, Aunt Joanne proved to be a one-woman army. She fortified the shattered parents with emotional support and canvassed the rail-trail behind Sabraton, a suburb on the eastern side of Morgantown where sightings of Skylar had been reported.

  Joanne also organized numerous search teams that met in the Sabraton McDonald’s parking lot. The first search on July 10 drew such a huge crowd Joanne was sure she’d picked the wrong place to meet—the parking lot was overflowing. When she went inside the restaurant, she discovered most of the people were there to look for Skylar.

  One week after Skylar disappeared, more people volunteered from all over the region, and complete strangers became close friends after hopping into cars together, bound by a common purpose: finding Joanne’s missing niece, Mary and Dave’s missing daughter. They split into teams of four and plastered flyers everywhere they could. The searchers drove up and down the winding country roads, dirt lanes, and interstates that led away from Morgantown, looking for Skylar night after night.

  At first, Shelia was arguably the most persistent searcher of all. She stopped by daily, usually with Tara. Her questions were always the same: “Did the police tell you anything new? What have they found out? What are they telling you?” To Mary and Dave, she seemed like a concerned ally, by turns energetic and distraught. Naturally, they shared everything they learned.

  In retrospect, Mary and Dave remembered Rachel never offered to help. Mary wondered about her absence and asked Shelia about it. Shelia said Rachel had been away at camp since the previous Saturday morning, the day after Skylar vanished. A couple of weeks later, Mary realized she still hadn’t seen Rachel, but with hundreds of thoughts preoccupying her, she was too distracted to dwell on it. Still, it felt strange they had heard nothing from Skylar’s other best friend.

  On July 9, the first Monday after Skylar disappeared, when Shelia and Tara helped the Neeses search, mother and daughter both knew the police investigation was well underway. They were also aware the FBI was involved. Officer Colebank had already been to Shelia’s house earlier that day with Special Agent Morgan Spurlock. During the visit Colebank noticed something strange.

  “I will never forget this,” Colebank said, recalling her first encounter with the animated, watchful teenager. Everyone—Shelia, Tara, Shelia’s stepdad Jim Clendenen, Shania, and Crissy Swanson, a distant cousin—was gathered at Shelia’s house, “in the garage just hanging out, sitting on chairs, just chillin’. I’m, like, okay. . . . ‘Your supposed best friend is missing. Why are you sitting here having a good old time?’”

  In actuality, the family had gathered at the Clendenen home to watch the first televised newscast about Skylar’s disappearance. The atmosphere still seemed less somber than Colebank thought it should be. Shelia told Colebank she just hoped Skylar would come home.

  Colebank decided to tackle the social media first. “I have some questions about Skylar’s Twitter. Do you know what Skylar meant when she tweeted ‘you doing shit like that is why I will NEVER completely trust you’?”

  “No,” Shelia said.

  “Do you know who she was tweeting?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What about her last tweet, ‘All I do is hope’?”

  Shelia just stared at Colebank. “Probably some boy.”

  “Any boy in particular?”

  “Not that I can think of. She and Eric Finch were close, and she had this other friend, Floyd Pancoast. Then there was Dylan Conaway. You might ask him.”

  Colebank scribbled in her notebook. “Have you tried calling Skylar?”

  “It just makes me so sad to hear her voicemail, to hear her voice,” Shelia said, looking like she might cry any second. “I can’t call her number.”

  Colebank checked out Shelia’s bedroom. It was pretty typical, except most teenager’s bedrooms didn’t have a cardboard toilet paper roll sitting on the desk, with some dryer sheets right beside it. Colebank recognized the homemade tool for what it was: a bounce blower. Some young people thought exhaling pot smoke through the dryer sheet kept the scent down. It didn’t, really. She had suspected Shelia’s parents were pretty permissive with Shelia, but this was proof.

  Next Colebank asked to see Shelia’s car. In fact, she wanted to see Shania and Crissy’s vehicles, too. Neither one of theirs resembled the one in the grainy video, but as Colebank walked around the silver Toyota Camry she couldn’t help thinking: This could be it. It really looks like that type of car.

  Colebank glanced at Shelia periodically as she circled the little car, but the teen “didn’t even bat an eyelash,” the officer later said.

  She also heard Shelia’s firsthand account about her and Rachel dropping Skylar off. Colebank didn’t buy it. Why drop Skylar off almost four blocks away for fear of waking Mary and Dave when they had picked her up nearby the apartment complex earlier that night? When she asked Shelia, the teen said Skylar had been mad and insisted on being let out there.

  Something sounded wrong to Colebank’s trained ear, so she had Shelia go over the entire evening again. This is what Shelia told her: She and Rachel parked on Crawford Avenue; Skylar came out her window, ran up the slight incline to where they were parked, and got in; and they turned onto Fairfield Street, where they pretty much stayed, cruising and smoking weed on the side streets of Star City. She and Rachel were both dressed in shorts and sweatshirts, and the three girls talked about Rachel’s boyfriend, Skylar’s money problems, and how her shift at Wendy’s that day had been boring. Skylar wasn’t on her phone much, but she seemed upset and began acting weird, which is when she insisted they drop her off away from her home. When Shelia asked why, Skylar refused to say. According to Shelia’s second written statement, they were with her “for at the most thirty minutes.”

  Colebank thought that sounded plausible, so she decided to let it rest. Instead, she tried another line of q
uestioning. “Why haven’t you done more online to try to locate her?”

  “I’ve been too upset.”

  “That’s bullshit, and I don’t believe it for a second. If that was my friend, I’d be blowing up their Facebook page. I’d be blowing their Twitter account up if I didn’t know where they were. You know where she’s at. So tell me.”

  “I told you, we dropped her off,” Shelia said.

  The story didn’t make any sense to Colebank, and she immediately suspected Shelia was lying. She just wasn’t sure why.

  The key takeaway from the visit was Shelia’s attitude. “I did not like Shelia from the get-go,” Colebank said. “Her demeanor was wrong. Arrogant. Narcissistic. But I had nothing, no actual evidence for me to go on. It was just a gut feeling.” The young officer also sensed Shelia was a very capable manipulator.

  Colebank was sure of it when Shelia started crying and mumbled something about missing her best friend—and Tara shut the interview down.

  When Colebank returned to the station she watched the video again, playing it back and forth. She realized there were a few dead spots in the surveillance coverage—which is why she couldn’t see Skylar leave her bedroom window. Nor did the video show any traffic from Crawford Avenue.

  Colebank did, however, see headlights from nearby cars. That fit with Shelia’s statements to police, so Colebank reasoned the teen’s story was plausible. Which meant the car captured by the video couldn’t be Shelia’s. It had to be someone else’s.

  The dead spots would also explain why the video didn’t show Skylar going back inside—but perhaps she had crouched down beside her apartment building, hiding and waiting, and then gotten into the second car after it arrived.

  Still, Colebank’s gut told her it wasn’t. She didn’t know what it was, though.

  A few hours later Colebank was still pondering the question of the unknown car when two retweets went out from Shelia’s phone. A UHS girl had tweeted a pic of Skylar’s MISSING poster, and Shelia sent it out for all her network to see. Another student had tweeted the same MISSING flyer and the message, Hey guys this girl goes to UHS please retweet. Shelia did.

  fourteen

  A Wild Child Runaway

  On July 9, WBOY, one of three area TV stations, told viewers a local girl was missing. That same day, WAJR, a radio station with a popular call-in show, tweeted Police looking for a missing Star City teen.

  One day later, The Dominion Post ran its own story. “Police, Family Seek Missing 16-year-old,” read the headline in the July 10 edition. The story described the teenager and the clothing she was last seen wearing. It also quoted Dave, who said Skylar’s cell phone was “shut off or out of power.”

  The article ended on a poignant note, relaying the distraught father’s message for his missing daughter: Just come home, baby.

  As the media geared up to cover the story, the Star City Police Department received good news: Skylar had been spotted in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. She was reportedly seen hanging around a boardwalk with an unidentified red-haired girl. A local woman with West Virginia connections had learned about Skylar on Facebook and called in the tip.

  Colebank was skeptical. She had read Skylar’s Twitter feed, and those of Shelia and Rachel. She saw the constant online arguing between them. But it was the June 9 tweets that really captured the young officer’s attention. Skylar had been angry at someone but she wasn’t willing to name them publicly, so she subtweeted, youre just as bad as the bitches you complain about, and a liar, and well now im too fucking annoyed to sleep.

  As she read them again, looking for any clue, Colebank realized Skylar’s tweets were growing angrier by the second: fuucckk yoouu.., then and no I do not type like that, which made it sound like perhaps Skylar was texting someone—or receiving texts at the same time she was tweeting. If so, it was a really good way to hide a private conversation, while blaring your anger about that person through tweets. Then there was Skylar’s final tweet from the argument—and it sounded like she got the last word: just know I know.

  Colebank leaned forward in her chair, eagerly staring at Skylar’s Twitter feed. “Know what, Skylar? What did you know?” she mused, talking to the computer.

  Colebank did not believe Skylar was a runaway so she doubted the teenager would surface in North Carolina. She’d been wrong before, though, and she fervently hoped she was wrong this time.

  While Carolina Beach police tried to track down the lead, Colebank phoned the Neeses. Dave answered.

  “Who has red hair, Dave?” Not having met her, Colebank didn’t know about Rachel Shoaf’s trademark tresses.

  “That’d be Rachel. Why?”

  “We may have something. I’ll call you back.”

  Next, Colebank called church camp officials. It was possible Rachel had left camp, and she and Skylar had taken a mini-vacation. Maybe they were skipping out on their responsibilities and worrying their parents, acting like typical teenagers. She hoped so.

  Colebank lost her optimism when camp officials put Rachel on the line. Skylar’s other best friend claimed she didn’t know the teen was missing. Colebank found that odd. Even if Rachel was out of touch at camp, she could have learned the news almost any time Friday before she left Morgantown. Rachel suggested Colebank call Shelia, saying she wasn’t as close to Skylar as Shelia was. Colebank said she would. Before hanging up, the young officer asked Rachel to stop by the department when she returned to Morgantown.

  “I will,” Rachel promised.

  She never did.

  Despite the absence of an AMBER Alert in Skylar’s case and the lack of widespread media coverage, the news was spreading. Momentum was building on social media, especially on Facebook. More and more people were sharing Skylar’s MISSING poster. On Thursday, July 12, Joanne’s daughter, Rikki Woodall, posted the following:

  Hey family—I’m Al & Nina’s granddaughter—my cousin Skylar Neese (on my other side of the family) went missing last week. . . . She’s a wild one, so we’re hoping it’s an extended teenage party break, but the thought of it being something else is terrifying. Would you mind please sharing this? I normally don’t share things like this, but she’s local in Morgantown area, and she’s my family. I appreciate the help!!

  In truth, Rikki did not know her cousin at all. Mary and Dave said they had never met. Despite her concern, Rikki was hardly an insider and her knowledge of the teen was based primarily on what was broadcast through social media.

  Oftentimes, social media communication conceals as much as it reveals. It’s not necessarily about conveying the full truth so much as sustaining a public image and managing that image. By all accounts, Skylar wanted to be seen as a wild child, but she wasn’t, not really. Not to say she didn’t occasionally get drunk or smoke weed, because she did. Accounts of her drug use vary—some teens maintain it was confined to marijuana and alcohol, while others said Skylar used other substances. In truth, the wild child image Rikki Woodall disseminated appears to have been largely manufactured by Skylar herself.

  Skylar looked up to Shelia—even though she had a questionable reputation. As a result of their association with Shelia, many teens thought both Skylar and Rachel were hanging with the wrong crowd—and even tried to tell them. It did little good, since both girls loved the excitement they felt whenever they were with Shelia.

  At various parties she attended, Skylar was often seen sitting on a couch by herself, playing with her phone or her iPod. Rachel was often absent from the party scene; her mother almost always refused to let her go with the other two girls. So while Shelia and her crowd were all drinking, drugging, and making out, Skylar was on Twitter.

  Like so many teenagers, she wanted to be perceived as “cool.” Her tweets and Facebook posts reveal a girl who just wanted to have fun. At the same time, they concealed Skylar’s true nature. They obscured the girl who was insightful, had exceptional writing skills, and planned to be a criminal lawyer. This was the real Skylar, the one whose peers said was by
far the smartest person in her social circle, the Skylar who was a rock for the friends who depended on her.

  Not long after Skylar disappeared, Carol Michaud went to the beauty salon to have her hair done. She learned Shelia went there, too, and that’s when the beautician told Skylar’s aunt an odd story.

  “She said she hung one of the MISSING posters in her shop, but someone took it down,” Carol said.

  The shop owner later said she remembered the day she hung it near the front entrance, “with tape on all four corners, so clients would see it as they were leaving.”

  One day when the owner went to the foyer, the MISSING poster was “just gone. I stood and stared for full two minutes,” she said.

  She knew the poster had been there earlier, and said she was confused about why it was gone. The poster couldn’t have fallen down. Then she remembered: Shelia and her mom were there earlier, when Shelia had her hair highlighted.

  Looking back, Carol had to wonder whether Shelia took it down to keep people from connecting the dots to her and Rachel. But the salon owner has another theory: she believes Tara could have removed it, “because she didn’t want Shelia upset over seeing it there.”

  It wasn’t the first time someone noticed Skylar’s MISSING posters were being removed. Many volunteers who spent hours every day hanging up posters began to wonder what was happening to them. They kept disappearing. Was someone following behind and taking them down as fast as the volunteers were putting them up? The MISSING posters had been removed at more than one local grocery store. Dave’s aunt Joanne said it had happened repeatedly in Sabraton, too.

  It turned into another mystery, since no one could say who was behind it.