Along the way, Joanne joined TeamSkylar<3, the Facebook group created by Dave’s cousin, Jennifer Hunt-Woodall. So did Rikki, who was also Jennifer’s cousin and her closest friend.
After dissension broke out, Joanne left TeamSkylar<3, totally breaking away from it. Rikki stayed on, and a few months later tensions were so high Joanne issued an edict: “We’re not going to talk about Skylar. That topic is off limits.” She hated telling Rikki that, but mother and daughter had taken sides—and the result was not pretty. Joanne loved her daughter and she knew Rikki loved her, but when it came to Skylar they couldn’t see eye to eye.
So when Rikki called her mom one night, and told her to stop looking for Skylar, Joanne was at a loss. Why on earth should she stop looking? Then Rikki told her mom Jennifer had learned through someone at the FBI where Skylar was, and Mary even knew about it, so Joanne should stop wasting her fuel and her time.
“Where is she?” Joanne asked.
“She’s in a home for unwed mothers up in Bobtown,” Rikki said.
Joanne didn’t realize the small Pennsylvania town had a home for unwed mothers, so she Googled the place—and was surprised to find not one, but two such homes. The next day, instead of taking Rikki’s advice, Joanne loaded up her team and they crossed the state line, making a beeline directly for Bobtown. Once there, they did a reconnaissance mission, parking across the street at each location and watching anyone who came or went. Finally, they decided to take a poster into the homes and simply ask the receptionist: “Have you seen this girl?”
Of course, neither place had.
twenty-six
You’re Either With Us . . .
It was time to change tactics.
Gaskins and Berry brought new intensity to the search for Skylar but they were running into too many dead ends. They had scoured Blacksville and surrounding areas for small silver cars. A number of knock-and-talks at residences had turned up nothing. No one had heard word of any party out that way in early July. They had talked to Eric Finch and Dylan Conaway again—nothing. Berry was convinced Eric was hiding something, but the evidence proved otherwise.
They’d had several conversations with Colebank and Spurlock, going over and over the little information they did have. They still couldn’t be sure whose car it was, where it was taking Skylar, or why. Colebank and Spurlock both believed Shelia and Rachel were lying about something, stonewalling for some undetermined reason. Colebank was insistent they look harder at the two teens.
But no one had any idea why the girls would lie. Mary and Dave assured police they wouldn’t. But the investigators had several conversations about why the teens might be lying—and always came back to square one. They were the same possibilities enshrined in so many rumors: Skylar got drunk and hit her head when she fell, she overdosed, or she ran away with a boy. Maybe it was speculation—but maybe the rumors were a version of the truth.
Asking the question, “What if that was Shelia’s car?” led the conversations right back to the same set of fruitless speculations.
Finally, Colebank filed for warrants, asking a local magistrate to find probable cause to search the persons and homes of both teens. She took them down to the magistrate on September 6 and he signed them immediately. The warrants included the power to seize any and all devices used to transmit vocal or electronic signals.
Later that same morning, Colebank received Shelia’s cell records from the phone company. In particular, they revealed Shelia made or received 5,215 phone calls or texts during six days, from July 4 to 10. As Colebank glanced through the pages and did the math, she noticed that was the average number of calls and texts going in and coming out of Shelia’s phone throughout the entire summer. Colebank couldn’t believe how much that girl was on her phone. She couldn’t wait to begin digging through the hundreds of pages of records, and had a gut feeling they would lead her straight to Skylar.
She hadn’t requested Rachel’s records yet because all the teens she interviewed said Skylar was really close to Shelia, but not so much Rachel.
On Friday, September 7, the first warrants on individuals in the case were served on Shelia and Rachel. The girls weren’t suspects, but law enforcement wanted to find out what they were hiding.
Gaskins and Berry were in one car; Colebank and Spurlock were in another. The four officers entered UHS, went to the office, and introduced themselves. Together they should have presented a formidable front to anyone there since they represented all three levels of law enforcement: city, state, and federal.
However, even after Assistant Principal Cheesebrough, arguably the primary student liaison at UHS and the “face” of the administration, learned why the investigators were there, he was skeptical. “Those girls are good. Their skirts are too short sometimes, but they don’t do anything wrong,” he said.
Colebank wasn’t impressed. Neither, it turned out, were the other three officers. Gaskins said it was odd, the cold welcome they received at the high school. The sense of being unwelcome extended beyond the administration, they later discovered. “It felt like we were a nuisance to the teachers,” he later said.
The officers asked to talk to both girls. Cheesebrough pulled Rachel and Shelia out of class and led them back to the office. Gaskins remembered the moment well.
“They just had a big smile on their face like they had not a single worry in the world, life was good,” he said, “then they see us, and their faces fell. Like, ‘Ugh, we have to deal with you guys again?’”
Gaskins and Spurlock escorted Rachel to one room while Berry and Colebank took Shelia to a separate room. Each girl was shown the warrant, and a phone and a bag of marijuana were discovered in Shelia’s purse.
“Shelia immediately began crying, wanting us to throw it away,” Berry said. “‘Throw away the marijuana! Get rid of it!’”
Since recreational drug use was hardly a priority at that moment, Colebank turned it over to Cheesebrough.
“Here’s your little angel’s weed,” she said, tossing him the bag. “You deal with it.”
They also confiscated Rachel’s cell phone, after she agreed to give them the password. It was apparent she didn’t want to relinquish her phone. Gaskins knew a bad attitude when he saw one.
“Look Rachel,” he said quietly, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.’”
Rachel grew silent and didn’t say another word.
Back outside, Berry was the first to speak. “I’d bet a pizza their cell phones are golden.”
The four officers would continue their search for the girls’ secrets at their homes.
“Chris and I will take Rachel’s place,” a somber Gaskins said. Of the four, Gaskins was the most reserved. “We know how much you want to search Shelia’s home, Jessie.”
When Colebank saw the small smile on Gaskins’ face, her own split into a wide grin. Colebank had grown to especially dislike Shelia. She and Spurlock got into her cruiser.
“It’s go time!” Berry said as Gaskins pulled away from the curb. He couldn’t wait to see what they would find at the Shoaf house.
Patricia Shoaf’s modest residence sits in a tidy upscale housing development in the Pierpont area. The property is almost bereft of trees, and an open expanse of lawn stretches behind the home Rachel shares with her mother. It’s a house many teens would love to live in.
Rachel wasn’t one of them. Ever since her parents’ divorce, Rachel wanted just one thing: to live with her father. Her relationship with her mother was filled with conflict and everyone knew it. A self-proclaimed Daddy’s girl, Rachel was not beyond acting out to spite her mother, which only made the situation worse. Word from observers was that Patricia could be equally difficult.
Many teens observed the mother-daughter trouble firsthand, both before and after Skylar disappeared. Like the night in late spring 2012, when Rachel was in a car with three other teens and her cell phone rang. “Hi, Mom, I’ll be home—” Her words were cut off by her mother’s screams at the other end
of the line. Everyone in the car could hear Patricia. “Mom, calm down! I told you, we’re almost there,” Rachel said, ending the call as quickly as she could.
“Psycho bitch!” she seethed, cramming her cell phone deep into her purse. “I so want to move in with my dad.”
“We actually felt sorry for Rachel,” one girl said later.
Liz said Patricia’s version of that night is somewhat different. Rachel claimed to have been at one of her Young Life meetings. The popular religious group known for its teen ministry has a branch in Morgantown, and Rachel was a devoted attendee.
The girls in the car only heard Rachel’s side of the story; Liz said Patricia was livid because Rachel wasn’t where she was supposed to be that night, and Patricia found out about it.
Either way, a little before eight that evening, right after Gaskins and Berry hauled away her electronic gadgets, Rachel tweeted that she was jealous of Shelia’s relationship with her mother, Tara. She sent the tweet from her mother’s computer, which the police left behind because Patricia needed it to work from home.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you picking on my daughter?” Tara asked Colebank and Spurlock when they showed up with the warrant. “She doesn’t know anything.”
According to Colebank, no sooner had the girls’ cell phones been seized at the high school than Tara bought her daughter another one. “Shelia had a new cell phone five minutes after we took hers,” Colebank said, “because she couldn’t live without one.”
Rachel thought that was terrific. She tweeted, sooo jealous of the relationship @_sheliiaa and her mom have. At the same time, it let Rachel get in a little dig at her own mother. Just four minutes later, Shelia retweeted, adding we’re buds :).
In fact, all three girls—Skylar, Rachel, and Shelia—liked going to Shelia’s house best. Tara was laid back and permissive; she simply let the girls do whatever they wanted.
Before Tara married Jim, she never could have afforded such an indulgence as a new cell phone. With finances tight, Tara had to choose luxuries carefully. Life in Blacksville had been hard for mother and daughter until Jim came into the picture, bringing marriage and a move to Morgantown. Although Shelia also wanted to move to be near her best friend Skylar, going from financial insecurity in a rural area to relative luxury in an urban setting was a big change for them.
Soon after the searches, both girls began a pattern of skipping school and getting into various kinds of trouble. Their behavior forced school officials to repeatedly call the girls’ parents. No doubt Cheesebrough then wondered what had happened to cause those behavioral changes. It’s difficult to know if he attributed them to Skylar’s disappearance, or just “normal” teenage angst, because UHS administration has had a gag order in place almost since school resumed in 2012.
twenty-seven
And Tara Makes Three . . .
One Saturday in September Colebank stopped by the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department to say hello to her fiancé when she ran into another deputy.
“What’re you up to, Tim?” Colebank said.
Deputy Hunn, known for his solid, stocky physique, had just finished his workout in the department’s gym and said he was heading home. “How about you, Jess?”
“Still trying to find Skylar. Only problem is, she hasn’t come back on the radar. Phone records told us nothing except she hasn’t been using her phone,” Colebank said. “I keep hoping someone will see her, but so far we’ve got squat.”
Hunn suggested she focus more on his end of the county, out in Blacksville. That was all the encouragement Colebank needed.
“You’re right,” she said. “Screw it. Let’s get some four-wheelers.”
On their next day off, Hunn and Colebank teamed up with Trooper Berry. Having grown up in the Blacksville area, he had gone to school with Hunn. The trio turned onto Route 7 and headed west. When they got to Blacksville, the three off-duty officers got on their four-wheelers and took off. Together they covered every path and trail they could find. They rode all over the one-lane back roads and even on the golf course behind Clay-Battelle High School, until it was too dark to see. They continued searching throughout the month of September, riding for hours on end. Still they had nothing. They knew it was hopeless.
Skylar was the type of friend who kept in touch with the people she loved, people like Daniel, Shelia, and Rachel. She also posted or tweeted nonstop, so no way was she going to cut off all her social media ties. Even if she’d run away because she was angry at her parents—and there was no evidence to support that idea—Colebank knew Skylar would have reached out to someone.
Except she didn’t. No one had heard one word from the missing girl.
“Skylar would’ve called someone,” Colebank said later. “She wouldn’t let all these people who love her worry about her. That’s who she was.” Although none of the law enforcement officers ever met her, they felt like they knew her. Through the pages of her diary the appealing teen had made an impact. Across all departments—from the young FBI agent to the troopers to the detectives and veteran cops—every officer working the case felt that Skylar had touched his, or her, heart.
Even though they suspected Skylar was dead, they weren’t giving up. They would keep searching until they found her, even if it was only her remains. The officers promised Mary and Dave—and each another—they wouldn’t stop looking until they brought Skylar home.
Behind the scenes, both girls were finding it more difficult to keep up pretenses. In September, Rachel moved in with Rusty to give mother and daughter a much needed break.
Given the way Rachel was behaving, Patricia felt like she was running out of options. Not long after Rachel went to stay with her father, Liz picked her up from Rusty’s place. Rachel didn’t know her mother had staged the lunch date because she was so worried about Rachel.
“I think she knows something about that night, about Skylar, but she won’t tell me,” Patricia told Liz. “You’re so close to her and she thinks the world of you. See if she’ll open up.”
Liz chose Rachel’s favorite restaurant and while they nibbled on nacho chips, she tried to get Rachel to talk. At first it was difficult. Rachel wouldn’t say a word. Then Rachel mentioned Tara. “I had to check with Tara—”
Liz cut her off. “What do you mean you had to check with Tara? She’s not your mother, Rachel. You don’t need to check with her, or in with her, about anything!” Rachel glanced away, silent.
“Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? What really happened that night? What are you not saying?”
Liz could not stop thinking about Skylar. She was terrified of what had befallen the missing teen. She didn’t think Rachel would deliberately harm Skylar, but she knew the girls—especially Shelia and Skylar—had been arguing a lot. Patricia had told her about the screaming that had gone on the previous August, and how angry the two girls had been.
Rachel took a sip of her soda.
Liz pressed further. “Did you girls get in a fight?”
Rachel nodded.
“I’m sure when you picked her up, you were in the front seat. Let me guess. Skylar was pissed she had to get in the back seat, and you got to sit with Shelia, right?”
Rachel, silent, nodded again.
“She was jealous of you, wasn’t she?”
Rachel only nodded.
Liz sensed Rachel was weakening. “That’s why she and Shelia were constantly at each other, isn’t it?”
Rachel’s head bobbed faster.
To Liz it felt like Rachel wanted her to guess what happened. “Did something go wrong?”
This time Rachel’s head went even faster, her nod an emphatic yes.
“You girls were out in Blacksville, weren’t you?”
That’s when Rachel shut down. She looked like she might cry. Liz tried to get Rachel to tell her what went wrong the night Skylar disappeared, not taking her eyes off of Rachel’s for a second. She knew if Rachel’s eyes darted around she was lying.
; “Look, I know you were in Blacksville that night,” Liz felt her temper rising. “Why? Why are you lying to me? What happened to Skylar?”
“We got into a fight and she ran . . . Skylar ran away . . . into the woods.”
It wasn’t the whole story, but it was more than the police had heard. When Liz and Rachel left the restaurant two hours later, both their faces were red and splotchy, and wet with newly shed tears. Liz was convinced Rachel knew what happened to Skylar—she was just too terrified to say.
After Liz recounted her conversation with Rachel, she and Patricia brainstormed, trying to come up with answers. They wanted to understand why Shelia and her mother had so much control over Rachel. So many times since July, Rachel had openly defied Patricia to be with Shelia, often with Tara’s assistance. Patricia didn’t get it, and the more she and Liz thought about it, the less they liked it.
The two women would have been even angrier if they knew what Crissy Swanson knew. Crissy’s parents live in Core, a little community just outside of Morgantown on the way to Blacksville. There is a medical clinic and a post office, but not much else.
While Liz and Patricia were busy wondering about Tara that September, so were the Swansons. Crissy’s mother was Tara’s best friend as well as a distant relative. After Skylar disappeared, Tara seemed to take solace in her visits to the Swanson house. Crissy said it seemed like she needed someone to confide in, and Tara would often tell Crissy’s mom details about the case, who in turn would tell Crissy.
Pretty Little Killers Page 16