Pretty Little Killers

by Berry, Daleen, Fuller, Geoffrey C.

  The girls spoke in unison. “Right.”

  Not long after, Shelia and Rachel changed their story again. “We went out to the Brave bridge to smoke pot and Skylar ran off in the woods. We looked for her for hours. We couldn’t find her and had to leave.”

  That’s when the girls became official suspects. At the time, investigators believed the two teenage girls were probably terrified to tell the adults the truth: Skylar had died from an accidental overdose.

  They had no idea the truth involved murder.

  State and federal officers agreed: it was time for a polygraph. The test would help convince one of the girls to reveal the truth. Berry and Gaskins thought it would be Rachel.

  Crissy wasn’t the only one thinking about the FBI. So were Jessica Colebank and Chris Berry. It happened the same day Rachel skipped out on her polygraph exam. Both girls were scheduled to take their exams at the WVSP detachment in mid-December.

  Tara drove Shelia to the detachment for her exam and Shelia’s lawyer, Mike Benninger, met them there. He and John Angotti, Rachel’s attorney, had already talked with their teenage clients and their parents. 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, Rachel had asked Shelia where she would take the exam.

  SHELIA:police station probably gonna fail cause of nerves no big fucking deal

  RACHEL:As long as you don’t fail cause you’re lying. You can ask to take it again because you were nervous the first time

  SHELIA:oh well im definitely not scared about lying but its not like theyd know the difference lol

  She should have been scared. Shelia did “fail” the polygraph. Twice. At least inasmuch as anyone can fail. The test is really scored on a question-by-question basis. The outcome 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. She was nervous and jittery while getting ready 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. But it did no good. As they drove across the Pleasant Street bridge, Rachel jumped from the moving 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, 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 knew she would be safe there.

  When Berry and Gaskins heard what happened, they suspected Rachel’s actions were those of someone with a guilty conscience. They began making calls and looking at all the places they thought she might be. They desperately wanted to go after her and were trying to determine if she met the status of a runaway.

  Colebank told Berry that Tara was coming to see her after work to get Shelia’s electronics back, so she wouldn’t be able to sit in on Rachel’s polygraph exam at the detachment like she planned.

  Instead Colebank went home to get her son from the bus after her shift ended at four, and then returned to the station to wait for Tara. She didn’t learn until Berry showed up that Rachel skipped out on her polygraph.

  “Yeah, Rachel didn’t show,” Berry said when he dropped by. “Maybe Tara can tell us where she is.”

  “Good, let’s see what Tara knows,” Colebank said.

  The city officer had all of Shelia’s electronics ready when Tara arrived, but she was determined to get as much information as she could before she released them. “By the way, you know Rachel’s missing, right?”

  “No she’s not. Rachel’s down in the car with Shelia,” Tara said.

  “What’s she doing with her?” Colebank said. Her eyes met Berry’s. “She’s supposed to take her polygraph.”

  “Well, she’s hanging out with Shelia now.”

  “We need to take her over to the State Police detachment before they list her as a runaway.”

  “Her dad knows she’s with me.”

  Colebank was pissed. So was Berry. They both believed the more the two teens were together, the less chance they had of finding Skylar. They also knew they couldn’t question either girl without their attorney present.

  That’s when Colebank realized: Tara doesn’t have an attorney. I can question her.

  “Tara, why are you helping them lie?”

  “I have nothing to do with what these girls are doing,” Tara said.

  “Christmas is coming up. How would you feel if your child was missing at Christmas? You need to end this.”

  “Me? I told you they don’t know anything.”

  “You need to try and appeal to them as a mother. Step up and if they did something, we can deal with it.” As a mother herself, Colebank thought this approach was worth a try. “I want Skylar brought home. So does everybody else.”

  “We do too!” Tara said. Colebank believed her distress was genuine. The strain showed on her face as it increasingly had for the last few months. She wasn’t yet sure why Tara was so worn down. Was it from the pressure to learn something—or to hide something?

  “How can you do this?” Tara continued. “You guys are ruining their lives. They’re getting harassed and picked on at school. All their friends are accusing them. The whole town’s accusing them. They don’t know anything.”

  That’s when Colebank snapped. She was tired of how Tara coddled Shelia. She had seen enough of Shelia’s arrogance and Tara’s constant defensiveness and accusations. Whenever she or Spurlock got close to something, either Tara or Benninger would shut down the interview.

  “You are her tool and she is using you to hide from us,” Colebank said. “These girls know exactly where Skylar is. You are an idiot if you have not seen that by now, after all the evidence you know we have.”

  While Colebank was dealing with Tara, Berry texted Gaskins, asking if they could hold Rachel and take her to the detachment. He was waiting for a reply when the confrontation occurred.

  As Shelia’s parent, Tara had been present for many of the interviews and had spoken to Colebank and Spurlock. They pointed out inconsistencies and small changes in the story. Tara refused to listen, refused to see the obvious.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Tara said.

  “Well, you need to open your eyes and believe it because those girls did something to her and know exactly where she is. She is dead,” Colebank said. “Wherever she is, she is dead, and they know where she’s at. You need to end this for Dave and Mary’s family.”

  Tara began crying and left the building.

  “Like daughter, like mother,” Colebank said to Berry.

  They wanted nothing more than to follow Tara out and yank Rachel from the car. Make the truant teen wait there until her parents showed up to take her home. But they couldn’t. The minute Tara told Colebank and Berry that Rusty knew Rachel was with her, they couldn’t do a thing. It didn’t take Colebank long to figure out her heated discussion with Tara had made her the first law enforcement casualty of the investigation. She realized it the next time she called Gaskins and Berry to ask what their day’s agenda included—and no one called her back.

  Whoever Josie Snyder was, she had very good sources. Even the police thought so. They followed Josie’s online harassment of Rachel and Shelia. Trooper Berry felt certain she knew something about the case. He tried unsuccessfully to get a warrant to learn her identity, prompting Josie to go dark for a while.

  Then after nothing but stony silence since November 21, Josie cam
e alive the evening of December 16 with a series of colorful tweets. They were addressed to Mia Barr, but everyone familiar with the case knew they were really subtweets 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. Of course that really meant Josie had no clue that Rachel had run to Shelia, not away from her.

  thirty-two

  About a Girl’s Car

  On a regular basis all four officers—Colebank, Spurlock, Gaskins, and Berry—would gather around and watch the surveillance video again and again. After Colebank was “excommunicated,” as she jokingly calls it, the male officers continued the practice. One day they blocked out half a shift and huddled around a large-screen computer monitor. Over and over, they watched the surveillance video that showed Skylar sneaking out her bedroom window. They played it from the beginning, in slow motion. They played it backward just as slowly. They looked at every single frame, trying to figure out what they had missed. Because surely there was something there—something so obvious they couldn’t see it.

  Over the course of the next several weeks, the officers continued watching the video, looking for that tiny clue that would tell them whose car Skylar got into that night. One morning, Spurlock, Gaskins, and Berry turned on the video at 8:00 A.M. when their shift began and then studied different car makes and models for hours online.

  “We were so burned out, we actually went to the sergeant’s office where he has a bigger screen, to blow up a screen shot,” Berry said. “The coffee didn’t taste good anymore.”

  The three men were so specific in their search for details, they looked at the gas caps, the back glass in the cars—everything they could think of to try to find a match to the car in the video. By ten that night, the men began to argue over their theories and the minor differences in vehicle models they found online.

  “Let’s stop right here,” Spurlock said. “Let’s go home, take a night, sleep on it, and start out fresh tomorrow.”

  “Okay, sounds good to me,” Berry said. Gaskins agreed and the three men headed home.

  Chris and Alexis Berry had been married for four years when he was reassigned to the Morgantown Detachment. Alexis had given up her dream of going to medical school to become Chris’ wife, because she was crazy about him. But his work on Skylar’s case began to take a huge toll on their marriage.

  Berry spent more hours at the office than he ever had before. That wouldn’t have been as hard on Alexis if Berry hadn’t also brought his work home with him. Many times, he wouldn’t get home until midnight—and yet she’d still wake up to find him texting. Again. It was the same thing every night. At first she didn’t believe him when he told her who he was texting.

  “Who are you texting at two A.M.?” Alexis asked.

  “Gaskins,” Berry said.

  “Sure you are.”

  But then he’d show her his phone, and Alexis saw he was telling the truth. She couldn’t stop worrying, though. He looked horrible. She knew Spurlock and Gaskins were equally rundown, because she’d become acquainted with the women in their lives, too.

  That’s how Alexis knew she wasn’t the only worried wife. The men were exhausted—and it showed. They had dark circles under their eyes. They were eating on the fly, when they bothered to eat at all, so they all lost weight.

  “When we work, we work,” Berry would often tell her.

  That night—the night they all worked so long the coffee didn’t even taste good anymore—was awful. Berry couldn’t stop thinking about the case, mulling it over in his mind as he drove home. He knew Alexis was probably going to be “mad as a wet hornet” when he arrived. He was right.

  “It was an awful night,” Alexis agreed.

  Then inspiration hit him like an early fall frost.

  “It just clicked,” Berry said. He’d been watching the video all day long, looking at every possible make and model of car and—nothing. But the minute he sat down with his wife, it hit him: Shelia told police she picked Skylar up and later dropped her off at the end of the street, but they had never seen Shelia pick Skylar up the first time. Damn, he thought. Colebank was right all along.

  He didn’t waste a second. He called Gaskins and then added Spurlock so they were all on a three-way phone call.

  Gaskins was a few miles away, pacing in his kitchen. Even from upstairs, his fiancée Kelly Wilkes could hear Gaskins talking to himself. They usually only had a few hours each evening to spend together. At one time, that had been because of Kelly’s schedule. She managed a fast-food chain and was going to college at night. But ever since Gaskins got this case they’d hardly seen each other.

  So their relationship suffered, too. At first, Kelly expected Gaskins home for dinner a little late. Then she realized if she waited for him, dinner would be burnt to a crisp.

  “Well, I’ll see you when I see you,” she finally learned to say. She ate alone many nights, watching episodes of Law & Order.

  At other times Kelly tried to call Gaskins but got no reply. “He might not answer me for a couple of hours and I’d be worried he’d be out there dead,” she said.

  Like Alexis, she was frustrated by her man’s constant texting—especially when they did sit down to a meal together. “Get off there,” Kelly would tell Gaskins. “Dinner’s gonna get cold.”

  Upstairs in bed, Kelly could hear Gaskins below, still talking to himself as he paced around the living room. She knew he was obsessed by the case and figured by the time he’d solved it, the floor covering would be worn out.

  Oblivious to Kelly’s worry and only able to think about the missing girl, Gaskins continued to pace, trying to figure out what he’d missed. He knew if he thought long and hard enough, retracing every step of their investigation, replaying the entire case from start to finish, he could find the answer. For the next hour or two, that’s what he did. He remembered how everyone believed at the outset that Skylar left with a boy, or because of a boy—either a random stranger she met online or in the Wendy’s drive-through lane where she worked, or a boy she’d been sneaking around to see, without her parents’ knowledge.

  Pretty early on, they ruled out the theory Skylar left with a stranger. That left only boys she knew, so they had looked at Dylan Conaway, at Eric Finch, at Floyd Pancoast, at Dylan’s cousin, Kevin Willard, at . . . so many boys Gaskins couldn’t remember all their names. There was only one problem: none of those boys drove a car like the one in the video and, in fact, no one could remember seeing Skylar with a boy, or hearing her express interest in a boy—any boy. So no, it hadn’t been a boy at all.

  Gaskins thought back to Shelia and Rachel, to how they had picked up Skylar and then dropped her off—supposedly at the end of the street. It was Shelia who had given the police names of other boys they might want to look at. But those leads were dead. They went nowhere. There hadn’t been a party at the Conaway home, either, or anywhere else. For once, it seemed like the teens were telling the truth, when they said there had been no parties in Blacksville that night.

  He believed someone out there knew something, but they were just too scared to talk. Then again, there was the troubling fact that Skylar wasn’t seen coming home on camera. That took Gaskins back to square one, to Shelia and Rachel, and he realized there was only one answer left: it was Shelia’s car. Nothing else added up.

  Walking the floor, ruminating on all he knew, Gaskins was methodically working out the kinks
of the case when Berry’s call came through.

  “That has to be Shelia’s car!” Berry was practically yelling. “The girls are definitely lying!”

  The next day at work, everyone involved celebrated the first major crack in the stone wall Shelia and Rachel had erected. They did so after gathering around the video again—this time backing it up to 11:00 P.M., the time Shelia said she and Rachel picked up Skylar.

  Sure enough, no one saw anything like that on the video—because no car showed up to get Skylar then. The vehicle they had been searching for so long and hard, had been there the entire time, just like Colebank originally suspected. It was a silver Toyota Camry—and it didn’t pick up Skylar until 12:31 A.M.

  thirty-three

  Contents under Pressure

  Berry knew he was taking a chance. The idea might come to nothing, but it was worth a try. He knocked on the door of the Neeses’ apartment, trooper hat in hand.

  Dave answered. “Come on in, Chris.”

  Berry could tell Dave was down. Without Skylar, Thanksgiving had been rough for the Neeses and as Christmas drew near, both of them had grown increasingly sad and weary. Berry wondered how much more they could take.

  “Dave.” Berry nodded as Dave stepped back. “I have an idea.”

  Mary was sitting on the couch, staring at the TV. Dave sat down beside her. Berry stood, shifting from foot to foot.

  “Time to shake some trees,” Berry said.

  “See what falls out,” Dave replied, sitting forward on the edge of the couch. He liked the idea already.

  Berry had told him before that “shaking trees” often results in a big break in an investigation. When leads dry up, go out and do a “knock and talk”—the police equivalent of a cold sales call. Start asking questions and make yourself as much of a nuisance as possible, then sit back and see what happens. Berry knew Shelia and Rachel were hiding something, but he hadn’t been able to make them talk yet. He felt like they were beating him. Berry couldn’t take that, because Berry hated to lose.