Mary was momentarily relieved. She was more concerned about the girls sneaking around than the thought of some random stranger snatching Skylar off the street. That kind of scenario seemed far-fetched in their tiny town.
“Why do you girls continue to sneak out when we’ve told you just come to us when you want to do something?” Mary scolded. “You don’t need to do this sneaking stuff.” Mary didn’t know how upset she was until she realized she’d lit her cigarette inside the kitchen, a strict violation of their lease. She opened the sliding door and stepped out on the balcony. “We can’t find Skylar anywhere.”
“I heard. Do you know what happened yet?”
“We don’t know.”
At that moment Tara, Shelia’s mother, got on the line.
“Mary, what’s going on?” Tara asked.2
“I don’t know. We can’t find her. Wendy’s called and she hasn’t showed up at work.” At that moment, worry seized Mary Neese’s heart. Somehow, just by saying the words “we can’t find her,” Mary truly realized that Skylar was missing.
“Do you want us to come over?”
“Yes, I do.”
***
When Shelia and Tara arrived, they accompanied Mary as she went door to door down one side of Crawford Avenue, asking if anyone had seen her daughter. Dave waited for Officer Bob McCauley, of the Star City police, to respond to the 911 call. McCauley arrived at 4:41, and the two of them covered the other side of Crawford. No one had seen a missing sixteen-year-old girl.
Contrary to the rumors that Shelia was crying that day, she did not cry during this search. Dave described her face as impassive and expressionless, her walk slightly wooden. At the time, Mary thought it was because Shelia was so upset, because she was scared. Shelia’s mother, Tara, had cried when she first got to the apartment, but Shelia hadn’t.
After the door-to-door search proved fruitless, the five of them walked back to the apartment. That’s when Mary had an idea: the surveillance video. She was surprised the police hadn’t already checked it. Security cameras had been installed around the small apartment building, primarily to capture shots of people trying to break in. Cameras were also trained on the inside hallways of both floors. Jim Gaston, the landlord, could access the security tapes. Dave called him, and Gaston said he’d be right over.
An unmarked door close to the Neeses’ apartment led to Gaston’s small video room, the size of a walk-in closet. The landlord sat at the computer controls, and the six of them—Dave, Mary, Tara, Shelia, and Officer McCauley—crowded around to watch the large monitor. Jim chose the view from the side of the apartment where Skylar’s room was located. The camera faced the complex’s parking lot, a small side street, and another apartment building across the way. Jim rewound the tape and let it play forward at double speed.
“Wait, wait,” Dave said when he thought he’d seen something. “Back it up.”
Jim rewound the tape and the six of them saw part of Skylar’s head blur past. Then nothing for a few seconds, although Dave noticed the shadowy image of a car in the background of the video. The time signature on the video read 12:31.
He tapped the screen. “You picked her up at eleven, Shelia?”
Shelia studied the image. “Yes.”
Suddenly, Skylar’s head emerged, and she was seen walking briskly toward a gray car. She opened the back door and climbed into the backseat. There was no sign of a struggle. No indication the people inside were strangers. No clue of any foul play whatsoever. Then the car drove off and the scene was empty again.
It was as if they watched Skylar vanish, right before their very eyes. It was all Mary and Dave could do to keep from reaching out and trying to pull their precious daughter back—back into the picture, back into their lives.
For several long seconds, silence filled the small room. Finally, Jim spoke up. “I think that looks like an SUV,” he said. On the video, the car had been blurry and indistinct. Officer McCauley agreed it could be an SUV. Shelia said nothing.
Dave asked her if she knew anyone with a similar vehicle, but Shelia said she didn’t.
“Do you know if any of Skylar’s friends have cars like this?”
“No,” Shelia said, shaking her head back and forth.
McCauley took Shelia’s statement that evening, so her word became the official story. His handwritten notes were the first recorded in the case. Shelia told McCauley she and Rachel picked Skylar up at 11:00 p.m. and dropped her off at the end of the street about 11:45. That meant, according to Shelia, that she and Rachel were home and in bed by midnight. That was possible, given that the three teens lived so close together. Everyone watching the video that night believed the vehicle on the video had to be someone else’s. It couldn’t be Shelia’s, because she drove a sporty silver Toyota Corolla—the one her stepfather had purchased for Tara before they got married.
That left only one logical explanation—but it was the last one that Mary and Dave wanted to hear. After her friends dropped her off, Skylar had left in a second car. But who could she possibly have left with?
People believed this theory for months; it became the basis for a general timeline of Skylar’s disappearance:
11:00 p.m.: Skylar sneaks out of the house to joyride with her friends.
11:45 p.m.: Skylar’s friends drop her off at the end of her road to avoid waking her parents.
11:45 p.m.–12:30 a.m.: Skylar’s activity is undetermined.
12:31 a.m.: Skylar is seen getting into the backseat of an unidentified gray SUV.
For almost two years, people who have seen the video replayed online at various news sites have asked the same question: Why did no one recognize Shelia’s car as the one in the video? More important, why did no one realize that Skylar was never seen leaving the first time, with Shelia and Rachel? Why did it take trained law enforcement as long as it did to come to these same conclusions?
These questions seem obvious now, but at the time no one wanted to believe that Skylar’s best friend would lie about the timing, especially not Mary and Dave. That soon after Skylar’s disappearance, Shelia was still simply a trusted teenager.
No one suspected the manipulative liar she would turn out to be.
***
That first weekend was a blur for Mary and Dave. Watching Skylar vanish on videotape had been harder than they realized. Worry, hope, fear, and despair filled the atmosphere of the apartment. They both felt the urge to do something, anything, to find their only daughter. At the same time, they felt too trapped and helpless to come up with an effective course of action. All they could do was cling to what the Star City police told every parent of a missing child. Trying to reassure Mary and Dave, the police told them not to worry because Skylar had probably gone on some kind of crazy summer getaway.
Even though they knew Skylar would never be that irresponsible, Mary and Dave tried to talk themselves into believing she had. The only alternatives were too grim. “They said teenagers do this,” Mary said later, referring to what the Star City Police had told her initially. “They said we should give it the weekend.”
They almost convinced themselves that Skylar would be home Sunday night. Almost. At the end of the weekend, she would magically appear. Her reckless, impromptu beach visit would be over, and their beloved daughter would be all apologies.
The weekend was torture for Mary and Dave. They sat. They waited. They wondered when they would hear Skylar’s ornery laugh. See her mischievous smile. They barely noticed the endless parade of friends and relatives that weekend. Through it all, every time someone knocked, every time the door opened, Dave would think, God! It’s her. It’s her. It’s her.
But it never was.
Chapter 8
Rumor and Silence
From the moment they knew Skylar was gone, the nearby sound of police sirens set Mary and Dave’s nerves on edge. Was an officer coming to tell them Skylar was home? Or were the sirens conveying something worse?
Actually, the shrill sounds h
ad nothing to do with Skylar. One fire whistle that ripped through the night, waking them up, went off because a couch was in flames. Another West Virginia University student igniting another couch. As one popular T-shirt said, “WVU: Where greatness is learned and couches are burned.”
Skylar had planned to attend WVU, Morgantown’s great equalizer. Although many residents, like Mary and Dave, didn’t have college degrees, many others jumped at the chance for their child to receive an education and have a better life. West Virginia PROMISE scholarships provided free tuition for hard workers and overachievers like Skylar. The money helped them cross the line from blue-collar to white-collar status.
The population of greater Morgantown swells to almost 100,000 when class is in session, but shrinks by half when students leave in the summer months. The town is well-to-do, but with coal mining on the wane in the outlying communities—with names like Core, Osage, and Blacksville—life can be hard. The university boasts faculty and students from around the world, a diverse population that the families who have lived in these mountains for generations mostly succeed in ignoring. The two cultures mix to some degree, but they often clash at the two largest high schools, Morgantown High and University High, where the children of university folks go to school with the children of townspeople.
Early on, before most adults even knew there was a missing girl named Skylar, the UHS students were abuzz with speculation. While Mary and Dave and their immediate circle worried and searched around the clock, most of Morgantown remained in the dark.
Not so the town’s teenagers. In fact, those teens were coming to conclusions that the adult world wouldn’t reach for months.
***
Those first few days were filled with worry, which seemed to have little effect on two people: Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf. This was odd, given that they had been Skylar’s very best friends. In fact, UHS students said the trio had been inseparable in their freshman and sophomore years. Where you saw one, you usually saw all three.
The cliquish trio always turned heads when they passed other students in the University High School hallways. Slender and sharp-tongued, Shelia had been popular at her old school, Clay-Battelle. But at UHS, Shelia was an unknown. Except for Skylar, all of her childhood friends lived in Blacksville. When Shelia didn’t become popular at UHS, she used her budding sexuality to make friends and influence people. Shelia was the least liked of the three.
Everyone who heard Rachel sing assumed she would end up on Broadway. Rachel was known for being a songbird, and for landing lead roles in the school’s drama productions. Rachel was the most talented of the three. Unlike Shelia, Rachel was surrounded by her childhood friends, many of whom also came from Saint Francis. Unlike Skylar, Rachel had money, her parents considered more white-collar than blue-collar workers. That distinction automatically made Rachel the most popular of the three.
Finally, there was the five-foot-two blossoming environmentalist and champion of the underdog. The girl who smiled all the time, aced every exam, did her friends’ homework, and insisted she was going to law school. That, of course, was Skylar. A likable honors student, she was the smartest of the three.
During those two years, Skylar must have assumed that the social payoff was worth the occasional drama. She either wasn’t bothered by the shifting alliances and two-on-one disputes that occur between three close friends or she tolerated the problems for the sake of having fun and partying. She assumed whatever problem arose could be smoothed over. That assumption was the worst mistake she ever made.
On Friday the 6th of July, while the Neeses were searching for their daughter, Rachel and her mother were sunning themselves on Cheat Lake, out in the suburbs. Patricia Shoaf, a full-time Comcast sales rep, wanted to spend some time together before Rachel left for two weeks at church camp. So mother, daughter, and a friend of Patricia’s who owned a boat spent the day sunbathing on the lake.
The light of Patricia’s life, Rachel was perhaps the best thing that had come of her marriage to Rachel’s father, James “Rusty” Shoaf. Patricia assumed Rachel’s stunning looks and talent would take her far in life.
As they sunbathed, Patricia may have wondered about the four-inch cut along Rachel’s lower right leg, close to her ankle. She may have questioned Rachel’s explanation that she’d gotten it earlier, while boarding the boat. Perhaps Patricia noticed that the cut looked fresh and angry, like it would leave behind a nasty scar.
***
On Saturday, Shelia and her mother, Tara, helped the Neeses canvass door to door again. They walked the rail-trail down by the river, an old railroad track that had been converted into a hiking trail. Unlike the day before, Shelia was now as tearful as Tara, and they both hugged Mary repeatedly. Tara’s heart went out to Mary and Dave; their only daughter was missing. She could only imagine how she’d feel if Shelia was the one who had disappeared. Mother and daughter promised they would be back the next day and every day thereafter for as long as it took.
The next time Shelia stopped by the Neeses’, she was alone. She asked Mary if she could sit in Skylar’s bedroom. Mary agreed, but a few minutes later, when she heard Shelia sobbing, she hurried down the hallway to see what had happened. Shelia was lying on Skylar’s bed, hugging a pillow to her chest. Huge sobs tore through her. Mary, feeling sorry for Shelia, lay down beside her and rubbed her arm, just as if it was her own daughter in distress.
***
In the days that followed, Shelia appeared to grieve for her missing friend. She spent hours with the Neeses trying to help find Skylar. But when Mary and Dave looked back on events, they saw her sadness as feigned. Shelia was the picture of sorrow in real time, but her activity in cyberspace revealed that not all was as it seemed. Saturday night at 11:45 she tweeted, tired of losing sleep over this. The meaning of this was unclear. One can only guess that Shelia’s loss of sleep had to do with the disappearance of her “bestie.”
An hour and a half later, at 1:24, she posted another mystifying tweet: when you text me and my stomach drops to my ass <. The < symbol indicated that she did not like what she felt. Was Shelia talking to someone with whom she shared some important knowledge, perhaps a secret discussed only in texts? Most of Rachel’s tweets were successfully scrubbed from the Web in the spring of 2013, but it’s likely she was the one who shared Shelia’s secret.
The most intriguing aspect of Shelia’s Twitter traffic that weekend was not what she said, but what she didn’t say. Why wasn’t Shelia reaching out to Skylar via Twitter? Why wasn’t she sending out tweets begging Sky to come home? Shelia’s silence was a huge departure from her usual blowing up of her Twitter feed, and what she didn’t know was that some people were starting to notice. She didn’t tweet to Skylar. She didn’t tweet about Skylar. Nothing.
Chapter 9
Officer Colebank Has Doubts
Officer Colebank never thought of Skylar as a runaway.
Jessica, as Mary and Dave referred to her, was the Star City Police Department’s lead investigator into Skylar’s disappearance. Initially, Bob McCauley had handled the case, but, though he had many years as a deputy sheriff, he now worked only part-time for Star City. This case involved a missing teenager, so it required a full-time investigator like Colebank. As soon as Colebank came back to work after two days off, McCauley handed off the case to her.
Around the station, Colebank was the department’s unofficial “detective” because she liked to dig deep when working her cases. Six years as a 911 dispatcher had helped motivate her to become a cop. Every time a call came in, she had longed to be on the other side of the radio.
Difficult cases like this one were her lifeblood. Colebank was the type of cop every small-town police chief loves: intelligent, dedicated, and hardworking. She also has an investigator’s keen ability to sniff out falsehood and an innate ability to read suspects’ behavior. Liars pissed her off, and she wasn’t afraid to let them know it.
When Colebank inherited Skylar’s case, she’d only been in law
enforcement for four years, but she had already become a thorough and aggressive investigator—partly because her father, on the force for thirty-five years, had helped train her when they worked together as Fairmont city cops. The Star City Police Department dealt with four or five missing-juvenile cases a month; Colebank handled the majority of them. Most had been runaways; up to this point, Skylar was the only missing juvenile on Colebank’s two-year watch who had never made it home.
Officer McCauley entered Skylar’s name and other vital data into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database July 6, the same night law enforcement first learned of her disappearance. Important details about missing juveniles go into this central crime database, the country’s largest, which the FBI makes available to facilitate the flow of information among police agencies.
The local police also called state police headquarters in Charleston twice, asking for an AMBER Alert to be issued. AMBER Alerts are only issued 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.
But Dave 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 important, 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 that Skylar would never have left home for good without taking “that damned dog.”
The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines Page 4
