The FBI didn’t see Skylar as a runaway either. While the federal agency does get involved in cases of missing juveniles, they only do so when sexual assault, physical abuse, abduction, or Internet crime is suspected. Skylar’s disappearance apparently had none of these elements.
However, the FBI had been involved in an investigation an hour south of Morgantown for a year before Skylar disappeared. Aliayah Lunsford, three, vanished from her Lewis County home in 2011. The massive search for Aliayah lasted for weeks. Sadly, the toddler was never found. If the FBI believed Skylar and the Lunsford case were connected, that could have been the reason they reacted so quickly in Skylar’s case.
Unless there was some other reason.
***
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 support. 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, including frequent hugs, and canvassed the rail-trail behind Sabraton, a suburb on the eastern side of Morgantown where sightings of Skylar had been reported. Sabraton was primarily a working-class neighborhood, with pockets of poverty here and there.
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 that Joanne was sure she’d picked the wrong place to meet. The parking lot was overflowing. When she went inside, 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 the 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 had learned.
In retrospect, Mary and Dave remembered that 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 that they had heard nothing from Skylar’s other best friend.
***
The first Monday after Skylar disappeared, when Shelia and Tara helped the Neeses search, mother and daughter both knew the police investigation was well under way. They were aware the FBI was involved. Officer Colebank had already been to Shelia’s house earlier that day, and Special Agent Morgan Spurlock had joined her. On that visit Colebank noticed something that struck her as strange.
“I will never forget this,” Colebank said, recalling her first encounter with the animated, watchful teenager. Everyone—Shelia, Tara, Shelia’s stepdad, Jim, 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 to watch the first televised newscast about Skylar’s disappearance. But the atmosphere still seemed less somber than Colebank thought it should be. Shelia told Colebank she just hoped Skylar would come home.
When Colebank asked if she had tried calling Skylar, she said Shelia replied, “It just makes me so sad to hear her voice mail, to hear her voice. I can’t call her number.”
That day, Colebank heard firsthand the story about how Shelia and Rachel had dropped Skylar off. She didn’t buy it. Why drop Skylar off two blocks away for fear of waking Mary and Dave when they had picked her up earlier right beside the apartment complex? When she asked Shelia that question, the teen said Skylar had been mad and insisted on being let out there.
“Why haven’t you done more online to try to locate her?” Colebank asked.
“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 at. 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 that Rachel and Shelia were lying. She just wasn’t sure what they were lying about.
Almost as an afterthought, Colebank asked Shelia why she hadn’t yet tweeted anything about Skylar. It was odd, she said, that Shelia hadn’t spread the word about Skylar’s disappearance. At that point Shelia started crying and mumbled something about missing her best friend. That’s when Tara shut the interview down.
A few hours later, two retweets went out from Shelia’s phone. A UHS girl had tweeted a pic of Skylar’s MISSING poster, and Shelia had sent it out for all her network to see. Another one had tweeted the same MISSING flyer and the message, Hey guys this girl goes to UHS please retweet. Shelia did.
Chapter 10
A Wild Child Runaway
Three days after Skylar disappeared, WBOY, one of three local TV stations, told viewers the local girl was missing. WAJR, a station with a popular call-in show, tweeted, Police looking for a missing Star City teen the same day, July 9.
One day later, the only newspaper in town, 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.
That same day, 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 didn’t believe Skylar was a runaway and doubted the teenager would surface in North Carolina. She’d been wrong before, though, and she fervently hoped she was wrong again 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 that 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 this was the case.
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 quite 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 that Colebank call Shelia, saying she wasn’t as close to Sk
ylar as Shelia was. Colebank wasn’t sure that was true but 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.
***
Despite the lack of support from the AMBER Alert program and the absence of widespread media coverage, the news about Skylar 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 Skylar at all. Mary and Dave said they had never even met in person. 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. That’s 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. But the wild child image that Rikki Woodall had disseminated appears to have been largely manufactured by Skylar herself.
Still, Skylar looked up to Shelia and Rachel—even though Shelia was known for being significantly more involved in the party scene and both she and Rachel were sexually active. As a result, many teens thought Skylar was hanging with the wrong crowd. Apparently, at various parties around Blacksville and Morgantown, Skylar was often seen sitting on a couch by herself, playing with her phone or her iPod. While people around her were 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 revealed 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 she was by far the smartest person in her social circle, the Skylar who was a rock for the friends who counted on her.
Chapter 11
Where’s Goody?
The day after Rikki’s Facebook post, Mary and Dave loaded their bags into Mary’s sister’s car and prepared to drive down to North Carolina. Carol Michaud, or Aunt Carol, as Skylar called her favorite aunt, had bonded with Skylar at Skylar’s birth. Carol and Skylar had spent so much time together since then, Carol looked at Skylar like the daughter she never had. Skylar was also like a sister to Carol’s son, Kyle, who was two years older. Carol would do whatever it took to bring Skylar home.
Mary and Dave’s own car wasn’t in the best shape, and they had already put a ton of money into it just to keep it on the road so it would get them to work each day. But a long trip like that was another matter. Dave was afraid it would break down and leave them stranded along the road. God knows they already had enough stress; the last thing they needed was more.
But they had to check on this last Skylar sighting, to see for themselves if the girl spotted on the boardwalk was their daughter. For all they knew, it was her. In just a few hours, they believed, they might see their baby again. Carol’s offer of her own car had been an answer to their prayers.
Meanwhile, the volunteers who spent hours every day hanging up posters began to wonder what was happening to the fliers. The posters kept disappearing. Was someone following them and taking the posters down? The MISSING posters had been removed at one local grocery store and at a nearby hair salon. Dave’s Aunt Joanne said it had happened repeatedly in Sabraton, too. No one could conclusively say why. Or who was behind it.
The same day Mary and Dave were getting ready to drive to North Carolina, someone who called herself “Pisces_Sun” posted on Websleuths, saying she had barely seen or read anything about the story. Websleuths is one of the largest online crime discussion sites, and Pisces_Sun’s post highlighted a disturbing reality: Me and my husband drove through Star City on our way to the store just now… I’m shocked that there aren’t missing posters for this girl up anywhere on the main drag! … Haven’t heard anyone mention it around town, either.
Even though Skylar had been missing for one week, few people outside of Mary and Dave’s immediate circles seemed to know about it. Skylar’s story illustrated a sad truth: traditional media can’t raise awareness as quickly as necessary in the case of a missing juvenile. That’s why the AMBER Alert was created—but the AMBER system didn’t consider Skylar to be in danger. As far as Mary and Dave were concerned, the AMBER Alert system was broken and needed to be fixed.
Once national news programs did pick up the story, the networks requested sound bites from the parents. Ultimately, all of them came from Dave because Mary couldn’t look into a camera without crying uncontrollably. With his close-cropped, gray-flecked hair, knitted eyebrows, and tight skepticism pulling at the left corner of his mouth, Dave reminded people of the actor John Goodman. In spite of his obvious concern and frustration, every news clip portrayed a man who was bearing all the disappointments with an admirable, soft-spoken dignity.
As the online momentum intensified, more people learned about Skylar’s disappearance. The mainstream media struggled to catch up to all the social media sites that had been covering the story since it began. By the time the Neeses were ready to leave for what they hoped would be a joyful reunion with Skylar, Colebank heard back from the Carolina Beach police. The girl who had been seen was, in fact, a runaway. She was not Skylar.
Mary and Dave could barely find the energy to unpack Carol’s car.
***
On Sunday, a week and a half after Skylar came up missing, Mary Neese awoke to the certainty she’d never see Skylar again. Her maternal instincts told her as much. Across town, her sister Carol had the same feeling. Carol dressed quickly and drove to Mary’s.
On the way, Skylar memories kept playing as if on a loop inside her mind. Carol had been there the day Skylar was born. She had driven Mary and Skylar home when Mary called her, insistent she leave the hospital a day early. Carol never forgot that day, or the black ice that the car containing her, Mary, and their two only children spun around on in the middle of a busy road. Carol had held it together long enough for her husband, Steve, to come and rescue them. The minute she got home, though, she burst into tears.
Like Mary, Carol cries easily. She does so even as she relates stories about Skylar: the time Skylar borrowed her earrings to wear to a middle-school dance, the times Skylar insisted she had to come clean Carol’s house when Carol was sick, and every time her favorite niece gave her another teapot.
Carol entered the Neeses’ apartment without bothering to knock. In north-central West Virginia, people leave their doors unlocked when they are home—and often when they’re not. It’s common for relatives and close friends to simply enter, especially if they are expected. Mary was on the couch, her eyes rimmed with red.
“Carol, she’s not coming back,” Mary said. “If she was coming back, she’d be back. I’m telling you now.”
“I know. I can feel it, too. Skylar wouldn’t do this.” Carol sank onto the couch beside her sister.
“You know what else?” Mary said. “Her period was going to start, and you know how she gets.”
Carol nodded. “Cramps so bad she has to go to bed for the entire first day. And she always has to have Goody with her.” Carol suddenly realized somethi
ng. “Mary! Where’s Goody?”
Mary shook her head. “In Skylar’s nightstand, same as always.”
“If Skylar had run away, she’d have taken Goody with her,” Carol insisted. The women were referring to a fuschia piece of cloth cut from Mary’s nightgown that Skylar had kept since she was a toddler. Any time she was sick or in pain, Skylar wanted Goody nearby.
With that shared realization, Mary and Carol cried together, long and hard on the small balcony outside the dining room. They talked and wept for much of the afternoon.
When Dave got home after his shift, Mary and Carol were on the deck.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his brows knitted together with worry.
Mary spoke quietly. “Skylar’s gone.”
“What?” He felt suddenly panicked. “How do you know that?”
“We just know.”
Dave didn’t want to hear that. The family was just pulling out of a rocky patch. Skylar had sensed the change and was once more becoming the amiable and happy kid she had always been. He couldn’t bear to hear that Skylar was never coming home.
***
One week after Officer Colebank first spoke with Shelia, the Blacksville branch of the Huntington National Bank was robbed. It was just after 10:00 a.m. on Monday, July 16, when a sturdy man in all black wearing a full-face mask entered the branch carrying a backpack. He didn’t say a word—the large gun in his right hand said it all. The lone teller triggered the silent alarm. The bank robber either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He walked to the counter and handed the backpack to the teller, who filled it with the contents of the cash drawer. The robber fled through the back door. From start to finish, the crime took less than thirty seconds.
Corporal Ronnie Gaskins and Senior Trooper Chris Berry from the West Virginia State Police arrived first on the scene. Trooper Berry knew the bank well. He had been transferred to Morgantown to help solve the rash of recent bank robberies. Berry’s family was from the Blacksville area, so he was happy to spend time working in his hometown. His grandfather, a Monongalia County deputy sheriff, had been shot in the neck at the very same bank Berry was assigned to investigate. Luckily, the shot had grazed him and only required a few stitches.
The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines Page 5
