Pretty Little Killers

by Berry, Daleen, Fuller, Geoffrey C.

  While Daniel said he had no idea what provoked Patricia, her best friend, Liz, insists there is “no way” Patricia slapped her daughter.

  “Patricia never believed in corporal punishment,” Liz said, “so she wouldn’t lay a hand on that girl.”

  Liz witnessed the exchange between Rachel and her mom that night. Patricia had just learned Rachel didn’t show up for the previous night’s performance because she was off somewhere with Shelia.

  Patricia was furious with Rachel. The police had warned her to keep Rachel away from the other girl, and not only had Rachel lied to Patricia, but she also skipped out on a performance. Patricia had gone to great pains to try to follow their instructions, but every time she turned around Rachel was being defiant and flaunting her friendship with Shelia.

  When Mr. Kyer told Patricia that Rachel’s understudy had to go on instead, Liz said Patricia was enraged. She confronted Rachel and when the teen realized she had been discovered, her eyes widened and she burst into tears.

  While all of the backstage drama was going on, no one suspected anything was amiss because Rachel’s Twitter traffic during that time was upbeat, reflecting her excitement and love of the stage. She sent a shout-out to Mikinzy for showing his support by being in the audience and bringing her flowers. Her enthusiasm peaked on November 3, the last day of the play. Rachel tweeted: round three boys and girls, let’s kill it tonight!

  Rachel’s good mood didn’t last long. Several area teens received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Clarksburg, about forty-five minutes from Morgantown. Grand jury subpoenas are supposed to remain secret, but Shelia and Rachel learned that Eric Finch, Crissy Swanson, and a teen named Aaron Roupe—all of whom had known Skylar through Shelia Eddy—were called to provide information.

  Law enforcement was unaware Shelia and Rachel knew about the grand jury, but they did. The girls were upset and it showed in their tweets. Rachel’s sick of being let down and Shelia’s simple F M FREAKING L (“FML” is textspeak for “fuck my life”) were easy to decipher.

  Later that day, Shelia’s tweets revealed sadness—although the remorse might have been feigned (i would do anything to go back to the beginning of 2010 literally anything). Could her tweets have been a reference to the fact that in 2010 Shelia still lived in Blacksville and Skylar was still alive?

  Shelia’s sadness was short-lived. The next day she was back to her old form and feeling cocky: no one on this earth can handle me and rachel if you think you can you’re wrong. This may have been meant as a warning, possibly for the police working the case.

  The official transcript of the grand jury proceedings remains sealed; however, it appears to have been a fishing expedition. The fact that a federal grand jury was convened in the first place helps explain the FBI’s presence, since the FBI always works cases brought into federal court. Given all of this, the precise nature of the investigation remains obscure.

  Was the grand jury looking for evidence of the bank robberies? Was Skylar’s disappearance connected to those bank robberies? Afterward, the subpoenaed teens said it seemed the grand jury was more about Blacksville drug traffic than either the bank robberies or Skylar’s disappearance.

  But Shelia and Rachel clearly believed the grand jury was all about a girl—Skylar. For instance, Shelia tried to alleviate Rachel’s worry in a November 6 text: Mark said it was ALL gunna be about drugs.

  By “Mark,” Shelia may have meant Mike Benninger, her attorney. Both girls’ parents had retained attorneys for their daughters sometime in September, not long after police began questioning the two teens.

  Rachel texted back: okay how does he know that’s all this is about? im sure its more for me.

  Shelia replied, because thats what the us attorney said their gunna follow the drugs to get to skylar.

  If Rachel was worried about the federal grand jury, that was nothing compared to what came next: the two girls learned that authorities wanted them to take a lie detector test. Neither teen was happy. It felt like the heat had been dialed up another notch.

  Meanwhile, their Twitter enemies couldn’t wait to bring on even more: Pretty little liars keep on lying!! Josie Snyder tweeted. Then, Ever seen the show I (almost) got away with it . . . They ALWAYS get caught may take a little but criminals end up behind bars :).

  By the time the federal grand jury met, social media users around the state, and to some degree around the nation, were fully engrossed in Skylar’s story. Becky Bailey’s late-night Facebook rants had become especially famous; many members on the TEAMSKYLAR 2012 site loved reading them. The rants began after Bailey saw one of the first Facebook posts about Skylar right after she disappeared. It didn’t take long for Bailey to learn the pretty teen was Dave Neese’s daughter. She and Dave had gone to high school together.

  Bailey poured out her frustration on Facebook, talking about the terrible dangers facing today’s children. One of the many topics Bailey vented about was the fact that no AMBER Alert was announced for Skylar. Dave’s former classmate promised the Facebook group she would continue to post until “Skylar is returned home safe and sound.”

  Bailey was infuriated that AMBER Alerts could only be issued once law enforcement determined a missing child had been abducted. (AMBER is actually an acronym: “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”) She believed missing teenagers—even those who left of their own free will—were still in danger. Bailey wanted every case of a missing teen to be scrutinized as though under the lens of a microscope.

  Becky went to work, trying to fix the AMBER Alert problem. On December 4, she posted her plan in an online petition. After providing some background on Skylar’s case, Bailey stressed that the first forty-eight hours after a child disappears are critical—whether the teen ran away or was abducted. She closed with a powerful appeal:

  This petition matters to everyone who has a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, brother, sister, this could have been anyone’s child, it could be yours, it could be mine. . . . I never in a million years thought this could happen to someone I knew but it did, so please no one think you are immune. Changes in this law may be, God forbid, too late to help Skylar but please sign this petition so someone else may have a better chance.

  “I did this for Skylar, so she would have a lasting legacy. I did it for Dave and Mary,” Bailey said, “and the zillions of kids who slide through the cracks on a daily basis.”

  Bailey’s plea struck a chord in the heart of every reader who’s ever been a parent—and perhaps some who haven’t. Within a few short months, more than 23,000 people signed her petition.

  Dylan Conaway was starting to sweat. He’d been the focus of a police investigation into Skylar’s murder—and the target of local gossip for months.

  “I obviously knew I wasn’t guilty,” Dylan said, “but everybody, literally, everybody I knew and grew up with thought I was a murderer. Even the people I thought were my friends. That’s a horrible feeling.”

  Dylan was one of the many people in Morgantown and Blacksville who were wrongly accused of Skylar’s murder. Not only did law enforcement have their eyes on him, but his name repeatedly came up on websites that discussed the case.

  Of course Dylan wasn’t alone. Crissy, Shania, and Shelia’s first cousin, Lexy Eddy, were all similarly targeted. Lexy and Crissy were both related to Shelia. Unwilling to believe she had done anything wrong, they defended her throughout that fall. So did her loyal friend, Shania. After Rachel confessed, the girls’ pictures were circulated online as gossips tried to implicate them in Skylar’s murder. The accusations were baseless but all three girls suffered.

  At work, Crissy’s coworkers talked about her, speculating about her involvement in the crime and even taking their concerns to their boss. At nearby North Marion High, Lexy was hounded by fellow students until she left school that semester.

  Even though Shelia and Rachel eventually pled guilty to Skylar’s murder, none of these people feel free from all the accusations.
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br />   In the autumn after Skylar’s murder, social media gossip speculated that Skylar had a crush on Dylan Conaway, or that he had a crush on her. Neither idea seems likely.

  “Skylar was cool. Quiet sometimes,” he said. “Nothing to really dislike about her. Even if she was as old as Shelia, she looked a lot younger. She seemed so innocent. Shelia seemed more mature, rambunctious. Skylar was more shy. It definitely seemed like she looked up to me, in a big brother way. Like she wanted to be like me.”

  Dylan admitted he’s done hard drugs many times and said Shelia and Rachel had become involved with harder drugs through their sophomore and junior years. Skylar only smoked weed, so far as he knew.

  Dylan had been with Shelia the first time she smoked pot. It was in the back of a Ford Explorer after a Clay-Battelle football game during their freshman year. Dylan was driving and his cousin, Kevin, was in the passenger seat. In the back seat was another friend of his, along with Crissy and Shania.

  “Shelia and Skylar were in the very back in the hatch,” Dylan recalled. “We were parked on a back road. Football season, 2010. After Shelia had moved to Morgantown.”

  Shania, who admits she smoked weed long before either girl, said she thought it odd because neither Shelia nor Skylar wanted anything to do with weed and then, suddenly, they did. It appears Shelia smoked weed to impress Dylan, who she thought was cool.

  Shania said Skylar did the same thing one week later. Skylar wanted to impress Shelia, and be cool, too.

  Most of Dylan’s interactions with Skylar, Shelia, and Rachel were when they were freshmen and sophomores. He was Shelia’s first26 lover, and they remained party friends. Now, after all that’s happened, people ask him if he ever saw any hint of what was to come.

  “If I had, I would have gotten out of it way sooner,” he said.

  On discussion boards and in local gossip, the Conaway house has been portrayed as a sort of party central. Dylan’s mother, Debby Conaway, denies this, saying she was at home whenever Dylan invited friends over.

  So does Dylan. He says the “parties” at his house mostly consisted of a few kids sitting around getting high. He confirmed that Skylar was often playing on her iPhone during these gatherings.

  One night Kevin came over when Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar were there. “I had some vodka and they got pretty drunk,” Dylan said. “I definitely let them drink a little too much. I looked at [Skylar] and I was, like, ‘Skylar if you gotta puke, just go to the bathroom, make yourself throw up, whatever, just don’t puke on my bed, please.’”

  Skylar insisted she was fine, but moments later, when she tried to stand, she said, “I’m fine”—and threw up all over his bed.

  After she finished, “she seemed like she came back a little, but she was, like, ‘Oh, boy, what did I just do?’ She definitely felt bad.”

  Dylan was not happy, so Kevin offered to give the girls a ride to Shelia’s dad’s house.

  “By the time he got home,” Dylan said. “I was outside burning my entire bed.”

  thirty-one

  Hiding Out

  That November, Crissy Swanson fidgeted anxiously in a federal courtroom of the Northern District of West Virginia. She’d been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and she had no idea what they planned on asking her.

  Crissy had been terrified of this day ever since she’d met Berry and Spurlock at the Dollar General store in Blacksville. She remembered the meeting well. It began with a phone call from her mom: “Um, there are two state troopers out here looking for you.”

  “Can you ask them why?” Crissy said. “’Cause I know I haven’t done anything.”

  “They wanna ask you about the Blacksville bank robbery.”

  “I don’t know crap about the Blacksville bank robbery. So send them my way.”

  The two plainclothes officers arrived at the Dollar Store, walked up to Crissy, and introduced themselves. She remembers them as Berry and Spurlock, who told her that if she lied, “it’s gonna get you seven years in federal prison.”

  “Okay,” she said, slapping her leg with her hand, and suddenly feeling quite warm. “I wasn’t gonna lie to you before, but now I’m really not. What do you want to know?”

  Once she got down from the witness stand at the grand jury hearing, Crissy felt waves of relief roll over her. She knew she had been honest and forthright, which was all that mattered, all the United States District Attorney was looking for. She even thought her testimony had helped alleviate suspicions about Shelia, after the DA asked Crissy if Shelia would take a polygraph.

  “Oh, Shelia will take a lie detector test,” Crissy said. “Why wouldn’t she? She has nothing to hide.”

  When Crissy arrived back home in Fairview, she dialed Tara’s number.

  “We called to let her know we were out of grand jury,” Crissy said, adding that she wanted to reassure Tara and Shelia that none of the questions had been too troubling. That was when Tara said something that made Crissy question the loyalty she felt for her cousin.

  “I know I shouldn’t say this over the phone. I know they can hear me,” Tara said, reflecting her belief that the phone was tapped. “Shelia came out and said they were out in Brave that night.” The town of Brave is about 3.5 miles west of Blacksville, just over the border in Pennsylvania.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Crissy said. Her anxiety instantly turned to anger. She knew exactly where that was—it was one of the darkest, loneliest stretches of road around. If the girls were out that way and Shelia had lied about it all along. . . . Crissy stopped the track her thoughts were taking. If Shelia had lied about that one thing, what else did she lie about? “You heard this from Shelia?”

  “Benninger. He said Shelia had admitted that to him.”

  They hung up not long after and that’s when it hit her: Crissy realized Shelia wasn’t the only one stonewalling. She remembered back in September when Tara said, “If Shelia had a passport, we’d be gone.” Then there were all those times Crissy’s mother told her Tara seemed to know details about the crime before anyone else did. Crissy also found it troubling that Tara was giving Shelia alcohol and weed to calm her down, saying she was uptight because the police were harassing her.

  Crissy worked at an assisted-living home in Fairmont, about twenty miles southeast of Morgantown. She decided to call Shelia on the way to work, because she had told her she would let her know how the grand jury went. “Then I’m not going to talk to her about it anymore,” Crissy told her mom. “I’m not going to ask any more questions.”

  “Good,” Crissy said her mom said. “Because whatever’s going on, you don’t want that on you. Shelia’s lied once. You better just leave it alone.”

  Crissy called as she promised. Shelia had only been out of school for about a half hour. “Okay, I have you on speakerphone,” Shelia said. “Rachel’s here with me.”

  “Grand jury went fine,” Crissy said. “I really don’t think anything’s weird. You know, they just asked me about the boys.” Crissy had gone back and forth about the question—was the grand jury really convened to look for drugs or Skylar? From the tone of the questions, it sounded like they were looking for drugs. Which is exactly what she told Shelia.

  “Oh, okay. Whatever.”

  “Shelia, don’t you tell your mom I called you right now, okay? Don’t say anything to her, but I want you to understand that you’re ruining your life.”

  Dead silence came from the other end of the line. Finally, Crissy spoke up; the rumors and innuendo had eroded her faith in her cousin.

  “This is going to destroy you if you’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Even if you have nothing to do with this, you’re going to go to jail if you lie. You can’t lie.”

  “I said I’m not lying.”

  Crissy couldn’t tell if Shelia was angry, but she still wanted to help her—if she could. “Good, because why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you help Skylar come home?”

  “I prom
ise that’s all I know,” Shelia said. “I promise. I would tell you if there was something else. I promise I would.”

  With that, Crissy felt like Shelia was leaving her no choice. “Okay, and if there’s anything else, I don’t want to know. I want you to tell the FBI.”

  On December 1, Gaskins knew he had the girls. Now it was only a matter of time.

  The day before, Rachel had changed her tune. During an interview, she told Gaskins they dropped Skylar off at the Conaway house—not at the end of her street like they had been saying since early July.

  Since Shelia had an interview scheduled the same day, Gaskins couldn’t wait to hear what she said. Shelia, though, apparently wasn’t up to speed with Rachel. Her story remained the same. No one tried to contradict her or ask her any questions that might tip her off. They just jotted down her information.

  The very next day, Shelia called Benninger and told him she wanted to tell him the truth. Benninger called the U.S. Attorney’s Office to report what his client told him: “They did drop Skylar off at a house in Blacksville.”

  Gaskins was elated when he heard the news, because Shelia’s story was identical to Rachel’s. That’s when he knew: Rachel changed her story, but forgot to tell Shelia in time. When Shelia found out, she had no choice but to change hers. The wall of lies was wobbling.

  Two days later Tara was leaving a local grocery store with Shelia and Rachel, who each had another appointment with the police. A Fairmont woman27 who recognized the two teens from their photos says that as they were getting into Tara’s car, she overheard them telling Tara what happened to Skylar.

  “Skylar got mad,” Rachel started.

  Shelia finished. “And ran away—”

  The woman says Tara broke in before the two teens could finish the story. “That’s it, right? She ran away and you didn’t see her again? Right, girls?” Tara said, as if telling them not to say anything else.