Pretty Little Killers

by Berry, Daleen, Fuller, Geoffrey C.

  Already ravaged by weather and time, the remains were unrecognizable except for one feature: they were clearly those of a small human being. Worst of all, the head was missing.

  Only Gaskins, a member of an elite state crime-scene unit, and a veteran trooper who had worked more than thirty crime scenes across the state and had personal knowledge of the case, recognized the tattered remnants of clothing Skylar had worn her last day alive: a yellow print shirt and stained green shorts.

  Feelings of relief that their search had come to an end mingled with a sense of satisfaction that Mary and Dave could find closure. Overwhelmed by all of the conflicting emotions he’d kept bottled up inside for the last five months, Gaskins couldn’t keep from crying.

  As so often happened in this case, social media broke the news that Skylar Neese was dead. However, the news was carefully hidden behind a smokescreen because police had been cautious about whom they shared their find with—and traditional news media was not among that group. Law enforcement at the scene knew at the time the remains were all that were left of Skylar, but they wouldn’t release that information until all of the standard DNA tests were performed.

  Still, some people outside of police circles figured it out. Josie Snyder was one of them. At 2:53 P.M. that same day, Josie took to her keyboard to send out a poignant tweet. She wanted the world to know what she knew, but at the same time, Josie wanted the message to be somber and subtle: SKY is so gloomy today :(.

  Whoever they were, Josie Snyder’s sources were solid. Her tweet about Skylar being found came in the early afternoon of the same day she was found.

  For the next forty-eight hours, the crime scene was sealed off. But the presence of so many FBI agents and State Police troopers wandering around was bound to have caused a stir among the neighbors. All Gaskins and Spurlock hoped was that they could get all the goods on Shelia before she got word that Skylar’s remains had been found.

  Gaskins alerted Greene County authorities they would be bringing the human remains there. When they reached the county offices, Coroner Gregory Rohanna was given strict orders not to release any information about the body. Not to the media or anyone else. The police still had one suspect loose, and they didn’t want her to know they were closing in on her.

  thirty-seven

  Skylar’s Law

  Dave learned the bitter truth the day Skylar would have celebrated her seventeenth birthday.

  He had chatter and rumors from various people—Skylar had been killed, her murder involved knives, Shelia and Rachel were somehow mixed up in it—but all the puzzle pieces came together the night of the candlelight vigil.

  That February 10 was a Sunday, and it was Mary and Dave’s first birthday without Skylar. The day had been unseasonably warm for that time of year, in the low 60s. People kept coming, and before long there were far too many to fit inside Mary and Dave’s modest apartment.

  Mary had announced the vigil on Facebook and the radio and newspaper mentioned it, but they never expected this many. Friends, relatives, and complete strangers came. Some just came to pay their respects; others stayed the course of the three-hour event. Cars filled the apartment parking lot and lined both sides of the street.

  Mary’s sister, Carol, arranged for large containers of coffee and hot chocolate, set out on the retaining wall where Skylar had hidden her vanity bench the last night she snuck out. Carol also coordinated the efforts of the people who brought snacks and desserts, placing everything on a table on the blacktop parking lot.

  It was particularly difficult for Mary, who missed her daughter terribly. Skylar should have been there that night. She wasn’t, though, and she never would be.

  As people arrived, Carol gave each one a candle for the Chinese lantern ceremony they had planned. People mingled in the parking lot because the grass was wet from the rain. And they kept coming. Eventually, there were so many people that Carol ran far short of the 150 candles she had brought.

  At one point early in the evening, County Commissioner Tom Bloom pulled Dave aside, saying he had something important to tell Dave. Being in county government, Tom heard all the stories, especially from public employees, like politicians—and police officers.

  He told Dave it was Skylar’s remains that had been found in January, just like Dave had heard. The remains hadn’t been positively identified yet, but law enforcement was pretty certain what was left of Skylar had been shipped to FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. But he had worse news.

  Tom had also heard that Rachel Shoaf had confessed. She and Shelia had stabbed Skylar to death. Tom emphasized that none of this information could be made public yet.

  Dave was shaken, but not surprised. It felt like all the whispers of the last few months had been leading to this. A little later, he revealed what Tom had told him to Mary, who felt the evening begin to fall apart. She didn’t do well in crowds to begin with, and this event . . . this news. . . . Once again, Mary and Dave felt pushed beyond their limits.

  The high point of the evening came when the lanterns were released into the starry sky in honor of Skylar. Because Skylar had been a budding environmentalist, they chose biodegradable lanterns. When someone suggested balloons early on, Mary said they were out of the question because Skylar believed balloons were nothing more than a pollutant—and a danger to animals. The large crowd lit their candles and held them aloft as the lanterns began ascending. Each one powered by its own individual flame, they rose and floated away in the night sky.

  Dave remembered the evening as both sad and happy. They were touched by the concerns and well-wishes people expressed, but still couldn’t quite accept the fact that their private grief had once again become a public spectacle.

  As the gathering wound down, leaving mostly relatives and closest friends to linger, Dave decided he had no choice. He’d already tried telling people to ease up on their search efforts. What he couldn’t say—because he wasn’t supposed to know—was that the remains found on January 16 were most likely Skylar’s.

  Two people still at the gathering had been completely devoted to the search for Skylar: Mary’s boss, Tammy Henry, and Becky Benson. Both women had pushed themselves until their health suffered. With what Tom had told him, Dave couldn’t let them continue working so hard.

  He took Tammy, who had been one of the most active searchers, aside privately and again tried to tell her to slow down. He said he and Mary appreciated it, but it was time to stop. The look in Tammy’s eyes told Dave she wouldn’t, so he told her that Skylar’s remains had been found.

  Then he went to find Becky. “This isn’t going to turn out the way you thought it would,” he said, also breaking the news to her about Skylar. Just like Tammy, though, he could tell Becky didn’t want to believe him, either.

  Mary and Dave had missed so much work since Skylar disappeared they didn’t even have enough money to fill their gas tank. Yet they had been invited to address the House Legislative Committee in the middle of February 2013, a month after Skylar’s unidentified remains were found. Gas or no gas, they were going to Charleston to help make Skylar’s Law a reality.

  Skylar’s Law had been introduced with Delegate Charlene Marshall as the lead sponsor. The clock was ticking, the time fast approaching for the Legislative Committee to discuss the bill, and Charlene believed its members should hear the story of Skylar’s disappearance. She wanted them to know how badly Skylar’s Law was needed.

  Dave hoped Mary would join him, but she refused. And Dave—who realized his wife was a more mature copy of Skylar in temperament—understood he shouldn’t push her. Mary felt she couldn’t hold up through the ordeal. Her emotions were like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point. She couldn’t listen to Dave talk about Skylar in front of all those people.

  But one of them had to make the three-hour trip to Charleston. Thanks to Commissioner Bloom, Dave didn’t have to worry about fuel for their old car. Bloom insisted on providing gas money for the trip.

  When Dave arri
ved at the state capitol, he went straight to Marshall’s office. Bloom was already there.

  “Dave Neese, I’d like you to meet Delegate Charlene Marshall,” Bloom said, introducing Dave to the tireless eighty-year-old representative from Monongalia County.

  Dave shook Marshall’s hand. “I want you to know, Delegate Marshall, that I’ll always cherish the photo of you and Skylar,” Dave told her.

  The senior statesman thought the grieving father was confused, because she didn’t recall ever meeting Skylar.

  “You probably don’t remember. Skylar was your special page when she was ten.”

  Marshall felt the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up.

  “Mary and I, we were sitting up in the balcony that day,” Dave said. “Skylar gave you your lunch. She was so pleased. . . . You were like a hero to her.”

  Marshall felt tears welling up as she tried to remember the child page. “Well, she did something for me then, and now I’m trying to do something for her,” she said at last.

  When Bloom and Marshall offered to pay for Dave’s lunch, he politely declined, but Marshall insisted. She knew he had a long day ahead of him and what he was up against. He needed enough energy to get through it.

  Dave had to tell the committee about his missing daughter, and it would be the hardest speech of his life. He had to address the legislators as though Skylar was still alive, even though he was grappling with the reality that she wasn’t.

  He told Mary he would simply pretend that Skylar was still alive. It was their only hope of passing Skylar’s Law.

  Dave addressed the committee, and though his voice caught with emotion several times, his words were convincing and moving. Skylar’s Law, he said, needed to be passed for other potentially endangered children. He explained it was a small but crucial amendment to existing AMBER legislation. It would mandate that police contact the AMBER Alert system, which would be required to treat all missing children and teenagers—regardless of how they came to be missing—as actual kidnapping cases unless an investigation proved otherwise.

  Dave’s trip to the capitol was successful, as Skylar’s Law was overwhelmingly popular with the legislators. As it wove its way through the legislative process, Skylar’s Law came up for a vote in each chamber. Each time it passed unanimously.

  When he heard the news, Dave called Mary immediately. “It passed! It passed the House 98–0 and the Senate 34–0,” Dave told his grieving wife.

  thirty-eight

  Finding Skylar

  When the news of Skylar’s remains finally broke on Wednesday, March 13, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Wheeling made the announcement. It confirmed the FBI was directly involved in Skylar’s identification, which explained in part why the process had taken so long. But the four-sentence press release explained little else.

  March 13, 2013

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Body Recovered in Pennsylvania Identified

  WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA—United States Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld, II, announced today that the body recovered in Wayne Township, Pennsylvania, on January 16, 2013, has been scientifically identified as that of Skylar Neese. Neese is the Star City, West Virginia, teenager who was reported missing by her parents in July of 2012. The testing of the body was conducted by the laboratory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  The investigation into the disappearance of Neese and her subsequent death is ongoing.

  With Skylar’s remains positively identified, authorities were one evidentiary step away from arresting Shelia and Rachel.

  Daniel Hovatter was among the growing number of people who were rapidly learning that Skylar was gone. Mary had broken the news about Skylar’s remains in a Facebook message back in February, and Skylar’s close friend had been absolutely heartbroken. Like the Neeses, he had not learned of Rachel’s confession, either, but when he was told it looked like her remains had been located, he knew immediately who was responsible.

  By the time the news of Skylar’s murder was made public on March 13, Daniel’s world was falling apart, so he did the only thing he could do to cope with the intense pain he felt: he went home, locked himself in his bedroom, and lit up a joint. Then he cried and cried—for days on end.

  Skylar’s other childhood friend, Hayden McClead, heard the same time Daniel did in February. Her mother, Katrina, and Mary were close, so when Katrina learned the news from Mary, she told Hayden. For the next month, Hayden’s world was suspended in silent grief. Never having faced something this awful before, she simply didn’t know how to feel. While she had been told Skylar was probably dead, she didn’t want to believe it. She continued to go to class, mired in a cloud of numbness and denial—until March 13.

  Hayden was listening to her chemistry teacher’s lecture during fourth period that day when she felt her phone vibrate. Someone had sent her a message on Facebook. R u ok? The words confused her. She wondered what they meant and why anyone would be worried about her. Just then, her mom’s picture appeared on Hayden’s cell phone screen. Hayden left the classroom to take the call, worried that something bad must have happened.

  Katrina broke the news to her daughter as gently as she could: Skylar’s body had been positively identified. Hayden could no longer ignore the truth. Still, she was so shocked when the reality set in, she could barely speak. One singular thought kept repeating inside her head: Shelia and Rachel did it.

  Across the county, Shania Ammons’ volleyball coach pulled her from class to deliver the news in person. Shania went from sobbing to wailing. She was so upset that school officials were afraid to let her drive herself home, so she called her grandma and talked for a while until she calmed down. Then she walked out of Clay-Battelle High School and went straight home, stopping long enough to text Shelia with the news. She was sure Shelia would want to know.

  Shelia didn’t cry that day. Shania didn’t think it odd because she and Shelia had cried together, back when Skylar first disappeared.

  Back at the home she shared with her grandparents, Shania told her grandmother she was headed over to Shelia’s.

  “If you’re going, then I’m going,” Linda said. The slender but forceful grandmother wouldn’t let Shania go by herself, because Linda had her own suspicions about Shelia.

  “My family didn’t believe her story,” Shania said, “and they tried really, really hard to keep me away from Shelia. It was a constant fight, an every-single-day fight. But I still hung out with Shelia. They didn’t keep me away from her.”

  Ironically, on that March 13, Shania and Linda already had plans to join Shelia and Tara for dinner. So they all went to Martin’s Bar-bque Joint in Morgantown together. Shania remembers the meal being sad and awkward.

  Shania said Shelia asked her who she thought had committed the murder. Shania answered honestly.

  “I don’t know.”

  The high school cafeteria could be called a precursor to today’s social media sites: a hotbed for the same kind of gossip and innuendo that pops up on Facebook, Twitter, and Websleuths. Many students first heard rumors about Skylar’s murder in the lunchroom—some true, some false. One particularly disturbing rumor began floating around after Skylar’s body was found, but long before Rachel and Shelia were arrested.

  This dark story especially affected Jordan Carter. She had never given up hope that her one-time summer playmate would come home. Perhaps because the color purple was used at Skylar-themed events after she disappeared, Jordan would think of Skylar every day when she drove home from school past a local bar called the Purple Cow Lounge. Jordan was always looking at the faces of people she passed—hoping one of them might just be her missing friend.

  After the news broke about a body being found, Jordan was sitting at a table in the UHS cafeteria when a snippet of conversation caught her attention.

  “You know Rachel and Shelia killed her, right?” one teen asked another. “You know they cut off her head and dumped her in the woods.”

  Jordan
was speechless with horror.

  The snow was coming down hard on March 18, almost a white-out, as FBI Victim Specialist Tessa Cooper navigated the black SUV toward Brave. Dave rode in the passenger seat, with Mary in the back. It was a quiet ride.

  No one had expected so much snow in mid-March. A week earlier the sky had been clear, the temperatures in the high 60s. That day, thick flakes fell in a torrent. Looking out the window, Dave thought the snow wouldn’t be around long, not with the ground so warm. He knew these roads; he and Mary had driven them a dozen times at least, back when . . . when Skylar was still missing. Now Tessa was going to show them where Skylar had been found.

  As they rode north, Tessa talked to them about what they were going to see. She had become Mary and Dave’s primary liaison with law enforcement and the prosecutor’s office. She explained what they should expect, helped alleviate worries, and provided an outlet for the pent-up emotions.

  “Nothing about the site jumped out. Nothing obvious,” Dave later said. “She was trying to prepare us [for] the fact that they dumped her like a sack of garbage.”

  Based in Charleston, Cooper served the entire state, counseling victims of terrorism and crimes like murder, kidnapping, and child abuse. It was heart wrenching but important work, and she had been doing it for over a decade.

  Tessa pulled over at a wide place in the road and turned the car off. Mary and Dave got out, and Tessa said, “Over here.” She led them to a scattered pile of branches and leaves and debris at the base of a tree about ten feet off the road.