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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
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Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
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Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
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Speaker 7: Pretty Little Killers, journalist Dalen Berry and investigator Jeffrey Fuller
Speaker 7: expand upon their New York Times bestselling ebook, The Savage
Speaker 7: Murder of Skuyler Nice to give you even more information
Speaker 7: behind one of the most terrific and shocking murders of
Speaker 7: our time, including over one hundred pages of new material.
Speaker 7: Pretty Little Killers shares the latest theories and na answers
Speaker 7: the questions that have left many people baffled. After killer
Speaker 7: Sheila Eddie pled guilty to first degree murder and was
Speaker 7: sentenced to life in prison and Rachel's Chauff was sentenced
Speaker 7: to thirty years for second degree murder. Family friends, investigators,
Speaker 7: and other key sources revealed the facts you would have
Speaker 7: learned if the case had gone to trial, including specific
Speaker 7: details drawn from Rachel's confession. Pretty Little Killers looks at
Speaker 7: the crime through the eyes of the victim and killers,
Speaker 7: providing intimate testimony from the pages of Rachel's personal journal,
Speaker 7: Skylar's diary and school papers, and court records. Barryan Fuller
Speaker 7: examine all this, including previously unreported details about Rachel and
Speaker 7: Sheila's rumored lesbian relationship, and explain why more than one
Speaker 7: investigator believed Skyler's murder was a thrill kill. Most important,
Speaker 7: Pretty Little Killers provides a satisfying answer to Skyler's final question,
Speaker 7: Why Little Killers is the book that we're featuring this evening,
Speaker 7: The truth behind the savage murder of Skyler Nice with
Speaker 7: my special guest journalist and author Dayleen Berry, and once
Speaker 7: again audience, I apologize I had trying to walk Daileen
Speaker 7: Berry through the process of connecting through Skype. I thought
Speaker 7: we had addressed the problem in the last few minutes,
Speaker 7: and then apparently not again a few minutes to have
Speaker 7: her possibly and again it's my fault for this, and
Speaker 7: I apologize, and if I could, I'm going to have
Speaker 7: to contact blog Talk Radio and find out how to
Speaker 7: delete this episode so that people don't have to suffer
Speaker 7: through this insufferable excuses for not having everything together that
Speaker 7: I need to have together to have this show and
Speaker 7: have these fine guests come on via Skype or via
Speaker 7: any method that they'd like. So we'll just give it
Speaker 7: a few minutes. This is Daileen Berry pretty little killers,
Speaker 7: juvenile killers, so very disturbing to most people, a phenomena
Speaker 7: that's growing, not rather than dissipating in America. See more
Speaker 7: and more of this as kids mature, and also startling
Speaker 7: evidence thanks to social media and social media being a
Speaker 7: real participant, really and intimately involved in these crimes and
Speaker 7: later providing crucial evidence at trial, incriminating evidence. As most
Speaker 7: people are their lives are inextrictly, inextricably involved with social media, tweeting, Facebook, etc. Connecting,
Speaker 7: so I apologize, I Daileen probably having some real problems here,
Speaker 7: know what to do? Really, we just suffer through a
Speaker 7: couple more minutes, and then I will definitely reschedule this
Speaker 7: episode if she is not so angry about not being
Speaker 7: frustrated and spending this much time just to get on
Speaker 7: this show, spending her valuable time. She's had some beyond
Speaker 7: bad luck in the last few weeks, so she's been very,
Speaker 7: very gracious, and I appreciate her taking the time, her
Speaker 7: valuable busy time to come on and talk about this
Speaker 7: incredible crime and her wonderful book, Pretty Little Killers, The
Speaker 7: Truth behind the savage murder of Carlernice. And there's quite
Speaker 7: a few things to discuss in this book as well.
Speaker 7: Being in Canada very very surprising when I see the
Speaker 7: differences in States. Here we go, Daileen, very welcome to
Speaker 7: the program. Dailien Barrie, Hi, thank you very much the audience.
Speaker 7: How do you only have to suffer for you a
Speaker 7: few minutes of my seems routine excuses for guests not
Speaker 7: coming on, So I apologize. We've introduced the the your book,
Speaker 7: and so let me first ask the question that's one
Speaker 7: of my routine questions without giving anything away? How did
Speaker 7: you come to want to write this book or how
Speaker 7: did you come to be the person that wrote Pretty
Speaker 7: Little Killers?
Speaker 4: Well, it happened in the town where I live, and
Speaker 4: another writer and I got together and decided it was
Speaker 4: just a fascinating case. It wasn't your run of the
Speaker 4: mill teenage runaway or teenage girl gets picked up by
Speaker 4: an internet predator case now giving away.
Speaker 7: No, not at all, not at all. Now, when did
Speaker 7: you at what point did you know about this story? Again,
Speaker 7: you saved in your town, So tell us exactly at
Speaker 7: the point that you became aware of this story and
Speaker 7: then how long after before you officially decided or when
Speaker 7: was it you officially decided I'm going to write about this.
Speaker 4: I became aware of it almost immediately when they started
Speaker 4: announcing that Skylo Nice was missing. Like most people in
Speaker 4: the community, Morgantown is a small area and so people
Speaker 4: generally look out for each other, and that's what we did.
Speaker 4: But it wasn't until a year later, when it became
Speaker 4: a parent that there was a lot more to the
Speaker 4: case than just a runaway, that I got involved in
Speaker 4: it and my co author got involved in it.
Speaker 7: Now, scot Kyler Nice was born in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 7: So tell us about Skylar Nice and her parents, and
Speaker 7: tell us about who she was, where was she from,
Speaker 7: and tell us a little bit more about Morgantown in
Speaker 7: where in relation to the state capitol. Will say where
Speaker 7: is this? Tell us geographically where this is. Tell us
Speaker 7: a little bit more about that.
Speaker 4: Morgantown is in north central West Virginia, which is located
Speaker 4: about ninety minutes south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it is
Speaker 4: about two and a half hours north of Charleston, which
Speaker 4: is the state capitol, where almost almost in the center
Speaker 4: of the state, just a little bit north of it.
Speaker 4: And Skylar and her parents came from a lower socio
Speaker 4: economic level. You might say. They had lived in the
Speaker 4: Cheat Lake area for a while, which is one of
Speaker 4: the outskirts of Morgantown, and then they moved across to
Speaker 4: our city, which is closer to Morgantown. It's kind of
Speaker 4: like a suburb, but it's closer than she like. It's
Speaker 4: only about five to ten minutes from downtown Morgantown. Her
Speaker 4: father works at Walmart and her mother works at Ruby
Speaker 4: Memorial Hospital. Skyler was an honor student who pretty much
Speaker 4: bounced and bopped along everywhere she went. She always had
Speaker 4: a smile on her face from what her peers said
Speaker 4: and her family, and she was well liked by just
Speaker 4: about everybody. And she was an honor student who wanted
Speaker 4: to go to college to become a defense attorney.
Speaker 7: Was the family religious at all? Or and was Schuyler
Speaker 7: religious at all?
Speaker 4: It's interesting the family her parents were not. They did
Speaker 4: not go to church and they don't profess to be religious. However,
Speaker 4: her aunt Carol was very religious and took Skyler to
Speaker 4: church with her. What we learned during the interview with
Speaker 4: Carol was she would share Bible passages or Bible stories
Speaker 4: with Skylar as she was growing up. And so I
Speaker 4: think it's because of Carol's influence that Skyler had a
Speaker 4: religious band.
Speaker 7: Now, let's introduce her friend, Sheila and tell us who
Speaker 7: Sheila is, and for our audience, they meet when Skyler
Speaker 7: is seven years old, in two thousand and three, in
Speaker 7: the second grade, and they meet at a little community
Speaker 7: and youth center. So tell us who Sheila is and
Speaker 7: a little bit about her life, and tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about Shila.
Speaker 4: Sheila Eddie came from an outlying area about thirty minutes
Speaker 4: away from Morgantown in a little town called Blacksville, and
Speaker 4: Blacksville is very rural. She was the child of parents
Speaker 4: the divorced pretty early on, Greg and Tara Eddie. And
Speaker 4: one of the very big events in her life was
Speaker 4: her father's accident. He was in a motor vehicle accident
Speaker 4: and sustain a traumatic brain injury which left him to
Speaker 4: some extent disabled, and then later on he and her
Speaker 4: mother divorced, So she grew up essentially in a in
Speaker 4: a you know, single parent family. She had she saw
Speaker 4: both parents, but she was living with her mom primarily.
Speaker 4: And one of the major events after that that it
Speaker 4: seemed to impact her life greatly was her mother's relationship
Speaker 4: and subsequent engagement to Jim Clandennon, And that seemed to
Speaker 4: be a very for for she Letley, seemed to be
Speaker 4: a very negative thing that happened in her life because
Speaker 4: her mother had a new love interest and it kind
Speaker 4: of took her away from Sila to some extent.
Speaker 7: Wasn't there some initial on Sheila's part sort of enjoyment
Speaker 7: of the financial security and some of the financial perks
Speaker 7: that the new husband could provide.
Speaker 4: That's actually what family members and friends said about her
Speaker 4: relationship with her stepfather and before he became her stepfather,
Speaker 4: was that she didn't really care for the relationship, but
Speaker 4: she liked the monetary and material benefits that could bring her.
Speaker 7: She actually kind of went up the level of sort
Speaker 7: of the ladder in terms of economics socioeconomics, with her
Speaker 7: father or stepfather having more financial means, didn't.
Speaker 4: She She did quite a bit. Actually.
Speaker 7: Now they had a friendship starting in the second grade,
Speaker 7: and so they would do things in school and then
Speaker 7: outside of school as well. And what was the relationship
Speaker 7: between the parents of Skyler and Sheila, How did they
Speaker 7: what extent did their friendship extend to.
Speaker 4: Well, it's interesting because when they met, it was it
Speaker 4: was a summer program and they gradually over you know,
Speaker 4: the few years after that, they became closer and closer.
Speaker 4: And Sheila's mom, Tara, seemed to be the primary source
Speaker 4: of transportation for Skyler, possibly because she had, you know,
Speaker 4: it was easier for her to get you know, she
Speaker 4: worked in town. She worked in Morgantown, so she could
Speaker 4: pick Skyler up from town and take her out to
Speaker 4: their place. And for a long time, Skyler would visit
Speaker 4: them at their home in Blacksville weekends in the summertime.
Speaker 4: She was out there a lot during the weekdays, according
Speaker 4: to the neighbors in Blacksville.
Speaker 7: Now, in terms of the characters, you know kids growing up,
Speaker 7: some women, girls, boys, men mature at different rates in
Speaker 7: terms of experience, will say sexual experimentation, or say the
Speaker 7: classic things drug use or alcohol use. Who was more
Speaker 7: will say inclined to be the rebel or rebellious Skyler
Speaker 7: or Rachel, and tell us just a little bit more
Speaker 7: about their characters in comparison, I would have.
Speaker 4: To say that it would be Sheila. By far. Skylar
Speaker 4: did not seem to be a rebel type. What was
Speaker 4: very interesting about the dynamics she had with her parents
Speaker 4: was she didn't really hide anything she did. She pretty
Speaker 4: much was open about what she did. And I think
Speaker 4: because of that, she had a closer bond with her parents,
Speaker 4: and she knew what was right and wrong, and she
Speaker 4: knew she was going to get in trouble she did
Speaker 4: something wrong, but she also knew that her parents weren't
Speaker 4: going to overreact like a lot of parents do. Sheila,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, seemed to have a mother who
Speaker 4: let her pretty much do whatever she wanted, and there
Speaker 4: weren't very many rules. It didn't seem like it seemed
Speaker 4: like they were more friends than mother and daughter. And again,
Speaker 4: her father wasn't in the picture as much, and of course,
Speaker 4: with a traumatic brain injury, it sounded like, based on
Speaker 4: the information I could gather, that he didn't make many
Speaker 4: decisions when it came to her behavior or her discipline.
Speaker 7: Now, is Skylar and Sheila in any kind of serious
Speaker 7: disciplinary problems at school or with the law in say,
Speaker 7: all of their high school, we'll say, or up to
Speaker 7: high school up to twenty ten? Was there any incidents whatsoever?
Speaker 4: No, And that's the very interesting part of the story,
Speaker 4: is that there had not been any noticeable behavior problems.
Speaker 4: And what the teachers said and the students at Blacksville
Speaker 4: who grew up with Sheila was that she seemed a
Speaker 4: very happy kid who got along with people. She seemed
Speaker 4: a little bit I think, probably trying to think of
Speaker 4: the exact word, maybe sketchy down the road, but certainly
Speaker 4: not sketchy. When she was in elementary and junior high
Speaker 4: she was maybe not as upright as Skylar was, but
Speaker 4: the kids liked her. She didn't have any behavioral problems.
Speaker 4: And she didn't have any relationship problems per se when
Speaker 4: it came to other students at Blacksville for the most part.
Speaker 7: Now, Skyler and Rachel meet in at UHS. So tell
Speaker 7: us about Scholar and Rachel, and tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about Rachel's show.
Speaker 4: Well, up until rachel shows entry into the friendship and
Speaker 4: when it became a trio, they were freshmen at that time.
Speaker 4: But up until that point, from the age of seven
Speaker 4: or eight until ninth grade, Sheila and Skylar had been
Speaker 4: they had a friendship that was inseparable, It was unbreakable.
Speaker 4: It was just the two of them for the most part.
Speaker 4: Occasionally they had other girls that would enter that. But
Speaker 4: when Rachel came along in ninth grade, she seemed to
Speaker 4: live on the edge to some extent the way Sheila did,
Speaker 4: and so it very fast that relationship between Sheila and
Speaker 4: Rachel escalated, and then Skuyler found herself on the outside
Speaker 4: looking in, which was pretty painful for her.
Speaker 7: But this is a slow process and there are incidents
Speaker 7: that happened, So what is the There was an incident
Speaker 7: in twenty eleven at school where they Rachel and Sheila
Speaker 7: are talking about disposing of a body discussing is tell
Speaker 7: us about this. This is an incredible story and is
Speaker 7: important later on as well.
Speaker 4: It is, and just to kind of finish answering your
Speaker 4: previous question. Whereas Sheila was more into boys, she was
Speaker 4: pretty boy crazy, and she also liked to smoke marijuana.
Speaker 4: She made that known through her tweets, Rachel was more
Speaker 4: a very talented musician, actress, singer, and she had a
Speaker 4: goal of going to Broadway. All three girls were very
Speaker 4: academic in terms of succeeding in high school, but at
Speaker 4: that time they were in Sheila and Rachel ended up
Speaker 4: in the same biology class, and in the fall of
Speaker 4: that year two thousand eleven, they were overheard by three
Speaker 4: other students that we know of, asking how you dispose
Speaker 4: of a body, and Sheila apparently used Schuyler's name. Rachel
Speaker 4: tried to shush her. One of the one student that
Speaker 4: actually responded made a comment thinking that it was just
Speaker 4: a joke, saying, watch that show Breaking Bad. They have
Speaker 4: stuff like that on there, and he really didn't think
Speaker 4: that they meant it, And so because of that, nobody
Speaker 4: really knew to report it.
Speaker 7: Tell us of Rachel's home situation and what her relationship
Speaker 7: was with her parents.
Speaker 4: Rachel also came from a broken home. Her parents divorced
Speaker 4: when she was pretty young, and she didn't have a
Speaker 4: really great relationship with her mother. There seemed to be
Speaker 4: a lot of fighting between the two of them. There
Speaker 4: was definitely a lot of anger on Rachel's part towards
Speaker 4: her mother. She made it clear to many of her
Speaker 4: friends at University High School that she wanted to live
Speaker 4: with her father and that she wasn't happy living with
Speaker 4: her mother. So that generally seems to be the family
Speaker 4: dynamics up until the time Skuyler was killed.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us about the first real major incidents. There
Speaker 7: is a fight that breaks out at the Hollywood Theater
Speaker 7: that's in March. Now, tell us how they get to
Speaker 7: this point and is there any indication before that? Again, tweeting,
Speaker 7: and as I mentioned to the audience while we're trying
Speaker 7: to connect, it was that tweeting, the Twitter world and
Speaker 7: Facebook itself and social media plays an incredible role in
Speaker 7: this case, in the crime itself and then in the
Speaker 7: prosecution later and in your book in terms of revealing
Speaker 7: all kinds of information. So tell us about the climate
Speaker 7: of this very important connecting through social media before we
Speaker 7: talk about the fistfight at the Hollywood Theater.
Speaker 4: Well, social media did play a very large role in
Speaker 4: the case because basically, if you look back at their tweets,
Speaker 4: you could see a very disturbing pattern of internal fighting
Speaker 4: that was going on between the three girls, but especially
Speaker 4: between Skyler and Sheila. And you could also see signs
Speaker 4: that there was kind of a volleying or jockeying for
Speaker 4: position within the friendship, in large part from Skyler trying
Speaker 4: to become closer to Rachel. At times she seemed very
Speaker 4: angry and hateful towards Sheila, and then it was the
Speaker 4: same way with Sheila toward Skyler and also Sheila, you know,
Speaker 4: making a play for Rachel in terms of being one
Speaker 4: upping Skylar for Rachel's friendship. So that was the dynamics
Speaker 4: of the tweets, and they were pretty disturbing because they
Speaker 4: when you look back at it as you can see
Speaker 4: that there was clearly something going on that should have,
Speaker 4: you know, caused people to be alert to there being
Speaker 4: some serious problems between the three girls.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about some of the people that were
Speaker 7: there right from the very beginning. You introduce a character
Speaker 7: named Daniel that's very important to the story. So tell
Speaker 7: us about Daniel and his relationship with Skyler.
Speaker 4: Daniel Hovatter was one of a few very close friends
Speaker 4: of Skyler from when she was little. She had, i
Speaker 4: want to say, three very close friends before she met Sheila,
Speaker 4: Daniel Morgan and Hayden. And Daniel she became friends with him,
Speaker 4: and her father would go over to Daniel's house and
Speaker 4: do repairs, and they would play board games, and they
Speaker 4: just were very close. In fact, he was the only
Speaker 4: boy that Skyler had a close relationship with throughout school.
Speaker 4: And Daniel became a pivotal figure in all this because
Speaker 4: he knew the dynamics of the relationship between the three
Speaker 4: girls so well that he suspected some foul play early on,
Speaker 4: and because he knew that wherever Skylar had gone, either
Speaker 4: Sheila or Rachel or both of them had to know
Speaker 4: where she was. And so he became a very important
Speaker 4: player in the investigation because he was responsible for basically
Speaker 4: harassing Rachel's chauff until she she told what she knew.
Speaker 7: You talk about him understanding the dynamics between the three girls,
Speaker 7: knowing them intimately and especially knowing Skyler, but knowing that,
Speaker 7: like you say, the three the three girls. I alluded it,
Speaker 7: alluded to it, or we alluded to it in the
Speaker 7: synopsis of the book. What was their sexual preference? Was
Speaker 7: there anything to this lesbian rumor? And what was the
Speaker 7: again there they're young. What was their level of promiscuity
Speaker 7: if that was even the case between those three what
Speaker 7: was the difference?
Speaker 4: Well, it was very, very different between the three girls.
Speaker 4: First of all, there's no indication whatsoever that Skuyler had
Speaker 4: even had a sexual experience in terms of, you know,
Speaker 4: intercourse with a boy or any type of sexual activity
Speaker 4: with a girl. And these kissing pictures between the girls
Speaker 4: seemed to be the limit of what Skuylar's activity was.
Speaker 4: But that wasn't the case with Sheila and Rachel. Sheila
Speaker 4: was very promiscuous. She began it seems like she began
Speaker 4: being promiscuous in the ninth grade. Right before the ninth grade,
Speaker 4: right before she moved from Blacksville, she had a relationship
Speaker 4: with a guy, Dylan Conaway, who you know, he mentioned
Speaker 4: that in an interview he did, so that's the public knowledge.
Speaker 4: And then after that she would have, you know, basically
Speaker 4: hook up with guys one night stands if you will,
Speaker 4: and she would go to school the next day and
Speaker 4: regale her circle of friends with experiences. Rachel, on the
Speaker 4: other hand, had a pretty steady boyfriend, McKinsey Bogs, and she,
Speaker 4: unbeknownst to people, also had a sexual relationship with Sheila.
Speaker 7: Interesting, now you talked about Derek Connaway. Sorry, oh, I
Speaker 7: was just going to say.
Speaker 4: The fight in the in Hollywood Theater which was which
Speaker 4: broke out actually was precipitated because Skuyler thought that Sheila
Speaker 4: was texting Rachel and she was jealous and she wanted
Speaker 4: Sheila to show her who she was talking to on
Speaker 4: her cell phone, and Sheila refuse. It turned out that
Speaker 4: she wasn't texting Rachel. But that fight got pretty you know,
Speaker 4: hot and heavy, really fast, and it ended up with
Speaker 4: Sheila and Skyler running from the theater and their friend
Speaker 4: shaniah Ammon's following them out. But it came to blows.
Speaker 4: They came to blows inside the theater, and it was
Speaker 4: basically over Skyler's jealousy that she was Sheila was being
Speaker 4: closer to Rachel than she was to her.
Speaker 7: To demonstrate the importance of this fight, How customary or
Speaker 7: typical was it for either one of these girls to
Speaker 7: get into fist fight with anyone, not at all.
Speaker 4: To my knowledge, we haven't heard about any other fights
Speaker 4: that Sheila was in. Skyler started becoming angry during the
Speaker 4: last year of her life according to her parents, and
Speaker 4: started acting out a little bit at home with her
Speaker 4: angry issues, but beyond that, there was no knowledge of that.
Speaker 7: Now, this fight is in late March at the Hollywood
Speaker 7: Theater for April and May of that year. Following this,
Speaker 7: what is the relationship like, what how do Sheila and
Speaker 7: Skyler behave towards each other after this fight, and and
Speaker 7: how how is it regarded by Rachel? Tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about how they all felt about this and
Speaker 7: how did they proceed with trying to repair their friendship
Speaker 7: or how did it proceed afterwards?
Speaker 1: Well, it didn't.
Speaker 4: It didn't seem to get much better. I mean, ideally
Speaker 4: they seem to pretend, Rachel and Sheila, that is, seemed
Speaker 4: to pretend like it got better, but it really didn't.
Speaker 4: And so they were plotting behind scenes with their you know,
Speaker 4: their level of intimacy whatever they had going on behind scenes,
Speaker 4: and Skyler was for the most part unaware of that
Speaker 4: because they were keeping it from her. But they they
Speaker 4: also were acting out on Twitter, and that seemed to
Speaker 4: be taking a more predominant course in the relationship in
Speaker 4: the public's eye when you look back at the tweets.
Speaker 7: Was there a clear victor in the fistfight? Was did
Speaker 7: someone really get the best of the other person? Was
Speaker 7: there any humiliation or degradation involved in that fight? Was
Speaker 7: there any serious injury?
Speaker 4: No serious injury, But it does seem like Skuyler was
Speaker 4: more physical than Schila was, and Chila was definitely seemed
Speaker 4: to be humiliated based on the eyewitness account that we got.
Speaker 7: Now in June, there's another major incident at the beach
Speaker 7: or they're going to go to the beach and then
Speaker 7: they have this huge argument. What is that huge argument about?
Speaker 7: Or is that just an extension of this fight? Tell
Speaker 7: us if there was some sort of this huge argument.
Speaker 4: We don't have a definitive answer for that, Dan, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: But the best guess that we've come up with is
Speaker 4: that at some point Sheila may have tried to involve
Speaker 4: or engage Skyler in a sexual relationship, maybe made a
Speaker 4: pass at her at the beach, because if she could
Speaker 4: then sway Skyler, there would be no reason for Skuyler
Speaker 4: to hold anything over her, not that she was, but
Speaker 4: the perception that she was holding something over them would
Speaker 4: be removed and they would feel safe. She and Rachel
Speaker 4: would feel safe in their relationship. That's the best guess
Speaker 4: we have because according to law enforcement, according to Sheila's
Speaker 4: mother who was on the trip, they don't know what
Speaker 4: it was about.
Speaker 7: Do you think there's some merit to this? You know,
Speaker 7: the theory. I guess we're getting a little bit ahead.
Speaker 7: But in terms of this exposing of that Skyler, was
Speaker 7: there really something to that that she had something on
Speaker 7: Rachel and Sheila And was it connected around misunderstanding connected
Speaker 7: to the sexual relationship they had.
Speaker 4: It seems highly likely if you look at the tweets
Speaker 4: Skyler's tweets, there's two tweets. One that happens in late
Speaker 4: August early September of twenty eleven, right before the incident
Speaker 4: in the biology class about disposing of a body, and
Speaker 4: Skyler says something about telling the whole school what she
Speaker 4: knows so that could be perceived as a threat. The
Speaker 4: other thing she says, and Jessica Colbank, who started out
Speaker 4: as the primary investigator before the FBI and the state
Speaker 4: police got involved, she said the tweet that Schuyler put
Speaker 4: out to the world not long before she was killed.
Speaker 4: I think it was within the week time before she
Speaker 4: was killed. And she said just no, I know, and
Speaker 4: that was after she came back from the beach. Indicated
Speaker 4: that she was basically warning them that she knew what
Speaker 4: was going on.
Speaker 7: Interesting, now we're talking about June ninth. You say that
Speaker 7: there was some activity on Twitter and there may have
Speaker 7: been an argument on June ninth. Tell us a little
Speaker 7: bit about that. What based on police reports?
Speaker 4: You say, Well, Rachel came back from church camp and
Speaker 4: that evening she and Sheila met in the universe to
Speaker 4: the high school parking lot, where they were overheard speaking
Speaker 4: in raised voices in anger, and a male student asked
Speaker 4: them if they were fighting about him, and they replied
Speaker 4: that they were angry over something Skyler had put on
Speaker 4: her Twitter, and Scott, that's the tweet that Skyler put
Speaker 4: on there, just no I know, and she had called
Speaker 4: them out and using some some foul language, and that
Speaker 4: was when they decided that they would sepidate and kill
Speaker 4: her in July.
Speaker 7: Now we talk about Skyler and her relationship. She's very close,
Speaker 7: she's very honest with her parents. But there are things
Speaker 7: that their parents don't know, like the footstool that she
Speaker 7: uses to sneak out. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about this sneaking out before we talk about July sixth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the one thing that her parents they
Speaker 4: knew before, but they were not aware she was doing
Speaker 4: it as recently as she was. And I think that's
Speaker 4: because Skuyler was trying to figure out for herself whether
Speaker 4: she wanted to be more like Shila or whether she
Speaker 4: wanted to walk on the safe side, which is what
Speaker 4: she'd always done until that point. And so I think
Speaker 4: she was torn between the excitement that she got from
Speaker 4: seaking out at night to be with the other two girls,
Speaker 4: and so she snuck out that night, and you know
Speaker 4: that ended up going with them under false premises, based
Speaker 4: on them telling her that they were going to go party,
Speaker 4: when in fact they had planned to kill her.
Speaker 7: Now this is July sixth, and her parents are Unbeknownst
Speaker 7: to her parents, they believe she's in her bedroom. So
Speaker 7: tell us what happens the next day. When does Dave,
Speaker 7: her father, find out, When does everything change.
Speaker 4: That's got to be the worst part of the story
Speaker 4: in terms of Dave and Mary's knowledge and what happened
Speaker 4: because he came home from work, and the way the
Speaker 4: family worked, they had one vehicle that they shared, and
Speaker 4: so he was going to have Skylar take him back
Speaker 4: to work and then she would have the car to
Speaker 4: go to work. And when he knocked on her bedroom door,
Speaker 4: she didn't answer, and then when he tried to open it,
Speaker 4: it wouldn't open, and he found that he couldn't he
Speaker 4: couldn't get it open, so he couldn't raise you know,
Speaker 4: he couldn't wake her, he thought, and that's when he
Speaker 4: grabbed a coat hanger and opened it, and her bed
Speaker 4: hadn't been slept in. He called her mother at work,
Speaker 4: and Mary said, well, she's probably just gone shopping with
Speaker 4: some girls, you know, her friends, and he immediately suspected
Speaker 4: something was wrong, and that's when he went into the
Speaker 4: bedroom again and realized that her window was up a crack,
Speaker 4: and he went outside and saw the stool behind the
Speaker 4: house where she'd hidden it, and then he knew that
Speaker 4: she'd snuck out and not come back. So he got
Speaker 4: very worried really fast.
Speaker 7: And what's the next thing he did do?
Speaker 4: He called Mary and she said she was coming home.
Speaker 4: From work, and when she got home from work, they
Speaker 4: were just about ready to call nine one one when
Speaker 4: somebody from Wendy's where Skuylar worked called and wanted to
Speaker 4: know why she hadn't shut up for work. And when
Speaker 4: Mary hung up the phone, that's when they called nine
Speaker 4: one one to report her missing.
Speaker 7: And what was the police response to the nine one
Speaker 7: one call and their assertion that she was missing and
Speaker 7: this was not typical and that it would be urgent.
Speaker 7: What was their police reaction would they say to Mary?
Speaker 4: Indeed, well, the police reaction was much different than what
Speaker 4: the initial media report said. They came out, they canvassed
Speaker 4: the area with them, They looked at surveillance video from
Speaker 4: the apartment building, and they wrote up a report. They
Speaker 4: interviewed Sheila, and because Sheila and her mom came over
Speaker 4: at Mary's request and watched the surveillance video of Skyler
Speaker 4: getting into this car in a granny in a granny video.
Speaker 4: And when everybody asked Sheila she knew whose car that was,
Speaker 4: she said no. So they took her at face value,
Speaker 4: and you know, obviously not believing that a pretty sweet face,
Speaker 4: you know, sixteen year old girl could be involved in
Speaker 4: Skyler's disappearance, and then the unfortunate thing was that they
Speaker 4: wanted the parents wanted an Amber alert issued, which in
Speaker 4: the state of West Virginia that has to go through
Speaker 4: the state Police headquarters, which is in Charleston, the capital.
Speaker 4: So Star City Police, where the investigation began, made the
Speaker 4: call a couple of times to Charleston after entering Skylar's
Speaker 4: information about her height and weight and weight and all
Speaker 4: that physical data into the Prime database, so that if
Speaker 4: she was found anywhere, people would know, you know, that
Speaker 4: she was a missing teenager. But they made the request
Speaker 4: and state police denied it because it said they said
Speaker 4: she didn't seem to be in danger. She had left
Speaker 4: willingly with someone she knew, so they would not issue
Speaker 4: the Amber alert, and that was a big problem for
Speaker 4: her parents, as I'm sure you can understand.
Speaker 7: So there are friends that Dave and Mary know of.
Speaker 7: So the very first friend that they did call they
Speaker 7: were Sheila. So what was what did Sheila say about
Speaker 7: seeing Skyler and anything else about the incident?
Speaker 3: Indeed, well, that was what was.
Speaker 4: So confusing Dan. She said that she at first, she
Speaker 4: said when they called Sheila, at first she denied seeing
Speaker 4: Skyler and then she called back and said, I have
Speaker 4: to tell you the truth. We snuck out and we
Speaker 4: were gone for about, you know, thirty minutes, and she
Speaker 4: was back home. And that's how they figured that she
Speaker 4: had left with someone else or maybe even been abducted
Speaker 4: by someone else before she made it back into her
Speaker 4: bedroom window. But of course what they didn't know at
Speaker 4: that time was that Sheila was lying about the timeline
Speaker 4: of events and that she and Rachel had picked Skyler
Speaker 4: up later.
Speaker 7: Well, this is one of the more fascinating aspects of this,
Speaker 7: and I don't want to pick on police, but this
Speaker 7: is a keystone cop moment if there ever was one,
Speaker 7: I think, especially when you get used to watching CSI
Speaker 7: on television, so I know it's unrealistic to expect perfection.
Speaker 7: But Sheila said that her and Rachel picked up Skyler
Speaker 7: at eleven and then drove around just nowhere specific and
Speaker 7: then dropped her back off. So police, in this day
Speaker 7: of video every their video cameras in most places, what
Speaker 7: do the police do and what do they see with
Speaker 7: the tape itself and with the timeline that Sheila has
Speaker 7: put forth.
Speaker 4: Well, initially the belief was that the police didn't recognize
Speaker 4: the car, but when I interviewed Jessica Colebank, she said,
Speaker 4: I suspected it was Sheila's car, but we didn't have
Speaker 4: any evidence. And there's still a question in my mind,
Speaker 4: and I think most of the public would agree that
Speaker 4: why didn't they just take the car and search it police?
Speaker 4: So they didn't have probable cause. But you've got a
Speaker 4: missing teenager, so that doesn't altogether make sense. But in
Speaker 4: the end, I will have to say that in the end,
Speaker 4: I don't think that you would have had the confession
Speaker 4: from Rachel and the guilty plea later on from Sheila,
Speaker 4: which basically eliminated the need for a trial and a
Speaker 4: slam dunk ultimately at the end. But it was very
Speaker 4: confusing to the public for many months because the police
Speaker 4: did not reveal the knowledge of what they had behind
Speaker 4: the scenes and what they suspected, although I also believe
Speaker 4: that at some levels psychologically they did not want to
Speaker 4: believe that either to either of those girls could have
Speaker 4: done anything to Skuyler. They basically use.
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Speaker 4: That said as much during the interviews.
Speaker 7: That's what I got from this as well, is that
Speaker 7: they were hoodwinked, just like almost everyone else initially, and
Speaker 7: maybe that's not the way they should have thought, but
Speaker 7: in sort of the reverse of the way police typically think,
Speaker 7: they just didn't imagine these little girls, these young girls,
Speaker 7: sweet girls, were capable of something like this. So in
Speaker 7: that vein, let's talk a little bit more about I
Speaker 7: think the most important part of this case and a
Speaker 7: real eureka moment for police much later. So let's not
Speaker 7: give it away, but let's talk about this eleven o'clock
Speaker 7: to eleven forty five and dropping Skyler off and what
Speaker 7: the police saw in terms of a car and person's
Speaker 7: in that car dropping someone off at a certain time,
Speaker 7: and what they didn't notice at that time. Again, we
Speaker 7: won't just we'll answer that answer that first part of
Speaker 7: the question so that we can it's an incredible the
Speaker 7: you know, what they find out.
Speaker 4: Later, Well, if I, if I understand the question.
Speaker 7: Dan.
Speaker 4: What they saw in the video was grainy footage of
Speaker 4: a car that looked like it I don't even know
Speaker 4: if you could tell the color. If if you could,
Speaker 4: maybe a gray car. But it was parked away from
Speaker 4: the apartment building. And you could see Skyler enter the
Speaker 4: screen at the corner and kind of walk pretty fast
Speaker 4: with a purse or a backpack. I forget what she
Speaker 4: had with her that night. And she opened the door
Speaker 4: of the back seat of the vehicle and got in,
Speaker 4: and then the car drives away. Is that what you
Speaker 4: were asking about?
Speaker 7: Sure? Sure, and we'll we'll, we'll, we'll get the audience
Speaker 7: because I've dwelled on this and we'll talk about this
Speaker 7: in a few minutes. What happens later with police, remarkably
Speaker 7: they understand this and make a again Eureka moment. So
Speaker 7: at this time with police not suspecting these girls, again,
Speaker 7: Twitter the Twitter world or Twitter again, I don't know,
Speaker 7: Twitter world, I guess, and Facebook and social media light
Speaker 7: up with all of the friends, all these young people
Speaker 7: utilizing this communicating they're rumors. There are people that are instigators.
Speaker 7: There are people that are that seem to have better
Speaker 7: rumors than other people or are more persistent. So tell
Speaker 7: us about some of these people and some of the sites,
Speaker 7: and tell us a little bit about some of the
Speaker 7: information that was circulating true and rumored information on social media.
Speaker 4: Well, the teenage the teenage teenagers or the teenage world,
Speaker 4: the university high students, and also the Blacksville students, which
Speaker 4: the high school there is climate well, and that's where
Speaker 4: Sheila had gone until she transferred to UHS when she
Speaker 4: became a freshman. Those two high schools were the students
Speaker 4: there were tweeting either one of two things. They were
Speaker 4: tweeting either tell us what you know or you know,
Speaker 4: we know you're involved, or you know where's Skyler? You
Speaker 4: know what happened to her? You know, they were There
Speaker 4: was a lot of you could see a lot of
Speaker 4: emotional tension both on Facebook and Twitter from the teenagers.
Speaker 4: They were first of all, heartbroken that one of their
Speaker 4: own had gone missing, heartbroken for the nieces, heartbroken actually
Speaker 4: for you know, Sheila and Rachel because their best friend
Speaker 4: was missing. And then over time it kind of grew
Speaker 4: into a crescendo where the students were saying, you girls
Speaker 4: know something basically, and I think a lot of that
Speaker 4: came from Daniel Hovader putting forth the premise that they
Speaker 4: had to be involved.
Speaker 7: It's interesting the role that Jennifer Woodhell has on Facebook.
Speaker 7: Part of me, Jennifer Woodle Hunt that has on Facebook,
Speaker 7: and some of the things that she does are there's
Speaker 7: some truth to some of the things, but she's also
Speaker 7: creates a lot of pressure on Dave and Mary by
Speaker 7: circulating harmful and damaging rumors and untruths on some of
Speaker 7: the posts as well. Isn't that true?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that had to be. I can't even imagine what
Speaker 4: they went through. One of the most disturbing ones to
Speaker 4: me was that Skyler had she'd been in contact with Skyler,
Speaker 4: and Skyler was just hiding from her parents. She'd gotten
Speaker 4: pregnant and didn't didn't want her dad to know. Her
Speaker 4: mom knew, but her father she didn't want him to know,
Speaker 4: and she was coming home she was safe. That was
Speaker 4: just really disturbing to me to think of what they
Speaker 4: must have gone through when they saw things like that.
Speaker 7: It was all also vicious rumors about in reality, she
Speaker 7: probably smoked pot occasionally, there's no real evidence of that.
Speaker 7: Much more than that, and then there was vicious rumors
Speaker 7: of of well, rumors about regarding drugs and her drug.
Speaker 4: Use, yeah, there was, but Skyler pretty much. I think
Speaker 4: that she probably experimented with some other drugs from some
Speaker 4: of the accounts that I got during interviews, But for
Speaker 4: the most part, she used marijuana. And it's interesting because
Speaker 4: Daniel Hovadter said that she used marijuana to help her
Speaker 4: sleep because she had a hard time getting to sleep
Speaker 4: at night.
Speaker 7: Now it's also interesting too, is that coincidentally, there's a
Speaker 7: bank robbery in this small town around the same time,
Speaker 7: and police believe wrongfully of course, that there's some connections.
Speaker 7: And there's a good reason why there's connection. We talked
Speaker 7: about Sheila's having a relationship at some point, some type
Speaker 7: of relationship with a Derek Conaway. So tell us about
Speaker 7: Dylan Why police pardon me? Dylan his brother? So tell
Speaker 7: us about that this bank robbery and this initial misunderstanding
Speaker 7: that the police thought there was a connection.
Speaker 4: Well, what happened was the state police were investigating the
Speaker 4: bank robberies and they had gotten some information that there
Speaker 4: was some Blackville characters involved, and so they decided to
Speaker 4: check out some non criminal elements and went Canvascene houses
Speaker 4: and one of the houses they went to was the
Speaker 4: Conaway House, and they when they got there, they saw
Speaker 4: Dylan's older brother, Derek. He came from around the back
Speaker 4: of the house where he had been digging with a shovel,
Speaker 4: and he had the shovel in his hand. And they
Speaker 4: said specifically that when they joked with him about burying
Speaker 4: a body, you could basically see his heart thumping in
Speaker 4: his chest. He didn't have a shirt on, and he
Speaker 4: seemed to be very disturbed at that comment, so they
Speaker 4: suspected that he perhaps had something to do with Skuylar's disappearance.
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Speaker 7: build it beautiful. As we were talking about the bank
Speaker 7: robbery connections, so how does it proceed with the FBI?
Speaker 7: You talk about Gaskin, officer of Ronnie Gaskins and Spurlock
Speaker 7: from the FBI tell us about their involvement and how
Speaker 7: they proceed with the investigation from here.
Speaker 4: At this point, well Star City, where Skylar disappeared from,
Speaker 4: is a very very small area geographically, and unfortunately, once
Speaker 4: the car drove outside of that boundary, then it becomes
Speaker 4: the jurisdiction of either the county or the state Police,
Speaker 4: depending on what they decide who's going to take it over.
Speaker 4: So what happened ultimately was one of the superiors in
Speaker 4: the state Police contacted Ronnie Gaskins and Chris Barry and said,
Speaker 4: you know, can you all check out these robberies. And
Speaker 4: while they were doing that, they started talking about Skyler's disappearance.
Speaker 4: And this was after they met Derek Conaway that day,
Speaker 4: who of course had nothing to do with her disappearance,
Speaker 4: but they didn't know that at the time, and they
Speaker 4: started talking and then Mary Niece makes a call to
Speaker 4: state Police and ask them if they'll get involved, and
Speaker 4: then they get a call from their superior about going
Speaker 4: over to see what they can find out from her.
Speaker 4: So they get involved by going to the niece's house
Speaker 4: and checking Skyler's bedroom, at which point they see her
Speaker 4: diary and they really are taken aback by what they
Speaker 4: read in the diary in terms of the type of
Speaker 4: person she was. They didn't feel like she was the
Speaker 4: type of teenager who would just deliberately disappear and leave
Speaker 4: her parents to anguish wondering where she was. So that's
Speaker 4: how they came to be involved. The FBI got involved.
Speaker 4: Morgan Spurlock in particular got involved because they had been
Speaker 4: a little girl three four years old. She was in Weston,
Speaker 4: which is about an hour and a half from Morgantown.
Speaker 4: They still haven't found her, but they thought maybe when
Speaker 4: Skuyler came up missing, that there was perhaps a serial
Speaker 4: predator targeting female underage kids. And so that's how the
Speaker 4: FBI got involved that in the bank robbery.
Speaker 7: Now you spoke of the diary. When the FBI examined it,
Speaker 7: was there any reference to the stormy relationship between Rachel,
Speaker 7: Sheila and herself and if so, what did she say?
Speaker 4: There was? To some extent, she didn't talk much about
Speaker 4: it though. The main thing she talked about, the one
Speaker 4: incident that she mentioned was the She did mention a
Speaker 4: few things, but she doesn't go into it very much detail.
Speaker 4: She mentioned things like Sheila upset her by being closer
Speaker 4: to Rachel and ignoring her and hurting her feelings. Things
Speaker 4: like that. She doesn't really go into much detail in
Speaker 4: the diary. She doesn't really seem to be laying her
Speaker 4: heart out in her diary, for say, for instance, like
Speaker 4: I would if I was hurt over something, I would
Speaker 4: go into every single detail and recount it just so
Speaker 4: I could have a clear memory of what happened. But
Speaker 4: Skyler didn't seem to do that. She just kind of
Speaker 4: spoke in general terms.
Speaker 7: Now, the chatter on social media again, we talked about
Speaker 7: its negative effect on Mary and Dave and all the
Speaker 7: parents were aware of the rumors. This is a small town.
Speaker 7: What did the parents do? Mary and David, what did
Speaker 7: they do with this information at some point? What did
Speaker 7: they gleam anything from it? They were they trying to
Speaker 7: get what was their reaction with that information and what
Speaker 7: was their reaction with the police's response or lack of
Speaker 7: response in their mind and their estimation.
Speaker 4: Well, they were pretty upset early on because the police
Speaker 4: did not reveal what they knew. You know, the police
Speaker 4: oftentimes will withhold information because they feel that if it
Speaker 4: can get out, then it's going to hurt the investigation,
Speaker 4: which of course can happen, so you know, rightfully, so
Speaker 4: they did that. But Mary and Dave were pretty good
Speaker 4: at following what they saw on Twitter. They even had
Speaker 4: some friends with their accounts following the teenagers and trying
Speaker 4: to decipher or even beyond deciphering, egging or prodding at
Speaker 4: Sheila and Rachel to get them to maybe say what
Speaker 4: they knew, and Mary especially followed the social media activity
Speaker 4: really close.
Speaker 7: What was the relationship like between Tara and Mary and
Speaker 7: the parents of these girls. What was going on between
Speaker 7: the dynamic between the parents.
Speaker 4: Well, Tara and Mary and Dave knew each other fairly well,
Speaker 4: but Mary and Dave didn't know Patricia's show hardly at all.
Speaker 4: I think they had barely met her. But the relationship
Speaker 4: between Tara and Mary and Dave went back several years
Speaker 4: because their daughters had been friends since they were you know,
Speaker 4: seven or eight. But they didn't They didn't really, for
Speaker 4: the most part, interact much socially. I think a few
Speaker 4: times they may have gotten together and done something, but
Speaker 4: for the most part they didn't because everybody was working
Speaker 4: and you know, they just didn't probably didn't have the
Speaker 4: time of the money to do that.
Speaker 7: Tell us what the breakthrough was. Again, getting back to
Speaker 7: what the police have this Eureka moment where they're reviewing,
Speaker 7: scratching their heads, frustrated they'd review the videotape again of
Speaker 7: the outside of Skuyler's home. Tell us what that Eureka
Speaker 7: moment is and what they discovered.
Speaker 4: Well, they had spent days practically going over car details.
Speaker 4: They would look at the side mirrors, they would look
Speaker 4: at the grill, they would look at every single detail
Speaker 4: of a vehicle they could to try to determine what
Speaker 4: make and model the car in the video was. They
Speaker 4: got a big screen and they labored over that for
Speaker 4: days practically, and finally, as Chris Barry said, when the
Speaker 4: coffee didn't even taste good anymore, putting you know, countless
Speaker 4: hours over time into looking through the video and walked
Speaker 4: and looking at other cars, they went home, called it
Speaker 4: a day, and it was really late that night and
Speaker 4: they were each in their respective homes and probably about
Speaker 4: the same time, they realized that it was Sheila's car
Speaker 4: because nothing else made sense. It was it just that
Speaker 4: was the only thing that made sense to them, and
Speaker 4: that was the eureka moment for the state police.
Speaker 7: The other part of it is that they realized that
Speaker 7: while they had video of the car dropping Skyler off
Speaker 7: or pardon me, they only had half of the video.
Speaker 7: You realized only had half of the video, which he
Speaker 7: that's correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, they they actually, yes, they did. And I
Speaker 4: forget that sometimes because for so long the public didn't
Speaker 4: know that and neither did we. But they didn't see
Speaker 4: a car. They didn't see Sheila's car or the yep.
Speaker 4: Sheila said that she got back roughly I don't know,
Speaker 4: fifteen thirty minutes before Skyler supposedly was seen leaving in
Speaker 4: the second car that she's told everybody must have picked
Speaker 4: Skyler up. And so what they realized was they never
Speaker 4: saw Sheila's car pick Skyler up. They never saw Sheila's
Speaker 4: carr bring her back, and so they determined that it
Speaker 4: had that the only car it was Sheila's car because
Speaker 4: that was the only car in the video. There was
Speaker 4: no other car when you went behind that moment in
Speaker 4: time and when you went forward in the video, Sheila's
Speaker 4: carr was the only one, and that's why it had
Speaker 4: to have been hers.
Speaker 7: It's interesting that other people really thought it was suspicious
Speaker 7: that they would have went driving for thirty or forty
Speaker 7: five minutes, dropped her off before midnight, and then she
Speaker 7: went hung around either outside or back in her room
Speaker 7: again for forty five minutes according to the timeline, to
Speaker 7: be picked up by somebody else and then disappear from
Speaker 7: from there with association with some other person, and again
Speaker 7: with no evidence of anything, and no video of that
Speaker 7: as well. So that was very interesting. Now given that
Speaker 7: the police have this Eureka moment, they have this again,
Speaker 7: this very incriminating evidence, and they got a couple people
Speaker 7: that they thought were just recently, very very innocent. How
Speaker 7: do they proceed with Sheila and Rachel and tell us
Speaker 7: about the polygraph examinations that they want for these women?
Speaker 4: Well, they basically harassed They interrogated them repeated They kept
Speaker 4: calling them to their office and they would question them,
Speaker 4: and they finally uh set up the polygraphs. And the
Speaker 4: very interesting part of the polygraph events was that Rachel
Speaker 4: leapt from her father's car practically as it was moving
Speaker 4: and ran off and ended up with Sheila's mother, who
Speaker 4: then kept her effectively from going and having her polygraph.
Speaker 4: So Sheila failed her polygraph. Rachel ended up I think
Speaker 4: she took one later on. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she
Speaker 4: took one later on, but ultimately she you know, she
Speaker 4: broke down and confessed.
Speaker 7: Now before this confession, it's it's interesting. So let's go
Speaker 7: just back a little bit here, because there's Rachel goes
Speaker 7: away and then there is Sheila to be questioned, and
Speaker 7: so something again, something happens without one of the girls.
Speaker 7: Unbeknownst to one of the girls, something is happening. Someone
Speaker 7: is talking, So tell us about this incident and what
Speaker 7: happens while one is away.
Speaker 4: Are you referring to Rachel being hospitalized? Yes, okay, so
Speaker 4: Rachel is. You know, she's been keeping this secret inside
Speaker 4: of her and it's been literally driving her crazy from
Speaker 4: all accounts, and over the Christmas break, after she gets
Speaker 4: back from celebrating the holidays with her family, she has
Speaker 4: a breakdown of sorts and is taken away by her
Speaker 4: parents to a psychiatric hospital where she's committed. And that
Speaker 4: is the first time since Skuyler disappeared that she and
Speaker 4: Sheila were separated, and she was separated. They were separated
Speaker 4: for about a five day period and when she gets
Speaker 4: out because she had missed her appointment, her next interview
Speaker 4: with the police for her polygraph, they said, you know,
Speaker 4: bring her straight here, do not take her home, And
Speaker 4: that's what our parents did. The police wanted that because
Speaker 4: they felt like for a five day period she had
Speaker 4: not had them had any access to Sheila and vice versa,
Speaker 4: so they felt like it would possibly be a really
Speaker 4: good time to get her done. Maybe break and tell
Speaker 4: what she knew.
Speaker 7: Right, So tell us about the interview itself and how
Speaker 7: police proceed in that interview. And of course you already
Speaker 7: mentioned it as a confession, so how do they get it?
Speaker 7: You know, they always strategize before they go into that room,
Speaker 7: no matter what they think they know, because it's without
Speaker 7: that confession, things get sticky and it's something that they
Speaker 7: would rather have happen rather not. So tell us about
Speaker 7: this interview.
Speaker 4: Well, something happened when Rachel was in Chestnut Ridge the
Speaker 4: psychiatric hospital. It seemed like whatever therapy she received there,
Speaker 4: she left a different person and she went in and
Speaker 4: perhaps that was because she was away from Sheila for
Speaker 4: five days. But when she came out and entered the
Speaker 4: you know, in interrogation room if you will, at the conference
Speaker 4: room at her attorney's office, they maybe it was a
Speaker 4: state police office, I can't remember for sure, but anyway,
Speaker 4: wherever she was located and the attorneys were there and
Speaker 4: the state police were there, she basically said, you know,
Speaker 4: this is what happened, and what she told them left
Speaker 4: them dumbfounded. They told me during an interview that they
Speaker 4: practically fell off their chairs. Gaskins dropped his pencil because
Speaker 4: all along the police believed that the girls were afraid
Speaker 4: to talk because they knew something that happened to Skyler,
Speaker 4: but they were not directly involved in it. And at
Speaker 4: that moment when Rachel revealed that they had deliberately taken
Speaker 4: her out and stabbed her, they knew that they know.
Speaker 4: They just couldn't believe what they were hearing. It was
Speaker 4: pretty pretty traumatic all the way around.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's interesting. They still were hoodwinked and through the
Speaker 7: lawyers had said that there would be an immunity deal
Speaker 7: in case that they weren't. They were just involved in
Speaker 7: some way, so they thought there was still lying. They
Speaker 7: knew they were lying, but they didn't realize extent, and
Speaker 7: so this immunity deal. They still believed that she wasn't involved.
Speaker 7: That's why there was an immunity deal. So tell us
Speaker 7: why again, everyone wants to know why, and a central
Speaker 7: question here, what was the motive according to Rachel for
Speaker 7: this murder?
Speaker 4: Rachel said they killed her because they didn't want to
Speaker 4: be friends with her anymore. But that is just such
Speaker 4: a thin excuse that no one believes it.
Speaker 7: And okay, now go ahead.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Well do you want the real reason.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't want to hold you back, so okay,
Speaker 7: sure give us the reason why you believe or what
Speaker 7: you found to be the real reason.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, nobody acts with a motive unless to
Speaker 4: kill somebody, unless they've had something else going on behind
Speaker 4: the scenes, you know, psychosis or something something to you know,
Speaker 4: you're you're suddenly hit with all kinds of pressure and
Speaker 4: you snap. You know, they've got the show on snapped
Speaker 4: where that happens. But in this case, it really does
Speaker 4: appear that these two teenage girls were afraid that their
Speaker 4: relationship would become known. Now, that is to me a
Speaker 4: key element in this case. However, there's also the factor
Speaker 4: that Skyler was the killjoy. Skyler was the girl who
Speaker 4: would chastise Sheila if Sheila went over the edge. Skyler's
Speaker 4: the one who told them, you know, we really shouldn't
Speaker 4: do this, or she would be bluntly, you know, sharing
Speaker 4: with friends and other people, family members that you know,
Speaker 4: they had smoked weed and you know, those types of
Speaker 4: things were not things that Sheila and Rachel really were
Speaker 4: too keen on talking about. So there was there were
Speaker 4: different factors, but the primary one seems to be that
Speaker 4: they thought this relationship they had would be exposed.
Speaker 7: Now in this legal wrangling. And that's another really fascinating
Speaker 7: part of this book because as soon as you think
Speaker 7: the story is, oh, I understand it, well, then there's
Speaker 7: these legal twists in turn very interesting behavior. So the
Speaker 7: deal about the immunity that's off the table when they
Speaker 7: realize that, wait a minute, she's a co killer here.
Speaker 7: But at the same time, because she's come forward first
Speaker 7: and gives the information first, we all know this from
Speaker 7: law and order, that there is some sort of deal
Speaker 7: put on the table. Tell us what kind of deal
Speaker 7: for her testimony, for her being truthful and coming forward
Speaker 7: first is given to Rachel.
Speaker 4: The deal was that she would get twenty to forty
Speaker 4: years and I'm trying to think if there was something
Speaker 4: else parole. I believe.
Speaker 7: Possibility to parole after fifteen years.
Speaker 4: Yes, ten years and.
Speaker 7: Okay ten years, ten years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And the other part of this story is too that
Speaker 7: they automatically take people that are under eighteen years or
Speaker 7: sixteen years of age and put them to adult court
Speaker 7: and adult sentences. But in this case they did, didn't
Speaker 7: they right?
Speaker 4: And in the state of West Virginia, you're automatically tried
Speaker 4: as an adult for a capital crime like murder that
Speaker 4: happens when you're a certain age, and they were the
Speaker 4: age that they were tried as adults, so that would
Speaker 4: make it mandatory that they would end up in an
Speaker 4: adult facility when they turned eighteen.
Speaker 7: The other part of it, too, is the what is
Speaker 7: the benefit or I say, what did Rachel say to
Speaker 7: her benefit in terms of her involvement in this murder
Speaker 7: that would benefit her rather than Sheila?
Speaker 4: Okay, can you ask that again? I'm not quite sure
Speaker 4: I followed you.
Speaker 7: Was there anything in Rachel's confession that would benefit Rachel
Speaker 7: and to the detriment of Sheila in this plea agreement
Speaker 7: and this confession.
Speaker 4: Well, just by virtue of the fact that she was
Speaker 4: the one to take them to Skylar's body and tell
Speaker 4: what had happened, that gives her an automatic advantage, which
Speaker 4: is typical of what happens when there's more than more
Speaker 4: than one killer.
Speaker 7: But she didn't put any emphasis on one being a ringleader. Again,
Speaker 7: it's not going to benefit her really in the end.
Speaker 7: But you see often someone trying to put more responsibility
Speaker 7: on the other killer.
Speaker 4: We'll say, you know, she didn't seem to do that.
Speaker 4: That's not the way Corporal Gaskins outlined her confession, and
Speaker 4: that doesn't sound like what she said when she was
Speaker 4: in the courtroom and apologizing. What she said in the
Speaker 4: courtroom was interesting. She said that wasn't me, that the
Speaker 4: girl that did that wasn't me. But she did not
Speaker 4: say that she was enticed to do it, that she
Speaker 4: was let alone, that somebody coerced her. And it doesn't
Speaker 4: seem like that's what she said in the confession either.
Speaker 7: What was the actual crime murder itself? What did they do?
Speaker 7: There was multiple status, So tell us about the actual crime. Again,
Speaker 7: she has beheaded, so tell us about that. Tell us
Speaker 7: about the entire ghastly crime.
Speaker 4: Well, they drove out to a rural area behind Blacksmille.
Speaker 4: It's called Brave. It was just over the line in
Speaker 4: PA and Pennsylvania. And they got out of the car
Speaker 4: under the pretense of going to smoke marijuana at a
Speaker 4: location where they had smoked marijuana before, and they sent
Speaker 4: Skuyler back to the car to get a lighter because
Speaker 4: theirs wasn't working, And when she turned her back, they
Speaker 4: reached under their hoodies to where they had the knives
Speaker 4: under their arms and started attacking her, stabbing her in
Speaker 4: the back essentially, and she fought back, she ran aways.
Speaker 4: At one point she was able to get Rachel's knife
Speaker 4: from her and stabbed Rachel in the leg, and then
Speaker 4: she was overcome by the two of them. Skyler was
Speaker 4: very strong, Rachel was also very strong. The common belief
Speaker 4: is that Sheila would never have been able to carry
Speaker 4: out this crime on her own, and so there had
Speaker 4: to be two two to take her down.
Speaker 7: When she was recounting the murder itself and everything that
Speaker 7: followed the murder, the post murder, what was her demeanor, like,
Speaker 7: how did she react?
Speaker 4: She seemed really nervous. Gasking told me in the interview,
Speaker 4: and he said she even asked if she could have
Speaker 4: a garbage can because she thought she might throw up. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 4: she also said that she told them that Skuyler had
Speaker 4: stabbed her and they couldn't believe that, and she said, here,
Speaker 4: I'll show you, and she showed them the scar on
Speaker 4: her leg.
Speaker 7: Now, what was Sheila's demeanor and what was Sheila's behavior
Speaker 7: and how did Sheila react to all of this?
Speaker 4: It's been very bizarre that the courtroom scene of her
Speaker 4: still is very disquieting. She looks like she doesn't know
Speaker 4: what's going on around her, very like a child, like
Speaker 4: a child who just doesn't even get it. And from
Speaker 4: what I've heard from people who have talked to her
Speaker 4: since she's been in prison, then in the letters I read,
Speaker 4: she seems like this is no big deal. She doesn't
Speaker 4: indicate that she did anything wrong, and she seems to
Speaker 4: think that she's going to get out in no time.
Speaker 4: And when she gets out, she'll go back to smoking
Speaker 4: weed and hanging out in vehicles and you know, getting high.
Speaker 7: What was the attendance like at the court at the
Speaker 7: court case itself in terms of parents of Rachel, Sheila,
Speaker 7: Schuyler and friends? What was tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: of that sort of attendance dynamic and the event, well,
Speaker 7: it was very very tense.
Speaker 4: There was on the right side, if you're facing the
Speaker 4: judge's bench, you would have Skuyler's family friends, and on
Speaker 4: the left side of the aisle you would have Rachel's
Speaker 4: family or Sheila's depending on which hearing it was for
Speaker 4: their sentencing, and of course you've got I think it
Speaker 4: was probably the teenagers who were torn, because the teenagers,
Speaker 4: some of them were friends of all three girls. And
Speaker 4: maybe didn't really even know where to sit, but you
Speaker 4: could clearly see the pain and the suffering that all
Speaker 4: of the family members were experiencing. It was very hard
Speaker 4: to watch.
Speaker 7: Now, if I'm not wrong, Mary and David along with
Speaker 7: a politician, government official, a commissionaire I believe Tom Bloom, Yes, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 7: thank you, and just did something that really, despite all
Speaker 7: this tragedy, there is some little bright spot with the
Speaker 7: law change. So tell us about the fight for the
Speaker 7: law and what happened just around the same time. It
Speaker 7: was not previous about Skyler's Law.
Speaker 4: Chuck Yoakum and Tom Bloom. Chuck had been a student
Speaker 4: and he's in an administration position over in Annapolis School now.
Speaker 4: But he and Tom got together and they, along with
Speaker 4: Charlene Marshall, a delegate from lond County, came up with
Speaker 4: Schuyler's Law so that in the future, whenever there's a
Speaker 4: missing child or teene, no matter the circumstances, the Amber
Speaker 4: alert should automatically be put out to the public so
Speaker 4: that there's no time lapse, because of course the first
Speaker 4: twenty four hours are crucial when you're searching for a
Speaker 4: missing child, and so that was the one good thing
Speaker 4: that came up all this, and.
Speaker 7: What was the sentence for Sheila in the end, what
Speaker 7: was her sentence?
Speaker 4: She got a life sent with a chance of parole
Speaker 4: in fifteen years.
Speaker 7: And it's because they were young that by law they're
Speaker 7: able to have some possibility of parole. Otherwise it would
Speaker 7: be deemed cruel in an unusual punishment. Right.
Speaker 4: That seems to be the common thinking, although it seems
Speaker 4: like there is some amount of not really argument, but
Speaker 4: discussion about whether that's an accurate assessment of the way
Speaker 4: that law reads. I've read some literature since then that
Speaker 4: indicates that there are some cases where they do sentence
Speaker 4: teens and don't give them parole. But it's an interesting
Speaker 4: legal dilemma that's currently being batted around in the court system.
Speaker 7: Just a side note. In Canada, if this were to happen,
Speaker 7: both of those girls would be given the maximum sentence
Speaker 7: in juvenile custody, which would in three years. I believe
Speaker 7: that they would have almost no no, that's as long
Speaker 7: as they can go. I don't believe they could raise
Speaker 7: them to adult court. I do not believe, even with
Speaker 7: the Conservative government and being in power for about six
Speaker 7: years or more, that they could not. They could not
Speaker 7: do that. Three years they would be released.
Speaker 5: That's the difference.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's incredible in people here, especially in the state
Speaker 4: of West Virginia. But a lot of people from around
Speaker 4: the country who have followed the case are outraged that
Speaker 4: they even got parole. They think that, you know, they
Speaker 4: should be held indefinitely. Yeah, yeah, the possible possibility.
Speaker 7: What the we are into election cycle next year in
Speaker 7: the reigning conservative government. They say it's just a political move,
Speaker 7: but they are trying to introduce legislature that is opposed
Speaker 7: by the opposition parties for the removal of the possibility
Speaker 7: of parole for the most heinous killers and criminals. That's
Speaker 7: what they're just putting forth now in twenty and fifteen.
Speaker 7: So there is no actual life sentence, and there's a
Speaker 7: first degree murder. It would be life sentence, but with
Speaker 7: the possibility of parole after twenty five years. So just
Speaker 7: some differences. I thought i'd throw in there because I
Speaker 7: just find it fascinating that the difference is so the
Speaker 7: same judicial system. I know there can be differences, there's
Speaker 7: differences in other countries other than America, too, but this
Speaker 7: is a stark difference. When I'm looking at this, you know,
Speaker 7: day to day in doing this true murder, So very
Speaker 7: very tell us about Mary and Dave and sort of
Speaker 7: where they were at the end of this having a
Speaker 7: Schuyler's Law but I mean, just put through the ringer
Speaker 7: with this entire ordeal. I know that you got really
Speaker 7: inside this community and got inside these people's lives to
Speaker 7: tell this story, this incredible story. So tell us about
Speaker 7: Mary and Dave after all of that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you know, Skuyler was their only child,
Speaker 4: not their only daughter, she was their only child. So
Speaker 4: of course their lives were pretty much destroyed when she disappeared,
Speaker 4: and especially when they found out she had been murdered,
Speaker 4: and how terrible her suffering had to have been during
Speaker 4: that murder. But they have had a hard time with it,
Speaker 4: as you can imagine. I don't think any parent unless
Speaker 4: they've experienced that extent, the grief of that extent that
Speaker 4: they could even imagine. But they've tried to speak out
Speaker 4: at different groups and churches and schools when they're invited
Speaker 4: and try to help the community to maybe appreciate what
Speaker 4: to look for in terms of other teens or children,
Speaker 4: what to watch for. They've they've they've just been, you know,
Speaker 4: trying to get through it all, and it's taken so long,
Speaker 4: and now there's a civil suit that's involved, and it's
Speaker 4: just going to take a lot of time for them
Speaker 4: to heal. I don't know that you know that they'll
Speaker 4: ever be completely successful, but they are doing better. And
Speaker 4: I think that part of the part of the heart
Speaker 4: wrenching pain that they experienced had to do with Sheila
Speaker 4: pretending to help them search for Skylar and pretending to
Speaker 4: not know what had happened to her, and then feeling
Speaker 4: like they had been betrayed by Sheila because they literally
Speaker 4: took up for Sheila when people in public media started
Speaker 4: bashing her and saying, you know, awful things about her,
Speaker 4: they would take up for Sheila Originally.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I regret that we didn't talk about that too,
Speaker 7: because that was a dramatic, you know, profound and very
Speaker 7: psychopathic moment when Sheila's very adamant and involved in the
Speaker 7: in the search for her friend, and very very emotional
Speaker 7: and did some fine acting around that time. So again,
Speaker 7: just I can imagine the betrayal that the family felt
Speaker 7: on top of the grief and in top of the
Speaker 7: just inexplicable horror of you know, social media and criticism
Speaker 7: and the police in action. So they thought or at
Speaker 7: least they couldn't get any information, and they thought their
Speaker 7: daughter was missing but likely killed, and didn't know where
Speaker 7: the perpetrator was at all, just and you captured all
Speaker 7: this in this book. So I want to congratulate you
Speaker 7: on Pretty Little Killers capturing this murder in mayhem and
Speaker 7: horror and really a fine books. So I want to
Speaker 7: thank you very much. For those that might want to
Speaker 7: contact you, I don't know if you have a Facebook
Speaker 7: page or you communicate that way, or how can people
Speaker 7: learn a little bit more about this or other work
Speaker 7: that you do. How can they connect.
Speaker 4: With you Facebook? Twitter? And I also have a website
Speaker 4: and it's the title of my memoir. My first book
Speaker 4: is Sister of Silence dot Com.
Speaker 7: Okay, I want to thank you very much Dalen taking
Speaker 7: out your valuable time to come onto the program. I'm
Speaker 7: sorry about all the technical nonsense at the beginnings. I'm
Speaker 7: glad we got to have you on here and fully
Speaker 7: explain this book. So thank you very much for this interview,
Speaker 7: and thank you Dane. I hope to talk to you
Speaker 7: again soon and have yourself
Speaker 4: Agreed to ev YouTube bye bye, good night.