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00:04Skylar, you are one of my best friends.
00:10The whole of Morgantown is going crazy looking for you.
00:19I need you to come back.
00:23I seriously can't deal with school without you.
00:28Skylar has been missing since late Thursday night.
00:30If anyone has seen this girl, please let the police know.
00:35Coming to you live tonight, 18 mysteriously banishes, just steps from her West Virginia home.
00:41Maybe she was meeting up with someone.
00:44Perhaps he was an older boy.
00:46There was a sighting of Skylar at a party in the woods.
00:49There was a ton of partying and drugs.
00:51Who knows what happened?
00:52Maybe some hot-headed drug dealers were sick of her.
00:55I do wonder if there could have been an accidental odyssey.
00:57Is she hidden away?
00:58Abducted?
00:59Is she trapped in a dungeon somewhere?
01:01Skylar, I hope you're safe.
01:02I'm scared to death right now.
01:03Who's to say somebody's not going to just, like, grab me?
01:06We were terrified, and we were screaming.
01:09What?
01:09You all about to kill that!
01:11You fucking fuck of us!
01:31I actually had gotten a phone call from a mutual friend of mine and Skylar's,
01:40and she said, hey, have you heard from Skylar?
01:44And I was like, I mean, not today, not, you know?
01:48And I was like, why?
01:50And she was like, well, we can't find her.
01:55I got a text from Skylar.
01:57Just your normal saying, goodnight, love you, like, that was it.
02:03That was the last thing I heard from her.
02:05I did text her a few times, and I was like, hey, if you see this, like, call me or
02:10something.
02:11I was in my bedroom, and my mom sat me down and told me Skylar went missing.
02:14And I was just like, no, she's not.
02:17She's not missing.
02:18That's impossible.
02:20Nobody's heard from her.
02:21Nobody has, like, nobody's seen her.
02:25It's very scary, and it makes you, like, think, like, my God, like, what happened?
02:40I'm Skylar.
02:42I go to University High School, a.k.a. UHS.
02:47Since I started here, life's been more exciting than my entire 15 years.
02:54Love, my friends.
02:56We're just closer than anyone else, and don't talk shit.
03:00There was definitely a lot of clicks in our school.
03:03You had the cheerleaders and the theater kids and the science people.
03:08You would definitely see, like, all of the football players that were being rowdy and making a lot of noise.
03:15There was the populars, the jocks, the band geeks.
03:18I was a band geek.
03:24Skylar just had her, like, small group of friends that she was with every day.
03:31It was usually just Sheila, Rachel, and Skylar.
03:37Me and Sheila are best friends.
03:40We'll always be best friends.
03:43We're super close and talk on the phone every night.
03:47I love hanging out with Rachel.
03:50Sheila and I are closer to her than we've ever been with anyone, other than each other.
03:57Skylar in school was very smart.
04:00Always really good grades, and she was the person that, you know, you kind of peeped over at their paper
04:05to get the right answer.
04:09She, uh, she had more of that, like, bubbly personality, and her MO was, what can we do and have
04:15the most fun out here and, you know, not be boring and lame.
04:21Rachel was a completely different story.
04:24She was in the drama club.
04:26Everyone talked about this girl who had a voice of an angel and that she came from a really great
04:31Christian family.
04:33So, the three of them were, like, different people.
04:37But the trio seemed to be really, really close.
04:41They were always together, the three of them, just, like, talking and laughing and goofing off.
04:50They'd hang out by the lockers.
04:52In between every class, they'd try and find each other.
04:55They really didn't talk to many other people.
04:57It was kind of crazy.
04:59I feel like Skylar found Rachel and Sheila, and she was like, this is my clique of friends, so I'm
05:04gonna stay in this little clique of friends.
05:10So, I haven't written in forever.
05:14Life's been crazy.
05:17But I plan on writing down all our stories from summer so far.
05:22With all of us in trouble, sneaking out now is pretty much impossible for Sheila, Rachel, and me.
05:29Can't get enough of you.
05:37On Thursday night, Skylar came home from work.
05:40She had a part-time job at Wendy's.
05:43And she said, Mom, Dad, I am gonna go to bed.
05:46I am dead tired, and I smell like french fries.
05:48And she walked over to me and gave me a kiss.
05:53The following day on Friday, I awoke, and we never bothered Skylar in the morning, because we didn't have to.
06:01We let her sleep in, and I would come home at my lunchtime and give Skylar the car, and, you
06:07know, she would take me back to work.
06:09That was our routine.
06:11And, uh, first I walked over, close to her door, and I said, Sky, come on, baby.
06:16And I said, you gotta get up.
06:18You gotta take Daddy back to work.
06:21And I didn't get a reply, so I went over, and I said, Skylar.
06:27I tried the lock, and it was locked, which wasn't uncommon.
06:30And so I got a coat hanger out of the closet, and I popped the lock.
06:36The first thing I noticed was her bed hadn't been slept in.
06:40And I said, oh, boy.
06:45I got a call at work from Dave, and he said that Skylar was missing.
06:51She wasn't home.
06:54I was not alarmed at first.
06:57I told him, I said, well, maybe she went shopping with Sheila.
07:02I said, call Sheila, see if she's with her.
07:05That's her best friend.
07:07She'll know where she is.
07:08And I said, Sheila, where is Skylar?
07:11She said, I don't know.
07:13He called back and said that they hadn't seen her, that she wasn't with them.
07:19So I gave him different names of her friends to call that I thought she might be with.
07:25Rachel had messaged me asking if I had seen or heard from Skylar, and I told her no.
07:33Rachel had just left to go to camp for the summer.
07:39And she said that if I heard anything, to get a hold of Sheila.
07:44I said, well, we won't worry till 4 o'clock because she has to be at work at 4, and
07:52she won't miss that.
07:54I looked over at the window, and it was open about this much.
07:58I looked down at her vanity bench.
08:01All her stuff was there, but she wasn't.
08:04It wasn't like her to just not say anything, especially to her parents.
08:10Mary had come home from work.
08:12I was starting to worry at that point.
08:16And at 4 o'clock, the phone rang.
08:21It was Skylar's part-time job, wondering if she was coming to work because she hadn't shown up, and that
08:26was so unlike Skylar.
08:28She was always there on time.
08:31And I said, I don't know.
08:33I don't know what to tell you.
08:35She's not here, and I can't find her.
08:38And then I started crying, and I was a mess.
08:47Long County 911, do you have an emergency?
08:49I have a 16-year-old daughter who apparently snuck out of her room last night.
08:53She has not been home, hasn't went to work, can't get a hold of her from any of her friends.
08:58I am scared to death.
09:07I'm on this phone!
09:10I feel like when the three of them were together, it was easier to be who they really wanted to
09:17be.
09:18I got this!
09:20So Rachel, outside of the group, was very proper.
09:24But it felt like when she was in the group, she was really wild, not afraid to be loud or
09:30rambunctious or get into trouble.
09:33And Skylar, once she was inside of that clique and in the group, she was pretty outgoing.
09:39She liked to, you know, talk a lot, get into trouble.
09:44They definitely egged each other on.
09:47And as high school continued, it definitely felt like they were pushing the boundaries more and doing things that teenagers
09:55shouldn't be doing.
09:56But you really trust your friends to, you know, have your back and not say anything.
10:01A fun night for us was driving around, you know, drinking and stuff and spray painting signs.
10:08And, um, yeah, I probably shouldn't say any more on that.
10:13We would go joyriding.
10:15And, uh, most of the time it was Sheila calling the shots because it was her car.
10:20It was a little silver car, but it was really nice.
10:23Fucking shit!
10:26Fucking shit!
10:27Sheila was definitely a very influential person.
10:31If Sheila wanted to go somewhere, Skylar was like, yeah, let's go do it.
10:36Sheila was an only child.
10:39Sheila's mom had, like, a different parenting style.
10:43She thought, you gotta let the kid do what the kid wants to do and make their own mistakes, their
10:47own decisions.
10:53The chief came to me and said, you like doing this type of stuff?
10:57Why don't you run with it?
10:59So that's how I got the case.
11:02I always dreamed of being a detective.
11:05I always wanted to know who done it and why.
11:10The first thing I did was I went and talked to Mary and Dave Knees just to get a feel
11:16for what they thought had happened and to make that initial connection with them.
11:23Their apartment building was very quiet.
11:25We rarely had calls there.
11:27And the window that she climbed out of, the stool was still outside just as she had left it.
11:35Skylar's bedroom was your typical teenager, except it was very clean.
11:40So that's not typical.
11:43So you're just thinking, why would she do this?
11:48Why isn't she home yet?
11:51You're hoping that she's just at a friend's house.
11:55Possibly she ran away with a boy because love can make you do crazy things.
12:05Why would she do that?
12:09Whenever the topic of boys kind of came around, like Skylar, I feel like the conversation typically got routed to
12:18like Rachel and Sheila.
12:30Sheila was very experienced with boys and I think that Rachel had a pretty serious boyfriend.
12:38They were the ones that were, you know, getting the boys and doing more of the like crazy teenage girl
12:45stuff.
12:45And then Skylar was like the nicer one, more down to earth.
12:51Sheila lost her V card to Dylan Conaway.
12:56Sheila and Rachel get hit on, but never me.
12:59It sucks.
13:11It kind of like turned into like a chain of like one friend called me.
13:16I called my boyfriend who then like called some of his friends to be like,
13:23Hey, has anybody seen or heard or know anything about Skylar?
13:30Because she wasn't in her bed this morning.
13:35The whole community of teenagers really kind of came together.
13:46We drove into Skylar's house and everybody that was there was starting to figure stuff out.
13:55Skylar's friends offered to come over and help look for Skylar.
14:01Sheila and her mother agreed to come over and Sheila said,
14:06I've got to be honest with you and tell you about what happened last night.
14:12Sheila confessed that Rachel and Sheila had picked Skylar up the night before
14:18and they went joyriding around the neighborhood, but they were all back home and in bed by midnight.
14:27So that scared me even more.
14:32Mary said,
14:34Jesus Christ, Sheila, we've always let you and Skylar do whatever you wanted to do as long as it was
14:39safe.
14:39Why do you have to sneak out and scare that wits out of us?
14:45And I made Sheila show me exactly where you dropped her off at.
14:50She said, right here.
14:51And she showed me the end of an interception.
14:54And I said, okay.
14:57We had a picture of Skylar.
15:00And Sheila and her mother and Mary went one side of the street,
15:04and I went the other side of the street, knocking on every door.
15:09Sheila and her mother were both very helpful.
15:13Sheila kept asking, what can we do?
15:16Do you need anything?
15:18And I was very grateful.
15:20It was her best friend as well as our daughter.
15:24So I felt for her as much as she felt for me.
15:30Every door we knocked on, nobody's seen her.
15:33That is the most helpless feeling in the freaking world.
15:36You can't find your loved one.
15:39And you don't know where she is.
15:42I told Dave, I said, we have cameras on the apartment building.
15:48I said, maybe the cameras caught it.
15:52I said, oh, my God, get a hold of the landlord now.
15:55So we did.
15:56There was Dave and myself and Sheila and her mother.
16:01And we were watching him go through the footage.
16:07He showed us and all we saw was this image.
16:11It was Skylar that climbed out her window.
16:17She ran across the parking lot and got the sedan in the back seat and drove away.
16:25It was so grainy, you couldn't see what kind of car.
16:29But you could see Skylar get in the car.
16:33Skylar got into a vehicle an hour after her best friends dropped her off.
16:38We watched it over and over and over and over again, trying to pause it, slow it down,
16:44to try and make out the vehicle, get a plate.
16:48Anything in every small minute detail we looked for.
16:52And there just really wasn't much there.
16:54The CCTV was black and white, so it was just a lighter colored car.
17:00But since she did willingly get into the vehicle, we knew it wasn't a kidnapping at that point.
17:06When we saw her get into the car willingly, I thought she knew who it was.
17:13So in my mind, that was a plus.
17:16But then on the other side, since she didn't come back home and no one knew where she was,
17:24whoever that person was, did they drug her?
17:27Did they throw her in the river? We just didn't know.
17:31It's pure hell, especially for me. I'm the dad. I'm supposed to protect my family.
17:38And I couldn't. She wasn't there for me to protect.
17:43The Star City police are still looking for a missing 16-year-old.
17:47Skylar Neese was last seen Friday at her home in Star City.
17:51The police say they don't suspect foul play, but Neese's family is concerned about her safety.
17:58We don't have a lot of money, but, you know, we got a lot of love and that's all we
18:02need.
18:03We love our baby. We want her home.
18:07The tape shows that the young lady left willingly, but what's happened to her since then is our concern.
18:13We want to know. We want to make sure she's safe.
18:16I was texting on the phone and my mom said, Kirsten, look at this, look at this.
18:21And then she rewinded the TV and that's when we saw the surveillance video.
18:26It was kind of like, don't do it. Like, go back, turn around.
18:30Kind of like you're watching, like, a horror film. Like, people are like, no, don't go in the door.
18:36Don't open the door. Don't go in the room. It's kind of like that.
18:40You know, where is she? Why is she gone? Who is she with?
18:52At this point, everyone was looking for Skylar, trying to figure out if anyone
18:59knew or heard anything. So I posted on Facebook and I was like, Skylar, come home. Where are you?
19:08Driving around town, I'd keep my eyes open for her. Everywhere I went, I looked for her.
19:15It's very scary to hear that your friend's not at home. Nobody knows where she is. Nobody's heard from her.
19:25There were posters that said missing. Skylar kind of had her description and we
19:36handed them out all over. I worked at an ice cream shop and I plastered the walls of that ice
19:47cream shop
19:48with these missing posters of Skylar. Small town gossip always gets around and, you know,
19:56that was big time. You know, we never had a kid go missing or anything. Oh, it was the talk
20:01at the
20:01school. People were thinking that she ran away and that maybe she had gotten into a fight with somebody,
20:11whether it be her parents or one of her friends, maybe she was in a fight with a boy.
20:18Maybe she met a guy online, right? Like, was it a date that went wrong and did something happen
20:25or was it, did it end up being an older dude? Did he abduct her? Like, it was definitely a
20:31time of
20:33not being very cautious. Like, if somebody wanted to message you, like, you would just talk to them.
20:44I personally didn't have a care in the world about social media and didn't really understand the
20:49dangers of it at all. I've been thinking lately, it'd be nice to start talking to someone.
20:57I hate being alone. So I made a fake profile with pictures stolen from some gorgeous girl and started talking.
21:15Social media was a big deal back then.
21:22It's like a new shiny toy. Like, you want to play with it.
21:27Social media was a whole world that your parents weren't looking at you and you can be and say
21:32however you wanted to be and feel. It felt like a separate world. It definitely did.
21:39I grew up where it was dial-up internet, but obviously you couldn't use dial-up all the time because
21:45someone might have to make a phone call. You didn't have enough internet to stream a movie or to
21:52even watch YouTube, but sending a message took 10 seconds.
21:57It kind of started on MySpace and then Facebook, but then Twitter came out and parents, I guess,
22:04didn't know about Twitter or they didn't understand it maybe because you just tweeted everything you were doing.
22:13Skyler's social media was not a world I was part of. I never thought about it.
22:19She would be on the computer at two and three in the morning and I was trying to sleep and
22:25I could hear
22:25the click, click, click, click. Yeah, so that caused quite a few issues and fights.
22:34Dave and I had no clue what she was doing on the computer. I would never ask who she was
22:42talking to.
22:43It just didn't enter my mind.
22:51I received a call from the Star City Police Department saying like, hey, there was a
22:56a 16-year-old girl named Skyler niece. She went missing and they have no leads.
23:02In Star City, we don't have very many missing teens or runaways. So the FBI came on board rather quickly.
23:10We issued those legal process for her cell phone records.
23:15We wanted to get tower locations, who she's had contact with. Are there any mysterious numbers that
23:22her parents don't know? That could be a clue to who she's with. But that took time to get. That
23:28was not
23:29a quick process. Coming to you live tonight, 18 mysteriously vanishes, just steps from her West
23:37Virginia home. Once the public became more aware of Skyler being missing, that's when tips really started
23:44coming in. And any tip that comes in, we chase it down. There was information that there's a possible
23:56sighting of Skyler being in North Carolina. It seemed like a strong tip, especially since
24:03there were two girls on the beach. One had red hair and Rachel has bright red hair.
24:12I called Dave and Mary and said, I just want you to be prepared to drive nine hours if this
24:18is a real
24:19tip. We were scared to death. We didn't know if that was her or not. So we gathered all her
24:24stuff
24:24and we were going to head down there. My mom had told me that there was a sighting of her
24:28and I was excited. I was like, oh my gosh, we found her, we found her. Rachel was at church
24:36camp
24:36that week. So she was out of town, but it's possible she left church camp and made a plan
24:43with Skyler to go to the beach. I did contact the church camp.
24:52Couldn't get anyone to return my calls.
24:58But eventually, Rachel called back.
25:04She seemed nonchalant, just kind of, well, I'm at church camp. I can't do anything from here.
25:11You know, I don't know anything.
25:15And that's basically all she said.
25:20So many leads turned into dead ends. Somebody saw Skyler walking on the interstate.
25:26Well, turns out it wasn't Skyler. Somebody saw Skyler in Sabernan.
25:30Well, I went down to Sabernan and screamed my guts out. And all along, I knew in my heart
25:38that she would never do this to us. She would never, ever do this to us.
25:43There have been 172 sightings. And law enforcement told us just a couple of minutes ago that none of
25:49them had panned out thus far. It wasn't her. It was very disappointing.
25:56It was like all hope was just kind of crushed at that point.
26:01There is no, oh, she went on a last minute vacation with some random friend because she would have been
26:06back by that point. So she's either ran away and has no intention of coming back, which didn't seem
26:13likely at all. Or she was kidnapped and is trapped in a dungeon somewhere. You kind of start to assume
26:22the worst.
26:24It was definitely shocking. And especially in Morgantown, like there was not a lot of crazy stuff that happens here.
26:36I was very scared for my friend and like so scared that like I could be next. Like if they're
26:44snatching
26:45kids up off the street, like who's to say I won't be walking out of work and somebody's not going
26:50to
26:51just like grab me and run. We wake up each day and get ready for the day and do the
26:56best we can do.
26:57There's unfortunately, there's no guidebook or rule book or any kind of other guide that says how you
27:02should deal with stuff like this. Mary was a mess, as we both were.
27:07Oh, my Lord. I think they had me on every medicine creed of a man. And I just sat around,
27:17stared in space and waited and waited.
27:21Scott was our world. And now you're not here. And it makes it really tough to get up every morning
27:27and keep going.
27:35As a teenager, usually your best friend is your sounding board. They know everything. And
27:43true secrets are few and far between. You usually tell somebody your secret at some point.
28:00So we wanted to talk to Skylar's friends.
28:10Holy shit. Fuck. Look. Okay. God, seriously. It's like a fucking jaw. It's like.
28:20Are you going to puke? Why would I?
28:24Sheila and Skylar were best friends. When Skylar met Sheila when they were both about eight years old,
28:34Skylar liked Sheila because she was so bubbly and funny and, you know, always causing chaos.
28:42Yeah. They had so much in common. They both were very loyal to each other. They were inseparable.
28:53She was like our kid, man. She didn't knock on the door. She walked in.
28:57She didn't ask if she can get something to drink. She just went and got it.
29:02She was very close to us, you know?
29:09I would say their relationship was, I guess you could call it intense.
29:17Skylar was very confident, but Rachel had such a big personality and Sheila also had a very big
29:28personality that I feel like Skylar almost was like diminished when she was with them.
29:36I feel like when the three of them were together, it was big personality, big personality, Skylar.
29:43Rachel called tonight. It was good to talk to her even though Sheila and I are kind of at each
29:49other's throats every time we're on the phone.
29:53I'd almost rather not talk to Rachel. I'm secretly glad she can't talk every night.
30:03We had heard that Sheila was her best friend in the world.
30:11So she was my next step.
30:15My plan initially was to just get a feel for how Skylar was and what mind frame Skylar was in.
30:25I wanted to ask Sheila, who are the boys she's talking to?
30:30You know, where did you guys typically hang out? Where did she want to go?
30:35If she was to hang out with someone else besides you, who would that be?
30:40Pull up and they had their garage door open and they were all just kind of hanging out,
30:46having a good time in their garage.
30:50Music's playing. Everybody's laughing. Everybody's smiling. And that bothered me because there was no distress.
31:00Not the reaction I expected to see.
31:04I had that inkling of there's a lot more to this than she's willing to say.
31:12But sometimes when you're talking to minors, even though they want to help,
31:17they also don't want to get in trouble themselves.
31:20So I wanted to bring her to the office in a controlled environment and talk to her there
31:26and really break it down without all of her family members. Because maybe she wasn't telling
31:31me answers because she was afraid to say it in front of her family. So I wanted that one-on
31:35-one time with her.
31:37But at the office, she was kind of nonchalant. Like, oh, I'm here. What do you want?
31:43I just want to help find Skylar. I don't really know where she's at. I don't know anything.
31:51So I wanted her to write out her statement because sometimes when they write, it changes.
31:57So what they cross out and change their mind on can be clues.
32:05On Thursday night, me and Rachel Schell picked Skylar up after we snuck out. We drove around Star
32:11City for 30 minutes at most. And then we had to go home. So Skylar insisted we drop her off
32:18at the
32:18end of Crawford. And we never talked after that.
32:24She took her time writing her statement to make sure it was really pretty and bubbly.
32:30But there was nothing there. And I think she was putting on a show.
32:35It's frustrating for me. You're replaying everything she said and trying to figure out
32:42the truth. Is she hiding something?
32:47Girly friend, oh my god. This has been the worst 24 hours of my life. LOL. Pathetic.
32:56Slept with my mom for the past three nights, so I'm not alone.
33:00I hope camp goes okay. I bet you're freaking without talking to me. I'll update you.
33:07The FBI is involved. They're trying to figure out the plates on the car. They said it looked like
33:13a hatchback, like a Subaru or something. They don't know if they'll be able to figure it out because
33:20it's so grainy. Love you. Miss you. Love you. Miss you. Love you. Miss you. Love you. Miss you.
33:27Love you with all my heart. Miss you so much. Your best friend.
33:32Girly friend. I don't know. Love you.
33:39Day three of camp. Thank you, Lord, for making today an awesome day. Help me with the Schuyler situation.
33:49Help me to follow you and keep me and Sheila strong throughout this.
33:55My dad's calling me. Or with my mom. No, I won't answer.
34:02Rachel's family was really religious. I'd say they were more strict than most.
34:10My mom took my phone tonight because I threw something clean in a dirty clothes hamper for two
34:16weeks. Great. I did hear about her mom like yelling at her a few times.
34:23Rachel never came to school with bruises or anything, but that's what made her mom so intimidating to me.
34:30So I could definitely see how Rachel saw the fun in rebelling or going against the grain.
34:38And once she was with Schuyler and Sheila, you could definitely see her more like wild side come out.
34:45Definitely.
34:47The main thing that we bonded over was just religion, I guess, feeling confined,
34:53not being able to, I guess, do whatever you want. So that's where we like to rebel together and go
34:59smoke
34:59pot whenever we wanted.
35:24Rachel was back in town and that's when Jessica asked,
35:28can you come with me to help with the interview of Rachel Shove?
35:34Rachel was very nervous, very nervous.
35:37So we tried to take a little time in talking to her and getting to know her and getting her
35:42to relax,
35:44build a little rapport with her. But she was nervous the entire time.
35:48She said that they picked up Schuyler and then drove around for maybe an hour, smoked marijuana,
35:55and then it was time, you know, to drop Schuyler off. And Schuyler wanted to be let out a couple
36:02blocks early. So the headlights didn't go through the windows and wake up Dave and Mary.
36:08Rachel's statements lined up with what Sheila had said almost too well. They were very,
36:14very similar in their statements and no one's statements are exactly the same. So it felt rehearsed.
36:23We wanted to really break down the minute details of that story because sometimes when you fabricate
36:30a story, you forget small details. So that was our next step. Okay, show me, take me on your journey
36:37that night. I even drove Sheila around and said, show me where you drove.
36:47Sheila and Rachel's stories were different in the directions they went. One said they turned left,
36:55the other said they turned right. And that's not a street that you would mess up that turn on because
37:00it's a main road. So either they went towards Morgantown or they went towards the river.
37:06But that was a big clue for us when they took the wrong turn.
37:13And that was our first really big aha. You know, we have something that isn't lining up that we can
37:22prove isn't lining up. We got excited then. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. These are different.
37:28Why are they different? Why are they different? Why are they lying about this? Did they go to a party
37:35and they don't want to get someone else in trouble? Did something happen?
37:42My job is to find the truth behind the lie and catch them in it.
38:04I grew up in Blacksville, which is 20-ish minutes from Morgantown, a small community out in the sticks.
38:16I do remember picking up Skylar and Sheila and driving them out to one of my buddy's houses.
38:29Dylan was a grade or two above me and he was known for selling drugs and all that kind of
38:34stuff. But
38:35the girls knew him as the skinny dude with the big dick. He was like that stereotype. I mean,
38:41he got some girls back in the day.
38:49In Blacksville, that would be anything from six to eight of us to a hundred of us, you know,
38:56we would either drink or smoke weed or whatever. Another huge part of my life now is weed. Sheila,
39:05Rachel and I smoke with Dylan Conaway a lot. But lately, weed's been getting me in trouble.
39:12Skylar and Sheila definitely introduced weed to Rachel. And I feel like that's something that
39:19they actually really bonded over. And they, like, did it all together, you know.
39:26I did know that Skylar smoked weed.
39:32Rachel, Sheila and Skylar, they were all, like, very open on social media.
39:40They would post anything and everything. Like, there wasn't
39:45a minute that would pass where it didn't just, like, post something on Twitter.
39:49Sheila and Skylar tweeted a whole lot more than I ever did.
39:52They would tweet every inch of pointless everything.
40:09After interviewing Sheila and Rachel, we thought, these girls know exactly where she's at. And
40:16they're just not telling us. So then we thought, all right, we need to get on their home turf to
40:22try
40:22and get answers. And social media is their home turf. So that's where we went.
40:29Social media was very unfamiliar to all the investigators. We kind of joked about, you know,
40:35none of us use this stuff. So we had to learn very quickly.
40:40We realized kids were using Facebook, Twitter is almost like a diary.
40:47They just log on and let their feelings out.
41:05I went on all the girls' Twitter pages and everything was public.
41:10It was a new frontier, you know, as an investigator to understand what was going on in their world.
41:19We're trying to Google things to see what they mean by what words they use.
41:25And you could see that there was discord somewhere with someone.
41:32Somebody's pissed Skylar off. We just don't know who she's talking about.
41:45There was a tweet that Skylar made shortly before she went out with Rachel and Sheila. It says,
41:54you doing shit like this makes me never want to trust you.
42:00So I asked Sheila, like, hey, what was this tweet about? And Sheila said, I don't know. I don't know
42:05what she was mad about.
42:12Throughout, like, sophomore year, something was really, really wrong between the three of them.
42:21There was definitely a shift in the energy of their friendship. At the beginning, it was very
42:29sisterly, sisterly, but then it kind of felt like sisters that hated each other.
42:37They were very close to each other. So if they were posting about someone, you knew who it was about.
42:44I don't know exactly when they started, but it just felt like Rachel and Sheila were getting closer,
42:54and it would upset her. And it would upset her. I remember her venting about that a few times.
43:06Skylar was being dragged along and taking their pictures, just being that side person.
43:13You could tell in little ways of the way they talked to each other and the way they'd be that
43:18it was really just Sheila and Rachel. It was like a different level of something else.
43:24Like it was more than friendship. They were like this.
43:33I've come over to Sheila's to sleep over and cover for her while she sneaks out. And I'm freaking out.
43:41I'm hoping her mom won't come in and find that she's not here. She's with Dylan Conaway and two other
43:48guys. They invited Rachel. Fuck. I hate being left out. I think she was just different. She wasn't as
43:58social or sexual. Skylar like really looked up to them, kind of wanted to be more like them,
44:07the way that they looked in there, like just kind of the way that they were.
44:13I'm sure there is some resentment of, you know, why can't I look like that?
44:20Why aren't the boys as interested in me? And maybe they fight, maybe they argue about it.
44:27Life would be so much easier if jealousy didn't exist.
44:38We're just, you know, all frustrated and just trying to come up with the next idea.
44:47But we definitely felt like we were missing something.
44:51And then we got their phone records.
44:56Sheila and Rachel's phone records showed them in Blacksville at 4 a.m.
45:02when they said they were at home sleeping.
45:06Son of a bitch, they lied. And that's when all hell broke loose in the case.
45:14Officer Colbank called me and she said, hey, Sheila and Rachel's cell phone records are coming back
45:19and they're not telling the full story here.
45:22So we went back and we reviewed the video surveillance.
45:26But there really wasn't much for us to go on.
45:29So I asked, did you guys check the sheets to see if there's any footage of this car
45:35that was in the video at the apartment?
45:37Because you would have to go past the sheets to get to Schuyler's apartment.
45:42These gas stations, they're well lit and they have sophisticated, you know, camera systems.
45:49So I'm scrolling through it and watching the footage.
45:52And on July 6, 2012, at 1230 in the morning, I see the car that looks like
46:01the car at Denise's apartment.
46:04We watched it and paused it and said, that is Sheila's car.
46:08A hundred percent. And it was pure elation in the office whenever we got that.
46:16I mean, it was there the whole time.
46:19We had just taken a large leap in our investigation with that video.
46:26So now we know that it's Sheila's car.
46:32We know they're in Blacksville at 4 a.m.
46:36So we need to go to Blacksville and start digging out there.
46:47We were expecting they were at a party.
46:51Because that was a big party spot for teenagers at the time.
46:56There's even a party rock, which is out in the middle of a field in the woods,
47:01where they just go hang out and party and drink.
47:07There was already a lot of attention on Blacksville that summer.
47:11West Virginia State Police are investigating an armed robbery at the
47:14Blacksville branch of Huntington Bank.
47:18I started working the case right away.
47:21Chris Berry was with me.
47:23One thing about Blacksville, it was a thriving community with the coal mines.
47:27But after 2008, the coal mines started getting shut down.
47:31Then the drugs started coming in.
47:34Painkillers, heroin, meth.
47:38And it started getting dark out there.
47:43It's nothing for somebody to get that desperate to go rob a bank.
47:47Surveillance photos, captured around 10 a.m. on July 16th,
47:50show a man wearing a ski mask and pointing a gun at a clerk demanding money.
47:55There was a fireman involved, and the people in the lobby got on the floor.
47:59Obviously, they were scared, terrified.
48:02Small town, so people start talking, and the rumors start about,
48:06well, I think so-and-so did this, you should check them out.
48:09And the name that we kept getting was Derek Conaway.
48:13So he was a suspect.
48:15I'm sitting there going, Conaway? Why do I know that name?
48:19There's something to that.
48:21Whenever I was looking over Skyler's Facebook page,
48:27she was actually friends with Dylan Conaway and his brother Derek Conaway.
48:36We started seeing pictures of the parties they were having in the Conaway's basement.
48:42And in those pictures was Sheila, Rachel, and Skyler.
48:45They were on the couch. You could tell they were intoxicated or under the influence of something.
48:53It crossed my mind that those brothers could have had something to do with everything.
48:58Dylan was not a good kid.
49:04Dylan had a reputation. There's tons of rumors.
49:09Did someone harm Skyler to keep her from telling something she shouldn't have known?
49:16Because she was that straight-laced compared to the others.
49:20And we were expecting, unfortunately, that she was not going to be coming home.
49:26We were still hopeful, but that was definitely creeping into the investigation quickly.
49:32When we developed this theory, are Rachel and Sheila at this point just too afraid to speak on what really
49:38happened to Skyler?
49:40Because these guys are dangerous.
49:43Dear Lord, this is a very stressful and scary time for me right now.
49:48Please keep me safe and lead me down the right path.
49:52Thank you for being with me lately and letting nothing bad happen to me.
49:57I love you.
49:59It all kind of started to connect.
50:02Like, maybe there's a lot more going on here.
50:05You know, money and drugs and 16-year-old girls being at the wrong place at the wrong time with
50:13the wrong people.
50:15If she didn't run away, Rachel and Sheila were involved somehow.
50:26And they're in way too deep, and they don't know of a way out.
51:25Transcription by CastingWords
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