Dear Diary | Chapter 3

Hi, I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast unlike any other. Why? Because every case I cover comes from the heart of my home, New England. From the rocky Maine coast. to the historic streets of Boston, to the quiet corners of Vermont and beyond, I investigate stories filled with untold twists, enduring questions, and voices that deserve to be heard.

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This podcast is intended for mature audiences listener discretion is advised In a video uploaded to YouTube in May of 2012, less than two months before Skyler went missing, Sheila and Rachel filmed themselves driving around Morgantown in Sheila's silver 2006 Toyota Camry. They primp in front of the camera before seeming to forget its presence entirely. They proceed to take hits from a stashed bowl and have looping, circuitous conversations.

First, Rachel's worried she's too stoned to perform during rehearsal. I can't sing when I'm high. Then, she brags about her floppy-haired boyfriend, Mackenzie Boggs, a musician and frontman for the rock band Call Us Next Tuesday. Go all the way back in that corner. This is where me and Mackenzie fucked. At one point, they get stoked on how cool the trees look whizzing past their windows.

They're quite high. At the time when they were taken, the videos were part road journal, part amateur self-portrait, and part confessional. It's a really high song. Oh my god, you know what? I need to tell you a secret. I just forgot. You have a secret from me? Well, I mean, I've never told anyone. Not even Skylar? No. Okay. I didn't even tell Skylar that I get high.

the videos, like everything the three girls touched, would become evidence. From Waveland, I'm Holly Millay. And I'm Justine Harmon. This is Three. While law enforcement now knew it was Sheila's Camry in the apartment security video, they were left asking,

What happened next? Where did they go? What are they hiding? We thought the girls witnessed something. If you're being threatened, you're 100% safe with us, we'll take care of you and all that. Tell shit the bad guys are, we'll go after them. That's our job. When I first met State Trooper Chris Berry, he was 29, boyishly handsome, wearing jeans, long-sleeved white tee, and heavy boots. He was young enough to navigate the earliest days of social media.

And he could easily pass for one of the 30,000 West Virginia University students who swell Morgantown every autumn. He still could today. We meet at Surfside Charlie's in Myrtle Beach. I would say social media has gotten 10 times worse. Jesus, when you interviewed me, it was right there at the beginning. Tell me how you set up a fake Facebook page.

that are detachments. We set up a fake Facebook profile, and that's how we caught bad guys. We caught where all the drug dealers were, where all this was. And these kids would just friend you and tell you anything. Throw a couple stuff with like marijuana leaves or something like that to make it look like we're just a bunch of dopers. And because I had one kid one time, like, you get a warranty? I'm like, yeah. I'll get a warranty. I've never seen you.

Like last second, I was like, well, I'm always skipping class. That's why you never see me. I'm always skipping class and getting stoned. And they're like, hell yeah, that's awesome. It was just fun and easy like that. It was through the girls' friends and friends of friends. that a better sketch of the teens and how they lived on and offline began to emerge. When Skyler hung out with, say, Shania Amens, the hijinks were more or less PG-13.

I think ninth grade was the Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa. So Skylar and I went together. It was my grandmother had bought our tickets and. and you know Skylar lived in Morgantown so that was the first time that Skylar and I had ever stayed just the two of us by ourselves and had ever done anything where it was just Skylar and I. Sheila wasn't there. I stayed at Skylar's and we had a great time.

That was our first concert like that. Like I said, we were freshmen, so I think we were like 14, 15 years old. Probably 14. And there was a lot of smoking in the Coliseum for the concert. And we were like smoking with complete strangers, but... In those days, it wasn't as likely to get handed something that was much more dangerous than marijuana. Here's a picture of Skylar and I from that concert. And, you know, we showed up in like jeans and Wiz Khalifa t-shirts thinking we were all cool.

Yeah, that was definitely not the aesthetic that we were expecting. We were at a rap concert in Morgantown, so we got kind of a shock there.

Being and feeling younger than everyone else. Awkwardly asking strangers, can I hit that? And learning from it all. But add Sheila, and the dynamics changed. The hijinks suddenly turned rated R. So then our 10th grade year, Sheila had her license first and her mom had given her her old car. So she was able to get around. And that's when we went to the Tiger concert.

Sheila posted a picture of her, Skylar, and Shania in a bathroom mirror selfie before the concert. They're all wearing slightly different black dresses. Skylar's looks to be strapless. Sheila is in a short t-shirt dress. And Shania is wearing a long sleeve design with holes down the sleeves. There are two giant big gulps in front of them. The caption? A simple heart. And they were all excited because they had tickets.

Skylar and I both got our dresses from Forever 21. Oh, these girls bought brand new dresses, spiked heels, special jewelry. And Skyler had on a little black dress with gold shoes and that gold necklace. And she had bought it special for that concert. It was a leaf, a gold leaf, like a maple leaf. It wasn't a pot leaf.

So we all ended up with a black dress and heels to go to this concert in 10th grade and Sheila driving. And we knew that we could get weed in ourselves. So snuck in blunts to smoke in the Coliseum. you know we had seen the year before and it was a blast now sheila like side swiped a pole almost wrecked i swear we probably almost died a hundred times that night once we got home we all stayed at sheila's house

Her mom was a little more lenient about some things. That night, Sheila tweeted, Ain't no rest for the wicked. Skylar was always a sounding board for Sheila and her exploits. and she was happy to have a front row seat. She chronicled everything in her diary. Back in 2014, Jessica Colbank put it to me this way, quote, A lot of her diary seemed not jealous of Sheila. Skylar was very pretty. But Sheila had all the guys and could do whatever she wanted. Sheila got all the attention.

Skylar could live vicariously through Sheila, writing about what she called Sheila's sexcapades, because she didn't have any of her own, and Sheila was not shy when it came to the details. According to Colbank, Sheila told Skyler who she did it with, how they did it, if it was good, if it was bad, if he was big, if he was small. That's another reason Skyler wasn't sexually active.

She didn't need to be because she could live off of the stories that Sheila was telling. The girl's outward appearance, bonded, happy, aligned, was often in sharp contrast with what Skylar had written. The dissonance spoke volumes. It put in perspective a little bit the dynamics between Sheila and Skyler.

Because again, photos, they all looked happy. They were all smiling in photos. They put their best face forward because Sheila is a very vain person. Extremely vain. One entry in particular stands out. On August 21st.

2011, at 2.34 in the morning, Skylar wrote about a vodka-soaked sleepover with Rachel and Sheila at Rachel's house. I remember that night. That is so weird because Rachel was never allowed to do anything. And she was allowed to have a sleepover, which I thought was bizarre, you know, as far as Patricia mothering. That's Rachel's former next door neighbor, Kim Keener. And so anyway, I remember her coming to my house and I think the girls had been smoking pot down there that night.

Because she said the windows were wide open and, you know, and I mean, big deal. But and I mean, but she told me that she was awakened at five o'clock in the morning to screaming, a screaming fight between the three girls. While holding her daughter's diary in 2014, Mary told me what Skylar had written about on that raucous night. Skylar, Sheila, and Rachel were all at Rachel's house one night and they wanted to...

So they snuck downstairs, got liquor out of her mom's liquor cabinet, went upstairs, locked themselves in so Patricia couldn't walk in and catch them. And they were drinking. And she said that... They got drunk and Sheila and Rachel proceeded to make out. She said. in every way that you possibly can outside of actually nothing. And she said the word. And she said she was locked in the room with them and was afraid to leave.

because she was afraid then that Patricia would find out they'd gotten into the liquor. I know that the night that she talked about in her diary about those two being lesbians, they were all three drunk. That's Dave Neese again, Skyler's dad. I think the night that those two had relations, Skyler talks about it in her diary, and she decided then...

i'm the third wheel you know i'm the one that's they're talking about and it was true i mean they were after that encounter she said in her diary it made her sick to her stomach and she hopes she never has to watch anything like that again. Her private testimonial revealed a painful, permanent fissure in the friendship, something Skyler's parents would only realize after their daughter had gone missing.

One of the things I've found out this go-round is Skylar had a temper. She did. We noticed that too in her diary. But knowing she had a temper, she also was very... Forgiving, very forgiving. She was very quick to bite, but then bring it back. Then she'd hope for the best and go from there. Well then, boom, something else would happen. It was just constant.

Two weeks after Rachel and Sheila hooked up in front of her, Skylar took to Twitter. I'd tell the whole school all the shit I have on everyone, which is a lot. Hashtag, if I could get away with it. If you could stop a home break-in before it starts, why wouldn't you? Traditional home security systems only respond after a break-in. SimpliSafe is different. With their Active Guard outdoor protection, you can prevent crimes before they happen.

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By September of junior year, the school had become a pressure cooker. From the get-go, the principal and staff discouraged all chatter regarding Skylar's disappearance. Here's Tom Bloom again. We had kids who needed to talk to people. And I will be point blank. I blame it on the principal and, you know, the administration. They put a ban on all talking. Couldn't help.

And why the hell would you do that? The teachers weren't allowed to talk. So now you had the teachers who couldn't help the kids. It was more important to keep the image of university high school than help the kids at that time. And that's one of my real angers of the school system. I'm bitter on that. While discussion of Skylar was restricted, there was no keeping law enforcement from coming into the school and questioning students. At 16...

Juveniles can be interviewed as adults without the presence of a parent or guardian. Yet Rachel and Sheila's mothers both resisted their daughter's cooperation. And before long, the teens each... had their own attorney. They were the only students who did. Under increasing pressure, the two girls turned to each other, leaving their peers behind.

Daniel Hovater, a friend of Schuyler's since childhood, grew close to Rachel while spending so much time with her during theater rehearsals. Sheila, he kept at a distance. Like the authorities, Daniel thought the girls were holding back, and he wasn't afraid to speak up. On October 2, 2012, nearly three months after Skyler's disappearance, Sheila posted a plea on the Team Skyler Facebook page with a picture of Skyler.

The two are sitting on the floor with Sheila leaning back between Skylar's legs, eyes closed, as Skylar's kissing her cheek. She wrote, Skylar, sorry I haven't posted in a while. School has been taking up all my time. Me and Rachel miss you so much, especially at lunch. We sit at a lunch table alone. Come back so we don't look like loners anymore. LOL. School is so hard without you. Actually...

Everything is hard without you. I seriously think about you 24-7 and miss talking to you on the phone day and night. I know you wouldn't like some of the things that are being said lately. While law enforcement was tracking the girls online, Watching them post in real time, other forces were hard at work. Two people, using the pseudonyms at Josie Snyder and at Mia Bar 8, started following Sheila and Rachel on Twitter.

And with obvious relish, were taunting them. On October 10th, 2012, at Mia Bar 8 tweeted, Luke 12 too. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden. that will not be known. On October 26th, Josie Snyder tweeted back to Mia Bar 8, Bring pretty little liars down together. Hashtag promise to never leave you cold. Feeling attacked.

Sheila fired off a tweet that was clearly a warning to all. No one on this earth can handle me and Rachel, and if you think you can, you're wrong. Rachel and Sheila were finding the hassle from the police, the phantom posters,

and the kids at school unendurable. By mid-December, they were no longer attending UHS and were homeschooling online. Patricia was going to a party down in Virginia. And she had just left the house, gets a call the FBI or there to question Rachel. And she calls me and tells me to get over to the house. That's Rachel's family friend, Kelly Kearns again. Instead of even turning around.

and coming home she goes on to her party and i get there the neighbor kim is there her rachel's boyfriend is there they're up in the living room I don't really know what to do. I've never dealt with anything like this before. So I'm talking with Kim and the boyfriend. And finally, I don't know, about 30 minutes later, I go upstairs and I say, okay, I need to know what's going on.

And they were like, you know, we're done. It's the only time I had Rachel to myself in all those years. And she gave me some cock and bull story about Skylar sneaking out twice because they dropped her off. So she had to have snuck back out. But the entries in Rachel's diary revealed a very different story. Up until July 6, she would write the typical musings of a hormone-fueled teen. But on July 6...

Rachel began writing in code of the Schuyler situation and not wanting that to happen and how she wanted to be rebaptized. Here's Chris Berry. She had a diary that Ronnie and I found on the first search where we did her house. And her pages, she dated them, everything. Rachel was just... Straightforward. Talking about smoking weed, having sex for the first time, this, this, and this. Her diary screwed her first. It was the day after Skylar went missing.

She talked like this deep religious saying of like, dear God, please take me down the golden path for the sins I've committed and all that stuff. We're looking around and going, what the fuck do we got here? Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. Count on Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right person with the right background who can move the business forward. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites.

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to bring joy to every seasonal celebration. Plus, it's delivered fast and free, so you can start spreading the holiday cheer. Shop my hand-picked Birch Lane collection and more classic styles at birchlane.com. Would you guys rather suffocate or get shot? Get shot. Shot. Wait, it depends on where. Would you rather get in the head? Shot. There would be no suffering at all. Eaten by hands or suffocated? Suffocated.

In this clip, Sheila casually asks Rachel and Schuyler how they'd prefer to die. Eaten by ants or suffocated? Drowning or suffocating? Sheila appears to delight in hosting the Morbid Game Show. Drowning or suffocating? Suffocating. It's almost the same thing. I know, but it's not. We interviewed her, you could look straight in her eyes, there was nothing there. Like, you'd ask her questions, and she'd be like, nope. Anything else you want to ask? Like, that creepy response is back.

As the investigation progressed, the consensus among all was that Rachel and Sheila knew more than they were letting on. In her interviews, Rachel was clearly uncomfortable. exhibiting nonverbal cues in conflict with what she was saying. When I interviewed Trooper Ronnie Gaskins in 2014, he described watching her slowly falling apart.

Sheila, unfazed, seemed to revel in the process. Here's FBI agent Morgan Spurlock in 2014. i told ronnie i said she's one of those crazy that it got to the point i had to start watching when i was going home and because my house she like had a little uh section that goes to the back door but it was covered because we lived on a mountain

So we had a patio, or a breezeway, went back, easy to hide into. I was taking my gun out with my flashlight and kind of peeking around the corner because I said this crazy bitch would come out and stab me. There were only... Two directions, Sheila and Rachel could have gone after picking up Skylar. They said they drove east. On a hunch, Barry went to two different Sheetz gas stations and scanned hours of surveillance tape. Until boom.

There it was, Sheila's car, driving west towards Blacksville, Eddie's home turf. So then we went across the river to the other sheets to see if they went on the interstate or kept going out. Well, it showed that she kept going out on Route 7 towards Blacksville. So right there we knew, 12.30, 1 o'clock in the morning, they were heading out to Blacksville. And we just got Sheila and Rachel in the lot.

Star City police officer Jessica Colbank decided it was time to turn up the heat, to confront the inconsistencies in Rachel and Sheila's stories once and for all. So we made arrangements because we're like, we know these girls are lying. We need to hem them up. And we'd been pushing that, especially me and Chris. We need to get these girls separated because they were like blue.

and their parents were not helping separate them. And so with everything going on, the state police had their polygraph examiner available at their office. Sheila took the polygraph test first and was confident she'd passed. As Colbank told me in 2014, she was big-headed. She thought she could beat it. Sheila even texted Rachel. All nonchalance. Police station probably going to fail because of nerves. No big fucking deal. To which Rachel responded. As long as you don't fail because you're lying.

You can ask to take it again because you were nervous the first time. Sheila shot back. Oh well, I'm definitely not scared about lying, but it's not like they'd know the difference, lol. Sheila failed the polygraph test. not once, but twice, for withholding information from law enforcement. The questions the examiner asked assumed that she knew what happened to Skylar that night, but was either afraid to say,

or being threatened by those involved. What Sheila actually did know was so beyond comprehension, she was never asked if she had murdered her. But when they started hitting them with lie detector tests... that eddie girl took two of them and the only thing she got right was her name okay i mean it was the whole thing was a lie so they couldn't compare it to anything else you know everything she said was a lie

So how can you compare a liar to what's telling the truth? Through it all, she kept on tweeting. You're fat because I hate you. I cannot express how much I love being naked. Ah, Law & Order SVU will always bring joy to my life. On December 12th, it was Rachel's turn to take the lie detector test. But on the way downtown, she panicked.

The day that Rachel was supposed to be polygraphed, she jumped out of a moving car to not go and ran down the street, which her dad called and said, hey, she just jumped out of the car. I don't know what's going on. I don't know where she went, but he did not want to file a missing persons report because he said she'll show up somewhere. I'm not that concerned. She skipped on the polygraph. That pissed me off. God, that pissed me off.

And because Ronnie and Martin's like, well, screw it. She don't want to do the fogger. We can't force her to. So we'll just, you know, call it off. Sheila's mom, Tara, had also been of little help. We're hitting dead ends after dead ends after dead ends. This girl's been missing and they're fucking around with us. I hate to say it's like I got two 60 year old girls and a dipshit mother who's pulling her dicks. Tarek, she had been calling incessantly, you know.

You're depriving my daughter of her electronics and I need my computer and everything like that. And so I said, you can come get them. I'm done with them. We've gotten all the information we need off of them. Tara comes up. to the office we were upstairs at the time and i'm getting a box of things and i just happened to ask her do you know where rachel's at she said yeah she's in my car in the parking lot so i said hold on a second

So I called the state police because they said she didn't show up. And I said, she's in my parking lot right now. Come get her. And the FBI was there and they had a discussion and they called her dad. to see if they wanted them to come get her. And he said, no, she's fine with Tara and Sheila. That's when Jessica just started going off and Karen called her a fucking tool bag and all that. I'll never forget. I was sitting there.

at the table and i'm just kind of like this to say that it's good sure enough about a tool bag i was like damn i was like all right here we go you go girl you keep going you do your thing and uh she just laid in and tara was crying and i called her a tool I said, you are a tool for your daughter and her friend to get away with whatever they're trying to get away with. They are using you, they are manipulating you, and you are letting them. There is no question in my mind that you know something.

And it needs to stop. And I told the FBI that and the state police. And they said, yeah, that's not quite how we want to run the show. You know, let us just take it over. And just like that, Colbank was kicked off the case.

All the while, the phantom posters applied steady pressure. At Josie Snyder said, Failed lie detector. Ooh, no, no. Hiding from Popo. At Mia Bar 8, Clearly connected to someone in the know, heckled. At reach. You know Sheila is pointing the finger at you. And then? What you gonna do? What you gonna do when they come for you?

Next time on 3. She said, get your shit together, Rachel, and slapped her. That's why she said, get your shit together. She said she picked up a lit candelabra and hit me in the face. She told us exactly where to find Skyler. She needs to be put to rest the proper way. She says, what do you mean? And I said, you know exactly what I mean.

Three is an original production of Wavelength. The series is created and written by Holly Millay and me, Justine Harmon. The executive producer is Jason Hoke, who produced and edited the series. Associate producers are Lydia Horn and Leo Culp. Fact-checking by Lydia Horn. Sound engineering by Shane Freeman. Music by Robert Ellis.

Studio recording at CDM Studios in New York and Wildwoods Picture and Sound in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Dave and Mary Neese in the city of Morgantown, West Virginia. If you love this series, leave a review and please tell your friends. Follow Waveland on Instagram at Waveland Media for more on this series and upcoming new shows. Thanks for listening.

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