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