A month before classes dismissed for summer break, Wendy Evans15 was studying during lunch in one of the rooms off the library when Rachel came in. Wendy was one of the friends she had ditched for Shelia. It didn’t take Wendy long to realize Rachel wanted to vent. Rachel closed the door so they were alone. She seemed exasperated—or angry.
“I can’t stand Skylar,” Rachel said suddenly.
Wendy shrugged. “Why not? I thought you all were best friends.” She remembered how little she had seen or heard from Rachel since she, Shelia, and Skylar had become fast friends. Even so, Wendy knew Rachel and Shelia talked badly about Skylar behind her back. They bad-mouthed everyone, including Skylar.
“I can’t stand her,” Rachel repeated, her eyes hard, “but I can’t not be her friend.”
“Why?” Wendy asked. “Just don’t be friends with her.”
“She’s like, so mean,” Rachel said. “She’ll blackmail us and tell all our secrets if we stop being friends with her.”
Wendy smiled, thinking Rachel was being overdramatic. No wonder she was in theater. “What secrets?”
Rachel didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes narrowed and a scowl formed on her face.
“At this point,” Rachel said, “I wouldn’t mind if she died.”
Shelia and Rachel laughed as Daniel and Skylar got into the car. They had changed out of their uniforms in the bathrooms at work, so they were ready to go. It was a summer Saturday afternoon, with Rachel in the front passenger seat, Skylar and Daniel in the back seat. Shelia wanted to treat herself—and Skylar and Daniel had gotten their paychecks.
“Hang on,” Shelia said as she finished a text. “Cool Ridge?”
“I haven’t been there in, like, forever,” Rachel said.
Cool Ridge was the head shop on High Street in downtown Morgantown.
“Wait, wait!” Skylar said as Shelia pulled out of Wendy’s parking lot. “I need an ATM.”
Since they were new employees, Wendy’s paid Daniel and Skylar with a type of debit card. The two teens could get cash with their cards and purchase whatever they wanted. Of course they needed cash for weed. They could get a cut for $60.
A quick stop at the gas station across Cheat Road and they were off to Sabraton, the next exit off I-68. Daniel knew a place. Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar waited in the car. Daniel was in and out in less than five minutes.
“Next stop—Cool Ridge!” Shelia said as she pulled back on the Interstate.
Daniel was packing a pipe and Skylar had her lighter in her hand. Rachel peeked over the passenger seat.
“Time for dementia hits,” she said quietly in a high-pitched, mock-singing voice. She and Shelia said that a lot, laughing afterward.
Cool Ridge is like any other head shop around for the last forty years. They sell incense in assorted shapes and scents, bongs, colorful bracelets, and beads galore. Celebrity, movie, and video posters. Odd musical instruments, like didgeridoos. They also sell lots of T-shirts. It was the trio’s favorite store, as it was Daniel’s.
The four teens browsed for a while. Stoned, they weren’t in any hurry. Skylar spent quite some time trying on bracelets. Daniel liked the T-shirts. Shelia and Rachel lingered near the incense, sniffing the ones that smelled especially good—or really bad.
By the time they were ready to go, Daniel had paid for a black T-shirt with an image of a marijuana leaf. Skylar had picked out a cool bracelet and some incense. Rachel didn’t buy anything, but as the clerk rang up Skylar’s purchases, Shelia handed Skylar the incense she had chosen.
“Mom wants me to bring home some milk and stuff,” she said to Skylar.
“Sure,” Skylar said, signaling the clerk to ring up Shelia’s incense. Skylar and Daniel exchanged glances. They had talked about this many times in the last few months, how whenever they went shopping, saw a movie, or bought weed, Shelia never paid. Not since they had started working at Wendy’s. They always just went along with it, but it was starting to bug them. The majority of the time, Skylar and Daniel blew their entire paychecks in one short weekend, paying for all four teens’ purchases.
It was one of the last times the trio and Daniel partied together. The girls’ relationship was deteriorating so fast it happened before they knew it. During the last few months Skylar was alive, her negative tweets toward Shelia and Rachel slowed considerably. They didn’t stop, as evidenced by a February 2012 subtweet, omg the number of times you do shit to piss me off throughout the day keeps going up and up. im not oblivious fyi. But Skylar’s Twitter traffic was not dominated by the dynamics of her relationship with Shelia—and Rachel—like it had been the previous autumn.
This matches Mary’s belief that Skylar was pulling away from Shelia, disengaging. She was reviving old friendships—with Hayden McClead, for instance—and trying to start new ones, like the one with Amorette. Skylar was building a new life, one that invited old friends back into her world.
Some of Skylar’s tweets showed her disdain for Shelia and Rachel; others showed they weren’t on her mind at all. By May 10 she was tweeting, obsessive girlfriends and ex girlfriends are my favorite. congrats on looking fucking pathetic.
Her Honors English portfolio paints a picture of a girl who was maturing and coming to acceptance during her last few months of life. In a poem she titled, “Different,” Skylar wrote about the loss of her childhood friend.
You were once friendly, funny, and flamboyant
But now you’re hopelessly needy, negative, and naïve
A new boyfriend changed you for the worst
But even claiming he was the apple of your eye didn’t keep him around
From happy as a clam to sad as a skeleton
You lost your friends and your spirit
So now the only thing I have to say to you is
I told you so.
Skylar’s words indicate she was trying to let go of Shelia—whom she blamed for giving up their friendship—but finding it hard to let her resentment fade away.
Tension and stress within the trio escalated again when their ongoing argument ruined Shelia and Skylar’s trip to the beach the first week of June 2012.
By the time Skylar joined Shelia’s family for their June beach vacation, as she had for the last several years, the tension between the two girls had turned their relationship quite volatile. No one knows what the fight was about, but people have speculated Shelia may have tried to put the moves on Skylar.
Perhaps this was an effort to test her control over Skylar, or merely an attempt to involve Skylar in the lesbian relationship she and Rachel may have had. It would have been a useful tool to Shelia: if Skylar played the same game, so to speak, she wouldn’t dare reveal Shelia and Rachel’s secret.
Regardless, something went very wrong during the trip. Shelia and Skylar argued the entire week. The fighting grew so intense, Shelia returned home and told Rachel they had to put their plan into action.
According to WVSP Corporal Ronnie Gaskins, the lead investigator, Shelia said, “Skylar has to die. Now.”
Skylar’s father believes if Shelia did make a sexual advance toward his daughter, Skylar would have rebuffed Shelia. Skylar was friends with everyone and especially disliked it when other people made fun of gays, but she wouldn’t have been interested in Shelia sexually, Dave says.
It is very likely that’s what Skylar’s Twitter fight during the early hours of June 9 was about. But it might not have been. It’s hard to say since the person with whom Skylar argued from 5:50 A.M. to 6:27 A.M. through subtweets has remained unnamed. Based on police reports that she and Shelia regularly argued online, however, it was believed Skylar was angry with her.
5:50 A.M.: youre just as bad as the bitches you complain about.
5:50: and a liar.
5:52: well now im too fucking annoyed to sleep
6:13: yeeaahh..
6:14: fuucckk yoouu..
6:15: and no I do not type like that.
6:27: just know I know
Star City police officer Jessica Colebank believes Skylar was arguing with Shelia and Rachel, but it is difficult to know what either girl said in return, since all of Shelia’s tweets during the time the fight was taking place have disappeared from her Twitter feed, and Rachel’s account has been deleted.
The single subtweet that stands out in Skylar’s rant is the last one: just know I know.
It sounds like Skylar was warning someone, saying she knew something was going on behind the scenes, some secret Shelia (or she and Rachel) was trying to keep from her. Maybe Skylar realized that not only had Shelia and Rachel been sexual that time in Rachel’s bedroom—but that they really were a couple.
Equally possible is this: Rachel was being very friendly with another girl while at Young Life church camp during this time, a fellow camper said. If Skylar heard that rumor and believed Rachel was cheating on Shelia with someone else, she could have been lashing out at Rachel—and threatening to tell Shelia. Given Skylar’s fierce loyalty to her friends, this also seems plausible.
Or, is it possible that because of the trio’s growing schism—as evidenced by oft-repeated and ever-increasing volatile arguments—Skylar had finally begun to believe the school rumor that Shelia might want to harm her? Or that both girls did?
Gaskins said it was possible Shelia did make a pass at Skylar, but admitted the prosecution still had no way of knowing—because Shelia refused to say what the beach fight was about. The only information that police have comes from a witness, another student, who reported seeing Shelia and Rachel argue just after Shelia and Skylar returned from the beach.
The Twitter fight happened June 9 at the same time Rachel was returning from Young Life. That evening she and Shelia met in the UHS parking lot, where a male student later told police he overheard them arguing. He thought they were fighting over him and asked the girls about it. Shelia and Rachel were quick to dismiss his concern, saying their anger wasn’t about each other or him.
They were upset, they confessed, with Skylar, over “something on Skylar’s Twitter,” the student told police.
Could it be because one—or both—girls knew exactly what Skylar meant, when she tweeted the ominous phrase: just know I know?
Rachel had left town with her Young Life friends midmorning on June 4, and was in Rockbridge, Virginia, through June 8. Several Morgantown teens were at camp, too, but only one other girl, Devon (not her real name), remembers anything remarkable about Rachel’s time there.
Until Shelia came along, Devon said she had been quite close to Rachel, and she, too, had tried to warn her Shelia wasn’t a good influence. Rachel never listened—until she and Devon went to church camp together.
While there Rachel, possibly having realized Shelia really intended to carry out their plan to kill Skylar, told Devon she was worried.
“I have to get away from Shelia.” That was all Rachel said, and after returning home, she seemed to do just that.
“For a couple of weeks,” Devon said, “Rachel was back with our Young Life group, hanging with us and not Shelia.”
If so, it’s doubly tragic Rachel finally saw the need to escape Shelia’s sphere of influence—only to then be pulled back in. Or was it a case of hoping she could mislead her friends to make them believe she was trying to escape, so she could later convince them Shelia had killed Skylar?
Everyone agrees: Rachel Shoaf was a follower, not a leader. What was less clear was whether she let Shelia lead her into an act of murder—or whether she went willingly. Either way, less than one month later both girls’ decision irrevocably changed their lives and those of their families.
It matters not whether Rachel followed Shelia because Shelia brainwashed her or because she was equally determined to kill Skylar. The choice to do so left the tiny town of Brave “unrecognizable,” one resident said, and its people heartsick “that this kind of evil seeped into our midst.”
Instead of celebrating her sweet sixteenth birthday with cake and candles, Rachel was helping Shelia plan Skylar’s murder. So while no one knows what Shelia said in reply to Skylar’s angry Twitter outburst—if she said anything at all—it isn’t hard to figure out how Shelia felt about it. That very night, both girls viewed Skylar as a threat, and set a date to kill her.
Gaskins says that on June 10, after the two girls met in the UHS parking lot, they put their plan into action. First, they began researching the various ways to kill someone. Since neither girl had any experience shooting a firearm, they opted for knives. After all, they reasoned, they didn’t even have to buy a knife—there were plenty in their mothers’ kitchens.
They weren’t sure how to go about stabbing Skylar to death, so they researched the best way to kill a person with a knife. After reading their options, they decided stabbing or severing the jugular vein was the surest way. No doubt during their sophomore biology class they would have learned this vein was a major blood vessel—and a deep wound there could easily be fatal.
Killing her, they imagined, would be the easy part. What about hiding her afterward? They tossed a couple of ideas around as casually as if they were playing a game of basketball. Perhaps they could get their hands on some acid somewhere. That would definitely do the trick. But they thought it might make people curious if they began asking about where to buy acid, so they quickly dismissed the idea.
Shelia, a big fan of TV shows like Law & Order, probably came up with the idea to feed Skylar to pigs. This is a commonly used device in television, as pigs are known for their strong jaws. In recent years episodes of CSI and Criminal Minds both featured victims who were fed to pigs.16
In addition, Shelia’s father’s trailer, her grandfather’s house, and all the Eddy land out behind Blacksville were surrounded by coal mines and farmland. Finding a pig or two to eat Skylar after she was dead shouldn’t be difficult at all. Of course, they probably worried they might wake up some sleeping farmer if they tried to drag her body over to a hog trough. They couldn’t risk that.
In the end, it was much easier than either acid or pigs: they would take Skylar out to one of their favorite places to get high, smoke a few joints, and then bury her there behind the Eddy land. That place was so dark and deserted, no one would ever find the girl they had both come to hate.