“Leave me alone, Daniel,” Rachel hissed across the aisle in drama class. Daniel laughed, even though the situation wasn’t funny at all. Ever since Skylar disappeared, he had learned laughing was easier than crying or screaming. School had been back in session for only one day, but Daniel was already tired of Rachel saying she didn’t know anything else. She refused to say much about Skylar or her disappearance, but he was positive she had crucial information. After all, Rachel and Shelia had been the last known people to see Skylar before she got into the strange car. Daniel knew what she and Shelia had told police—because Mary and Dave told him.
“Right, like you just drove around for, like, an hour, then dropped her off. The most boring joyride ever.” Daniel was disgusted. Rachel kept telling him the same story, like her voice was a looped recording. When he first heard Skylar had run away, Daniel didn’t believe it for a second. He and Skylar worked together at Wendy’s that day. She would have told him if something was wrong. No way Skylar would have run away without telling Daniel.
“Shut up, Daniel,” Rachel said a little too loudly. Rachel had a flair for the dramatic.
From the front of the classroom, Mr. Kyer stopped talking and glared at them.
Daniel saw the glower and chalked it up to Rachel being one of Richard Kyer’s favorite students. Whenever anyone said that, Mr. Kyer insisted he didn’t have favorites. He said he treated all students fairly, but pushed the talented students harder than the rest. Many students agreed with him, since numerous teens thought the drama teacher was the closest thing to a saint they could imagine.
Daniel was leaving class when Mr. Kyer stopped him. “Daniel, you can’t be accusing Rachel of doing something wrong without proof. This is America and people are innocent until proven guilty. If you have other evidence, then you need to tell the police.”
That was the problem: Daniel didn’t have any evidence. He just had a gut feeling based on how the girls were acting.
Daniel decided to back off, but only for the moment. He had been missing his buddy Skylar for almost six weeks, but now that he had access to Rachel, he was going to get answers. He had no plans to question Shelia. He never cared much for her. In fact, Daniel only hung out with Shelia because of Skylar. But Rachel, she would tell him the truth. Or else.
But what if that truth—whatever it was—made Skylar look bad?
Ken Lanning says truth is complex. “Society wants simple answers to problems. They don’t want complicated” ones that involve looking at multiple layers that lead to a murder like this one.
The long-time criminal profiler is now retired but he taught in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) at Quantico for more than two decades. Lanning has investigated many high-profile murder cases and says when it comes to crimes like this one, people often want a simplistic answer. They want it to be black and white, or good versus evil. Unfortunately, it’s rarely that easy.
For instance, Skylar could be “the representation of all the things that [a killer] sees is wrong with her life,” Lanning said. Or it could be Skylar unknowingly acted in a way that made Shelia and Rachel feel the need to kill her.
As word of Skylar’s disappearance spread, the world outside the high school walls began to feel the effects of her loss. Area parents couldn’t comprehend the torment the Neeses must have been enduring. It was all too easy to imagine the horror of losing one’s own child someday. But how terrible it would be if a daughter or son actually disappeared.
Communities grieve in their own ways. The grief must find a place to go, a way to find expression. A number of charity events were held around the greater Morgantown area the first few months after Skylar vanished. The Walmart in University Town Centre, where Dave worked, staged a candlelight vigil in August. T-shirts with Skylar’s name and picture were sold at the event and $3,100 was raised for a “reward fund” established in Skylar’s name. People donated because they wanted to help and needed to do something—anything.
A few weeks later the nearby town of Mannington hosted “Sky Ride,” a community gathering held in Skylar’s honor. Mary had grown up in Mannington, an old coal-mining town, along with her fourteen siblings. Practically the entire town turned out in a show of support. People jumped onto their ATVs and rode for hours around the local hills. Everyone brought a covered dish and after a long day in the sun, they broke bread together. Even more money was raised for the reward fund through an auction and a drawing. “Bring Skylar home!” was the day’s theme, and against all logic some attendees hoped the missing teen might somehow show up. The weight of a missing child was a heavy burden for the small community.
According to WBOY TV, one woman in attendance, a friend of the Neeses, wistfully recalled, “I remember Skylar from when she was a little girl, four or five years old, and she was always running around with curls bouncing. She was the cutest little thing. When I heard that it was her who was missing, it just broke my heart.”
Fortunately, the hometown show of support gave Mary and Dave a respite of sorts. They smiled and laughed with friends and family and actually felt lighter for a few hours. Even so, Skylar was never far from their minds. As dusk drew near and people began heading home, Mary and Dave returned to reality with heavy, aching hearts.
The truth is, just as Daniel suspected, that friction had begun to develop among Skylar, Shelia, and Rachel during their sophomore year. For a brief period, Skylar and Rachel were close, then they seemed to drift apart. It was her fading friendship with Shelia that Skylar bemoaned the most. Skylar even wrote about this in an essay for English class. There, she talked about how much Shelia changed after getting involved with a boy. Skylar wrote that the widening gulf between herself and her friend made her very sad.
On February 2, 2012, Skylar reflected on how this happened:
“I used to be extremely close with a girl who I loved dearly. She had such a fun personality and didn’t have a care in the world about what people thought of her. That all changed dramaticilly [sic] when she got a new boyfriend. She transformed from an independent, free spirit into a needy doormat. Her boyfriend became all she cared about and began losing self-respect. I hated watching my dear friend change before my eyes. Sadly we’re no longer close, but even if we were she’s not be [sic] person I became friends with.”
In truth, Skylar and Rachel were never as close as Shelia was with either girl. Skylar and Shelia’s bond went back almost a decade, but in some ways Skylar was losing her rank. She was becoming the third member—the odd girl out—of the trio. This may have been because Skylar was maturing more slowly than Shelia and Rachel—not mentally or emotionally, but physically. In some ways, Skylar was still a girl, but Shelia and Rachel—both sexually active—were young women. Skylar was turning into the “little sister” of the trio.
“Skylar and Shelia were real close,” Amorette said. “And then Rachel came along. That happened with me and my best friend. We started letting another girl hang out with us, and then before I knew it, she kinda took my place.”
Like so many of Skylar’s close friends, Amorette didn’t believe the rumors going around that first week of school.
“If she ran away, she would definitely tell me,” Amorette asserted. “I even told her [on Facebook and in texts] if you went to a party and messed up, it’s going to be okay. We’ll help you figure it out. I never heard back, and I knew something must be wrong.”