On the opening night of UHS’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a cast and crew of about forty teens rushed around taking care of last-minute preparations. A few parents, school personnel, and other adults drifted through the chaos. Thirty minutes before show time, most of the actors were in costume. A few were still sitting for their stage makeup. In the auditorium, people had begun to arrive and select their seats for the show.
Daniel paced back and forth reciting his lines in the hallway behind the auditorium. With glitter on his face and his hair teased large, he couldn’t wait to play the role of Oberon, the Fairy King. Down the hall, Daniel spotted Rachel in costume for her role as Helena, speaking to her mother. Rachel appeared to have been crying. Daniel heard Rachel’s and Patricia’s voices rising. He gestured to one of the girls who had applied Rachel’s makeup to go rescue her. Mother and daughter were obviously in the middle of another fight. Great timing, Daniel thought.
Just then Daniel thought he saw Patricia’s hand smack Rachel across the cheek. The smack was followed by, “Get your shit together, Rachel!”
While Daniel said he had no idea what provoked Patricia, her best friend, Liz, insists there is “no way” Patricia slapped her daughter.
“Patricia never believed in corporal punishment,” Liz said, “so she wouldn’t lay a hand on that girl.”
Liz witnessed the exchange between Rachel and her mom that night. Patricia had just learned Rachel didn’t show up for the previous night’s performance because she was off somewhere with Shelia.
Patricia was furious with Rachel. The police had warned her to keep Rachel away from the other girl, and not only had Rachel lied to Patricia, but she also skipped out on a performance. Patricia had gone to great pains to try to follow their instructions, but every time she turned around Rachel was being defiant and flaunting her friendship with Shelia.
When Mr. Kyer told Patricia that Rachel’s understudy had to go on instead, Liz said Patricia was enraged. She confronted Rachel and when the teen realized she had been discovered, her eyes widened and she burst into tears.
While all of the backstage drama was going on, no one suspected anything was amiss because Rachel’s Twitter traffic during that time was upbeat, reflecting her excitement and love of the stage. She sent a shout-out to Mikinzy for showing his support by being in the audience and bringing her flowers. Her enthusiasm peaked on November 3, the last day of the play. Rachel tweeted: round three boys and girls, let’s kill it tonight!
Rachel’s good mood didn’t last long. Several area teens received subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Clarksburg, about forty-five minutes from Morgantown. Grand jury subpoenas are supposed to remain secret, but Shelia and Rachel learned that Eric Finch, Crissy Swanson, and a teen named Aaron Roupe—all of whom had known Skylar through Shelia Eddy—were called to provide information.
Law enforcement was unaware Shelia and Rachel knew about the grand jury, but they did. The girls were upset and it showed in their tweets. Rachel’s sick of being let down and Shelia’s simple F M FREAKING L (“FML” is textspeak for “fuck my life”) were easy to decipher.
Later that day, Shelia’s tweets revealed sadness—although the remorse might have been feigned (i would do anything to go back to the beginning of 2010 literally anything). Could her tweets have been a reference to the fact that in 2010 Shelia still lived in Blacksville and Skylar was still alive?
Shelia’s sadness was short-lived. The next day she was back to her old form and feeling cocky: no one on this earth can handle me and rachel if you think you can you’re wrong. This may have been meant as a warning, possibly for the police working the case.
The official transcript of the grand jury proceedings remains sealed; however, it appears to have been a fishing expedition. The fact that a federal grand jury was convened in the first place helps explain the FBI’s presence, since the FBI always works cases brought into federal court. Given all of this, the precise nature of the investigation remains obscure.
Was the grand jury looking for evidence of the bank robberies? Was Skylar’s disappearance connected to those bank robberies? Afterward, the subpoenaed teens said it seemed the grand jury was more about Blacksville drug traffic than either the bank robberies or Skylar’s disappearance.
But Shelia and Rachel clearly believed the grand jury was all about a girl—Skylar. For instance, Shelia tried to alleviate Rachel’s worry in a November 6 text: Mark said it was ALL gunna be about drugs.
By “Mark,” Shelia may have meant Mike Benninger, her attorney. Both girls’ parents had retained attorneys for their daughters sometime in September, not long after police began questioning the two teens.
Rachel texted back: okay how does he know that’s all this is about? im sure its more for me.
Shelia replied, because thats what the us attorney said their gunna follow the drugs to get to skylar.
If Rachel was worried about the federal grand jury, that was nothing compared to what came next: the two girls learned that authorities wanted them to take a lie detector test. Neither teen was happy. It felt like the heat had been dialed up another notch.
Meanwhile, their Twitter enemies couldn’t wait to bring on even more: Pretty little liars keep on lying!! Josie Snyder tweeted. Then, Ever seen the show I (almost) got away with it . . . They ALWAYS get caught may take a little but criminals end up behind bars :).
By the time the federal grand jury met, social media users around the state, and to some degree around the nation, were fully engrossed in Skylar’s story. Becky Bailey’s late-night Facebook rants had become especially famous; many members on the TEAMSKYLAR 2012 site loved reading them. The rants began after Bailey saw one of the first Facebook posts about Skylar right after she disappeared. It didn’t take long for Bailey to learn the pretty teen was Dave Neese’s daughter. She and Dave had gone to high school together.
Bailey poured out her frustration on Facebook, talking about the terrible dangers facing today’s children. One of the many topics Bailey vented about was the fact that no AMBER Alert was announced for Skylar. Dave’s former classmate promised the Facebook group she would continue to post until “Skylar is returned home safe and sound.”
Bailey was infuriated that AMBER Alerts could only be issued once law enforcement determined a missing child had been abducted. (AMBER is actually an acronym: “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.”) She believed missing teenagers—even those who left of their own free will—were still in danger. Bailey wanted every case of a missing teen to be scrutinized as though under the lens of a microscope.
Becky went to work, trying to fix the AMBER Alert problem. On December 4, she posted her plan in an online petition. After providing some background on Skylar’s case, Bailey stressed that the first forty-eight hours after a child disappears are critical—whether the teen ran away or was abducted. She closed with a powerful appeal:
This petition matters to everyone who has a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, brother, sister, this could have been anyone’s child, it could be yours, it could be mine. . . . I never in a million years thought this could happen to someone I knew but it did, so please no one think you are immune. Changes in this law may be, God forbid, too late to help Skylar but please sign this petition so someone else may have a better chance.
“I did this for Skylar, so she would have a lasting legacy. I did it for Dave and Mary,” Bailey said, “and the zillions of kids who slide through the cracks on a daily basis.”
Bailey’s plea struck a chord in the heart of every reader who’s ever been a parent—and perhaps some who haven’t. Within a few short months, more than 23,000 people signed her petition.
Dylan Conaway was starting to sweat. He’d been the focus of a police investigation into Skylar’s murder—and the target of local gossip for months.
“I obviously knew I wasn’t guilty,” Dylan said, “but everybody, literally, everybody I knew and grew up with thought I was a murderer. Even the people I thought were my friends. That’s a horrible feeling.”
Dylan was one of the many people in Morgantown and Blacksville who were wrongly accused of Skylar’s murder. Not only did law enforcement have their eyes on him, but his name repeatedly came up on websites that discussed the case.
Of course Dylan wasn’t alone. Crissy, Shania, and Shelia’s first cousin, Lexy Eddy, were all similarly targeted. Lexy and Crissy were both related to Shelia. Unwilling to believe she had done anything wrong, they defended her throughout that fall. So did her loyal friend, Shania. After Rachel confessed, the girls’ pictures were circulated online as gossips tried to implicate them in Skylar’s murder. The accusations were baseless but all three girls suffered.
At work, Crissy’s coworkers talked about her, speculating about her involvement in the crime and even taking their concerns to their boss. At nearby North Marion High, Lexy was hounded by fellow students until she left school that semester.
Even though Shelia and Rachel eventually pled guilty to Skylar’s murder, none of these people feel free from all the accusations.
In the autumn after Skylar’s murder, social media gossip speculated that Skylar had a crush on Dylan Conaway, or that he had a crush on her. Neither idea seems likely.
“Skylar was cool. Quiet sometimes,” he said. “Nothing to really dislike about her. Even if she was as old as Shelia, she looked a lot younger. She seemed so innocent. Shelia seemed more mature, rambunctious. Skylar was more shy. It definitely seemed like she looked up to me, in a big brother way. Like she wanted to be like me.”
Dylan admitted he’s done hard drugs many times and said Shelia and Rachel had become involved with harder drugs through their sophomore and junior years. Skylar only smoked weed, so far as he knew.
Dylan had been with Shelia the first time she smoked pot. It was in the back of a Ford Explorer after a Clay-Battelle football game during their freshman year. Dylan was driving and his cousin, Kevin, was in the passenger seat. In the back seat was another friend of his, along with Crissy and Shania.
“Shelia and Skylar were in the very back in the hatch,” Dylan recalled. “We were parked on a back road. Football season, 2010. After Shelia had moved to Morgantown.”
Shania, who admits she smoked weed long before either girl, said she thought it odd because neither Shelia nor Skylar wanted anything to do with weed and then, suddenly, they did. It appears Shelia smoked weed to impress Dylan, who she thought was cool.
Shania said Skylar did the same thing one week later. Skylar wanted to impress Shelia, and be cool, too.
Most of Dylan’s interactions with Skylar, Shelia, and Rachel were when they were freshmen and sophomores. He was Shelia’s first26 lover, and they remained party friends. Now, after all that’s happened, people ask him if he ever saw any hint of what was to come.
“If I had, I would have gotten out of it way sooner,” he said.
On discussion boards and in local gossip, the Conaway house has been portrayed as a sort of party central. Dylan’s mother, Debby Conaway, denies this, saying she was at home whenever Dylan invited friends over.
So does Dylan. He says the “parties” at his house mostly consisted of a few kids sitting around getting high. He confirmed that Skylar was often playing on her iPhone during these gatherings.
One night Kevin came over when Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar were there. “I had some vodka and they got pretty drunk,” Dylan said. “I definitely let them drink a little too much. I looked at [Skylar] and I was, like, ‘Skylar if you gotta puke, just go to the bathroom, make yourself throw up, whatever, just don’t puke on my bed, please.’”
Skylar insisted she was fine, but moments later, when she tried to stand, she said, “I’m fine”—and threw up all over his bed.
After she finished, “she seemed like she came back a little, but she was, like, ‘Oh, boy, what did I just do?’ She definitely felt bad.”
Dylan was not happy, so Kevin offered to give the girls a ride to Shelia’s dad’s house.
“By the time he got home,” Dylan said. “I was outside burning my entire bed.”