Silent Snow, Secret Snow | Chapter 6

33m
As prosecutors build their case from Rachel's shocking confession, Shelia keeps up with her social calendar. Dave and Mary finally get some answers.

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Runtime: 33m

Transcript

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast unlike any other. Why? Because every case I cover comes from the heart of my home, New England.

Speaker 1 From the rocky main coast to the historic streets of Boston to the quiet corners of Vermont and beyond, I investigate stories filled with untold twists, enduring questions, and voices that deserve to be heard.

Speaker 1 So if you're ready to explore the darker side of New England, join me every week for Dark Down East. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 9 Would you mind telling me how you met?

Speaker 10 Want to take that, honey?

Speaker 3 Come on. We met at a bar I was working at.
Yeah. What was the name?

Speaker 3 The name was the Blue Room 2.

Speaker 1 The Blue Room 2.

Speaker 3 I got jumped by four guys. They broke my jaw here, here, here, and here, plus they broke my nose, plus they get a bunch of stitches.
And

Speaker 3 anyway, I was choking to death on my own blood, and if it hadn't been for Mary, I'd have died.

Speaker 3 She came over and took that hellbeat out of me. I mean, bad.
Really? Because he looked kind of tough. I was.
He was more than one jumping.

Speaker 3 I walked out and he's laying there on the ground and blood's gurgling out of his mouth. I'm like, roll him over, roll him over.

Speaker 3 So she pretty much saved my life. So the next day, I said, hey, will you give me a ride home?

Speaker 3 There was some girl that would not leave me alone. And I mean, she kept bugging me, bugging me, and bugging me.
Go home with me, go home. I said, Mary, come right home.
She said, sure.

Speaker 3 We've been together just about ever since.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 11 From Wave Land, I'm Justine Harmon, and I'm Holly Millay.

Speaker 9 This is three:

Speaker 9 Episode 6, Silent Snow, Secret Snow.

Speaker 9 Still together after 28 years, Dave and Mary Niece's marriage is like the moon. It began with an act of violence, goes through many phases, yet remains constant and true.

Speaker 9 Both born and raised in West Virginia, they embody the history of this dark, beautiful country, the only state entirely embraced by the Appalachian Woods, where the past feels somehow present.

Speaker 9 It was on this ground that the Civil War began in 1861. Two years later, Western Virginians formed their own state and joined the Union.

Speaker 9 one of five border states to fight against the Confederacy in some of the bloodiest battles along the Mason-Dixon County line.

Speaker 9 Not far from where Schuyler was finally found on January 16th.

Speaker 9 Once the FBI lab confirmed through DNA testing that the remains were indeed Schuyler's, Tessa Cooper, an advocate for the FBI, contacted Dave.

Speaker 8 She said,

Speaker 8 Dave, go get married for work and bring her, and we'll meet you at your apartment. And I said, why? I can't tell you.
And I said,

Speaker 8 it got so frustrating. And she said,

Speaker 8 you need to go get Mary and I'll meet you at your apartment. And I said, okay.

Speaker 8 So when we got, when I picked Mary up, we didn't say a word to each other the whole way home.

Speaker 8 It was.

Speaker 8 I'll never forget the silence. It was almost deafening.

Speaker 8 We both knew what was coming.

Speaker 8 Des Cooper, she told us, she said, through investigation, I'll never forget these words. They haunt me every damn day.

Speaker 8 Through investigation, we think we found Skyler.

Speaker 8 And the first thing out of our mouths was, is she alive? And no, she's not.

Speaker 8 It's something we both knew was going to happen, but you can't be prepared for that.

Speaker 7 It did.

Speaker 8 It's somebody telling you you just died. That's what it's like.

Speaker 8 And I said, what happened? We can't tell you. And I said, oh, Jesus.

Speaker 8 You can't be prepared for that kind of news. And you can't, there's no way.

Speaker 8 No one can tell you how to live that. I mean, no one can tell you the emptiness you feel.

Speaker 9 12 days after Schuyler's remains were found, Rachel tweeted on January 28th, 2013.

Speaker 11 There's so much I regret, but I'm on a new path and I seriously couldn't be happier.

Speaker 9 The following day, she tweeted to her boyfriend.

Speaker 11 Shout out to McKinsey for being the best boyfriend ever and sticking with me through all this shit. Love you.
Kissy Face Emoji.

Speaker 11 On February 2nd, this bitch is not going to ruin my life all over again.

Speaker 9 February 10th, 2013, the day Skylar would have turned 17, Sheila tweeted about how much she just loves to eat curly fries and wings.

Speaker 9 Rachel, who'd confessed a month earlier to killing her best friend, tweeted, happy birthday, Skylar.

Speaker 12 They had the birthday party, and they had plainclothes policemen all through the party because rumor was that Rachel and Sheila were going to show up. And to imagine this and just play along like,

Speaker 12 we're still out there trying to help you and we're still going to look for you, knowing that your daughter was murdered by these two individuals and they couldn't do anything yet because they were still building the evidence up.

Speaker 9 Schuyler's 17th birthday was somber, more of a vigil, held in the apartment parking lot with family, friends, and scores of strangers. who had read about the upcoming event in the Dominion Post.

Speaker 9 Holding lit Chinese lanterns, everyone mingled, smiling sad smiles, encouraging Mary and Dave to stay positive and hold out hope, not knowing what they already knew.

Speaker 11 And you threw that party, birthday party, for Skylar, knowing what had happened to her, but you had to put on this false front. Is that accurate?

Speaker 13 Yes, it is. And you know what? God loved Tom Bloom.

Speaker 13 He was our saving grace through a lot of that. He would tell us things that

Speaker 13 we

Speaker 13 probably weren't, well, we definitely weren't supposed to know. But he had an in

Speaker 13 with the state police

Speaker 13 and he would find out information and pass it along to us.

Speaker 13 And I got to say, I don't know if we would have made it. not knowing a lot of that info that we weren't supposed to know.

Speaker 9 It was only that evening that Dave found out exactly how Schuyler had died.

Speaker 9 Always desperate for information, Dave asked County Commissioner Tom Bloom, who'd actually been his former high school counselor, if he knew anything more.

Speaker 9 Father to father, Tom revealed what he'd heard on good authority.

Speaker 9 While Dave always thought Sheila and Rachel knew more than they were letting on, he was both numb and shocked by the facts.

Speaker 9 And he couldn't bring himself to tell Mary what he'd learned until days later.

Speaker 9 On March 6th, Rachel tweeted in what seemed like a feverish pace:

Speaker 11 Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try.
No hell below us, and above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for today.

Speaker 11 Snow makes everything more quiet.

Speaker 11 Happy moments, praise God. Difficult moments, seek God.
Painful moments, trust God.

Speaker 11 Every moment, thank God.

Speaker 11 And then on March 8th, my past is my past. Move the fuck on.

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Speaker 11 Downtown along High Street, older women, some mothers, some grandmothers now raising their grandchildren, stand on corners near stop signs, tapping on car windows, distributing literature and free Narcan to any and everyone with the hope that a life might be saved.

Speaker 11 Morgantown has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic in the last 10 years.

Speaker 11 A little further down the street is the Monangelia County Justice Center, which back in 2014 was a defunct post office built in the 70s.

Speaker 11 The sun streams through the large windows of the renovated building where we meet Judge Perry Joe de Christopher and retired prosecuting attorney Marcia Ashdown in a large third-floor conference room.

Speaker 11 Perry Joe resembles actress Marissa Tomei, attractive, dressed in a black top with a tiny checked, black and white Chanel-esque jacket, while Marcia, in black readers, wears a crisp white button-down blouse and black slacks.

Speaker 11 She's a ringer for Martha Stewart.

Speaker 11 The room is chilly, but the two friends and colleagues who worked together for so many years exude warmth.

Speaker 15 Like we're

Speaker 16 truly, it's like it's been.

Speaker 16 We spent lots of time, days, nights, evenings, weekends.

Speaker 16 Lots and lots and lots of times.

Speaker 16 Lots of fun times, lots of tears, lots of hard times.

Speaker 11 Lots of worry, lots of stress,

Speaker 17 quite a few laughs.

Speaker 18 Trauma bonded.

Speaker 16 Absolutely.

Speaker 16 Absolutely. People don't realize that.

Speaker 16 Like in our world, we know that secondary trauma.

Speaker 16 But like out in the world, people don't realize that. Like, you know, you do murder cases and murder cases are hard.
You know, you deal with victims' families.

Speaker 16 But, But, you know, we did kid cases, like kid cases.

Speaker 17 You do get callous to seeing

Speaker 17 horrible things. I mean, things that would horrify the average person.
You you know, you see a body photographed all carved up and their head mostly cut off. And

Speaker 3 you have to.

Speaker 17 Oh, it's a picture.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 16 You can't go through it alone, which is how we survived it.

Speaker 16 It's super surprising when

Speaker 16 you realize from this end,

Speaker 16 or from our view of the world, that we've done murders where people have been killed over snowballs, over leaning against someone's car, over a spilled drink.

Speaker 13 In a bar.

Speaker 16 In a bar.

Speaker 16 We had a a veteran that did two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was killed on high street over a spilled drink.

Speaker 16 Girls hating each other or worrying about a rumor, but it's just as ridiculous as all those other motives for murder.

Speaker 16 And every one of those that I just said, it's intense, and those are teenage girls. And so you can just imagine how that was huge in their mind.

Speaker 16 And so while it's certainly not a justification for murder, motive for murder is usually ridiculous.

Speaker 9 10 years ago in the Morgantown courthouse, I was waiting for the elevator when Marcia Ashdown, who hadn't returned my phone calls, suddenly appeared.

Speaker 9 As we stood there waiting, I introduced myself, pulled out my recorder and asked, why would Rachel and Sheila murder Skylar instead of just dropping the friendship?

Speaker 9 I've never forgotten her answer. It's shocking, she said.

Speaker 9 But then some people kill their spouse rather than getting divorced, for example.

Speaker 9 And it's not always because of an insurance policy. It's because they want to kill them.

Speaker 11 Years ago, when Holly and I first started to talk about this story, we would spend hours on the phone sharing our own adolescent experiences.

Speaker 11 Holly would tell me all about the slam book her classmates circulated in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Speaker 11 a mean girl style burn book in which her peers would share their most unvarnished thoughts and then pass it on for others to add their anonymous vitriol.

Speaker 11 We had something like that at my school, too. A simple 3x5 note card the boys circulated about the girls, in which they critiqued our bodies, our brains, our faces, our worth.

Speaker 11 An entire teenager's existence boiled down to a scathing chicken scratch review. University high school was no different.

Speaker 11 1,300 or so teenagers grappling with social issues, the precipice of adulthood, and whatever the hell was happening at home.

Speaker 11 They were ranked academically, pitted against one another on sports teams, and reminded of all the potential they were squandering.

Speaker 11 How do you not feel the urge to claim your stake, your place in line, your right to exist?

Speaker 11 I remember still the rush of rage when I heard what was written about me back then.

Speaker 11 The same rage I felt when one of my closest friends betrayed me by sharing a secret that wasn't theirs to tell, or trashed me to the boy whose name I would scrawl like a sacred talisman inside of my notebooks.

Speaker 11 A toxic cocktail of anger and hurt and insecurity that felt overwhelming and singularly mine.

Speaker 11 But the raw impulse to retaliate, to inflict fatal harm on a perceived enemy, is so taboo, so outside the realm of possibility, we don't even dare acknowledge it.

Speaker 11 The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world it doesn't exist.

Speaker 9 On March 14th, the headline on the Dominion Post read, Schuyler's remains ID'd.

Speaker 9 And beneath it, Star City teenager missing eight months. Family devastated.

Speaker 9 Rachel stayed as silent as the snow.

Speaker 9 But Sheila immediately went into survival mode, sending out a series of tweets.

Speaker 11 The pain is real.

Speaker 11 Rest easy, Schuyler. You'll always be my best friend.

Speaker 11 I miss you more than you could ever know.

Speaker 9 Mary, not wanting Schuyler's close friend to read the news or hear it from someone else, told Daniel Hovader personally.

Speaker 9 Mary messaged me and was like, okay, bud, they found the body.

Speaker 9 She didn't tell me that Rachel had led them to the body, though. She just told me that the FBI had found the body

Speaker 9 and that it was more than likely Skyler's. And that's whenever

Speaker 9 shit got real. I was just like, Great, one of my friends is dead.
And then

Speaker 9 once that was, that's whenever it was on the news and the school found out. 'Cause the news let it out like right before school had ended.

Speaker 9 And everyone started talking about it and everyone was walking around the school crying and freaking out and saying this guy was dead.

Speaker 9 And it was just a sad day at at school because I would have freaked out if Mary hadn't told me.

Speaker 3 I was driving, and

Speaker 13 I was on a mile-ground road

Speaker 6 passing the Subaru shop.

Speaker 6 And I heard on the radio, they said, Breaking news,

Speaker 6 your Schuyler's body's been found.

Speaker 6 And I was like,

Speaker 6 shit.

Speaker 6 And I heard that that day, I was like, wow, this is...

Speaker 6 She's home.

Speaker 7 We'll bring her home.

Speaker 7 What was fortunate about finding her when we did it was we were able to

Speaker 7 locate a lot of the remains.

Speaker 7 You know, over time, however, animals and the environment could have scattered the remains.

Speaker 9 In fact, it would be nearly three more months until they discovered Schuyler's skull. On March 29th, Gaskins returned to the site, determined to reunite all of Schuyler's remains.

Speaker 9 Walking the area, he found her skull on a small path some 80 yards away from where her body had been.

Speaker 9 Sheila, socially isolated and no longer the center of attention in a high school universe, filled her days homeschooling online, watching Law and Order SVU marathons, and hanging with her cousin, Alexis Eddie, and Shania Amons, her childhood friend.

Speaker 10 A lot of people were angry with me because I was defending Sheila.

Speaker 10 Even the police were like, you need to, you know, get away from her

Speaker 10 when they would come to interview me.

Speaker 10 But nobody would give me any proof. And I was 16 and I was stubborn and I was

Speaker 10 confused. And I was like, you know what? I've already lost one of my best friends.
I'm not just going to drop the other one when nobody's giving me an actual reason to.

Speaker 9 On March 31st, 2013, Sheila, as if goading the authorities, was tweeting back and forth with a friend about something unrelated when she wrote, we really did go on three.

Speaker 6 Right there's a proven fact, blatantly on Twitter. We went on three.

Speaker 6 You literally just confessed to the whole world

Speaker 6 and did for fun and a thrill

Speaker 6 to see if anybody catch on.

Speaker 9 Kim Keener knew something was seriously up given the constant police presence outside the chauffeur home. In fact, the neighbor grew so anxious, she began self-medicating.

Speaker 19 Oh, I was not. I was bending in.
I ate chocolate all the time. I was smoking pot all the time.
I mean, just trying to bring myself down.

Speaker 19 As scared as I was and as paranoid as I was, I was, I didn't want to, I didn't want to make things hard on them either because they were going through their own sweet hell. You know what I mean?

Speaker 19 And I still loved them. I, you know, I did.
And so it was just, it was, it was crazy.

Speaker 19 So I was afraid of a few things.

Speaker 19 I kept saying, okay, you know, I never voted for that damn prosecution office again because, you know, they let her walk after she admitted that she's killed this girl.

Speaker 19 She roamed around the county free, like a free bird for months, okay?

Speaker 19 and she had nothing to lose okay there are my cute little girls in their cute little beds next door my dogs would have never barked if she walked in my house it was like she lived there you know what i mean and then and then you know my husband worked nice i i was we were right we put an alarm system in we put cameras in

Speaker 9 while the authorities built their case against sheila and worked to move the girls from juvenile to adult status They struck a deal with Rachel.

Speaker 9 In exchange for her cooperation and testimony against Sheila, she agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder.

Speaker 9 They allowed a trip to Virginia Beach in April for Rachel to see her grandmother. To those following her on social media, she appeared to be on a carefree vacation.

Speaker 17 I do remember that she

Speaker 17 and her mother wanted to go to Florida.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I forgot about that.

Speaker 17 And I think we weren't in a position to try to stop that, I guess, because we would have had to have her in custody, I suppose. And

Speaker 12 we weren't ready to do that.

Speaker 11 Did we let her go?

Speaker 16 Did she go?

Speaker 17 I believe so, because I think I remember photographs from her Instagram account.

Speaker 7 Yes. Right.

Speaker 17 Thinking of something.

Speaker 9 On April 21st, she tweeted a picture of a mimosa and wrote, I need a mimosa or 10.

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Speaker 9 Throughout the month of April, Sheila was also very online, tweeting what read like other veiled references to the murder. On April 23rd,

Speaker 11 If only you knew, you'd shit right down your leg.

Speaker 11 April 24th. I hate when people blame their own actions and choices on others.
Deal with it. April 27th.
Ain't no rest for the wicked. April 28th.

Speaker 11 I hate seeing or hearing things that remind me of you because you're the last person I want to be reminded of.

Speaker 11 April 30th.

Speaker 11 I've closed enough windows to know you can never look back.

Speaker 9 Despite everything they'd heard secondhand, Dave and Mary still didn't feel like they had closure.

Speaker 18 They didn't give me much time to get to her. They did give me one night.
I got in the car and I drove to,

Speaker 18 I was going to go to Sheila's house and whoever answered the door, I was going to smoke them. I was going to shoot them right where they stood.

Speaker 18 And then I was going to find Sheila, take her somewhere, and start blowing fingers and toes off until she confessed. And Tom Bloom called me first.
He said, Dave, where are you at?

Speaker 18 And I was so pissed. I was mad.
I said, Tom, it ain't going to do any good. By the time you get here, it's going to be done.

Speaker 18 And I said, don't worry about it. Then Ronnie called me and Ronnie was pissed.

Speaker 18 I'd never seen Ronnie mad up until that point. He goes, where are you? And I said, it doesn't matter where I'm at.

Speaker 18 It doesn't make any difference. He said, Dave, I'm going to tell you right now, don't make this hard on yourself.
He said, what is Mary going to do without you?

Speaker 18 And then that hit a strong mood

Speaker 18 that hit me hard. And I said, oh my God, I never thought about that.
Not one time did I think about that. I have both my guns with me.
And

Speaker 18 they were going to die that day. There is no doubt in my mind until Ronnie said that, that what is Mary going to do without you?

Speaker 18 Shook me up.

Speaker 11 The next day, May 1st, 2013. Shania Amons was looking forward to her Clay Battelle High School prom, which was less than two weeks away.
Sheila, always up to see and be seen, was prom hopping.

Speaker 11 She went with her cousin, Alexis Eddie, to the North Marion High Dance in nearby Farmington. And now, Sheila was planning to go in a group with Shania to hers.

Speaker 10 So she was going to take, and ironically, she is a lesbian, but it wasn't like that when I say this, but she was going to take Sheila as her date so Sheila could come to our prom.

Speaker 10 And I was taking one of our friends that was a freshman, you know, that was a female so that she could come to the prom.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 10 I was trying to figure out what hairstyle because, you know,

Speaker 10 I had went dress shopping. I found my dress up in Clarksburg is where I got it.

Speaker 10 I had gotten shoes in Morgantown that matched with perfect. So I wanted everything to be like perfect.
So on that day, I was at the Paramount Beauty College getting a trial done on my hair.

Speaker 10 And my lifelong best friend, her name's Maggie.

Speaker 10 She called me and and she said where the fuck is Sheila and I said I said I don't know I talked to her a couple hours ago and she was with her mom at the doctor waiting for her mom to get blood work done or something why and she said you haven't heard anything and I said what are you talking about and she said it's on the radio right now that Rachel Shove pled guilty to murder and is in custody.

Speaker 22 Skylar's close friend, 16-year-old Rachel Schof, has admitted to planning the murder and stabbing the victim in a remote part of Wayne Township, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 23 Rachel confessed that everybody went, holy crap.

Speaker 23 It actually happened.

Speaker 24 It just came out of complete left field.

Speaker 23 Everybody's working on something else. And then I think it was a phone call came in that she had beat it.
And it was like,

Speaker 13 what?

Speaker 23 Kind of thing.

Speaker 10 And there is another juvenile in custody that they are not you know um

Speaker 10 giving the name

Speaker 10 i said are you serious and she said yeah i said i'll call you right back

Speaker 24 so

Speaker 11 i immediately hung up and i tried to call sheila and there was no answer and i texted sheila and there was no answer earlier that morning rachel's chauffe accompanied by her mother patricia had turned herself in and in accordance with her plea deal, pled guilty to second degree murder.

Speaker 19 She called me the day before

Speaker 19 it like, you know, came out or what, you know, whatever. She said, I just wanted to let you know before, you know, everything went bananas, Rachel has confessed to second degree murder.

Speaker 19 Now, the girls had already come home from school, though, and told me, mom, they stabbed her. And I said, listen to me.

Speaker 19 They may have done something to her, but there is no way my Rachel stabbed anyone. Okay, now that's just stories.
How about I'm telling my kid this you believe that because i just couldn't believe

Speaker 25 kim immediately told kelly kearns and the neighbor said something about them stabbing her and that's when i jumped in the car and raced to their house and knocked on the door

Speaker 11 kelly sent us pictures of rachel over the years several in which kelly is holding or hugging her as a grinning toddler with flame red hair and a dimpled smile.

Speaker 11 At about four, she's radiant in a pretty party dress, holding a wicker basket full of daisies.

Speaker 11 At five, on a lake, posing in the middle of an inner tube, smiling and wearing a life vest.

Speaker 11 Then, in a flash, she's around 12, a mouth full of braces and cheeks full of freckles.

Speaker 11 In an instant, The red-haired baby Kelly held moments after she was born is now a head taller than her surrogate mom.

Speaker 11 And look, it's Rachel and Sheila and Skylar smiling, posing, laughing at Rachel's 15th birthday party.

Speaker 11 Even as Rachel wraps her arm around her, Kelly has a sense that the teen has become someone else, a girl whose mind is somewhere else.

Speaker 25 Knocked on the door and there's Patricia and Rachel standing on the steps and I'm outside yelling, tell me you didn't do this.

Speaker 25 And Patricia told Rachel to go on and

Speaker 25 Patricia said it's bad. And she didn't give me many details and I left.

Speaker 11 I just left.

Speaker 9 With Rachel in custody, it was finally time to capture Sheila.

Speaker 9 Just before noon, Morgan Spurlock and Ronnie Gaskins pulled into the Cracker Barrel parking lot in Granville, West Virginia. Just as Sheila and her mother were walking to their car.

Speaker 9 We were over at Sheila's house in the beginning, and then we realized that she was over at the Cracker Barrel, and Rusty Troopers responded in time to stop her.

Speaker 9 And then that's when Ronnie put handcuffs on her and told her what she was rusty for. And I talked to her mother to let her know about what was happening the rest of the day.

Speaker 9 We brought her to the county court, like the Monte Gala County Sheriff's Department, and she was held there while arrangements were being made with the court.

Speaker 9 And then

Speaker 9 she had her appearance, and then we then we drove her along with Jessica Colbank down to the detention center.

Speaker 11 They gave me the opportunity to ride with her on the way to jail in the car. So, after they picked her up, because she was actually picked up at Cracker Barrel just up the road here with her mom.

Speaker 11 And we think she was trying to leave the state with her. So, I think they knew

Speaker 11 she acted like

Speaker 11 confused you know just

Speaker 11 could not understand why we were there

Speaker 11 she kept asking her mom you know is everything going to be okay

Speaker 11 just kind of got the sense like you know guys I don't I don't understand why you're here what's going on

Speaker 11 that kind of thing

Speaker 11 then I instructed her mom Tara

Speaker 11 to call Mike Vinegar

Speaker 11 because they were going to have a hearing for her initial appearance later on that afternoon.

Speaker 11 For 10 months, Sheila had so often repeated and impressed upon others her version of events to the authorities, to family, to friends, to Twitter followers, that she'd convinced herself she'd gotten away with the crime.

Speaker 11 Slapped into her new reality, Sheila was finally scared.

Speaker 9 Well, sort of. That's what she was worried about.
Was she gonna be with, you know, bad people? You know, like what you, what you, that's what she would say.

Speaker 9 Am I gonna be be with anybody that's mean don't put me with any mean people

Speaker 9 um and you know me and ronnie are kind of looking at each other like you know are you serious you know this is this is kind of like she didn't want to be seen in the back of the squat car um i remember that too and like she would try to i don't know she tried to duck down but she definitely you know raised those concerns saying you know people can see

Speaker 11 yeah she was more worried about appearances. She wanted to make sure she looked good for her mug shot.
Are they taking my picture?

Speaker 11 Is everyone going to see it?

Speaker 11 Everything like that. So she was solely worried about her image.
She was more worried about getting her hair done for prom on the way to jail. It wasn't, oh, you know, what's happening to me next?

Speaker 11 It was, okay, am I going to miss my hair appointment?

Speaker 11 It's not a typical reaction of someone that's just been picked up for murder.

Speaker 11 Next time, on three.

Speaker 26 Sheila Eddy, how do you plead to the offense of murder in the first degree of the felony charged in count three of the indictment in this case?

Speaker 27 The person who said you could be for you, Skyler, so-called friend, took her away from us without any remorse or feelings.

Speaker 24 If she didn't kill Skyler, she would have killed somebody else in her life.

Speaker 11 I don't know if there's a proper way to make this apology because there are not even words to describe the guilt and remorse that I feel each day for what I've done.

Speaker 28 Sheila and Rachel first

Speaker 28 joked about killing Skylar during science class when one of them said we should kill her

Speaker 28 and they looked at each other with a sense of agreement on that statement.

Speaker 11 Three is an original production of Wavelamp. The series is created and written by Holly Millay and me, Justine Harmon.
The executive producer is Jason Hoke, who produced and edited the series.

Speaker 11 Associate producers are Lydia Horne and Leo Culp. Fact-checking by Lydia Horne.
Sound engineering by Shane Freeman. Music by Robert Ellis.

Speaker 11 Studio recording at CDM Studios in New York and Wild Woods Picture and Sound in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Dave and Mary Neese in the city of Morgantown, West Virginia.

Speaker 11 If you love the series, leave a review and please tell your friends. Follow Waveland on Instagram at Waveland Media for more on this series and upcoming new shows.
Thanks for listening.

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