"They Know" | Chapter 5

Hi everyone, I'm investigative journalist and park enthusiast Delia D'Ambra.

And every week on my podcast, Park Predators, I take you into the heart of our world's most

stunning locations to uncover what sinister crimes have unfolded in these serene settings.

From unsolved murders to chilling disappearances, each Tuesday we dive deep into the details of

cases that will leave you knowing sometimes the most beautiful places hide the darkest secrets.

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Listener discretion is advised. I always told everybody, I said, if you could bet on crimes in Vegas, by gambling, I said,

I'd put $100,000 down if the girls would do it.

But they witnessed something and were threatened by that person who did it, not to say anything.

That's what I would have witnessed.

That's what I thought was happening.

And then, I'll never forget the night she. Ron and called me.
They did it. What do you mean? He said, they fucking did it.
They stabbed her to death. I'm like, who? What were we talking about? I was still thinking, okay, who stabbed Skyler? He goes, Rachel and Sheila.
And I was like, I was still thinking like, okay, who stabs Tyler? Like he goes, Rachel and Sheila. And I was like, I remember, well, outside the road.
Are you serious? He goes, yes. And he goes, I got to go.
We're heading out to retrieve the body. And I'll call you back.
From Waveland, I'm Holly Malay. And I'm Justine Harmon.
This is 3, Episode 5, They Know. After Rachel's confession in her attorney's office to State Trooper Ronnie Gaskins and FBI agent Robert Ambrosini, The group gathered their things, put their coats on, and in two cars drove the 30 miles

out. to State Trooper Ronnie Gaskins and FBI agent Robert Ambrosini, the group gathered their things, put their coats on, and in two cars drove the 30 miles out past Blacksville to Brave, Pennsylvania.
Rachel, riding in the backseat of Gaskins Cruiser, was leading them to the scene of the crime. Unlike Sheila, who grew up in the area, her father lived just miles from the murder site.
Rachel had to go by memory, which was all the more difficult given a recent winter storm. The deeper they drove into the backwoods, the deeper the snow, every twist and turn looking just like the one before.
Until Rachel recognized a tall oak tree and said, that's the spot where Skyler's at. The snow, knee-deep and hardened by the freezing temperature, impeded a detailed search of the crime scene.
And so the cars turned around, leaving Skyler, entombed in the elements, still waiting to be found. That same evening, inside Rachel's house at 402 Arabella Court in Morgantown, she was anxious for Sheila to come by.
Just next door, Kim Keener watched the action. Sheila's mom pulled up and dropped Sheila off, and she like drove around the neighborhood while Sheila sat there and talked to Rachel for a little while.
Inside the 10-split-level home at the end of the scenic cul-de-sac, there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, ample places for law enforcement to hide. And they were there, listening from the wings, as a 16-year-old Broadway hopeful attempted to extract a confession from her best friend.
Earlier in the evening, Kim Keener watched as law enforcement descended on the house.

My youngest was out playing basketball. I had to bring her in.

I was like, Abigail, you need to come in because I was afraid they wouldn't be able to hear her.

State Trooper Chris Berry, recently taken off the case,

remembers sitting in his office watching a recording of what happened inside the Shove residence that night. I saw the video.
They had cameras set up there too. Because the whole house was polluted with officers hiding in closets and bathrooms and shit.
But I have to give Rachel credit. She tried like hell and Sheila would not budge.
And I didn't think Rachel looked at her and she goes, they know. And she was like, what do you mean they know? And she said, they know what happened.
And of course she was like, no they don't. The only thing Sheila would say is keep your mouth shut.
Nobody knows nothing. They'll never know.
That's what she said. Keep your mouth shut, they'll never know.
If Sheila was nervous, let alone aware of the recording device under her friend's sweatshirt, she didn't show it. She kept changing the subject.
She talked about a boy or several boys, you know, just happened at school. We're driving school.
And Rachel would try to keep going back and going back. And she just wouldn't budge.
I remember watching it. I was like, damn, she's pretty good.
Sheila's done her homework of watching a lot of crime movies. You couldn't get that verbal commitment of like, they don't know we killed Skylar.

It was just, they don't know.

Sheila did say one thing that alluded to her complicity.

And then she made a statement like that she's been out there for six months.

But once again, any defense attorney could be like, who's she?

I could be a female cat or a female dog that they're talking about that they put out there. I think she knew at that point.
I'm sure Sheila could pick up on something, even if she didn't say anything directly. After seeing her best friend that evening, their relationship devolved.
The final act playing out, where else, on Twitter. Here's Sheila the very next day, January 4th.
First time I've been completely speechless. Holy fuck.
Three days later, she tweeted, Walk straight through hell with a smile. On January 9th, Sheila was home when the doorbell rang.
She opened the front door to find both the state police and the FBI armed with warrants. Ronnie Gaskins confiscated all remaining electronics, a cell phone, a tablet, and a computer.
And all the kitchen knives, some 17.

Including steak knives, paring knives, and chef knives.

The FBI sees the silver Toyota Camry parked in the driveway.

Despite the ambush, Sheila was on the offensive.

She soon acquired another phone.

On January 15th, she logged on and tweeted.

You don't even know the amount of shit you have caused.

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Restrictions apply. My son was 11 at the time and you know I during the case it was it was hard because I had my own family to take care of.
And he would come with me in the evenings after shift because I still had to answer calls. Like Chris Berry, Star City Police Officer Jessica Colbank, booted after calling Sheila's mom Tara a tool, could not let this case go.
After working her case assignments, Colbanks stayed at the office after hours, turning her attention back to Skylar, reviewing her old notes and files, phone records, and the written statements from the girls. Even though I was kicked off the case, you know, I wasn't kicked off in my mind, so I was still trying to do what I could do from my side without the knowledge of where they were at.
And I'd bring my son with me, and he would do his homework, and, you know, I would help him with that and, you know, have snacks for him. And he understood what I was doing was important.
Chris and Ronnie both called me right after Rachel confessed.

And they called and they said, Jess, you'll never believe, you'll never believe what happened.

And they said that Rachel came in and she confessed that they killed her.

And I was like, no shit.

You know, that was my initial response. Just because it was a relief to finally hear we had an answer.
And it was a frustration that I couldn't get that answer. they were always very anti-police, which I couldn't understand.
Screw the police, F the police from the get-go. The friendship between Kim Keener and her neighbors had grown strained during the last few months.
She couldn't understand Rachel and Patricia's refusal to help authorities find Skyler. I mean, their thing was the police have no one and that they are trying to pin this on these girls.
Like I would say to them, your friend is missing. The police are looking for her.
I don't know why you're fighting with them. And I just, I sat with Rachel and I said, don't you understand if they take your phone and they dump it and there's a picture in there, they might be able to find someone that has taken her.
Kim recalls being in Patricia's kitchen, watching her destroy what could have been crucial evidence. She took a hammer to a cell phone.
And that made me think she knew, you know, and I kept saying, you are going to get in trouble. Like, I don't understand why, why you, you are taking a hammer to the cell phone.
When she had her breakdown and finally went to the attorney's office, Patricia came over and said to me, we are cooperating now. It was like she knew that I was mad about that.
You know what I mean? Like she knew I was mad and she was letting me know we are cooperating now. When the U.S.
Attorney's Office notified Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Perry Jo DeChristopher that Rachel had confessed, She immediately phoned her boss, prosecuting attorney Marsha AshChristopher, that Rachel had confessed.

She immediately phoned her boss, prosecuting attorney Marsha Ashdown, who was out of town. I got that call.
She was not, she was actually out of town. And I called her and said, you need to wake up.
It was early morning hour and she was in a different time zone. I was in New Orleans.
And though they'd been following the stories in the papers and noting the rumors around Morgantown, nothing prepared them for the details of Rachel's statement. It was shocking.
Let me just say that I didn't go out of the room that day, and I was sick about it. So it was shocking.
Perry, Joe, and Marsha knew they had to keep a tight lid on the information. Leaks to Dave and Mary could easily jeopardize the case.
At best, the physical evidence was sketchy. And the truthfulness of Rachel's confession was still arguable since she'd been lying to authorities for months.
What they needed was proof of Sheila's involvement. It would not have been good for us to call Mary and Dave because first, you don't know if it's true.
And second, like you don't want to deliver that kind of noise.

By a phone call.

News over the phone. And finally, like, you know, if someone had called Mary and Dave that very minute, their reaction would have been to call Aunt Carol and to call this person and to call that person.
And as you can imagine, there would have been a mushroom cloud of information flowing to everyone that the police still needed to interview. I mean, they hadn't gone out to the scene at that moment.
They hadn't recovered any body. They hadn't done anything.
And so truly, at that very minute, there was nothing to do but kind of close our law enforcement circle and figure out

what to do next. You know, we have to continually remind ourselves that it's for a reason and for a good reason so that things don't get out and get out of control.
When Skyler first disappeared, crime reporter Alex Lang was still a general assignment editor.

He remembers the small story of a missing teen ballooning into a major mystery, with Dominion Post readers wanting to know more. I remember when the case started, it wasn't the world's biggest deal.
It was just a missing person case, and it was over a holiday weekend. But then she remained missing.
Every detail we found was almost always reported. Littlest update, the littlest interviews, the littlest detail all became stories because the community just wanted to know so much about this case.

In Morgantown, it's a college town. It's home to WVU.
The biggest story in that town in any particular year is how the football team does it. This was a close-up.
especially the town people.

It became not this

safe little community that's just known for a college football team. On January 11th, eight days after Rachel's confession, her boyfriend Mackenzie Boggs tweeted, Shout out to at Rach Dominion Post published a story with the headline, Police believe they know who Skylar left with, juveniles who she knew.
But that hasn't helped find her. Skylar was initially considered to be a runaway because the surveillance video showed her leaving on her own accord.
No one is sure what happened to her. Police have said they are not sure if she's alive or dead.
Anyone following the case, which was everyone, knew the names of the unnamed juveniles Skyler trusted. Two days after that story ran, on January 16, 2013, the cold snap broke and a light rain was falling, melting the snow.
Over 30 law enforcement officers, including Ronnie Gaskins and Morgan Spurlock, journeyed back out where Rachel had said Schuyler would be found. We led the first caravan of the ERT of FBI out to the site.

There are some administrative issues of, you know, getting a lay of the land. And, you know, it was like taking briefings because it was near a mine shaft that I think was terminated or discontinued, but still wanted to make sure of the safety of everybody that was there.
The canine dog circled the area, smelling the earth, pawing at the wet ground here, then there. With the recent rain and snow melt, there was a fear that the creek was so high it might have carried potential evidence downstream where officers were also searching.
Finally, the dog stopped. Looking up at the towering oak tree, the GPS collar around his neck snapped and fell.
And there, beneath a mound of snow and forest debris, was Skylar. Quickly, a tent was erected to protect her from the rain.

She was approximately 40 or 60 feet from the roadway edge.

There was a small creek that ran alongside, you know, not far from the road.

But she was in between the creek and the roadway.

She was kind of like out in a whole open area that covered up the branches and dirt.

One member of the small army of law enforcement combed the area with a metal detector and made a key discovery. At the crime scheme, the FBI evidence recovery team in Pittsburgh, we found her cell phone, or we found our cell phone out there, but it was locked.
There was also a SD card, so that had her photos, or the photos that were on it, so we were still able to access that. People up in Pittsburgh were able to see those photographs, and those were the exact same pictures on Skylar's Instagram account.
So I was able to match that up, so we had something to anchor to while the investigation continued

and all the forensic and scientific exams were being conducted by the lab.

The sky was cement gray.

The creek was flowing.

And though the trees were bare,

it was just as the psychic had described it to Mary and her sister Carol.

We would find her by water. We'd have to go over a bridge.

She'd turn across the seamount bridge, go across the railroad tracks, and about another what mile

on the left-hand side, there's a little stream running down, and that's where we found Skylar. The last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options.

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Enjoy so much more. Just how was it that Skylar came to be alone in such a remote area of the woods through summer and autumn and winter? The story would be unbelievable had it not been told by one of the last two people to see Skylar alive.
One of the two people who watched her die. That night, Rachel brought a shovel from her father's garage.
Sheila brought two kitchen knives from home. They put the shovel, cleaning supplies, and a change of clothes in the trunk of Sheila's car and drove to Skylar's apartment building.
On the way, Rachel called Skylar and the two had a seven-minute conversation. Although the temperature that day was in the 90s, Sheila and Rachel wore hoodies, under which the knives were wrapped in rags so they wouldn't cut themselves.
Once they got to Skylar's, they took the knives out of the cloths and put them back under their hoodies in the armpit area to have them ready. They called Skyler again, and she came out, hurried across the parking lot, and got into the back seat of the car, the footage caught by the surveillance cameras.
They were taking a joyride out to Brave, just across the Pennsylvania state line, where they'd gone before and gotten high. Skylar brought her bong, and Rachel had her pipe.
The drive is some 30 miles, giving Rachel or Sheila plenty of time to back out of the plan. Along the way, they passed two Sheetz gas stations with CCTV cameras, Clay Battelle Middle School, Sheila and Shania's alma mater, and passed the shack daycare and camp where Skylar and Sheila first met and bonded as girls.
After parking, the trio began walking into the woods when Skylar turned back to retrieve a lighter from her purse in the car. Rachel said, on three.
That was the agreed-upon signal. A count of one, two, three.
And they began stabbing Skylar from behind. At one point, Skylar got away, but Rachel tackled her.
In the struggle, Skylar managed to get the knife from Rachel and cut her right below the knee. But then Sheila was upon her, and fighting them both, Skylar was overpowered.
According to Rachel, after killing Skylar in the road, they took the shovel from the trunk of the car and tried digging a grave. But even in July, the dense earth was too hard to break.
So they dragged Skyler's body to the large oak tree and hid her under leaves and sticks. Ronnie Gaskins recalls Rachel's emotional state as she recounted the horror of what happened in the woods.
She wasn't holding in anymore. Now, you know, it's finally out.
We know what happened. Her parents are going to find out.
No more secrets. You know, it's finally out.
She was able to get through the confession and tell us what happened. So she was definitely scared I remember her having a uh a waste basket next to her in case you know she threw up so she was more more scared than anything i mean she wasn't she got teary-eyed i guess you could say she wasn't like bawling she wasn't like you know how someone gets so upset that you can't understand what they're saying.
It was a mutual decision. It was a mutual attack.
And Rachel did a countdown on three for them to start stabbing Skylar. So she did not minimize her role.
Rachel was there. She did the countdown.
She murdered Skylar. It was a mutual tax.
It was a mutual tax. With Skylar dead, the two girls, adrenaline coursing, stripped off their bloody clothes and either washed in the creek or cleaned themselves with the Clorox wipes hidden in the trunk of the car along with a fresh change of clothing.
After getting dressed, they headed back to Morgantown, but not before pulling off the road, popping the trunk, and getting rid of their blood-stained clothes and Skylar's purse. Exactly where? Rachel couldn't recall.
As for the knives, they'd been in the trunk too, but Rachel said she didn't know what Sheila had done with them. It wasn't until Rachel was home that she realized something was missing.
Yeah, Rachel lost her phone during the fight when they were attacking Skyler. That's how we were able to prove, too, Sheila's back out there.

Because we had a 4 o'clock in the morning ping on Sheila and Rachel's phone.

And then Rachel's phone stayed pinging the whole time, but Sheila's didn't. And then all of a sudden, it was like 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning,

Sheila's phone was on that tower again.

And that's what time she was out there looking for the phone.

She drove all the way back out there looking for the phone.

That's why Rachel was freaking out, because she was getting her girl on the boat with her mom and aunt and stuff.

That's why we had the pictures of them out on the boat party the next day.

And if you notice on the pictures of the boat, she's got cut marks on her legs because we saw those. I'm like, what were those? We got something about one night at a party and we ran through the woods and hit a briar bush.
Well, they're actually knife marks were in scratches from Skylar fighting back. Skylar was able to get the knife off of Rachel at one point.
Hearing that her body was found, Jessica Colbank was both relieved and reminded of her own futile efforts searching for Skyler. We rented four-wheelers.
We didn't rent them. We borrowed from the people of Blacksville four-wheelers to go just look.
And we were one ridge away from where she was found. So we were close.
We had no idea we were that close. You were in the car behind Morgan's car when when Rachel was taking them out to where the body was? No, I wasn't a part of that.
I had heard that they were going out there, but I wasn't part of, I've never been to the scene. Why? I don't know.
It's not my case. I have to say, I'm both moved and surprised that you haven't been out there.

No.

Sorry. It's okay.

I couldn't solve that case. That eats me.
Skylar's remains were sent to the FBI's lab in Quantico for DNA testing. But Rachel, Sheila, and others seemed to know what was coming.
Sheila found out somehow that Rachel had let the FBI scour us body because I saw a tweet that Sheila had made to Rachel and she said something along the lines of like, you stupid bitch, you could have kept your mouth shut, we wouldn't be in this situation. About an hour after she had tweeted it, she deleted it because I don't think she wanted people to know.

On January 16th,

at Josie Snyder wrote,

Sky is so gloomy today.

Then on January 22nd,

Sheila tweeted what could be considered

another taunt or wishful thinking.

Wonder if there's a Law & Order SVU where they don't figure it out. Next time on 3.
I'll never forget these words. They haunt me every damn day.
Rachel confessed and everybody went, holy crap, it actually happened. And then I was going to find Sheila, take her somewhere, and start blowing fingers and toes off until she confessed.
There's Patricia and Rachel standing on the steps and I'm outside yelling, tell me you didn't do this! And, you know, that's not a typical reaction of someone that's just been picked up for murder. Three is an original production of Wavelength.
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. Associate producers are Lydia Horn and Leo Culp.
Fact-checking by Lydia Horn.

Sound engineering by Shane Freeman. Music by Robert Ellis.
Studio recording at CDM Studios in New York and Wildwood's Picture and Sound in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Dave and Mary Neese and the city of Morgantown, West Virginia.
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.
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