Pretty Little Killers (34 page)

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 first
²⁶
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.”

thirty-one

Hiding Out

That November, Crissy Swanson
fidgeted anxiously in a federal courtroom of the Northern District of West Virginia. She'd been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and she had no idea what they planned on asking her.

Crissy had been terrified of this day ever since she'd met Berry and Spurlock at the Dollar General store in Blacksville. She remembered the meeting well. It began with a phone call from her mom: “Um, there are two state troopers out here looking for you.”

“Can you ask them why?” Crissy said. “'Cause I know I haven't done anything.”

“They wanna ask you about the Blacksville bank robbery.”

“I don't know crap about the Blacksville bank robbery. So send them my way.”

The two plainclothes officers arrived at the Dollar Store, walked up to Crissy, and introduced themselves. She remembers them as Berry and Spurlock, who told her that if she lied, “it's gonna get you seven years in federal prison.”

“Okay,” she said, slapping her leg with her hand, and suddenly feeling quite warm. “I wasn't gonna lie to you before, but now I'm really not. What do you want to know?”

Once she got down from the witness stand at the grand jury hearing, Crissy felt waves of relief roll over her. She knew she had been honest and forthright, which was all that mattered, all the United States District Attorney was looking for. She even thought her testimony had helped alleviate suspicions about Shelia, after the DA asked Crissy if Shelia would take a polygraph.

“Oh, Shelia will take a lie detector test,” Crissy said. “Why wouldn't she? She has nothing to hide.”

When Crissy arrived back home in Fairview, she dialed Tara's number.

“We called to let her know we were out of grand jury,” Crissy said, adding that she wanted to reassure Tara and Shelia that none of the questions had been too troubling. That was when Tara said something that made Crissy question the loyalty she felt for her cousin.