Pretty Little Killers (43 page)

“Can you leave me one knife?” Tara asked, “so I can make dinner?”

Gaskins shook his head. “I'm sorry, ma'am. We can't.”

By midnight Shelia had somehow gotten access to another electronic gadget, expressing her feelings online by tweeting,
life fucked me yet again
.

Shelia wasn't thinking about what she had done to cause it. She wasn't thinking of the painful death of her “best friend.” Shelia was thinking about Shelia. The interviews, the searches, the accusations were all just another conspiracy by the universe to inconvenience her. She was sure of it.

If Shelia thought her life sucked after the FBI took her wheels, she probably wanted to die when the authorities pulled the social rug out from under her and Rachel in early January. That's when they both left UHS and were home schooled. Liz says the U.S. Attorney's office took the action to protect other students from the two teen killers. Other people speculate that the girls received so many threats from fellow students they were removed for their own protection.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in early January Rachel and Shelia found themselves attending a virtual school inside their own homes. Separated from most social interaction and estranged from each other, their tweets indicate they put on a good front for the outside world.

Still, when either girl showed up to take a test at school, people talked. They were incensed after someone posted a photo showing Shelia attending the prom with her cousin, Lexy Eddy, at North Marion High. Although she couldn't have known it then, Lexy's decision to invite Shelia to the prom would jeopardize her own standing in the community.

Once Shelia and Rachel
were
arrested, Lexy found herself being harassed on social media and by her fellow students—who said she must have known about the murder, too, if she kept close ties to her cousin. Before long, Lexy closed all her social media accounts,
withdrew from school, and began instruction at her Mannington home. The beautiful brunette was basically forced underground, where she refused to talk to anyone outside of her immediate family and a few trusted friends.

The public took to social media to voice its disbelief and outrage. They wondered why the authorities would remove the two teens, only to let them intermittently return to school—and possibly endanger other students.

What the public didn't know is that the police were as frustrated as anyone else that two probable killers were roaming free, being allowed to travel out of state, or occasionally drop back in on UHS classes. But without any evidence, they couldn't arrest Rachel or Shelia. Many, many people confess to crimes they don't commit, and the police wanted to make sure Rachel's confession was rock solid before they made their move.

So the hands of the police and the prosecutor were tied, because while they had Rachel's confession, they did not have Skylar, so they couldn't confirm Rachel's story about the murder. Skylar's remains were still somewhere out in Brave. The police didn't have enough to convict Shelia, either. Not yet.

Their only option was to bide their time, allowing the public to believe they were idiots, and wait until they had enough evidence to convict Shelia, to back up Rachel's confession. In the meantime, they would wait for the DNA testing results from Shelia's car. Little did they know the long and winding trail that testing would take, or that it would be several months before the DNA would help police to prove conclusively that the girls had been involved in Skylar's murder.

Ashdown did make one deal with Rachel. They needed evidence to back up her confession. People give false confessions quite frequently,
sometimes intentionally, other times by accident. So police must gather evidence that corroborates a confession. This was crucial in Rachel's case because she had lied to the police for months.

Rachel had confessed—now they just needed her cooperation. To convince her to do that, Ashdown offered Rachel a plea of second-degree murder. In return, she had to lead them to Skylar's remains as soon as the weather was good—and she had to agree to testify against Shelia.

By January 16, Gaskins couldn't wait any longer. Snow had smothered the area for two weeks, melting off slowly. To the veteran trooper, the two-week wait was agonizing and had seemed to drag on and on. He waited as long as he could and finally decided to try again.

They would need two teams, but the second team wasn't free until later that morning. Gaskins wanted to get started early so they would have a full day if they needed it. Spurlock rode with him. A cadaver dog unit supplied by the FBI followed the two of them out Route 7 toward Blacksville. Gaskins took the same route as they had two weeks earlier.

Gaskins pulled his cruiser over at the same GPS coordinates Rachel had led them to before. It looked very different with the snow mostly gone. This time, the place was familiar. As they waited for the dogs to arrive, Gaskins remembered all the times he and Trooper Berry had searched the area. The two troopers had scoured the wooded mountains and had searched six mine shafts. One time in particular, they had hiked up the hillside and looked down a mine shaft. There they found a yellow size-medium T-shirt similar to the one Skylar had been wearing. They also found bones.

Worried about the find, they were relieved when they learned the bones were those of an animal. But the T-shirt was another matter. That took some time. But in the end, all tests came back negative.

When the cadaver dog and his handler were ready to go, the dog was turned loose and the search began. No sooner had they been
deployed than Gaskins got a call over the radio. The second team was there and ready to go, but Gaskins needed to drive back to the detachment and lead the way. Otherwise, they might get lost.

Within minutes of Gaskins' departure, the dog's handler noticed the canine's collar had fallen off, along with the small GPS unit attached to it.

The agent called out, saying he needed to find the $300 piece of equipment. He retraced the animal's steps and discovered the unit stuck between some rotting pieces of wood. The agent bent over and started to pick up the unit, then suddenly stopped when he saw something that looked like it had been dead for quite a while.

There, buried under rocks, branches, and other debris, about fifteen feet from the gravel road, the team discovered human remains. Skylar had been buried just twenty miles from her home—and only a few hundred feet from the spot where a handful of devoted officers had searched, repeatedly, during the last several months.

On their way back to the search, once again on Route 7, Gaskins and Spurlock talked as they drove.

“This might be a long day,” Spurlock said.

“Wouldn't it be nice if we got a phone call right now,” Gaskins said. “Someone would say, ‘Hey, we found Skylar.'”

“Yeah, it would be nice.”

About two minutes later, Spurlock's phone rang. Gaskins could clearly hear what the caller said: “Morgan, we found her.”

Gaskins and Spurlock could hardly contain their excitement.

“Rachel came through,” Gaskins said. “She told us where we'd find the body, and we did.”

“Now we can begin corroborating Rachel's confession.”

Sad as it was for both men—not to mention Dave and Mary—the remains needed to be confirmed as Skylar's. The labs must find evidence that she had, indeed, died from knife wounds, and with any luck they might find evidence pointing to the killers—even though Gaskins already knew who the killers were. Rachel had told them,
and had passed an extensive polygraph afterward. Gaskins now knew she had told them the truth.