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In late December 2012, Dave Nies, no stranger to the West Virginia Police Department over the past five months, walked up to the beige rectangular building and took the elevator to the third floor. He was a usual sight among the uniform stateies and overworked advocates who haunt the Crimes Against Children unit. It had been 169 days since Skyler went missing.

And the poor girl that worked in front of me saw me coming through the door. She held her finger on the buzzer and just didn't even ask. She let me go straight back. And I was a mess. Somebody had told me that somebody had confessed. Somebody told me all crazy stuff that wasn't true. And Roni let me right in, took me to a conference room, and he said, Dave, I got a call. I got to think I'll be right back. And he came back, pissed off. I just hated everything. And he said, That could be the best call we've had since this whole thing I said, What was it? I can't tell you. I said, Roni, oh my God, come on, dude. He said, Dave, I think it's going to make things better. We're going to get some answers. I'm shaking, I'm crying, I just wanted justice.

From Waveland, I'm Justine Harmon.

I'm Holly Malay. This is 3, episode 4, Hunger Games. It's spring 2012, four months before Skyler's disappearance.

Carly Ray-Jepsen's Call Me Maybe has broken Billboard's top 10. Fifty Shades of Gray is on the New York Times bestseller list, and the Hunger Games is the hot ticket in theaters. Shania, Sheila, and Skyler are sitting in the cool dark of the Hollywood Stadium 12 movie theater, waiting for the games to begin.

I can actually picture the whole thing. I was sitting on the end, and then I believe it might have been Sheila and then Skyler. Sheila was on her phone, was texting somebody, and was asking what she should say or something along those lines. Skyler was telling her, and Sheila didn't want to do that. Skyler tried to grab the phone from Sheila, so Sheila smacked her in the face, and Skyler hit her back. And that was all it was. It was really a smack to the face and then a hit back to the face. It wasn't like a big blow-up argument. They were both mad, obviously. When we got to the car, there was a lot of yelling and screaming. But before we even left the mall, everybody had calmed down. It was diffused. Closed. Everything was fine. It didn't carry on through the night. A very quick altercation that happened very out of the blue, and a lot of yelling in the car once it was over, and then it was done. And then it was really never talked about again.

That's why they had a lot of fights, and the fights were very public.

That's former UHS counselor Tom Blum again.

Where the guys, we do it to the side, but the girls were openly... That's how they liked to do it.

When they fought, everyone knew they fought. Dave remembers one such public incident that played to an audience of their classmates.

Yeah, she was, I think, a sophomore, a freshman in high school, and she was lockering with Sheila and a pregnant girl came walking down the hallway, and Skyler said, Oh, can I touch? Can I feel a baby kick, please? And Sheila said to the girl, Well, if you kept your legs together, it wouldn't have happened. She got turned around. I got witnesses to this. Turned around and nailed her right in the face. It knocked her inside the locker.

The girl's anger could bring them to blows. But even on a whim, Sheila delighted in taking things next level. One day, Skyler came home in tears.

So what's wrong, baby? She said, Sheila swerved to hit a squirrel. And I said, Oh, my God. And she was... Skyler was crying. She She was so mad. I just can't believe somebody would swerve to hit a squirrel. So this was when she was 16. Do people get like that? Or has she always been like that? I know a phone conversation I heard when Skyler was talking to Sheila and she said, Sheila, why do you want to go to the expense and everything and get another cat? They keep running away.

But Skyler stayed loyal. On March ninth, 2012, Sheila posted a mirror selfie with her two best friends. All three teens are fresh-faced in pajamas with Skyler wearing her reading glasses. While Rachel and Sheila look at the phone, Skyler, half ahead, shorter, gazes adoringly at Sheila, her arms thrown around Rachel's waist.

About two months after that sweet snap was taken, Rachel and Sheila were in science class bitching about how annoying Skyler was when Rachel made a joke, We should kill her.

The two girls looked at each other and smiled in agreement, whether at that moment they were serious or just playing a game. Over the following weeks, they devised a plan. Without question, Skyler was feeling the growing pains when one side of the triangle gets shortened. On March 24th, she tweeted, Too bad my friends are having lives without me. And then on April 14th, A girl, a girl, a bitch, a bitch. Daniel Hovater recalled an escalation in the animosity between the three.

Leading up to the summer of 2012, Sheila and Skyler, especially, were fighting a lot. We were in practice for pride and prejudice, and Rachel had her phone up to her ear, and she was laughing. I walked over to her, I was like, What's up? And she was Listen to this fight. Sheila had Rachel on three-way with her and Skyler fighting because Sheila and Skyler were fighting over the phone, and Rachel was on three-way. But Skyler didn't know that Rachel was on three-way.

The drama was constant, off and on stage. Hovete remembered another incident when Rachel and her mother had it out in the school theater before a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Does Rachel lose various faiths with Mom? I Almost every day at school, Rachel had a news story about her mom saying, Oh, my mom slapped me. And I remember one incident, we were playing A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare. Her mom, literally a few seconds before show time, right before it, slapped the Holy bejesus of her as hard as she could. Her mom literally wailed on Rachel's face, and Rachel started crying and all this and had to get her makeup fixed. And it was right portion of time. I remember the exact words she said, She said, Get your shit together, Rachel, and slapped her. That's what she said, Get your shit together.

Kelly Kearns, who'd been like a second mother to Rachel, never witnessed the increasingly volatile relationship firsthand, though she'd heard about it through mutual friends.

I never, ever saw Patricia hit Rachel or Rachel hit her mom. I understand from some other people, things got heated, but I'm guessing she was already starting to have trouble with her when she started hanging out with Sheila and really started skipping school, started doing all kinds of stuff. But as she got older and harder to handle, she didn't want Rachel coming running to me. So I did not end up with the closeness that I would have liked to have had. She told me one time, Rachel was 14. She finally admitted Rachel had shoved her. Well, I flipped out because Rachel's a big girl, and I was like, This is not happening. I confronted Rachel and said, If you ever do this again, we're going to have a problem. I suggested her going to the Mountaineer Challenge, a had a maid for discipline, but of course, her mom would not hear of it because she was going to be a Broadway star and blah, blah, blah. It wasn't... I understand from the girl next door that there had been some... Because she could hear them all the time, some screaming matches.

Oh, my God, yes. I would hear it in my house. I would hear it in my house. I would be in the house, not hear something Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think it started out. I think Patricia was a bully mom. I met this in here and said Patricia beats Rachel. She didn't beat her. She hover over her, she got her face. He screamed at her. Bullies stuff. And I think at some point, Rachel had enough.

I think it really didn't get physical till after this happened.

It's December in Morgantown. Skyler has been missing for five long months. Christmas lights along high street are ablaze. The college students have gone home for the holiday. Missing Persons posters with Skyler's face are weather beaten. The nieces didn't celebrate that first Christmas without Skyler. Yet there is one silver lining that holiday season. Skyler's Law, mandating Amber Alerts to be issued for all missing children, even those not suspected of being kidnapped, is gaining traction.

But Skyler's legacy doesn't just live on in memory.

It also lives on in Skyler's law.

Under Skyler's law, state police could issue an Amber alert for any missing child, even if an abduction is not suspected.

On December 19th, Roni Gaskins shared with the Dominion Post the one thing he knew for certain. There are people who know where she's at, and they're not talking.

Sheila who had always flaunted her freedom around town, was now shadowed by a parent or lawyer, even at the local hair salon, where she'd go to either highlight her dirty blonde hair or, depending on her mood, dye it cold black. Without even trying, aunt Carol knew both girls, comings and goings.

Where I get my hair cut, she let her mom go there. When she went to get her hair done, she wouldn't let Sheila say anything or talk to anybody. They would try to make conversation about something, and Sheila's mom would answer, and she wouldn't let Sheila talk. I had hung flyers up in the shop When they left, the flyers and stuff was gone. And so the girl that does my hair said, Me, it was really weird. She didn't let her talk. She said, Then the signs were gone. The posters were gone. She said, I'm pretty sure they had to take them because who else would do it?

At one point, Mary and Carol went full-on amateur detective, trying to trap Rachel in a lie.

Well, first she told me, Will you go to Rachel's house and talk to her with me? And I'm like, Well, yeah, sure. So a couple of days later, she said, Well, we're going to go, and we're probably going to wear a wire so they can hear what's going on. She said, Because we need to get it on tape, what's going on. So I was like, Okay. And then when the time come, her mom said, No, she's not doing well. She's not feeling well or something.

Carol, frustrated with all the false starts, began appealing to outsiders to conjure Skyler's whereabouts.

I asked Mary, I said, Can I borrow that goody? And she said, Yeah. She said, What do you want it for? I said, I just need to use it for a little bit. Well, she couldn't I find it. Well, give me her curly iron. She always liked to straighten her hair because she had the cuteest little curves, but she wanted it straight. And so finally, I said, Okay, Mary, I'm going to the psychic, and I want to take some of my scalers. And so she's like, You're what? And I said, Do you want to go? She said, Well, of course I want to go.

Didn't tell the psychic why they were coming. It's like you looked at Carol, she said, Who's the girl in your life? Who's the girl that has the problems in your life? What's going on? And that's when they told her. She told us exactly where to find Skyler.

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

She knew everything. She knew there was a red hair girl and a black hair girl. She said, You'll break the red head, but you'll never break the black hair.

I mean, it was the creepiest thing.

At Witzend on December 16th, Mary posted a 1,600-word missive on the Team Skyler 2012 Facebook page intended to stoke the flames. She wrote, These girls are more guilty than originally suspected. They have continued to withhold information to this day and have been caught in multiple lies to both the state and federal authorities. The original belief was that they were in fear of retribution or the consequences of others. Within a day or two, the post was taken down at the request of the authorities. But by then, it had been shared ad to night.

Skyler's family members weren't the only ones going rogue. Tired of spinning in place, Chris Berry leaked details of the investigation to Dave.

I took a chance. I just needed that pressure. Should I have done it? No, I shouldn't have. Roni called me and said, Did you tell the date nieces anything? No, I didn't. I didn't say anything. I wanted to get it out. I wanted to see what would happen. I feel bad for lying to Roni for that. I really do. You know what this case saw. On top of that, I was already pissed off sergeants and politics from the way I handled things as a trooper. I was a rough trooper. There was times to get nasty and ugly, and I got nasty and ugly. Me to throw some people around, I got answers, but I got complained on what.

The stunt got Barry kicked off the case, just like Jessica Colbank before him. Again, Mary decided to take matters into her own hands.

One I was on the computer, I was on Facebook, and Rachel sent me a private message and wanted to know how we were doing and could they do any, her and her mom, do anything for us. I said, Well, we're still plugging along. I said, The only thing you can do is tell me where she is. I said, She needs to be put to to rest the proper way. And she replied back, She says, What do you mean? And I said, You know exactly what I mean.

December 28th, 2012. The day after Mary Nees sent that sharply-worded Facebook message to Rachel, the girl came unhinged. Patricia Shoff placed an emergency call. She says, I have an issue with a 16-year-old daughter of mine. I can't control her anymore. She's hitting us. She's screaming. She's running through the neighborhood. Give me the phone. No, no, this is over. This is over. She just gave me a black eye. Oh, God. Please hurry. Kim Keener, whose house on the dead-end road was so close to Patricia's, you could, in her words, throw a rock from my porch and hit Rachel's bedroom window, heard the commotion.

Dud, dud, dud, scream. She's coming out of the house. Anyway, Rachel, then me gets in. She comes out of the house, screaming, You ruin my fucking life, my fucking life. And then bang, smack, whatever. That's when Patricia comes running out of the house, and she's holding She is holding her face. She is holding her face. And Brian and I walk out because I at that point know she's then been attacked. So her face is already black, just black. And we are like, What is going on? What is going on? She said she picked up a lit candelabra and hit me in the face. I've called 911. She said, and I said, Are you okay? She said, I'm fine. I'm fine. They're on their way.

I just went all to eat shit on them. Her mom said that was enough. She called 911. I knew she was on a self-destruct mode, is from what I understand, because of the pressure of keeping this. And then all hell broke loose when I think lamps got thrown and Patricia was telling Rachel, That's enough. It's over. When the cops came, she asked if they could take her to the hospital instead of directly to jail.

That night, Rachel was admitted to Chestnut Ridge, an inpatient psychiatric treatment center for teens. Over the next five days, Sheila would try twice to see her best friend.

When she was there, Sheila and her mom tried to get in because they wanted to know just what Rachel said. So I'm pretty sure Sheila's mom was in on all of this. I don't know at what point, but... And their whole theory was no body, no crime, and she just needed to hold out.

Cara and Sheila were trying to get in check that, and they didn't just go like one day. They went multiple days. They tried to talk to one of the security guards because when you go to Chesnut Ridge, you can get in there and you can get on the elevator, but you can't get on the secured floor and you can't get through the door once you get out the elevator. So they had tried every way to get on that secured floor. At one point, someone had a wig on, sunglasses.

But of course, they couldn't get in to see her because of security. Thank God for that because she probably would have convinced her to keep her mouth shut.

For the first time since they met, Rachel was beyond Sheila's reach, and Sheila's tweets were no longer defiant. At 5:25 PM that day, she wrote, Wow, literally worst night of my life. And at 10:32 PM.

Oh, hope my girl at Rage is okay. Love you.

On January 3, 2013, after five days in Chestnut Ridge, Patricia picked Rachel up and drove to her lawyer, John Angadi's office. Angati had called the US attorney's office and told them his client was willing to talk if they could work out a deal. When Rachel arrived, she asked her parents to wait outside the room while she spoke with her lawyer, FBI agent Robert Ambrosini, who specializes in polygraph tests, and Roni Gaskins.

There was just four of us in the room when she got fat. It It was her, it was her attorney, John, and God, it was myself, and it was the FBI agent. His name is Robert Ambroseini, and he assisted us on these interviews. I don't think she wanted her parents in there because I think she was scared because her mom was going to find out what did happen to Skyler and what her involvement was. So her parents actually found out after the confession. I was expecting her to tell us what we thought had happened. There was this party Because we kept getting all these rumors. We don't know where it came from. We tried to narrow down the source. We couldn't do that. But we were expecting her to finally say, Yes, Skyler had overdosed on her or whatever. The first three words out of Rachel's mouth were, We stabbed her. Then, of course, myself and the agent were speech this for a little bit. Then, Okay, wait. Let's start over. Tell us exactly what happened. What do you mean you stabbed her?

Rachel pulled over a waste paper basket in case she vomited and proceeded to recount the events in detail, unburdening herself of her sins.

And then that's when she started getting into the details how her and Sheila had conspired with one another plan to kill Schyler, the night that they carried it out. They had the knife concealed under their clothing, the shovel, and the cleaning supplies on the trunk of Sheila's car, and with the intent to drive her out there and kill her.

Sheila had Rachel pick the date they'd take Skyler out for a joyride. Rachel chose July fifth, when unbeknownst to Sheila, she would be at Church Camp. Camp was delayed, and Rachel was able to go out with Kelly Kearns on the boat that day.

I kept thinking, why wouldn't she have had Rachel pick the date? And I'm like, Well, she wanted Rachel to be committed, trying to get her more and more committed. And Rachel picks a date that she knew she wouldn't be in Morgantown.

Because she'd be off to church camp, correct?

Correct. By the devil himself, that camp would be closed, and she couldn't go, and she ended up still being in Morgantown. Because I think she just would have put Sheila off and gone off to camp. The holidays were there. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, everything that revolves around family. I think that societal need to be around family and give thanks and everything like that is a driving force for her religion. Who kills somebody and then goes to church camp?

On January 3, 2013, after confessing, Rachel agreed to lead authorities out to the murder site in the woods past Blacksville. Gaskins was there.

When Rachel let us out to the scene after her confession, there was a lot of snow. The guy, he could not do a proper search for the area.

Without a body to corroborate the crime, Rachel was permitted to go home under strict orders not to discuss the contours of her deal. That night, Sheila, who'd tried so hard to see Rachel at Chestnut Ridge, went to Rachel's house to welcome her home. She posted a picture of the two, reunited and smiling.

Finally, he got to see Rach.

In the selfie taken by Sheila, who's smiling in a white zip-up hoodie in rectangle glasses, Rachel leans in behind her, only her face in full view. Her eyebrows are There are dark circles under her eyes. She looks strained, and with good reason, she's wearing a wire.

Next time on 3.

He said they fucking did it. They stabbed her to death. They had FBI in the closet. They had FBI everywhere you can hide a human person.

They'll never know. That's what she said.

Keep your mouth shut. They'll never know.

I do know she just heard a cell phone before he came back, and that made me think she knew. She took a hammer to a cell phone.

I couldn't solve that case.

That eats me. Sorry. Three is an original production of Wavelamp. The series is created and written by Holly Mallet and me, Justine Harmon. The executive producer is Jason Hoke, who produced and edited the series. Associate producers are Lydia Horn and Leo Kolp. Fact-checking by Lydia Horn. Sound Engineering by Shane Freeman. Music by Robert Ellis. Studio recording at CDM Studios in New York and Wildwoods Picture and Sound in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Dave and Mary Mies and the city of Morgantown, West Virginia. If you love the series, leave a review and please tell your friends. Follow Waveland on Instagram @wavelandmedia for more on this series and upcoming news shows. Thanks for listening..