August 16, 2022 • 27 mins
Today’s guests are producers Beth Greenwald, Tim Hamilton and Jeff Shane.
Many of us don’t have the fondest memories of high school, but for the three young women at the center of this mystery, their formative years proved to be deadly.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
(00:20):
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
Today's guests are true crime producers Jeff Shane, Beth Greenwalt,
and Tim Hamilton's episode forty The Case of the Twitter Feed,
The Small Town and the Really Mean Girls. Skyler Niece
(00:44):
was born and raised in Star City, West Virginia, a
small town of only about eighteen hundred people with just
one stop sign. However, despite being in an insular community,
Skylar had big plans. At sixteens, Gylo was smart, a
straight A student. She loved reading in math. With her
(01:05):
big smile and infectious laugh, she dreamt of being a
criminal defense lawyer. After school, she worked at a local Wendy's,
saving money for college. If just one word came to
mind when thinking about their daughter, Skyler's parents said she
was genuine. At University High School, Skylar was well liked.
She was known as bubbly and always seemed to put
(01:26):
friends first. It's no surprise she found herself in a
very tight click with two other girls named Sheila Eddie
and Rachel Chouff. The group referred to themselves as the
quote three Musketeers, and classmates said they were literally together
every second of every day. It was the type of
friendship we all aspire to have, secrets, inside jokes and
(01:49):
amazing memories. The girls felt more like sisters than friends,
talking at all hours at the night and walking into
each other's houses without knocking. Here's Beth. Sheila, Rachel, and
Skylar were best friends, but they all had different upbringings.
Skylar had two loving parents, Sheila was like a bit
(02:10):
more of like a latch key kid, didn't have a
lot of rules in her household, and Rachel came from
a strict Catholic home but had divorced parents. And regardless
of these differences, they became impossibly close in a way
that like, you know, teenage girls can you know. And
despite psychologists saying that friendship triangles are impossible to maintain
and will inevitably leave someone out, these girls really had
(02:32):
a strong bomb and made this friendship work. Other people
in this school always described The threesome as very popular,
always together, sat at lunch. They were a tight group
of friends, and they're young. And Rachel, who had striking
red hair, was always the center of attention. When she'd
walk into a room. You would not miss her because
she was the red head, and she was tall and beautiful.
(02:53):
Skylar had a very innocent look about her. She was
came from a family who loved her, very innocent and
impressionable di Ide. And then we had Sheila, who dyed
her hair blonde, so you had really three very distinct
looks between the three of them. The trio gained a
kind of a rowdy reputation around school in town, with
(03:14):
Sheila leading the pack. And they got that reputation because
they were known to sneak out after curfew, go to parties,
hang out, and sometimes experiment with marijuana. But you know,
they were pretty much good girls. They were just doing
the teenage thing. Rachel describes herself online and this is
why I say it's a typical high school girl. Is
just she describes herself online as I want to go
(03:36):
to Hogwarts, Chinese food is my favorite, and a day
with me and Sheila is never a dull day. Don't
make a permanent decision for a temporary emotion. Sometimes I
wish I didn't fall in love sheet type you know,
you can see, Jeff. These are kind of just run
of the mill, typical teenage girls going through high school, right, yeah,
totally tim And all of this was shared perhaps too
(03:58):
much on social media you which is actually pretty normal.
Nine out of ten teens report using it. The girls
were really active on Twitter and Facebook. But as we
know all too well right now, social media is very
harmful with teens. It can affect their mental health, especially
with teams struggling with body image, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
But despite all that, by all accounts, Skyler Niece was
(04:19):
a pretty happy average team. She would tweet things like
this is seriously the best night ever and words cannot
describe how excited I am for this summer. So really,
what strikes me from all this is just how normal
it sounds. You know. These are girls who are very close,
They are going to parties, they have a lot of friends,
They're putting pictures online. It just seems like you could
find this click at any high school in any city
(04:41):
in America. I have two younger sisters. It felt like
them and their friends. It's cute. See it's sleepovers. It's
trying to sneak out and not have mom and dad
find out. It's trying to let's go swimming in the
middle of the night. It's harmless fun, and it just
seems very very typical of a teenage girl or a
teenage girl with two best friends. It seems like they
were really close having fun, and you know, at that
(05:03):
age you're kind of testing out boundaries, and it's good
to know that you have a bunch of loyal friends
who have your back is you're kind of going through life.
You hear a lot about teenagers cyber bowling, and what
I've seen in these girls social media is actually kind
of the opposite. They're constantly loving each other and saying
nice things about each other and seeing each other's praises.
So it really feels like a supportive friendship, which it
(05:25):
is a refreshing thing. However, Skylar Summer would come to
a tragic end. On the morning of July six, the
brunette teen disappeared. Was she a runaway, did she have
an older boyfriend who harmed her? Was she sex trafficked?
Nobody knew one day after disappearing, Sheila Eddie called Skylar's mother.
(05:50):
She was guilt stricken and admitted that the night Skylar disappeared,
she and Rachel had picked her up and drove around
like they had so many nights before. On the morning
and question, Rachel told Mrs Nice that around midnight, Skylar
asked her friends to drop her at the end of
the road so that the car lights wouldn't wake her parents.
The girls obliged and it was last time they ever
(06:12):
saw their friend alive. Police got a lead when they
obtained security footage from Skylar's family's apartment complex. At twelve
thirty am, they saw an unknown car pull up and
Skyler run into it. It was impossible to figure out
the maker model, but one thing was clear. Skyler got
into the car on her own accord. Here's Jeff. The
(06:38):
first thing police did was look at the teenagers social
media account, because, like we said, she was very active
on it, and they looked for some clues and it
seemed like the fourth of July weekend had Skylar feeling
down about something. She was tweeting things like life would
be so much easier if jealousy didn't exist. The day
of the disappearance, she tweeted, you doing ship like this
(06:59):
is I will never trust you, and perhaps prophetically, she tweeted,
stress will be the depth of me. Police couldn't figure
out what she was talking about. According to her friends
Rachel and Sheila, nothing would have the girls stressed out
and things were going well between them. She also didn't
have a boyfriend that anyone knew about. Tim. Is there
anything we know about this mystery car, who was driving it,
where it came from, where it was going. We don't
know much about this mystery car except it pulled in
(07:22):
around twelve thirty in the morning, about half an hour
after Skyler's friends dropped her off, about a block from
her house. Her mom's theory was that Rachel and Sheila
dropped her off at midnight, then thirty minutes later she
snacked back out to the mystery car. We didn't know
who was driving it. You couldn't make out through the
video the license plate. You couldn't see how many people
were in the car, but you could see the car
pull into their their parking lot, and you could see
(07:44):
Skyler get in and the car drive away. Because Skyler
got into the car on her own, it didn't qualify
for an Amber alert, but she could have potentially helped.
But she wasn't taken, she wasn't forced into the car.
She got in on her own, which then again doesn't
qualify for an Amber alert yet. Tim the amber alert
thing is really kind of distressing because even if Skyler
(08:07):
did run off on her own, one and three runaways
become victims of sex trafficking. So the police should have
taken her running away just as seriously as a kidnapping,
especially when she didn't turn up right away exactly, and
to her past and her her character and her friends
and her mom and dad, this was unusual. They knew
the character of their daughter, and she wasn't going to
(08:28):
be a runaway, and there was nothing to point to
that direction. So really, just her age and the time
of day and not being home and her family not
knowing where she went should have qualified. You know. I Mean,
here's the thing, I'm not sure she was a runaway.
I mean, if she was a runaway, you know, she
was taken her stuff and she didn't bring her contacts
or take her glasses, So to me, it didn't seem
(08:50):
like she was a runaway. No, this is a girl
who works really hard in school, she has an after
school job. She cares about her friends, she cares about
her family. It seems very out of character that she
would make herself disappear for any extended period of time,
and not at least at the very least you think
she would tell her closest friends where she was going.
If she had this mystery boyfriend, they would know it,
and if they want to help the investigation, they would
(09:11):
probably tell the police everything they knew. You have to
wonder what was she doing out at twelve durt in
the morning after her friends just brought her home. It's
certainly weird because if her two closest friends are not
with her, like, who is she with? That's what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
and in such a small town too, there's only so
many suspects, you would think. But we know she's very
(09:32):
active online. Perhaps she did meet someone on the internet
that has learned her out and taken her somewhere about
It's also just such unexpected behavior. But did she have
a secret boyfriend? Was there a party? It's also a
holiday weekend, it's like big party weekend, it's the fourth
of July. Maybe there's something going on, But again. If
she doesn't turn up the next day, that is an
(09:54):
immediate cause for concern. We're going to take a break.
We'll be back in just a moment. Both of Skyler's
(10:15):
parents were very concerned when they discovered she wasn't in
her bed, and so they started calling her friends and
looking onto her social media feeds, and everything seemed normal.
Her friends didn't know where she was. There was nothing
out of sorts on the social media feeds, and everything
seemed to just be like, maybe she snuck out with
some other friends since she was popular in her school,
and maybe I went to like a lake somewhere since
(10:36):
it was the fourth of July weekend. It was just
having fun with other kids. But that changed because the
very next morning, one of Skyler's friends called Skyler's mom
back and said, I have to tell you I lied
to you last night and Skyler snuck out with us
after you went to bed, And so that kind of
started the ball moving in a different direction of where
to look for her, you know, the family learning more information.
(10:59):
They learned that there was is uh step stool kind
of right outside of her her bedroom window, and her
father saw that and didn't think twice about it the
morning of, but then the next day is like, Okay,
now he understands. That's what she used to jump out
of the window and step onto the street, So that's
what her parents were doing. In the immediate Despite there
(11:20):
being no leads, Skylar's friends continued to rally. Sheila was
supportive and helpful to the niece family. At one point
she came over to their home and cried with Skylar's
mom on Skylar's bed. Skylar's besties were also helping the investigation.
They were organizing searches and posting constantly on social media
pleading for answers. Still, there was no sign of Skylar.
(11:46):
At a candlelight vigil, Rachel and Sheila were seen sobbing.
Mrs Knee found comfort in the fact that Skyler had
such great friends. Rumors swirled in the small town, and
police got hips that Skylar had been seen in such
far flung places as California and New York. All were
(12:07):
dead ends. Months went by with no answers. Rachel and
Sheila tried to get back to normal, but their classmates
were beginning to turn on the girls. Students began posting
that Rachel and Sheila must have known something. They were
the last ones to see Skyler after all. Seeing this,
the FBI began interviewing classmates about Rachel and Sheila's potential involvement.
(12:31):
At the time, Mr and Mrs Niece defended Skyler's friends vehemently.
They thought they would never have heard their daughter, but
Rachel and Sheila continued to become the focus of the investigation.
Police found surveillance footage of them at a gas station
the night of Skyler's disappearance, miles away from where they
claimed they were. Rachel's cell phone also pained off a tower,
(12:54):
again not in the area where they claimed they had been.
It was now clear that Rachel and Deilo we're not
being completely honest. At this point, the Nieces turned on
Rachel and Sheila. Mrs Niece posted on Facebook quote, Throughout
all this nightmare, the girls have withheld information. I love
(13:14):
these girls unconditionally and would never have dreamed they could
be capable of such things as this. This is truly
the ultimate betrayal. Here's best. What a surprising twist. I
thought they were Skyler's best friends, but to know that
they've been withholding information is devastating. Yeah, I imagine the
Nieces were probably heartbroken. I mean they had looked at
(13:36):
these girls as a source of comfort. You know, Sheila's
crying with Mrs Niece about this whole thing, and to
find out they lied, even about something small like they
were at a different part of town than they said
they were, definitely doesn't feel good. Mrs Niece also must
have been incredibly frustrated too, because to post about it
on social media, on this public forum, kind of proclaiming
that she's no longer aligned with these girls is really
(13:59):
like a big proclaim. Should I wonder if they did
that to get more pressure, you know, put pressure on
the girls that if they were turning on them, and
classmates were turning on them, that perhaps they would either
let something slip out if they knew, or would come
forward with other information that could perhaps help them find Skyler.
I mean, thinking as Skylar's mom and dad, it's almost
(14:19):
like you're sleeping with the enemy. I mean, these are
girls who four years have come over your house, have
slept in your house, have eaten your dinners, You've cooked
for them, you've provided for them. You want to make
sure they're taken care of when they're in your home.
So it's a shock, and I don't think that there's
any way to fully comprehend why they would not why
they withhold that information, but just the fact that they
(14:41):
did is the ultimate betrayal, and the story just takes
a weird dive from here. Well, what Tim, do you
know anything about Rachel and Sheila were saying how they
responded to this Facebook post. They seem to have like
a facade where they just ignored it at first, and
then they started taking social media and tweeting things like
Sheila wrote, I'm tired of losing sleep over this and
(15:02):
we really did go on three. It was cryptic, it
didn't make sense, it would you know, It just was weird.
And then Rachel would tweet things like you don't want
to mess with me and Sheil and it was almost
kind of like a defense, like back down, stop saying
these things about us, but you don't want to mess
with us. But we didn't understand that we really did
go on three. Didn't didn't make sense, but that's how
they were responding, just taking the social media, and the
(15:23):
kids in school were already saying that Sheila and Rachel
had to have known something, adding that extra layer of pressure,
and then you have a grieving mother posting publicly about
something specifically they withheld. I think, Beth, you're right. The
pressure is mounting. The pressure is mounting us. Sooner or
later there go somebody's gonna crack if they do know something. Yeah, Tim,
(15:45):
And you know what, it wasn't just the tension in
the in the school, you know, despite there being no arrest,
the entire town of Star City suspected the girls. And
I imagine they were probably petrified by the mob mentality.
But you know, gone in the days of pitch forks
and fires, and the new way to destroy someone is
really on social media. Yeah, Beth, and destroyed they did.
(16:06):
Sheila and Rachel's classmates began posting things directed at the girls,
like I hope you're taken away by Christmas. Then you
will know what it's like to be away from your
family and be ashamed. Your parents must be considering some
of the tweets that would come. Those were pretty veiled.
Tweets actually started to get even more direct. This is
one that a classmate wrote, you can't sleep because you're
the psycho that has been covering up a murder for
(16:26):
the last eight months. Rachel finally cracked and ended up
having a mental breakdown. I mean, it really seemed like
all eyes were turned and fingers were pointing in the
right direction. I mean, Rachel finally cracked. It seems like
she was hiding something. Let's stop here for another break.
(16:59):
The police, obviously we're investigating it, but it really is
a story of small town justice where people sniffed it
out and before the police knew anything. It seems like
classmates and talentspeople really suspect what had happened. Rachel and
Sheila said that yes, they did go out the night before.
It's still confusing for me because it just seems like friends.
It just seems like friends. How would two best friends
(17:22):
hurt their other best friends to the point where she
could be murdered. But a lot of the cases that
we've worked on, in the cases that we even look at, generally,
it's the last person to see the person. It's the
last people who are around the person who were somehow
involved in the death or at least know something more.
That's true. But it's like high school girls hanging out
Like I would never think I'm going to get in
the car with my friends go drinking on the dock
(17:45):
and I might never come back. Yeah, I mean, I
think from an outsider's perspective, it seems like things were
all hunky dorry with the friends, but clearly locals and
classmates started to see something that maybe we haven't. It's
also so interesting to me this case plays out so
much online because you know, every story, people talk and
there's rumors and people are whispering, but all these kids
(18:06):
are putting it on the internet that like, these tweets
about Rachel and Sheila are online forever, like we can
still find them. That's how we found them in our research,
and so kind of the annals of history of this story,
like it's really it's going to live forever online, which
is a lesson I think for people using social media
that it's like, once you put it on the internet,
it will be there forever. Yeah. I mean, I also
(18:27):
think it was strange that Rachel took such a defiant
tone with that first you don't want to mess with
me and Sheila. I mean that sounds like a veiled
threat and certainly something you don't want to do when
you're possibly under suspicion for disappearance. I mean, she was,
you know, an outspoken theater kids so I think she's
probably used to speaking her mind and feeling like she's
a little bit top girl at the school, and so
(18:48):
this kind of threat to her standing was probably pretty unnerving,
but it's extremely inappropriate, especially when her best friend is missing,
to be talking that way, agreed. Rachel was admitted into
a psychiatric hospital at the end of days. After being
admitted on January, Rachel admitted to police that, with Sheila's help,
(19:14):
they had killed their best friend. Furthermore, she said that
her and Sheila had planned the murder for months. Rachel
detailed how the night in questioned, she and Sheila had
packed Sheila's car with bleach shovels and kitchen knives. The
girls then picked up Skyler, drove her to an isolated spot,
(19:36):
and at the count of three, took turn stabbing her
to death, literally in the back. Rachel told police that
in her final moments, Skyler kept screaming why. Afterwards, the
girl buried Skylar in a shallow grave. When the police
asked Rachel why they had chosen July six for the murder,
she told them that she wanted to get it done
(19:58):
before leaving for church camp. In Rachel's confession, she revealed
Sheila not only helped in the murder, but was the mastermind,
and that they killed Skylar simply because they didn't want
to be friends with her anymore. The story was confirmed
when Rachel took police to the crime scene and they
found what they believed were Skyler's remains. Police would need
(20:22):
to test the remains before anything was confirmed. At this time,
police found a very disturbing video six months prior to
her murder. Skylar films Sheila asking her and Rachel how
they would want to die. Was this an ominous coincidence?
Here's the audio. Would you guys, rather suffocate or get shot?
(20:45):
Get shot? Shot? As the way it depends on where
would you rather? In the head shot? There would be
no suffering at all. It's pretty crazy that they were
talking about this six months before the murder. It really
doesn't make you think that they might have been kind
of setting some things in motion that early. It's weird
(21:08):
they were talking about this so many months ahead of
time and recorded it so it lived in infamy on
their phones for anyone to access down the road. And
this is like, you don't just kill somebody when you
don't want to be friends with them. Well, their minds
were just in a dark place, is what It shows
that this is like most girls are talking about boys
or homework, and these girls are talking about murder. It's
(21:29):
certainly now that you know what, you know what they did.
It puts this in a completely new lens. Yeah, and
it's just what a morbid conversation to have from it.
Just random and morbid in my opinion. So after Rachel's
mental hospital confession, there's still no arrest. Police said this
is because she had lied to them before, so they
really wanted to corroborate her story before making the arrest.
They wanted the prosecution to have everything locked in completely.
(21:51):
They also wanted to use Rachel to get to the mastermind, Sheila.
They used Rachel to trap Sheila in a wire tapping plan.
They had Rachel invite Chill over in an attempt to
get her best friend to confess on a hidden camera.
When Sheila got there, she of course tweeted a photo
of the pair, but unfortunately Rachel couldn't get Sheila to confess, Yeah, Jeff.
Days later, the police got a warrant and they searched
(22:12):
Sheila's house and car, and in the car they found
trace amounts of blood. Um, of course they didn't know
whose blood it was. They were gonna have to test it.
At the same time, though police positively identified Skylar's remains
and were really traveled fast in that small town, still
keeping up appearance as though. Sheila tweeted, the pain is real,
(22:33):
Rest easy, Skylar, you will always be my best friend. Finally, Jeff,
the blood test came back and the blood found in
Sheila's car it was Skylar's, and the girls were all arrested. Tim,
do you have any idea like what the motive was? Oh? Yes,
So here's the thing. Despite Rachel telling police the girls
killed their best friend just because they grew tired of
(22:54):
her friendship, it seems that there may have been some
other reasons that weren't so obvious. The contents of Skyler's
personal diary suggests that she may have known a very
salacious secret about her two friends and was threatening to
reveal it. She wrote in graphic detail about walking in
on Rachel and Sheila having sex during a sleepover in
(23:16):
her own She then alluded on social media that she
knew something was going on, tweeting quote just know I
know end quote, and then a little bit later, she wrote, quote,
I'd tell the whole school all the ship I have
going on, which is a lot end quote. Wow. So
that's pretty shocking revelation that she found out the secret
(23:39):
about her friends and they didn't want it getting out,
and that's why they telled her. Just maybe they were
paranoid alluding to this salacious secret and knowing you know,
what it was. And also, you know, when you're at
that age, you kind of just lead with what you feel,
and the girls were obviously like distraught or embarrassed about
it maybe and didn't want it to get out. Yeah,
(24:00):
and this is a small town West Virginia, and so
they probably weren't feeling super accepted by their community potentially,
so if Skyler knew this secret about them, they would
do anything to protect in it. And at that age,
they weren't even potentially knowing how they were feeling about
their sexuality. And so this idea that the whole school
would then be talking about it was probably too much
from the handle you're the three Amigos, Beth, you make
(24:23):
a good point. I think there could have been a
lot of paranoia on the part of Sheila and Rachel. Well,
like you said, to him, they're the three amigos, and
when two of those three become a couple, Skylar was
probably feeling really left out and that might have driven
a wedge in the friendship. Like they said, they just
didn't want to be friends with her, and obviously they're
mentally unwell if they want to kill her. Well, let's
(24:43):
also remember that Rachel came from a strict Catholic home.
So you know, you're in a small town in West
Virginia and here's this thing that you did that someone
knows about that they're threatening to spill. You know, she
probably felt the back against the wall um and was
scared about what the repercussions were off the was shared.
That's a really good point. This story would not be
(25:04):
tellable without social media. And that's what I think is
so interesting about it is that so much of this
happened online from start to finish. Twitter is the driving
narrative of this story. You know, I remember when I
was a teenager. You run a lot on your emotions.
You don't really have you react, your reactionary and I
don't think you play things through and think things out.
And I think these girls just kept spinning and spinning
(25:26):
and spinning, and they thought the only way out was
to murder one of their best friends, which is really sick.
I go back to Tim what you said earlier about
Rachel's online bio, that she said, don't make a permanent
decision for a temporary emotion, and sometimes I wish I
didn't fall in love, And it seems like she didn't
take your own advice, and she made a very permanent
decision on a temporary emotion. Sheila Eddie played guilty to
(25:52):
first degree murder and was sentenced to life as part
of a plea agreement. It made her eligible for parole
after fifteen years. Rachel Chauff played guilty to second degree murder.
She will be eligible for parole after ten years. Both
girls were seventeen at the time of the trials. Perhaps
(26:14):
one good thing did come out of Skylar's story. When
she first went missing, no Amber alert was issued because
she did not fit the criteria needed. Following her murder,
Schuyler's Law was voted into legislation to modify was Virginia's
Amber alert plan. The new law states that authorities must
issue immediate public announcements what any child is missing and
(26:37):
in danger, regardless of whether the child is believed to
have been kidnapped. Shameless plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love,
leave us a review and listen to season three of
our hit series The Piked and Massacre. New episodes there
every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget
(26:58):
to follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy
in Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graeves,
Beth Greenwald, Tim Hamilton, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tua. Crazy in Love is a
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more
(27:20):
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stay safe, lovers,
M Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
(00:20):
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
Today's guests are true crime producers Jeff Shane, Beth Greenwalt,
and Tim Hamilton's episode forty The Case of the Twitter Feed,
The Small Town and the Really Mean Girls. Skyler Niece
(00:44):
was born and raised in Star City, West Virginia, a
small town of only about eighteen hundred people with just
one stop sign. However, despite being in an insular community,
Skylar had big plans. At sixteens, Gylo was smart, a
straight A student. She loved reading in math. With her
(01:05):
big smile and infectious laugh, she dreamt of being a
criminal defense lawyer. After school, she worked at a local Wendy's,
saving money for college. If just one word came to
mind when thinking about their daughter, Skyler's parents said she
was genuine. At University High School, Skylar was well liked.
She was known as bubbly and always seemed to put
(01:26):
friends first. It's no surprise she found herself in a
very tight click with two other girls named Sheila Eddie
and Rachel Chouff. The group referred to themselves as the
quote three Musketeers, and classmates said they were literally together
every second of every day. It was the type of
friendship we all aspire to have, secrets, inside jokes and
(01:49):
amazing memories. The girls felt more like sisters than friends,
talking at all hours at the night and walking into
each other's houses without knocking. Here's Beth. Sheila, Rachel, and
Skylar were best friends, but they all had different upbringings.
Skylar had two loving parents, Sheila was like a bit
(02:10):
more of like a latch key kid, didn't have a
lot of rules in her household, and Rachel came from
a strict Catholic home but had divorced parents. And regardless
of these differences, they became impossibly close in a way
that like, you know, teenage girls can you know. And
despite psychologists saying that friendship triangles are impossible to maintain
and will inevitably leave someone out, these girls really had
(02:32):
a strong bomb and made this friendship work. Other people
in this school always described The threesome as very popular,
always together, sat at lunch. They were a tight group
of friends, and they're young. And Rachel, who had striking
red hair, was always the center of attention. When she'd
walk into a room. You would not miss her because
she was the red head, and she was tall and beautiful.
(02:53):
Skylar had a very innocent look about her. She was
came from a family who loved her, very innocent and
impressionable di Ide. And then we had Sheila, who dyed
her hair blonde, so you had really three very distinct
looks between the three of them. The trio gained a
kind of a rowdy reputation around school in town, with
(03:14):
Sheila leading the pack. And they got that reputation because
they were known to sneak out after curfew, go to parties,
hang out, and sometimes experiment with marijuana. But you know,
they were pretty much good girls. They were just doing
the teenage thing. Rachel describes herself online and this is
why I say it's a typical high school girl. Is
just she describes herself online as I want to go
(03:36):
to Hogwarts, Chinese food is my favorite, and a day
with me and Sheila is never a dull day. Don't
make a permanent decision for a temporary emotion. Sometimes I
wish I didn't fall in love sheet type you know,
you can see, Jeff. These are kind of just run
of the mill, typical teenage girls going through high school, right, yeah,
totally tim And all of this was shared perhaps too
(03:58):
much on social media you which is actually pretty normal.
Nine out of ten teens report using it. The girls
were really active on Twitter and Facebook. But as we
know all too well right now, social media is very
harmful with teens. It can affect their mental health, especially
with teams struggling with body image, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
But despite all that, by all accounts, Skyler Niece was
(04:19):
a pretty happy average team. She would tweet things like
this is seriously the best night ever and words cannot
describe how excited I am for this summer. So really,
what strikes me from all this is just how normal
it sounds. You know. These are girls who are very close,
They are going to parties, they have a lot of friends,
They're putting pictures online. It just seems like you could
find this click at any high school in any city
(04:41):
in America. I have two younger sisters. It felt like
them and their friends. It's cute. See it's sleepovers. It's
trying to sneak out and not have mom and dad
find out. It's trying to let's go swimming in the
middle of the night. It's harmless fun, and it just
seems very very typical of a teenage girl or a
teenage girl with two best friends. It seems like they
were really close having fun, and you know, at that
(05:03):
age you're kind of testing out boundaries, and it's good
to know that you have a bunch of loyal friends
who have your back is you're kind of going through life.
You hear a lot about teenagers cyber bowling, and what
I've seen in these girls social media is actually kind
of the opposite. They're constantly loving each other and saying
nice things about each other and seeing each other's praises.
So it really feels like a supportive friendship, which it
(05:25):
is a refreshing thing. However, Skylar Summer would come to
a tragic end. On the morning of July six, the
brunette teen disappeared. Was she a runaway, did she have
an older boyfriend who harmed her? Was she sex trafficked?
Nobody knew one day after disappearing, Sheila Eddie called Skylar's mother.
(05:50):
She was guilt stricken and admitted that the night Skylar disappeared,
she and Rachel had picked her up and drove around
like they had so many nights before. On the morning
and question, Rachel told Mrs Nice that around midnight, Skylar
asked her friends to drop her at the end of
the road so that the car lights wouldn't wake her parents.
The girls obliged and it was last time they ever
(06:12):
saw their friend alive. Police got a lead when they
obtained security footage from Skylar's family's apartment complex. At twelve
thirty am, they saw an unknown car pull up and
Skyler run into it. It was impossible to figure out
the maker model, but one thing was clear. Skyler got
into the car on her own accord. Here's Jeff. The
(06:38):
first thing police did was look at the teenagers social
media account, because, like we said, she was very active
on it, and they looked for some clues and it
seemed like the fourth of July weekend had Skylar feeling
down about something. She was tweeting things like life would
be so much easier if jealousy didn't exist. The day
of the disappearance, she tweeted, you doing ship like this
(06:59):
is I will never trust you, and perhaps prophetically, she tweeted,
stress will be the depth of me. Police couldn't figure
out what she was talking about. According to her friends
Rachel and Sheila, nothing would have the girls stressed out
and things were going well between them. She also didn't
have a boyfriend that anyone knew about. Tim. Is there
anything we know about this mystery car, who was driving it,
where it came from, where it was going. We don't
know much about this mystery car except it pulled in
(07:22):
around twelve thirty in the morning, about half an hour
after Skyler's friends dropped her off, about a block from
her house. Her mom's theory was that Rachel and Sheila
dropped her off at midnight, then thirty minutes later she
snacked back out to the mystery car. We didn't know
who was driving it. You couldn't make out through the
video the license plate. You couldn't see how many people
were in the car, but you could see the car
pull into their their parking lot, and you could see
(07:44):
Skyler get in and the car drive away. Because Skyler
got into the car on her own, it didn't qualify
for an Amber alert, but she could have potentially helped.
But she wasn't taken, she wasn't forced into the car.
She got in on her own, which then again doesn't
qualify for an Amber alert yet. Tim the amber alert
thing is really kind of distressing because even if Skyler
(08:07):
did run off on her own, one and three runaways
become victims of sex trafficking. So the police should have
taken her running away just as seriously as a kidnapping,
especially when she didn't turn up right away exactly, and
to her past and her her character and her friends
and her mom and dad, this was unusual. They knew
the character of their daughter, and she wasn't going to
(08:28):
be a runaway, and there was nothing to point to
that direction. So really, just her age and the time
of day and not being home and her family not
knowing where she went should have qualified. You know. I Mean,
here's the thing, I'm not sure she was a runaway.
I mean, if she was a runaway, you know, she
was taken her stuff and she didn't bring her contacts
or take her glasses, So to me, it didn't seem
(08:50):
like she was a runaway. No, this is a girl
who works really hard in school, she has an after
school job. She cares about her friends, she cares about
her family. It seems very out of character that she
would make herself disappear for any extended period of time,
and not at least at the very least you think
she would tell her closest friends where she was going.
If she had this mystery boyfriend, they would know it,
and if they want to help the investigation, they would
(09:11):
probably tell the police everything they knew. You have to
wonder what was she doing out at twelve durt in
the morning after her friends just brought her home. It's
certainly weird because if her two closest friends are not
with her, like, who is she with? That's what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
and in such a small town too, there's only so
many suspects, you would think. But we know she's very
(09:32):
active online. Perhaps she did meet someone on the internet
that has learned her out and taken her somewhere about
It's also just such unexpected behavior. But did she have
a secret boyfriend? Was there a party? It's also a
holiday weekend, it's like big party weekend, it's the fourth
of July. Maybe there's something going on, But again. If
she doesn't turn up the next day, that is an
(09:54):
immediate cause for concern. We're going to take a break.
We'll be back in just a moment. Both of Skyler's
(10:15):
parents were very concerned when they discovered she wasn't in
her bed, and so they started calling her friends and
looking onto her social media feeds, and everything seemed normal.
Her friends didn't know where she was. There was nothing
out of sorts on the social media feeds, and everything
seemed to just be like, maybe she snuck out with
some other friends since she was popular in her school,
and maybe I went to like a lake somewhere since
(10:36):
it was the fourth of July weekend. It was just
having fun with other kids. But that changed because the
very next morning, one of Skyler's friends called Skyler's mom
back and said, I have to tell you I lied
to you last night and Skyler snuck out with us
after you went to bed, And so that kind of
started the ball moving in a different direction of where
to look for her, you know, the family learning more information.
(10:59):
They learned that there was is uh step stool kind
of right outside of her her bedroom window, and her
father saw that and didn't think twice about it the
morning of, but then the next day is like, Okay,
now he understands. That's what she used to jump out
of the window and step onto the street, So that's
what her parents were doing. In the immediate Despite there
(11:20):
being no leads, Skylar's friends continued to rally. Sheila was
supportive and helpful to the niece family. At one point
she came over to their home and cried with Skylar's
mom on Skylar's bed. Skylar's besties were also helping the investigation.
They were organizing searches and posting constantly on social media
pleading for answers. Still, there was no sign of Skylar.
(11:46):
At a candlelight vigil, Rachel and Sheila were seen sobbing.
Mrs Knee found comfort in the fact that Skyler had
such great friends. Rumors swirled in the small town, and
police got hips that Skylar had been seen in such
far flung places as California and New York. All were
(12:07):
dead ends. Months went by with no answers. Rachel and
Sheila tried to get back to normal, but their classmates
were beginning to turn on the girls. Students began posting
that Rachel and Sheila must have known something. They were
the last ones to see Skyler after all. Seeing this,
the FBI began interviewing classmates about Rachel and Sheila's potential involvement.
(12:31):
At the time, Mr and Mrs Niece defended Skyler's friends vehemently.
They thought they would never have heard their daughter, but
Rachel and Sheila continued to become the focus of the investigation.
Police found surveillance footage of them at a gas station
the night of Skyler's disappearance, miles away from where they
claimed they were. Rachel's cell phone also pained off a tower,
(12:54):
again not in the area where they claimed they had been.
It was now clear that Rachel and Deilo we're not
being completely honest. At this point, the Nieces turned on
Rachel and Sheila. Mrs Niece posted on Facebook quote, Throughout
all this nightmare, the girls have withheld information. I love
(13:14):
these girls unconditionally and would never have dreamed they could
be capable of such things as this. This is truly
the ultimate betrayal. Here's best. What a surprising twist. I
thought they were Skyler's best friends, but to know that
they've been withholding information is devastating. Yeah, I imagine the
Nieces were probably heartbroken. I mean they had looked at
(13:36):
these girls as a source of comfort. You know, Sheila's
crying with Mrs Niece about this whole thing, and to
find out they lied, even about something small like they
were at a different part of town than they said
they were, definitely doesn't feel good. Mrs Niece also must
have been incredibly frustrated too, because to post about it
on social media, on this public forum, kind of proclaiming
that she's no longer aligned with these girls is really
(13:59):
like a big proclaim. Should I wonder if they did
that to get more pressure, you know, put pressure on
the girls that if they were turning on them, and
classmates were turning on them, that perhaps they would either
let something slip out if they knew, or would come
forward with other information that could perhaps help them find Skyler.
I mean, thinking as Skylar's mom and dad, it's almost
(14:19):
like you're sleeping with the enemy. I mean, these are
girls who four years have come over your house, have
slept in your house, have eaten your dinners, You've cooked
for them, you've provided for them. You want to make
sure they're taken care of when they're in your home.
So it's a shock, and I don't think that there's
any way to fully comprehend why they would not why
they withhold that information, but just the fact that they
(14:41):
did is the ultimate betrayal, and the story just takes
a weird dive from here. Well, what Tim, do you
know anything about Rachel and Sheila were saying how they
responded to this Facebook post. They seem to have like
a facade where they just ignored it at first, and
then they started taking social media and tweeting things like
Sheila wrote, I'm tired of losing sleep over this and
(15:02):
we really did go on three. It was cryptic, it
didn't make sense, it would you know, It just was weird.
And then Rachel would tweet things like you don't want
to mess with me and Sheil and it was almost
kind of like a defense, like back down, stop saying
these things about us, but you don't want to mess
with us. But we didn't understand that we really did
go on three. Didn't didn't make sense, but that's how
they were responding, just taking the social media, and the
(15:23):
kids in school were already saying that Sheila and Rachel
had to have known something, adding that extra layer of pressure,
and then you have a grieving mother posting publicly about
something specifically they withheld. I think, Beth, you're right. The
pressure is mounting. The pressure is mounting us. Sooner or
later there go somebody's gonna crack if they do know something. Yeah, Tim,
(15:45):
And you know what, it wasn't just the tension in
the in the school, you know, despite there being no arrest,
the entire town of Star City suspected the girls. And
I imagine they were probably petrified by the mob mentality.
But you know, gone in the days of pitch forks
and fires, and the new way to destroy someone is
really on social media. Yeah, Beth, and destroyed they did.
(16:06):
Sheila and Rachel's classmates began posting things directed at the girls,
like I hope you're taken away by Christmas. Then you
will know what it's like to be away from your
family and be ashamed. Your parents must be considering some
of the tweets that would come. Those were pretty veiled.
Tweets actually started to get even more direct. This is
one that a classmate wrote, you can't sleep because you're
the psycho that has been covering up a murder for
(16:26):
the last eight months. Rachel finally cracked and ended up
having a mental breakdown. I mean, it really seemed like
all eyes were turned and fingers were pointing in the
right direction. I mean, Rachel finally cracked. It seems like
she was hiding something. Let's stop here for another break.
(16:59):
The police, obviously we're investigating it, but it really is
a story of small town justice where people sniffed it
out and before the police knew anything. It seems like
classmates and talentspeople really suspect what had happened. Rachel and
Sheila said that yes, they did go out the night before.
It's still confusing for me because it just seems like friends.
It just seems like friends. How would two best friends
(17:22):
hurt their other best friends to the point where she
could be murdered. But a lot of the cases that
we've worked on, in the cases that we even look at, generally,
it's the last person to see the person. It's the
last people who are around the person who were somehow
involved in the death or at least know something more.
That's true. But it's like high school girls hanging out
Like I would never think I'm going to get in
the car with my friends go drinking on the dock
(17:45):
and I might never come back. Yeah, I mean, I
think from an outsider's perspective, it seems like things were
all hunky dorry with the friends, but clearly locals and
classmates started to see something that maybe we haven't. It's
also so interesting to me this case plays out so
much online because you know, every story, people talk and
there's rumors and people are whispering, but all these kids
(18:06):
are putting it on the internet that like, these tweets
about Rachel and Sheila are online forever, like we can
still find them. That's how we found them in our research,
and so kind of the annals of history of this story,
like it's really it's going to live forever online, which
is a lesson I think for people using social media
that it's like, once you put it on the internet,
it will be there forever. Yeah. I mean, I also
(18:27):
think it was strange that Rachel took such a defiant
tone with that first you don't want to mess with
me and Sheila. I mean that sounds like a veiled
threat and certainly something you don't want to do when
you're possibly under suspicion for disappearance. I mean, she was,
you know, an outspoken theater kids so I think she's
probably used to speaking her mind and feeling like she's
a little bit top girl at the school, and so
(18:48):
this kind of threat to her standing was probably pretty unnerving,
but it's extremely inappropriate, especially when her best friend is missing,
to be talking that way, agreed. Rachel was admitted into
a psychiatric hospital at the end of days. After being
admitted on January, Rachel admitted to police that, with Sheila's help,
(19:14):
they had killed their best friend. Furthermore, she said that
her and Sheila had planned the murder for months. Rachel
detailed how the night in questioned, she and Sheila had
packed Sheila's car with bleach shovels and kitchen knives. The
girls then picked up Skyler, drove her to an isolated spot,
(19:36):
and at the count of three, took turn stabbing her
to death, literally in the back. Rachel told police that
in her final moments, Skyler kept screaming why. Afterwards, the
girl buried Skylar in a shallow grave. When the police
asked Rachel why they had chosen July six for the murder,
she told them that she wanted to get it done
(19:58):
before leaving for church camp. In Rachel's confession, she revealed
Sheila not only helped in the murder, but was the mastermind,
and that they killed Skylar simply because they didn't want
to be friends with her anymore. The story was confirmed
when Rachel took police to the crime scene and they
found what they believed were Skyler's remains. Police would need
(20:22):
to test the remains before anything was confirmed. At this time,
police found a very disturbing video six months prior to
her murder. Skylar films Sheila asking her and Rachel how
they would want to die. Was this an ominous coincidence?
Here's the audio. Would you guys, rather suffocate or get shot?
(20:45):
Get shot? Shot? As the way it depends on where
would you rather? In the head shot? There would be
no suffering at all. It's pretty crazy that they were
talking about this six months before the murder. It really
doesn't make you think that they might have been kind
of setting some things in motion that early. It's weird
(21:08):
they were talking about this so many months ahead of
time and recorded it so it lived in infamy on
their phones for anyone to access down the road. And
this is like, you don't just kill somebody when you
don't want to be friends with them. Well, their minds
were just in a dark place, is what It shows
that this is like most girls are talking about boys
or homework, and these girls are talking about murder. It's
(21:29):
certainly now that you know what, you know what they did.
It puts this in a completely new lens. Yeah, and
it's just what a morbid conversation to have from it.
Just random and morbid in my opinion. So after Rachel's
mental hospital confession, there's still no arrest. Police said this
is because she had lied to them before, so they
really wanted to corroborate her story before making the arrest.
They wanted the prosecution to have everything locked in completely.
(21:51):
They also wanted to use Rachel to get to the mastermind, Sheila.
They used Rachel to trap Sheila in a wire tapping plan.
They had Rachel invite Chill over in an attempt to
get her best friend to confess on a hidden camera.
When Sheila got there, she of course tweeted a photo
of the pair, but unfortunately Rachel couldn't get Sheila to confess, Yeah, Jeff.
Days later, the police got a warrant and they searched
(22:12):
Sheila's house and car, and in the car they found
trace amounts of blood. Um, of course they didn't know
whose blood it was. They were gonna have to test it.
At the same time, though police positively identified Skylar's remains
and were really traveled fast in that small town, still
keeping up appearance as though. Sheila tweeted, the pain is real,
(22:33):
Rest easy, Skylar, you will always be my best friend. Finally, Jeff,
the blood test came back and the blood found in
Sheila's car it was Skylar's, and the girls were all arrested. Tim,
do you have any idea like what the motive was? Oh? Yes,
So here's the thing. Despite Rachel telling police the girls
killed their best friend just because they grew tired of
(22:54):
her friendship, it seems that there may have been some
other reasons that weren't so obvious. The contents of Skyler's
personal diary suggests that she may have known a very
salacious secret about her two friends and was threatening to
reveal it. She wrote in graphic detail about walking in
on Rachel and Sheila having sex during a sleepover in
(23:16):
her own She then alluded on social media that she
knew something was going on, tweeting quote just know I
know end quote, and then a little bit later, she wrote, quote,
I'd tell the whole school all the ship I have
going on, which is a lot end quote. Wow. So
that's pretty shocking revelation that she found out the secret
(23:39):
about her friends and they didn't want it getting out,
and that's why they telled her. Just maybe they were
paranoid alluding to this salacious secret and knowing you know,
what it was. And also, you know, when you're at
that age, you kind of just lead with what you feel,
and the girls were obviously like distraught or embarrassed about
it maybe and didn't want it to get out. Yeah,
(24:00):
and this is a small town West Virginia, and so
they probably weren't feeling super accepted by their community potentially,
so if Skyler knew this secret about them, they would
do anything to protect in it. And at that age,
they weren't even potentially knowing how they were feeling about
their sexuality. And so this idea that the whole school
would then be talking about it was probably too much
from the handle you're the three Amigos, Beth, you make
(24:23):
a good point. I think there could have been a
lot of paranoia on the part of Sheila and Rachel. Well,
like you said, to him, they're the three amigos, and
when two of those three become a couple, Skylar was
probably feeling really left out and that might have driven
a wedge in the friendship. Like they said, they just
didn't want to be friends with her, and obviously they're
mentally unwell if they want to kill her. Well, let's
(24:43):
also remember that Rachel came from a strict Catholic home.
So you know, you're in a small town in West
Virginia and here's this thing that you did that someone
knows about that they're threatening to spill. You know, she
probably felt the back against the wall um and was
scared about what the repercussions were off the was shared.
That's a really good point. This story would not be
(25:04):
tellable without social media. And that's what I think is
so interesting about it is that so much of this
happened online from start to finish. Twitter is the driving
narrative of this story. You know, I remember when I
was a teenager. You run a lot on your emotions.
You don't really have you react, your reactionary and I
don't think you play things through and think things out.
And I think these girls just kept spinning and spinning
(25:26):
and spinning, and they thought the only way out was
to murder one of their best friends, which is really sick.
I go back to Tim what you said earlier about
Rachel's online bio, that she said, don't make a permanent
decision for a temporary emotion, and sometimes I wish I
didn't fall in love, And it seems like she didn't
take your own advice, and she made a very permanent
decision on a temporary emotion. Sheila Eddie played guilty to
(25:52):
first degree murder and was sentenced to life as part
of a plea agreement. It made her eligible for parole
after fifteen years. Rachel Chauff played guilty to second degree murder.
She will be eligible for parole after ten years. Both
girls were seventeen at the time of the trials. Perhaps
(26:14):
one good thing did come out of Skylar's story. When
she first went missing, no Amber alert was issued because
she did not fit the criteria needed. Following her murder,
Schuyler's Law was voted into legislation to modify was Virginia's
Amber alert plan. The new law states that authorities must
issue immediate public announcements what any child is missing and
(26:37):
in danger, regardless of whether the child is believed to
have been kidnapped. Shameless plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love,
leave us a review and listen to season three of
our hit series The Piked and Massacre. New episodes there
every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget
(26:58):
to follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy
in Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graeves,
Beth Greenwald, Tim Hamilton, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
sound designed by Jeff Tua. Crazy in Love is a
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more
(27:20):
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stay safe, lovers,
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