Today's story is the remastered audio from These Teens Have a Terrifying Secret, which is a very popular video on my YouTube channel.
This story has a very graphic and distressing plot twist at the end.
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From the director of It comes It.
Welcome to Derry, the chilling new HBO original series exploring one of horror's biggest terrors, Pennywise the Clown.
Set in 1960s Derry, Maine, the new HBO original series is streaming Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO Max.
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Okay, let's get into today's story.
Morgantown, West Virginia, is this beautiful place nestled at the bottom of this huge mountain range called the Green Mountains.
It is a big time college town, as the famous West Virginia University is located there, And so during the school year the town is full of young people.
And during the football season, the town is absolutely buzzing with excitement.
But the college is not the only reason people live in Morgantown.
Lots of families choose to live there because there's so much to do year round.
Also, it's relatively safe.
And in general, it's an up and coming place, with new shops and restaurants and museums popping up every single year.
But despite all of that, Morgantown is also known for something absolutely terrible, and that is the story of Skylar Neese.
In 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neese was a sophomore in high school in Morgantown, West Virginia.
She was a straight-a student and she worked part-time at a wendy's, which is a fast food restaurant chain, and by all accounts, she was extremely well liked by her peers, her co-workers and had many, many friends.
She was the only child of Mary and David's niece and they absolutely adored her.
David in particular.
Who was this big burly man's man?
He said that he spoiled his daughter rotten.
The parents would say their daughter was full of love and life, and she was fiercely loyal.
And at times she could be absolutely hilarious.
One of Dave's fondest memories is when Skylar was a very young girl.
He was home taking care of her by himself.
And that morning, as he's looking after her, she asks him if he will participate in one of her trademark tea parties.
And so David, the ever dutiful father, walks over and says of course, I'll participate in your tea party.
And he sits down in this little tiny pink chair and his daughter, who's got her ballerina tutu on, she's across the table and she's all smiles and she sits down in her little pink chair and she hands him this little plastic teacup.
And so he takes the teacup and he sees there's water already inside of it.
And so he sips the tea inside of the cup and he says, oh, it's so good, honey.
You did such a good job brewing this tea.
And Skylar is just blushing.
She is so happy and so thrilled that he liked her tea.
Later that night, when Mary came home from work, she goes to her husband Dave, and says hey, how did it go?
How was it looking after Skylar today?
And Dave would tell her about all the things they did, including their big tea party.
And he would tell Mary that, you know, this time she actually put water inside of the teacup.
So it was actually like a real tea party.
And Mary stops him and goes, Dave, Skylar's not tall enough to reach the faucet.
How could she have put water inside of those cups?
And it turned out Skylar was using toilet water to fill the teacups.
Fast forward to 2012 and on the night of July 5th, 16-year-old Skylar Niece had just finished a night shift at the Wendy's restaurant and she just got home.
She walks through the front door of her family's apartment and as soon as she gets inside she tells her parents she's really tired, she wants to go to bed.
And so she hugged both of her parents.
She told them that she loved them, and then Mary and Dave watched their daughter walk down the first floor hallway, and then they watched her open her bedroom door, go inside and shut it behind her.
The following morning, Mary and Dave both had to work, so they were up early, and Skylar was not up.
She was still in her bedroom, her door was still shut, and so they assumed she was just going to sleep in.
And so Mary and Dave, they breakfast, they're chatting, they're kind of doing their morning routine.
And then, when it was time to go to work, they decided you know, let's not bother Skylar, she worked late last night, you know let her sleep in.
And so the parents they leave without seeing or talking to their daughter Later that afternoon.
Dave would come home early from work and he gets to the apartment.
He goes inside and it's quiet.
Now, Mary was still at work, but Skylar at this point really should not have been asleep.
It's like two or three o'clock in the afternoon.
And so he's thinking, you know, she's got to be up around here somewhere.
And so he yells out to his daughter, you know, hey, I'm home.
Where are you?
What are you up to?
But there was no response.
It was just silent.
And so he walked down the first floor hallway towards his daughter's bedroom, and he saw the door was still shut.
Now, she only kept that door shut when she was sleeping.
And so he's thinking, OK, I guess she must still be asleep.
This is really late in the afternoon.
So, you know, I'm going to knock on the door and see if she's OK.
And so he knocks. door and says, hey, Sky, you know, it's late in the afternoon.
You got to get up.
But there was no answer.
And when he listened to the door, there was no noise coming from the bedroom.
So he thought that was pretty weird.
And so he knocked a few more times.
He yelled out a few more times.
And when there was no response, no answer, no sound.
He opened the door up and when he looked inside, Skylar was not in there.
Now Dave was thinking to himself.
I don't think my daughter told me that she would be gone today, or at least not right now.
And he's trying to think, you know, did she say something?
Was she meeting someone today?
And he couldn't think of it.
And so he just pulled his phone out and he called his daughter.
But she didn't pick up.
So he called his wife mary, and mary's at work.
And mary picks up and dave asks her you know hey, have you seen skylar, or do you know where she is right now?
And she would say no, i don't know where she is.
Maybe she's out with one of her friends.
And so after dave hung up the phone with his wife, he wound up calling one of schuyler's very closest friends.
Her name was sheila and she had known schuyler since they were in second grade.
They were practically inseparable and he had a good relationship with sheila.
And so he just calls Sheila and he says hey, you know, I haven't seen Skylar.
She's gone right now.
Do you know where she is?
And Sheila would say, no, I'm sorry, I don't.
But I did talk to her last night.
But, you know, there was nothing unusual about our interaction.
It was just normal texting about you know, normal stuff.
And so dave said okay, thank you.
Well, you know, if you could, can you please try to get in touch with schuyler and if you do get in touch with her, please tell her to get in touch with us.
Or if you hear anything about her, please just let me know.
After Dave hung up the phone with Sheila, he kind of stopped and just looked around his daughter's bedroom and thought you know, maybe there's some clue in here about where she's gone.
And at first glance, really nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
But when he walked around her bed and was looking inside of her closet.
He saw the mesh screen that should have been mounted on the outside of her window was in her closet and he's thinking you know why is that in there?
There's no reason for it to be in the closet.
And so instinctively, he just turns around and walks over to the window that this screen is supposed to be on.
And when he looks down at the bottom of the window he sees it's open barely just enough where you could maybe get your fingernails underneath the window and pry it open.
And so Dave reaches down and opens this window all the way.
And because there was no screen on this window, he just stuck his head all the way out the window.
So his head is outside of the apartment.
He's just kind of looking around looking for some explanation of why this screen had been removed and put in her closet.
And he got his explanation when he looked straight down and saw on the grass outside, just several feet below this window because this is a first floor window there was a bench and the bench clearly had been moved there recently For Dave, even though he had never heard of his daughter sneaking out of the house before and really didn't think that was something she would do he's looking around thinking okay, you know, the evidence in her room and now outside of her room really indicates that that is exactly what she must have done the night before.
She must have snuck out.
But as he's processing this, he's also thinking OK well, if she snuck out of the house last night and then, you know, snuck back into her room, why didn't she replace the screen on the window?
And why didn't she close the window all the way and then, this morning, before she left to go wherever she went?
Why didn't she go outside and move the bench from under her window back to where it was supposed to go, to avoid suspicion?
Why didn't she do that?
And then it dawns on him that his daughter must have snuck out the night before but not come back yet.
She's still out wherever she went.
Dave was very concerned.
However, he's thinking maybe there's a better explanation, maybe i'm jumping to conclusions, maybe she didn't sneak out, and so he calls his wife to kind of just talk with her and figure out what they should do, and they decide.
You know what this is concerning, but let's just give her a couple of hours to turn back up again.
I'm sure she's fine.
And so they begin to wait.
And then at 4 pm that evening Wendy's the restaurant where Skylar worked called Dave and said hey, have you seen Skylar?
She was supposed to work today and she didn't show up.
She didn't call.
It's very unlike her.
You know, what's going on?
And this was the tipping point.
Dave and Mary knew something had to be wrong, and so Dave called the police.
Long County 911, do you have an emergency?
I have a 16-year-old daughter who apparently snuck out of her room last night.
She has not been home, hasn't went to work, can't get a hold of her from any of her friends.
I am scared to death.
After Dave got off the phone, he and his wife began kind of frantically figuring out what they should do.
You know, while the police are out looking, you know, should we go out and look too?
Or should we stay here in case she comes home and You know, maybe she's hurt.
Maybe we can help her if she gets here.
And so they're having this really difficult and stressful conversation when Mary's phone rings and it's Sheila.
And so Mary immediately answers it, hoping for some good news about her daughter.
But Sheila asks Mary right away, you know, hey, has Skylar come home yet?
And Mary says, no, she hasn't.
And in fact, we just got off the phone with the police because this doesn't make sense.
Something's wrong and we're getting the police involved.
And so when Sheila hears this, she kind of takes a deep breath.
And then, after a little bit of a hesitation, she says Mary, I've got to tell you the truth about last night.
She would go on to explain that the night before Skylar had snuck out of the house and so had she, along with their other very close friend named Rachel.
Rachel was someone that mary and dave also knew very, very well.
The three girls were kind of like best friends and totally inseparable, and so sheila said the three of them snuck out and in fact they did this a lot and they would drive around town and smoke marijuana together.
But this was not the big reveal.
Despite this being fairly shocking to Mary and Dave, this was not the big reveal.
The big reveal was that when they went out and snuck out of their houses and smoked weed together, they would make sure they never drove their car.
Whoever was driving, would never drive directly in front of any of their houses, because they were concerned that the noise from the car could wake up parents, and then they'd get caught.
And so the way they would do it is, after they snuck out of their house, they would walk a block or two away from their house and then they would call or text the other two and they'd get picked up and they'd go do their thing.
And then when they got dropped off, they would get dropped off a block or two away from their home and then walk the rest of the way.
And so Sheila told Mary that last night, like so many other nights, She dropped Skylar off about a block away from their apartment, and then Sheila and Rachel drove off, so they did not actually see Skylar enter her apartment.
So they don't know for sure if she actually made it home.
And so this was obviously horrifying for Mary and Dave to hear, because it totally opened the door for their daughter to have been abducted during this walk from the drop-off point back to her apartment.
And the street she was on was not well lit.
It's the middle of the night.
It's dark.
She's potentially high on marijuana.
And so it seemed like that was a very realistic thing that could have happened, as horrifying as it sounded.
And so, after Mary got off the phone with Sheila, she called the police and she updated them about what Sheila had told her.
And then Mary and Dave met up with Sheila and Sheila's mother and began searching the immediate area around their apartment in hopes that maybe, you know, she fell somewhere and she's trapped and she just needs to be picked up or helped in some way.
But after searching for several hours and knocking on dozens and dozens of doors, nobody saw anything.
Nobody knew anything.
There was no sign of Skylar.
And so as this group is totally down, they don't know what to do.
They feel totally helpless.
They know the police are out looking for Skylar, but they want to do something and they just they don't know what to do.
And that's when Mary remembers there is a security camera on the outside of their apartment building that is looking down at the road.
And so right away, the four of them literally run back to the apartment building.
They go inside, they find the security manager, they explain the situation.
And, sure enough, he pulls up the footage from the night before.
And the footage they see doesn't.
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Sheila had dropped Skylar off on that corner, kind of out of view of the camera at around midnight.
But at 1230, so 30 minutes after she's been dropped off.
You see this unknown kind of generic looking car pull up right in front of the apartment complex.
And then Skylar comes running across the lawn, goes right up to the car, opens the back door, hops in the back seat, shuts it and the car drives off.
Even though this did not solve the mystery of where their daughter was, because they had no idea what car this was, who was driving it or where they were going, Mary and Dave still felt relieved because from their perspective, it seemed like their daughter had willingly got into this vehicle, whoever it was.
Whatever they were doing, she had gotten in on purpose, which meant she probably was not being abducted, which was their big fear.
Over the next couple of days the police analyzed this footage and tried to get information about this car, but the footage was so grainy they couldn't do it.
However, the police were telling Dave and Mary, you know, hey guys, You know, I'm sure Skylar is going to show up any day now.
You know, as much as you may not want to believe it, that your daughter is capable of running away.
It is fairly common for teens to do that.
They'll run away and then, you know, a couple of days later, they'll pop back up.
And so I'm sure that's what's going on with Skylar.
You know, she chose to get in that car.
And so I'm sure she will choose to get back in touch when she feels comfortable.
So a couple of days go by and the parents haven't heard anything from their daughter.
And then a couple of weeks go by, still nothing.
And then a couple of months go by, still nothing.
And this is all despite the fact that there is a massive search happening led by the police, and locals in Morgantown have put flyers up everywhere that have pictures of Schuyler Niece's face, everywhere in town and in neighboring towns.
It was like you could not go five feet without being reminded that this girl is missing.
Have you seen her?
If you have, give us information.
Despite the amount of publicity this case was getting.
No one came forward with any meaningful information.
It was like Skylar had just vanished and no one had a clue what happened to her.
Her parents were obviously devastated that they had no idea what happened to her.
But they were kind of holding on to this idea that, you know, maybe she did run away and maybe she will eventually be in touch with us.
But by December of that year, so six months after Skylar had gone missing, no one had heard from her.
No one had seen her.
No one had any idea where she was.
There was no new leads.
And so people were starting to feel less and less optimistic and the case was starting to kind of go cold.
And then on December 12th, something totally unexpected happened that changed everything.
On that night, Rachel the other friend who had been there with Sheila and with Skylar on the night that Skylar had vanished she has a full-blown nervous breakdown.
In fact it's so bad that she's screaming and running around and she's punching her family members and her mom actually calls the police on her.
I have an issue with a 16 year old daughter of mine.
I can't control her anymore.
She's screaming.
She's running through the neighborhood.
Give me the phone.
Hurry up.
Hurry up, please.
After this call was made, the police show up to Rachel's house and they take her away to a psychiatric hospital.
And then several days later, when she was released from that hospital, she went straight to the Morgantown Police Department.
She walked inside and said, I got to get something off my chest about Skylar.
Apparently, whatever it was that she had been keeping secret had just been too difficult to keep inside.
It was quite literally driving her crazy.
And so the police said, okay, great.
And they brought her into an interview room.
They sat down and they said, okay, what do you got for us?
The following has been pulled from what Rachel told police.
Back on July 5th, 2012, Skylar came home from that night shift at Wendy's.
She goes inside her family's apartment.
She says goodnight to her mom and dad.
She goes into her bedroom and she shuts the door.
And she's laying on her bed.
She's on her phone.
She's not going to bed quite yet.
And as she's laying there, she starts getting text messages from Rachel and also from Sheila, asking her if she wants to sneak out that night.
Now, Skylar didn't want to, and she said as much because she was actually hurting.
She was mad at her two friends.
According to some of her other friends that went to school with her and Rachel and Sheila, the three of them were totally inseparable, but lately, kind of the few months leading up to when she ultimately disappeared, there had been tension in their group.
It seemed like Sheila and Rachel were getting very, very close and kind of pushing Skylar away and Skylar was starting to pick up on it.
It was little things like Sheila and Rachel would show up to school in matching outfits, but they wouldn't tell Skylar beforehand, kind of leaving her out, or whenever they posted selfies of the three of them.
Skyler was always relegated to the back or kind of in some other way obscured, to make sure she was not the focal point of the picture.
It was just very obvious that they were deprioritizing Skyler and it was really hurting Skyler's feelings.
And so it seemed like her way of standing up to them and kind of telling them that she was upset was to turn down their offer of sneaking out and smoking weed with them.
But over the next couple of hours Skylar would eventually say OK fine, you know, I'll come with you guys.
I'll sneak out and we'll go smoke together just before 1230 a.m. on July 6th.
Skylar gets off of her bed.
She walks over to her window.
She lifts it up and she pulls the screen off and she walks over to her closet.
She puts the screen in her closet and shuts the door to the closet.
And then she walks back over to the window and crawls out and lowers herself down onto the grass below.
And then she walks over and grabs the bench and slides it over and puts it right underneath her window.
And then she stands on the bench and reaches up and pulls the window down.
So there's just a little crack left so she can get back inside.
And then she just waited by the side of the apartment, looking out towards the road.
And right after 1230...
This car, the unknown car on the surveillance camera, pulls right in front of the apartment building and Skyler runs over to it, opens up the back right door and climbs inside.
This unknown car was Sheila's car.
Sheila was driving and Rachel was in the front passenger seat.
It would turn out, Rachel and Sheila lied about basically everything, including what time they picked up Skylar.
So the three girls they drive away from Skylar's apartment and Sheila hops on a highway and starts driving northwest.
Now, the girls did not immediately start smoking inside of the car.
They decided instead they would actually drive to a location, get out, and smoke there.
And the place they decided on was a spot they had smoked at before.
It was a known hangout spot for teenagers.
It was located about 4 miles away.
45 minutes away, just barely across the border into Pennsylvania.
It was down this kind of old country road that nobody ever went on.
And so Sheila drives the car 45 minutes.
She crosses into Pennsylvania.
She finds the turn onto this old road.
They drive down it a little ways until they're pretty far away from the highway, at which point Sheila pulls off the road onto the grass parks, the car, The three girls get out and they walk past the car a little ways down the path to a clearing on the right.
There was a hill that went up on the right, and they would kind of sit on this hill looking downhill, and that would be where they would smoke.
And so the three girls, they sit down.
They're all next to each other, facing downhill.
They're not facing each other.
And Sheila, who is sitting all the way to the right, with the car being over to the left.
She pulls out the marijuana joint.
And she's about to light it, but she realizes she does not have a lighter.
And so she asks Rachel and Skylar if they have a lighter.
And they both pat themselves down.
They're checking themselves.
They don't have a lighter.
And then Sheila says to Skylar, who's all the way to the left of the way they're sitting.
So Skylar is closest to the car.
She asked Skylar, hey, can you go in the car and get the lighter that I know is in there?
And Skylar said, no problem.
So Skylar, she stands up and she turns.
Her back is to her two friends.
And as soon as she starts walking, what she would have heard is the sound of her two friends standing up as well and then loudly saying one two, three.
And on three, Skylar would have felt two knives being plunged into her back by Rachel and by Sheila.
In a panic, Skylar does not even turn around.
She just starts taking off running towards the car and she manages to run away from her attackers, but because of her grievous injuries in her back, she eventually slows down, at which point Sheila tackles her from behind.
She gets her on the ground, she pins her on her back and sheila is trying to stab skyler, but skyler is doing her best to keep the knife off of her.
But at some point rachel comes running up beside them and between rachel and sheila they managed to hold skyler's hands down, at which point sheila and rachel began taking turns stabbing her in the chest and in the neck The whole time.
Skylar is trying to defend herself, but it's impossible with these two on top of her.
And at some point she just kind of gives up and she says, why are you doing this to me?
Why are you doing this to me?
But they don't give her a reason.
They just keep on going.
And eventually, Rachel stops stabbing Skylar, but Sheila doesn't.
Sheila keeps on going until, quote, her neck stopped making gurgling sounds.
And then, once Skylar went, still Sheila stood up like it was nothing, and she and Rachel just walked away from her body back to the car.
They went around to the trunk of the car.
They opened it up and inside was shovels bleach, trash bags, rags.
They had brought along a kill kit. because they knew what they were gonna do this night.
And so they start by cleaning themselves off.
They get the blood off of them and off of their weapons, and then they take the shovels and they walk a little ways off of the road, kind of into the woods, and they try to dig a grave.
But it would turn out the ground was too hard.
And so they abandoned the grave idea and just grab Skylar's lifeless body and drag it just about six feet off of the road and kind of chuck it against a log.
And then they threw boulders and sticks and anything they could on top of her body.
They don't know if she's still alive at this point.
So they're potentially dealing the fatal blow with these rocks and logs.
They cover her up until she's totally obscured.
And then the two girls just walk back up.
They grab their shovels.
They grab their rags, their bleach.
They put it back in the trunk.
They hop in their car and they drive away.
It would turn out Rachel and Sheila had been planning this for months.
The reason?
They didn't like Skylar anymore and apparently it wasn't enough to just be mean to her and not include her in things.
They actually needed to kill her.
And so the entire night that they went out and snuck out, that was all planned.
They knew Skylar did not want to come out and sneak out with them because they knew she was upset with them.
And so they said whatever they had to say to convince her to leave her house and sneak out with them.
And so she did.
She snuck out.
And when she got in that car, Sheila and Rachel had their knives already in their front pocket of their sweatshirt, ready to go.
And on their ride to this spot in Pennsylvania, Sheila and Rachel acted like oh, let's just go to this spot and smoke, when in reality this was planned too.
They wanted to make sure they were far away from Morgantown when they killed Skylar.
And so when they got there and they walked down to their spot to actually begin smoking, Sheila and Rachel had intentionally not brought lighters and Sheila had left a lighter in the car specifically so she could ask Skylar to go get it.
Because the plan was, as soon as Skylar gets up, to get that lighter and her back is to us.
Sheila and Rachel had promised each other that they would count to three and then attack her.
Ultimately, Rachel would be sentenced to 30 years in prison, but she'll be eligible for parole in 2023, and Sheila would be sentenced to life in prison, but she would also be eligible for parole in 2028.
During their trials.
Rachel was very remorseful and even gave an apology to Skylar's parents during the sentencing phase.
Sheila, on the other hand, smirked during her trial for most of the time.
She was smiling and totally making light of it.
She said she didn't do it.
She was totally not remorseful, and she did not offer an apology to Skylar's parents.
She did, however, leave an unbelievably cruel message on Twitter.
In March of 2013, when the police came out and officially said we have identified the remains in the forest in Pennsylvania as belonging to Skylar Neese.
When that announcement was made, just a couple of days later, Sheila tweeted.
We really did go on three.
Sheila was arrested one month later.
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