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Speaker 1: are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
Speaker 1: and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
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Speaker 2: Hello, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Rasha Pacuerero and.
Speaker 3: I'm Evet Genteeley. And this week we are talking about
Speaker 3: the death of Skyler Nice, a teenager who was murdered
Speaker 3: by the closest people to her, her two best friends.
Speaker 2: Yes, her two teenage best friends. And it's absolutely heartbreaking
Speaker 2: and I'm sure everyone is wondering, how could this happen?
Speaker 3: Why did this happen? That is the question that we're
Speaker 3: always asking why. But today we are so happy to
Speaker 3: welcome back our friend em William Phelps, investigative journalists and
Speaker 3: host of the podcast Paper Ghost and Crossing the Line.
Speaker 2: Yes, we like to call him Matthew, even though most
Speaker 2: other people call him Phelps, and we're really looking forward
Speaker 2: to talking to him today. But first our producer Trevor
Speaker 2: is going to walk us through today's case. Ten years ago,
Speaker 2: Skyler Nice came to this spot and never returned. Now
Speaker 2: a decade later, her memory lives on and those who
Speaker 2: knew her best.
Speaker 1: We never want anyone to go through what we went through.
Speaker 1: It's the worst hell I've ever ever been through, no.
Speaker 4: Matter what she says now. But she was young and
Speaker 4: she didn't know better. I'm sorry. Five and ten year
Speaker 4: olds know not to commit murder.
Speaker 1: Skyler Nice was a sixteen year old girl from Star City,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, who was stabbed to death by her two
Speaker 1: closest friends and left to die in a remote area
Speaker 1: one state away. Skyler was described by most as a
Speaker 1: good girl with nice friends and two loving parents in
Speaker 1: a pleasant home in suburban West Virginia. She was just
Speaker 1: eight years old when she met her best friend, a
Speaker 1: girl named Sheila Eddie. Eddie had a troubled relationship with
Speaker 1: her own parents, but grew to be very close with
Speaker 1: Skyler's parents, who described her as a second daughter. Their
Speaker 1: freshman year, Sheila transferred to Skyler's high school, and they
Speaker 1: both started hanging out with a third girl, Rachel's Chouf.
Speaker 1: The trio were inseparable, but when Skyler and Rachel started
Speaker 1: getting close, Sheila got jealous. Skyler and Sheila began having
Speaker 1: public arguments on Twitter, and in a tweet in August
Speaker 1: of twenty eleven, Skyler alluded to having dirt on both friends.
Speaker 1: She may have been alluding to a recent night when
Speaker 1: she allegedly witnessed Sheila and Rachel making out. After raiding
Speaker 1: Rachel's mom's liquor case. Sheila and Rachel now both turned
Speaker 1: on their former friend and tried to smear her reputation
Speaker 1: at school. They told classmates she was annoying and clinging,
Speaker 1: but then they went a step further planning her murder.
Speaker 1: When some classmates overheard them talking in school, they were
Speaker 1: sent to the principal's office, but then sent back to class. Then,
Speaker 1: on July fifth, twenty twelve, Rachel and Sheila invited Skuyler
Speaker 1: out for a late night drive while her parents slept.
Speaker 1: Skyler snuck out and the three drove to a remote
Speaker 1: area just over the West Virginia border into Pennsylvania. There,
Speaker 1: Rachel and Sheila brandished knives and stabbed Skyler nice until
Speaker 1: she was no longer moving. They then dragged her body
Speaker 1: to a nearby creek and hid it under some sticks.
Speaker 1: Rocks and dirt. Skuyler's parents were alarmed about her disappearance,
Speaker 1: but Sheila told them they'd drop Skyler off a few
Speaker 1: blocks down the street. After the late night hangout, months passed,
Speaker 1: during which Sheila spent a great deal of time with
Speaker 1: the Nice family, crying over Skuyler's disappearance, and even hanging
Speaker 1: up missing persons posters around the neighborhood. At school, Sheila
Speaker 1: and Rachel grew reserved and only hung out with each other.
Speaker 1: When they were questioned by police, Rachel acted nervous, but Sheila,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, acted quote perky, one officer said, quote,
Speaker 1: She'd look you in the eye and speak matter of faculty. Finally,
Speaker 1: in January of twenty thirteen, Rachel's chauf had a mental breakdown.
Speaker 1: After going to a psychiatric ward, she confessed to the crime.
Speaker 1: She then led the police to Skuyler's body. Sheila Eddie
Speaker 1: was at Skuyler's parents when the discovery was made, and
Speaker 1: she cried along with Skuyler's family. When the police asked
Speaker 1: Rachel why they killed their friend, she simply replied, we
Speaker 1: just didn't like her. The two girls were arrested. Sheila
Speaker 1: was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life
Speaker 1: in prison. Rachel was sentenced to thirty fe years in prison.
Speaker 1: And so what happened to Skyler Nice? How did a
Speaker 1: friendship between teenage girls turn into a bloody murder? And
Speaker 1: how does this story reveal a troubling mental health crisis
Speaker 1: for teenagers which often leads to violence.
Speaker 3: A few months ago, we talked about the case of
Speaker 3: Michelle McNeil with the one and only m William Phelps,
Speaker 3: who is the true crime author and host of the
Speaker 3: podcast Paper Ghosts and Crossing the Line. We are back
Speaker 3: with we like to call him Matthew is in the house.
Speaker 3: We are so excited to have you back on facing
Speaker 3: evil and you know today we're talking about Skylar Nice,
Speaker 3: so we'll get into that in a little bit. But Matthew,
Speaker 3: tell us, you know what's been going on, what's coming
Speaker 3: up next for you. I know we were just talking about,
Speaker 3: you know, the world that we live in and all
Speaker 3: the crazy things that are happening. That really takes a
Speaker 3: toll on us. But you know, you're such a deep, sensitive,
Speaker 3: wise human being and I know you always push forward.
Speaker 3: So what's new with you? Tell us what's new?
Speaker 5: I'm working on season four of Paper Ghosts, my limited
Speaker 5: series podcast, and I'm just getting ready to head out
Speaker 5: to the Ozarks. There's a case out there of a
Speaker 5: young girl who went missing in the late eighties and
Speaker 5: she was found some time later, and I'm looking at
Speaker 5: a couple of other cases that are similar to it
Speaker 5: that could be connected to hers. And there's cause at
Speaker 5: the time, late eighties, early nineties, that area of the country,
Speaker 5: the Midwest, if you will, there was a rash of
Speaker 5: you know, young teen girls going missing and some of
Speaker 5: them found, some not found. So this case is really interesting.
Speaker 5: I have a suspect that I'm really focused on that
Speaker 5: hasn't been named, and no one knows. Yeah, we'll see
Speaker 5: where it leads. You know. It's always interesting when I
Speaker 5: go out there and spend a couple of weeks and
Speaker 5: start knocking on doors and talking to people. So I'm
Speaker 5: looking forward to that. I have a few other podcasts
Speaker 5: that I'm in the process of developing and producing and
Speaker 5: things like that that are similar. You know, one of
Speaker 5: them is very different, but mostly they're similar to what
Speaker 5: I do, which is investigative journalism.
Speaker 2: It's funny since we last interviewed you, Matthew, I have
Speaker 2: to tell you, like, you're one of our very first interviews,
Speaker 2: and we've interviewed you know, several people since, and it
Speaker 2: makes me think, especially like how you got into the
Speaker 2: true crime genre and how you're still like moving your
Speaker 2: way through it, like this has been a calling, I
Speaker 2: think for all of us, because we just want to
Speaker 2: see the light in the darkness in this world. And
Speaker 2: I know that's exactly what you do. And the more
Speaker 2: and more that we're in this I'm like, oh, we're
Speaker 2: supposed to be here, and I just feel like you
Speaker 2: do that every single day. And I just have to
Speaker 2: say it's very very beautiful and you're an amazing example
Speaker 2: of what one person can do.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much. I mean, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: I'm humbled by that. I was recently watching something and
Speaker 5: it's a metaphor really for what you just said. So
Speaker 5: when the sun goes down, it doesn't get dark, the
Speaker 5: sky doesn't get dark. What it is, according to physicists
Speaker 5: and scientists is the light from the stars we see
Speaker 5: hasn't reached us yet. That's why they look dim. It
Speaker 5: hasn't reached us yet, So it doesn't light up the earth.
Speaker 5: When the sun goes around us.
Speaker 2: I love that, you know.
Speaker 5: And then when the sun comes out, we can't see
Speaker 5: we can't see any of them. So that little tiny
Speaker 5: bit of light heading towards the earth to shine, I
Speaker 5: look for that little tiny bit of light, you know,
Speaker 5: and see where I can. I can just get in there.
Speaker 2: And that's why we love you.
Speaker 6: Amen to that.
Speaker 3: It's just so interesting how you you know, like Russia said,
Speaker 3: we have interviewed so many different people, but there's just
Speaker 3: certain people when you know you're of like mind and
Speaker 3: like spirit, and we've felt that way with you from
Speaker 3: the get because this is a you know, as we know,
Speaker 3: this is a hard industry, you know, to be in
Speaker 3: to talk about.
Speaker 2: This, it's heavy, too heavy, shiite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But like you know, like I said before, if
Speaker 3: we can just open you know, one person's mind right,
Speaker 3: or help someone heal and move upward and onward, or
Speaker 3: solve a case, you know, like you.
Speaker 6: You know, with bringing justice.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's these these things are so important, so
Speaker 3: important in this world.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: Bringing answers to families is really rewarding. That that really
Speaker 5: keeps me going when I get with a family and
Speaker 5: I say, look, I've spent a couple of years here
Speaker 5: on this and this is what happened. This is what
Speaker 5: you're never going to hear because law enforcement doesn't have
Speaker 5: the resources, they don't have the budget.
Speaker 2: So here you go, like, please do something with this.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, right now, I mean they can know that
Speaker 5: at least they have some information about what happened. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: there's a why. And actually I was talking to a
Speaker 5: prosecutor interviewing a prosecutor the other day and he was saying, look,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm happy to talk with you because you know,
Speaker 5: no one else is going to do anything with this,
Speaker 5: so you know, I'm very happy to give you what
Speaker 5: you need to find out what you can, you know,
Speaker 5: And that's that's pretty gratifying for me after a long
Speaker 5: career of doing this, you know that the trust Yeah yeah,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of bullshit podcasts true crime, you know,
Speaker 5: makeup and TikTok and all of this out there.
Speaker 2: So right, we're all of us are trying our best
Speaker 2: to do ethical true crime. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: To get back to the case that we're talking about today,
Speaker 2: like you mentioned, you know, finding out the why. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about the case of Skyler Niece. This is
Speaker 2: not unsolved. We do know who did this? But what
Speaker 2: were your first impressions about this case, about this young
Speaker 2: girl Skyler.
Speaker 5: I've written many books about teens and murder, teens who kill,
Speaker 5: that sort of thing, so I'm very familiar with the
Speaker 5: psychology and what's going on. Right. So, all of these cases,
Speaker 5: this one especially, they're devastating. Right. These are people who
Speaker 5: haven't lived a life yet.
Speaker 2: Right, their brain's not even fully developed.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: What struck me was a touching scene that I read
Speaker 5: about the dad and her and a tea party. That
Speaker 5: was very touching.
Speaker 4: King and the.
Speaker 5: Punchline is that you know he he he asks her,
Speaker 5: you can't reach the water faucet. Where you getting the
Speaker 5: water from that? You've been that I've been drinking And
Speaker 5: she said, oh, the toilet.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 5: That really shows you know, love, you know, the love
Speaker 5: between between them all. But the other thing that stands
Speaker 5: out to me but doesn't surprise me, is in all
Speaker 5: of these cases, you have a leader and a follower,
Speaker 5: and very very rarely that will a team kill by
Speaker 5: his or herself. Right. They always there's always someone else connected.
Speaker 5: There's always someone else involved. Many times there's more than
Speaker 5: one involved. Yeah, Right, this case also struck me as
Speaker 5: the I will say. I mean, I can't diagnose anybody.
Speaker 5: I'm not a psychologist, but one of these girls is
Speaker 5: bona fide so show path the other isn't. That's that's
Speaker 5: clear to me here, you know. And the behavior after
Speaker 5: the murder right.
Speaker 2: With their family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this case, right, it's so baffling when you think
Speaker 3: about it, because you think about teenage girls and you
Speaker 3: know they should just be having fun going to a prom,
Speaker 3: you know, living their lives, not this heavy, heavy duty
Speaker 3: jealousy and anger.
Speaker 6: But you see it so much.
Speaker 3: It's like I think about the cases that you know,
Speaker 3: we've worked on in the past with Conrad Roy, that
Speaker 3: particular case where it's Michelle Carter, you know, and even
Speaker 3: the Shonda Shaer case. You know, it's a leader and
Speaker 3: a follower and someone gets incredibly upset and then get
Speaker 3: someone else to join and does these horrible things. I mean,
Speaker 3: it turns into a paradox of violence.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: The mental issues that these children have gone through that
Speaker 3: have led to this moment that has a lot to
Speaker 3: do with it, don't you think.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you both a question, Yeah, how do
Speaker 5: you feel social media played in this case? Particularly huge?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: It's huge, and I have to say full, full, full disclosure.
Speaker 2: I have been on social media since my Space, and
Speaker 2: for me, you know, it's always been something that's very
Speaker 2: prominent in my life. But I joined as an adult.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm forty four years old, and I think
Speaker 2: I started. I was on my Space whenever it started,
Speaker 2: and I was already in my late twenties. I was
Speaker 2: not a teenager. I cannot even imagine what these girls
Speaker 2: were going through. And we know that, you know, Twitter
Speaker 2: at the time had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 2: And now Twitter now, for me, of course, in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, is not my favorite place. It makes me
Speaker 2: scared for my daughter, who's eleven. Yeah, yeah, right, So
Speaker 2: we must all think that social media has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with it, right.
Speaker 5: Particularly here I'm looking at Sheila Eddie yep, and how
Speaker 5: she says I feel great right now, Skyler answers, this
Speaker 5: is the best night ever, right, and you know she's
Speaker 5: about to be murdered.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: Let me just back up. They're talking during the day
Speaker 5: on social media. Other people are piping in, amping up
Speaker 5: the conversation, right, so there's all these influences coming in
Speaker 5: that are just invisible, right, invisible influences, right, yeah, kind
Speaker 5: of stoking the fire if you will, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 5: she says at one point, it really, this is Skyler.
Speaker 5: It really doesn't take much to piss me off.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: She talks about how stress will be the death of her,
Speaker 5: about being bored, and I looked at that and I thought,
Speaker 5: it's the classic confluence of peer pressure, right, the symptoms
Speaker 5: of peer pressure. An environment for someone so young, a
Speaker 5: mind so young, kind of in a social pressure cooker,
Speaker 5: keeping up with her friends, trying to fit in, trying
Speaker 5: to be popular, trying not to be bullied. And then
Speaker 5: on July fifth, twenty twelve, Shila and Rachel invite Skyler
Speaker 5: to go out. And what struck me here is this.
Speaker 5: They pack knives, paper towels, bleach things to clean up
Speaker 5: with and to shovel.
Speaker 2: They meditated.
Speaker 5: This is not an impulsive decision. Now, I remember I
Speaker 5: did the slender Man case and it involved same age kids,
Speaker 5: three kids, same age, three girls, and one was a follower,
Speaker 5: one was a leader. You know, they did the same thing.
Speaker 5: They packed a knife, they went out into the woods,
Speaker 5: same thing. I don't know that this sort of thing
Speaker 5: happened in my.
Speaker 6: Day mine either, Matthew.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think social media plays a big part
Speaker 3: in it, and I think television as well. You know,
Speaker 3: I think, how do they know to go and get
Speaker 3: bleach and do this and do that?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I just think that we're bombarded with with all of
Speaker 3: this evil, like twenty four to seven, that it's available
Speaker 3: to these young minds and unless the parents, you know,
Speaker 3: and obviously a parent can't monitor everything.
Speaker 2: Now, you can't keep the kids in a bubble.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to social media, like I don't
Speaker 3: have children, but I can tell you this now, Like
Speaker 3: my niece Lee Lani, it's like she's like, I want Instagram.
Speaker 3: I'm not a mother. I'm not a mother, but I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: definitely not no TikTok, no Instagram, not till you're one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great because with that stuff, the more you
Speaker 5: look at, the more you get. So it has to
Speaker 5: have an effect on the mind of someone so young.
Speaker 5: But the question, I think, if we're facing evil, the
Speaker 5: question becomes cannot push a kid over the edge right
Speaker 5: and to commit some sort of violent act. And the
Speaker 5: big question in this case is what you started with me?
Speaker 5: Is the why?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's just a couple of things also that stood
Speaker 5: out to me when I went through the case, and
Speaker 5: that was the murder itself. How you know, of course
Speaker 5: they tackled her, started stabbing her, they did all of
Speaker 5: that stuff, and she fought back, right, And then there's
Speaker 5: the comment, but Sheila kept stabbing her until she was
Speaker 5: no longer moving and her quote neck stopped making gurgling
Speaker 5: sounds end quote. So for a child to use those words,
Speaker 5: that detail is significant. It's significant in the fact that
Speaker 5: it tells me how active, aware and completely in touch
Speaker 5: with what is happening and what they are doing. In
Speaker 5: order to make that observation and then later talk about it,
Speaker 5: you are in the moment, you know what's going on.
Speaker 5: You're not in some blind rage, you're not blacking out,
Speaker 5: you know, you know exactly what you're doing and the
Speaker 5: consequences of what is happening.
Speaker 3: So that's when we go back to and this is
Speaker 3: the question, because there was no remorse, you know, after
Speaker 3: this happened, Sheila was you know, confronting and you know, consoling,
Speaker 3: I should say, the parents, and she knew what she did.
Speaker 2: As a sociopathic part right, so that.
Speaker 3: We could absolutely say Sheila is a sociopath without diagnosing.
Speaker 6: Of course.
Speaker 5: Well, let's consider the situation for a minute. So what
Speaker 5: you have is a true, unempathetic, cold person, And let's
Speaker 5: look at what she's actually doing. She's in the family's house, Yeah,
Speaker 5: consoling the family, handing out flyers, hanging up She's participating.
Speaker 5: If we think back, who else did that?
Speaker 2: Michelle carter Yep.
Speaker 5: So it shows callousness, it shows deception, it shows well
Speaker 5: thought out lies. Right, and it begins to borderline on
Speaker 5: psychopathy and the characteristics of the sociopath. We can't deny that,
Speaker 5: whether we're psychologists or not.
Speaker 2: It's there, yeah, right, yeah, right, it's.
Speaker 5: You know, you would look at it as sadistic, antisocial,
Speaker 5: all of that stuff, all that bad stuff that goes
Speaker 5: along with being a sociopath and being devious and manipulating
Speaker 5: all the way until the end.
Speaker 2: Right. And she was with the family when Skuyler's body
Speaker 2: was discovered.
Speaker 5: If I'm not mistaken, yeah, she's she counseled the family.
Speaker 5: Yeah said how said how sorry she was?
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But let's put our attention to and this happens in
Speaker 5: every one of these cases. So when you have a
Speaker 5: leader and a follower, the follower always cracks.
Speaker 2: Right, yeh, which is what happened.
Speaker 5: Followers the one with remorse, with guilt, with a conscience,
Speaker 5: and the follower always goes in and cuts that deal first, right, right,
Speaker 5: And that's exactly what you have here, I.
Speaker 3: Think Rachel, you know, yes, she did, you know kind
Speaker 3: of deal, but it like really started to weigh on
Speaker 3: her her psychological, her well being, Like she couldn't she
Speaker 3: couldn't hold that anymore, she couldn't function.
Speaker 6: Yeah. The other girl, you know, Sheila, it was like nothing.
Speaker 5: Because she didn't feel. Yeah, she has no capability, no
Speaker 5: feeling of love of what we talk about a lot,
Speaker 5: which is that empathy putting herself in the parent's position.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's very.
Speaker 5: Common in teens who kill that one of them is
Speaker 5: like that, it is, yeah, yeah, And you know, let's
Speaker 5: go back into their lives and we can see how
Speaker 5: that has an effect on it. Because Rachel talks about
Speaker 5: having a good upbringing, you know, parents who loved her.
Speaker 5: That's whereas Shila talks about not having that.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that factors into it, for sure.
Speaker 5: It's different wires and all these wires start to cross,
Speaker 5: and it's very rare that that happens, and it's sad
Speaker 5: all around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure, Like you said earlier, especially when
Speaker 3: it's it's young kids, you know, young minds that are
Speaker 3: doing these god awful things and hurting other young people
Speaker 3: that it's just so heartbreaking. It goes back to mental
Speaker 3: well being, you know, because there's something you know where
Speaker 3: she's not one hundred percent Well that's awful, right, Yeah, she.
Speaker 5: Had an eating disorder, she was she was depressed. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there was a lot of factors going on.
Speaker 6: There, a lot of things happening when.
Speaker 5: Her Bodi's found Skyler. Sheila even posts on Twitter, worst
Speaker 5: day of my whole life.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: With Shila, it's clear that there is no why. There
Speaker 5: is no why. What it is is she wanted to
Speaker 5: get back at this girl for something we probably will
Speaker 5: never know, no, yeah, and instead of just unfriending her, right,
Speaker 5: she decided violence and murder was the way to do that.
Speaker 5: That she had to pay a price for whatever she did.
Speaker 5: And you know there's people out in the world like that, unfortunately,
Speaker 5: that that's what they choose, you know, they choose violence
Speaker 5: over just walking away.
Speaker 3: But I think that's where social media comes in again,
Speaker 3: you know, and we can talk about this all day long.
Speaker 3: Because when you're putting your stuff out there on social media,
Speaker 3: as you know Skyler and Sila and Rachel were doing
Speaker 3: on Twitter and saying things, you're putting it out there
Speaker 3: for an audience. So now it's not just between the
Speaker 3: three of you of what's going on, but now it's
Speaker 3: like a boxing match, you know what I mean. Now
Speaker 3: you're putting it out there into the world, and people
Speaker 3: are festering on that and creating this evil.
Speaker 5: No, there's been studies about crowds and how crowds react.
Speaker 5: So crowds, you know, will react one person, then ten people,
Speaker 5: then twenty people started reacting a certain way, the whole
Speaker 5: crowd will start following them. Yeah, right, because oh my god,
Speaker 5: oh my god. Whatever. So in this case, you have
Speaker 5: it on social media. But again going back to Shila,
Speaker 5: Shila was using social media as a cover. Basically, she
Speaker 5: was putting out lies on social media to cover up
Speaker 5: what she did, and she was probably getting a high
Speaker 5: off that. I'm sure she was getting an adrenaline rush,
Speaker 5: because the one thing that sociopaths need more than a
Speaker 5: lot of things is stimulation. They need to be stimulated. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that's like here you have Sheila interacting with the
Speaker 5: girl's family, so she's that's stimulating to her. She'd walk
Speaker 5: away from that house guaranteed. Look what I got away
Speaker 5: with today telling herself, Wow, what it would a fix?
Speaker 5: You know, what a high see.
Speaker 2: And I'm still sitting here with the why. I'm still
Speaker 2: like why. I mean, they were friends from the time
Speaker 2: they were little kids. It's not like that, you know,
Speaker 2: Sheila and Skuyler had just met. Rachel obviously was new
Speaker 2: to the click. That's a really hard question to answer.
Speaker 2: It could just be, you know how people are jealous,
Speaker 2: and jealous turns into hurtful and evil, and you just
Speaker 2: don't know, and you don't know what happened in her past,
Speaker 2: Like you said, she didn't have the upbringing that Rachel had,
Speaker 2: Like you never know what triggered in her brain as
Speaker 2: a young child that set her in this direction. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I remember I had been interviewing a serial killer for
Speaker 5: at the time, it was about six years, and I'd
Speaker 5: often try to rope him into talking about God and
Speaker 5: evil and good and this and that, just to get
Speaker 5: his sense of it. And he didn't believe in God,
Speaker 5: of course, and so I said, let's talk about evil,
Speaker 5: and he said this was his comedy. He said, well,
Speaker 5: if there is evil in the world, I'm it.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 5: So he knew, right, He says, if we're going to
Speaker 5: use evil as a word to describe something, that's me wow.
Speaker 5: And for him there was no why. There didn't have
Speaker 5: to be a why. There were triggers. There were triggers,
Speaker 5: you know, a woman said something he didn't like or
Speaker 5: whatever triggered him. But there never was no why other
Speaker 5: than the fact that at this is a decision he made. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm going to kill this woman today, end
Speaker 5: of story. In Sheila's case, she made that decision. It's
Speaker 5: clear that they made that decision a long time before
Speaker 5: they took carried out this murder because of all the
Speaker 5: things they took with them, the pre planning, the driving
Speaker 5: out to the area, and then everything after that, the
Speaker 5: social media posts, we miss you, where are you Skyler,
Speaker 5: we miss you? Come home, handing out the flyers, getting
Speaker 5: with the family. That's all part of the stimulation, the
Speaker 5: high the why, that's all part of the why why.
Speaker 5: Because she wanted to.
Speaker 2: And she thought she could get away with it, or
Speaker 2: she just didn't care.
Speaker 5: Most sociopaths, you know when we look at their behavior later,
Speaker 5: we're like Jesus, I mean, how the hell did you
Speaker 5: think you could possibly get away with this?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: But now let's put ourselves in their position. Their position narcissism.
Speaker 5: I believe I'm.
Speaker 6: Smarter than everybody else.
Speaker 5: I believe what I'm doing. No one's going to figure out.
Speaker 5: I can convince, I can trick, I can manipulate, I
Speaker 5: can lie, and people are going to believe it. So
Speaker 5: although it looks like kind of megalomaniac thinking to us,
Speaker 5: it's how they think. This is how their brain spinds,
Speaker 5: which makes them dangerous.
Speaker 2: So shifting gears a little bit, I do want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about what you think about this. So
Speaker 2: one issue in Skyler's case is that the amber alert
Speaker 2: didn't go out for Skylert. But do you think that
Speaker 2: law enforcement failed her because they just thought, oh, she's sixteen,
Speaker 2: she ran away, so as you run away, yeah, she's
Speaker 2: not a victim, you know, do you think that was
Speaker 2: a mistake.
Speaker 5: I see a lot of cases like this where a
Speaker 5: team goes missing and immediately they just jumped.
Speaker 2: To that they ran away.
Speaker 5: They took off with a boy or a girl, and
Speaker 5: they're they're you know, they're on their way to love
Speaker 5: finding the sunset from the beach, and they'll be back.
Speaker 5: Most good law enforcement don't think like that.
Speaker 2: If they're under eighteen, they'll just issue the amber alert.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, they'll just boom. And it should be
Speaker 5: that way. It should just be automatic.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 5: If she ran away, okay, fine, then we'll find her
Speaker 5: with the amber alert.
Speaker 2: Doesn't hurt anything, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: What it does is get people involved in the present
Speaker 5: moment of the day basically.
Speaker 6: Right, it's the community involved, exactly.
Speaker 5: It baffles the mind, you know, it baffles the mind
Speaker 5: when I see stuff like that and it doesn't happen.
Speaker 5: I think in this case, a law then gets enacted
Speaker 5: because of this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually called Skuyler's Law. So it expanded the
Speaker 2: date's Amber alert system to include any child who has
Speaker 2: disappeared and is believed to be endangered.
Speaker 6: That's the silver lining, Right.
Speaker 5: I have an amber alert story I can tell you of. Yeah,
Speaker 5: case said, I wrote a book. So, all right, So
Speaker 5: there's this woman who's eight months pregnant and another woman
Speaker 5: decides that it's her baby.
Speaker 6: It's not.
Speaker 5: So she drives from Kansas to Missouri, and she had
Speaker 5: befriended this pregnant woman, and she drives there one day,
Speaker 5: takes a pairing knife, cuts that baby out of her,
Speaker 5: takes the baby, takes off. The sheriff shows up. Okay,
Speaker 5: Sheriff ben Espy, great person that I've met along my journey.
Speaker 5: He shows up and he wants to issue an amber
Speaker 5: alert immediately. Of course, here's what he gets. He gets, Yeah,
Speaker 5: we're not issuing an ambler for it's a fetus. I
Speaker 5: don't know if it's a baby. They get into this hole,
Speaker 5: back and forth. Right, So finally he says I needed that.
Speaker 5: He tells me, he says, I needed that Amber alert
Speaker 5: to find that kid. I mean I needed to have
Speaker 5: that amber I mean you put on an ambler alert
Speaker 5: for a baby that's been born.
Speaker 2: That way, people are gonna be looking, Yeah, and.
Speaker 5: They're gonna notice. They're gonna notice something's wrong with that kid. Right,
Speaker 5: Long story short. He ends up calling the congress person
Speaker 5: in his district and he says, listen, he said, if
Speaker 5: you ever want to get elected again, you're gonna get
Speaker 5: that fucking Amber alert out tonight. Yep, and bang, they
Speaker 5: put that amber alert out. Within a couple hours, had
Speaker 5: all kinds of calls. Perpetrator was found with the baby
Speaker 5: in her arms.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, going back to Skylar's case, I mean, it
Speaker 3: took them six months longer just to find her body,
Speaker 3: you know, because they just assumed she was a runaway.
Speaker 3: But the parents, you know, the parents were on them
Speaker 3: to find her. So it's like, we need people in
Speaker 3: the justice system, you know, in all of these communities
Speaker 3: to really listen to what these families are saying, you know,
Speaker 3: and care, like truly care.
Speaker 5: It's easier to love than to hate. We've said this before.
Speaker 5: I think doesn't take anything to love somebody, but it
Speaker 5: takes so much energy to hate so much.
Speaker 2: Matthew, I wish you had met our mom because my
Speaker 2: mom always said something to me and to Evet, but
Speaker 2: more to me because I'm the more sensitive one. She
Speaker 2: would always say, Rashia, there's more good than there is
Speaker 2: evil in the world. No matter how dark it gets,
Speaker 2: you have to know that the light is always going
Speaker 2: to shine.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our mother was, you know, a bright light who
Speaker 3: had a very very very hard and dark life. But
Speaker 3: through all of that darkness, she fought for the light,
Speaker 3: and she fought for the light and Therefore she instill that,
Speaker 3: you know, in both Russia and I so to be here,
Speaker 3: to be with you on this platform with a like
Speaker 3: minded soulmate, you know, is very empowering for us because
Speaker 3: again I go back to this is not an easy industry.
Speaker 3: You know, people a lot of people just like to
Speaker 3: hear the brutality of it all, the sensationalism of it all.
Speaker 3: But there's so much more to that, you know, because
Speaker 3: it affects everyone. It affects the family, it affects the neighbors,
Speaker 3: it affects the community, it affects the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you got to have responsibility talking about.
Speaker 3: This, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: So yeah, some people don't, but you know, I just
Speaker 5: I don't pay attention to that.
Speaker 3: What is the light for you in this case? Like,
Speaker 3: where's the hope? Where's the growth?
Speaker 5: Part of it is that Amber alert lag Skyler's law. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so at least something good came out of it. The
Speaker 5: other part of it for me was Rachel's behavior at
Speaker 5: the end. How she takes responsibility. Yeah, she displays remorse,
Speaker 5: she displays empathy, sorrow, and she takes responsibility. Yes, I
Speaker 5: think that says a lot.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 3: Well, It's been an amazing, amazing hour having you here
Speaker 3: on this show.
Speaker 6: Matthew.
Speaker 3: Again, we appreciate your light, your wisdom, your heart, your intelligence,
Speaker 3: but most of all, we just appreciate you for being
Speaker 3: you and being here on facing evil with us.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you asking
Speaker 5: me again to come on. I'm very honored that you did.
Speaker 5: And you know we're friends for life.
Speaker 2: Now, that's right. Today's message of hope and healing goes
Speaker 2: out to the Ohanna, or the family of Skyler niece.
Speaker 2: Skyler's family remembers her fondly. She was a big reader
Speaker 2: who loved the Twilight books and she was just getting
Speaker 2: into the classics like Great Expectations. She was a girl
Speaker 2: after my own heart.
Speaker 6: She loved hip hop.
Speaker 3: Tyler the Creator and mac Miller were two of her
Speaker 3: favorite artists.
Speaker 2: Her family also said she had a wicked sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Her aunt, Carol recalls that Skyler gave her the nickname
Speaker 2: Sparky after she accidentally set some tissue papers on fire.
Speaker 2: She even decorated a spark plug as a Christmas ornament
Speaker 2: and gave it to her aunt as a guide gift.
Speaker 3: And while we know all these things about Skyler, the
Speaker 3: truth was that she was still figuring out who she
Speaker 3: was and something that she would never get a chance
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: And so today's message of hope and healing goes out
Speaker 2: to the memory of Skuyler and to her Ohana, her family,
Speaker 2: Onward and upward.
Speaker 6: Emua emua.
Speaker 2: Well, that's our show for today. We'd love to hear
Speaker 2: what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a
Speaker 2: case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 3: Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Speaker 3: Facingevil pod at tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2: And one small request if you haven't already, please find
Speaker 2: us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
Speaker 2: a good review. If you like what we do, your
Speaker 2: support is always cherished.
Speaker 6: Until next time.
Speaker 2: Aloha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero and a Vet Gentile.
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk Donald
Speaker 1: albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
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