True Crime Vault: How'd You Rather Die?

In July 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neice vanished from her bedroom in Star City, West Virginia. Her father, Dave, found her bed unslept in and her dog waiting by the door. The last person to see her was her best friend, Sheila, who told police the three girls—Skylar, Sheila, and Rachel—had snuck out for a joyride, smoked marijuana, and dropped Skylar home around midnight. But grainy security footage showed Skylar willingly climbing into a car at 12:30 a.m., not midnight. And the girls had told police they did not recognize the car. That discrepancy became the first crack in a case that would take six months to unravel.

The lie that unraveled everything

Police initially treated Skylar’s disappearance as a possible runaway. Star City is a quiet, blue-collar college town where serious crime is rare. But as weeks passed with no sign of Skylar, investigators dug deeper. Corporal Chris Berry and Trooper Ronnie Gaskins, already working a separate bank robbery case in nearby Blacksville, noticed a possible link: one of their bank robbery suspects was connected to the girls through social media. Rumors swirled—that Skylar overdosed at a party, that she was involved in the robberies, that she ran off with a man she met through the Wendy’s drive-through. None checked out.