10 day Torture Fest in Derelict Shed By Mom’s New Man
In 2005, Helen Reyes met Jerry Skiba at a local Applebee’s restaurant. Their relationship moved fast and Helen soon became pregnant. On July 6, 2006, 26-year-old Helen gave birth to Tegan Alyssa Skiba in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was a healthy baby with brown hair and brown eyes. Her family affectionately referred to her as “Tigi.” Tegan was healthy, but the relationship between her parents wasn’t. Helen had barely known Jerry a year before giving birth to their daughter. The relationship had moved quickly and she had ignored many of its issues for too long. Tegan’s birth only further proved that the relationship had run its course. Shortly after Helen brought their daughter home, Jerry became physically abusive and the couple broke up soon after.
Once the relationship had ended, Jerry didn’t make much of an effort to stay in his daughter’s life. Based on his behavior, that was likely for the best. Losing a parent this early in her life would have been difficult for any newborn, but Tegan was lucky. Jerry’s parents, Gerald and Sarah Skiba, leapt into the role of being loving grandparents and they did their best to fill any holes left by their son’s absence. The Skibas supported Helen as well. It wasn’t long before Helen began relying heavily on Jerry’s parents to babysit Tegan and assist in her child care. Helen’s relationship with the older couple wasn’t just about practicality; they had a real emotional connection. The unstable situation Tegan was born into had gradually blossomed into a large and tight-knit family.
Tegan went on to flourish into a bright, loving young girl for the next several years. She loved princesses and the color purple. Tegan also had a passion for the outdoors. She loved to frolic in her grandmother’s garden and find her favorite bugs, butterflies, and ladybugs. Her family treasured every moment spent seeing her beautiful smile. According to her grandfather, “She made us feel so good just being around her.” If it were up to the grandparents, they would have taken over custody of their granddaughter so they could provide her with a quiet, happy life that she so dearly deserved. But unfortunately, Helen Reyes had other plans.
After her relationship with Jerry fell apart, Tegan’s mother remained single for a little while. That changed in early 2010 when Helen met 21-year-old Jonathan Douglas Richardson. Just like her ex, she jumped into a serious relationship with her new man fast. Helen would later recall, “I cared about him. I felt I was in love with him or falling in love with him.” Another similarity between her new boyfriend and her old one was the red flags. At the time, Jerry had been locked up in the Craven Correctional Institution for narcotics trafficking. Jonathan had his own series of run-ins with the law. He’d been convicted of simple assault and injury to personal property. That charge came from when he broke the windshield of his then-girlfriend’s car during an argument in November of 2007. He was arrested again, this time for verbal threats and burning down an unoccupied building in 2008. In 2008, he was arrested in Wayne County for a DUI.
Now Jonathan wasn’t the type of guy who knew how to hide his crazier side either. According to relatives, Jonathan would frequently yell and cuss at Helen. Consequently, Helen was quiet and timid when she was around him. Despite all of the signals that she had run from one abuser to another, Helen allowed herself to be further drawn into his orbit and didn’t hesitate in allowing him access to her daughter. Jonathan was the man she wanted to create a family with. She wasn’t interested in anything else. Not long after the relationship began, Helen distanced herself from the Skiba family out of nowhere. She stopped answering their calls and texts. These people had once played a key role in raising Tegan and now Helen was preventing them from ever seeing her again.
This devastated the Skibas and they attempted to look into legal means of getting Tegan into their guardianship. Unfortunately, North Carolina law makes it difficult for grandparents to claim custody over a living parent. According to the grandmother, “It’s so hard, they want you to prove so much.” Helen’s bridge-burning would not stop with Tegan’s paternal grandparents; she had enough of her own parents as well. At the time, Helen was living with her family while she got back on her feet. Tension rose as her own family members didn’t approve of Jonathan for obvious reasons. Around June of 2010, Helen and her mother Maria had a blowout fight that resulted in Helen deciding to move out to live with Jonathan permanently.
Abruptly yanking Tegan away from her robust support system and gallivanting with her new man would be extremely irresponsible, even if the guy was Prince Charming. The relationship was young; Helen didn’t really know this man or how he’d treat her daughter. She didn’t even know if this relationship would last or if she was pointlessly getting her daughter emotionally attached to a summer fling. What Helen did know is how Jonathan treated her; he was verbally abusive and aggressive. Nevertheless, she decided to move in with him. There was only one more massive issue with this plan: Jonathan didn’t have a suitable house to move into and he didn’t even have an apartment either. Instead, Jonathan stayed in what amounted to be a dolled-up shed in his grandparents’ backyard.
The tin-roof 20 by 20-foot structure sat approximately 150 feet away from the main house. His grandparents, the Creeches, allowed him to stay there in hopes that he’d get his life together. But why stay with them rather than his own parents? Jonathan had an extremely rocky relationship with his parents. His mother, Sandy Creech, was accused of hiring a hitman to assassinate his father, Doug Richardson. Sandy was taken to court and found not guilty of any wrongdoing, and Doug survived the attack after being shot in the head. Even though Jonathan was a year old at this time, the incident left the relationship strained. His father gained primary custody, but his experience made him neglectful and physically abusive. Jonathan’s mother suffered from mental illnesses of her own and was a frequent narcotics user. That’s why Jonathan was staying in a shed in his grandparents’ yard rather than living with his parents.
Jonathan’s shed may have been sufficient for a broke man in his early 20s, but it was far from an ideal place to raise a three-year-old child. The shed had a burgundy door and four windows, two in the front and two in the back. It had electricity, but no running water or bathroom. The Creeches allowed those living in the shed to come inside and use the restroom, but this only happened on occasion. Instead, the inhabitants of the shed would often just defecate inside of it. It also lacked a kitchen, which is probably for the best given what we just shared. In this shed, Helen, Jonathan, and Tegan all slept together on a single air mattress on the floor. According to neighbors, Tegan’s time at the shed wasn’t entirely miserable. They recalled seeing her playing outside and having fun in the yard.
Her mother also spoke highly of her relationship with Jonathan. She called him a father figure to her daughter. She said, “He was stern with her at times, but he showed that he loved and cared for her. I trusted him and I trusted his word. Tegan said she really liked him and that she wanted him to be her dad.” That was the fantasy world that Helen sold herself and tried to sell everyone else. The reality of life living in that shed was far darker. Jonathan had an uncontrollable temper that caused him to lash out at Helen and his family. His grandmother admitted to being afraid of him. He was abusive to everyone in his life and three-year-old Tegan was no exception.
Helen claimed she attempted to set boundaries with Jonathan on how he treated her daughter, but it’s clear that this was not a priority for her. On one occasion, he stuck a cigarette in Tegan’s mouth and placed a beer can in front of her. Helen scolded him for this, but Jonathan didn’t care. Tegan, who mind you was three years old at the time, was frequently forced to drink alcohol. Another item of note is that Tegan regularly had bathroom accidents. Since the shed had no running water or toilet, poor Tegan was left with no other option. It wasn’t unusual for her to sleep in her own filth. The little girl was deprived of any dignity and Jonathan would punish her for these accidents.
Tegan also had a habit of getting mysterious injuries while with Jonathan. Helen once left Tegan with him while she went to Walmart. She returned to her having a cut on her head. Jonathan claimed, “She fell off her bike.” Another time they went to the beach together and Tegan’s eye was injured. Jonathan said, “It was a wave.” On another occasion, Helen returned home to find Tegan covered in welts. According to Helen, “I went inside and grabbed her and held her and told her that I loved her. He told me that he had whipped her for throwing up on his chair. He had whipped her with a power cord.” Helen said she was fiercely against the abuse and argued with Jonathan every time it happened.
Allegedly she almost broke up with him after the incident with the power cord, but regardless, the fact remains she kept Tegan housed with him and frequently left the two alone together. The way Helen explained things, Jonathan was loving at first and slowly became violent, and at that point she became too afraid to leave. But her actions painted a much different picture. In early July of 2010, Helen Reyes knew that she needed to find a place for Tegan to stay. Helen was planning on leaving for New Mexico to participate in the Army Reserve’s training. Now who did she decide to leave her daughter with? Was it Gerald and Sarah Skiba who babysat her and loved her before Helen had ghosted them? Was it her maternal grandparents who embraced and cared for her? Was it another trusted friend? No.
Helen reached out to none of these options. She decided to leave Tegan with Jonathan after he volunteered. Helen happily agreed to this arrangement, even though she knew that he was physically abusive towards Tegan and claims to be afraid of him. She agreed to leave her daughter with a man who liked to force-feed her alcohol. To the surprise of no one, Jonathan didn’t suddenly turn a new leaf once he took on the responsibility of watching Tegan for 10 days when Helen was gone. Instead, he put her through a level of torment that brought the hospital and law enforcement personnel to tears. During the 10 days Tegan was left with Jonathan, he put her through unimaginable suffering. He restrained her by her arms and whipped her with an electrical cord.
At one point Tegan was so desperate to escape she yanked against the restraint so hard that she broke bones in her arm and wrist. Jonathan’s grandmother walked towards the shed and noticed that the doorsteps were sprayed in feces. She knocked on the door and heard her grandson snap at Tegan, “Not to answer it.” During this time Jonathan didn’t take Tegan inside to use his grandparents’ bathroom and took glee in forcing her to have these accidents. A video taken at 2:31 a.m. on July 10, 2010, on Jonathan’s camera shows Tegan in a pink shirt and dark pants with her arms outstretched facing a wall and repeating a half a dozen times this phrase: “When I have to pee, I promise I will tell someone.”
Uninterrupted by Jonathan shouting at her, “Speak up!” she repeats the phrase four more times louder while in visible distress. Not only did Jonathan force her to beg for mercy, he recorded some of the events for his viewing pleasure. One of the cruelest acts was done to her fingers. He held her tiny fingertips with a plier-like instrument to keep her from pulling away and then jammed something under her fingernail and pulled upwards until her nail tore off. Sometimes he’d entertain himself by biting her and tearing off her flesh. Other times Jonathan aggressively forced her to endure essay. There was no line that he wouldn’t cross during his alone time with Tegan.
It’s a testament to her courageous spirit that she survived even one day with him, let alone 10. But she couldn’t hold on forever. On July 16, 2010, just a week and a half after her fourth birthday, Tegan defecated on the bed she shared with Jonathan. He flew into a rage. He grabbed an extension cord and whipped her, striking her in the head. The strength of this blow combined with her wounds caused her to fall unconscious. Jonathan realized he had taken things too far, so he grabbed her broken body and drove her to UNC Health Johnston. When Tegan arrived at the hospital, medical staff were horrified and demanded an explanation for her injuries.
Jonathan explained that, “She had been jumping on the bed and fell. I’d given her an ice pack and took her to the hospital when her head continued to hurt.” But of course the little girl’s body told a very different story. It is impossible to overstate how brutalized and damaged Tegan’s body was. She had accumulated over 140 wounds consisting of cuts, lesions, lacerations, whip marks, scabs, scars, and bruises. Her body was littered with over 60 human bite marks. Her wrists were broken. Her private areas showed signs of bruising and bleeding. All of the wounds on her tiny body had taken their toll, causing Tegan to lose more than 70 percent of her blood.
The internal damage was even worse. The wounds on her head caused both swelling and bleeding in her brain. I’ve researched a lot of cases of child neglect but not many of them come close to the amount of damage that was done to Tegan. According to one of the doctors who treated the little girl, there was essentially no part of her body that was spared. That was something that he had never seen in his 25 years working as a medical doctor. Now Tegan’s injuries weren’t just severe; they were shocking and barbaric. Consequently, when Jonathan strolled up nonchalantly talking about how the child fell off a mattress, everybody knew that that excuse was ridiculous.
One nurse named Mary Butler was so horrified and enraged by Tegan’s injuries that she confronted Jonathan directly. Jonathan sensed that she wasn’t buying his lies, so he began making excuses about how, “He needed to move his truck.” Mary knew she couldn’t let him leave the ER and chased after him. She was able to grab him by the throat and wrestled him back into the ER. Mary’s courageous actions allowed police to quickly take Jonathan into custody. Without her intervention, Jonathan most likely would have gotten into his truck and skipped town. While Mary apprehended Jonathan, other medical personnel worked frantically to try and save Tegan’s life.
Her savage injuries left her knocking on death’s door. One doctor recalled that, “She was so critically ill, so people were acting very, very quickly.” Although the doctors worked feverishly, they couldn’t make up for the damage that was done to Tegan. She was soon transferred to UNC Medical Center Chapel Hill and put on life support. Unfortunately, her condition did not improve. Tegan Skiba was pronounced dead Monday, July 19, 2010, at 6:30 p.m. Her death was ruled a homicide. Jonathan Douglas Richardson was initially charged with felonious CA and essay of a child. After Tegan passed away in the hospital, he was given an additional charge of first-degree homicide. His bond was set at just under a million dollars.
Helen Reyes returned home the day after Tegan was placed in the hospital. Her absence didn’t mean that she was spared of charges. The fact that Helen left her daughter with Jonathan when she knew what he was capable of meant that she was also at fault for the tragedy. Helen was allowed limited visitation of her daughter in the hospital while an investigation was launched. As details of Tegan’s death were made public, the Army publicly commented that if Helen needed help with child care during her training, that she could have asked them. As a single mother, she would have been required to come up with a family care plan that outlined how her daughter would have been cared for.
According to a spokesman for her reserve unit, the 535th Military Police Battalion, Helen did not provide a plan. Over the past decade, the Army had launched and strengthened a range of programs to help ease the burden of training and deployment. This included family care plans which applied to soldiers who were single parents, single pregnant women, dual military couples, and soldiers caring for an elderly family member. It is the soldier’s responsibility to file the plan and it’s kept in their personnel file. After searching, the Army discovered that Helen had actually come up with a family care plan, but in that plan she listed her mother Maria Reyes as the sole caretaker for Tegan while she was away, not Jonathan.
Wake County child welfare officials determined that Helen had failed to protect her daughter and entrust her to an appropriate caretaker before she left for training. On July 29th, Helen Reyes was charged with child neglect. Her bail was initially set at fifty thousand dollars; however, the assistant D.A. asked that the bail be raised to 250,000 dollars because he believed that Helen was a flight risk. His request was rejected and Helen was able to pay her bail and walk free until her trial. Although she wasn’t taken into custody, she was ordered to remain in North Carolina. Jonathan’s trial has been described by many as one of the most heart-wrenching trials in North Carolina’s history.
Jurors and courtroom staff sobbed multiple times. The judge had called frequent recesses for witnesses who broke down in tears during their testimony. Many of the people involved had seen their fair share of violence and death, but what Tegan went through was beyond pale. No training prepared them to discuss the horrors she was put through. Even the prosecution visibly struggled through parts of the trial. Now on the stand, the tears come. The jury is asked to leave. The prosecutor asked Da Silva again about that moment. “It merely brought tears to my eyes. It’s the most horrified thing I’ve ever seen done to a human being, especially a child. Never seen anything like that in the years that I’ve been doing this as a law enforcement officer,” he stated.
There was a reason that said Richardson, the emotions that hit everyone involved in the hearing bounced off of him. He remained unemotional through testimony, even cracking smiles during breaks. The descriptions of Tegan’s pain brought him no guilt, shame, or pain. During the break, Jonathan Richardson, accused of torturing and murdering the child, often smiles. When the jurors returned, Da Silva says Richardson made a curious remark after his arrest: “What are y’all going to do, tie me down and cut me up?” He just looked right straight at me and just had like a slight little slight little grin on his face.
On April 4, 2014, Jonathan Richardson, now 25 years old, was found guilty and convicted on charges of first-degree homicide, first-degree kidnapping, the essay of a child, and felony CA inflicting serious injury. The jury only deliberated for an hour. His sentence: death. “Return as our unanimous verdict that the defendant is guilty of first-degree murder based on the theory of murder by torture and based on the felony murder rule,” the foreman stated. Again expressionless, but behind him Richardson’s mother in the brown sweater wept. That’s his grandmother in the yellow.
The crimes happened in a shed 112 feet from her house. She had let Richardson live there with Tegan’s mom, his girlfriend. Both declined to comment on the verdict. Same for Tegan Skiba’s grandparents. At 12:38 p.m. he walked out of the courtroom, 25 years old, a convicted murderer. Jonathan’s mother Sandy was in the courtroom when he was handcuffed and taken back to prison after being sentenced to death. Knowing that she would likely never get to touch her son again, she shared the following words: “I understand the anger and bitterness because I feel it too after what happened to Tegan, but he’s still my son and I love him dearly and he needs me now more than ever.”
“I’m in disbelief that the Jonathan I know could do this. I have to forgive him not for him, but for myself. I hope the community can do the same. There’s a lot of healing that needs to be done that will come with time and faith in God,” she continued. In addition, Sandy had the following words for Tegan’s family: “Words cannot even express how sorry I am that this happened. My heart goes out to them and the pain that they’ve had to go through. I can’t imagine what they’ve gone through. I’m just so sorry. I just didn’t know. I had no idea that Tegan was there. I just didn’t know. I would have done something had I only known, and I’m hoping they can heal because I know the pain is horrible for them and has been.”
It would take another half decade for Helen Reyes to be brought to justice. Jonathan may have behaved monstrously, but it was Helen’s carelessness that enabled him. On March 6, 2019, she was found guilty of child neglect and sentenced to a minimum of only 18 months in prison. According to Johnson County Sheriff Steve Bizzle, “She neglected to carry out her motherly duties. She had witnessed her child being beaten at the hands of Jonathan Richardson before she left, so yes, she was to blame for this. Children are helpless. We have a so-called mother that just walked away.”
Tegan’s case shook Wake and Johnston County to their core. Jurors had to be bussed in and out of neighboring Hartnett County to limit bias in the jury. At least one juror was confronted by a citizen at Golden Corral who emphatically told them to, “Convict Jonathan.” Thousands were counting on the prosecution and jury to bring him to justice. The community’s rage wasn’t just targeted at Jonathan; his grandparents faced harsh scrutiny as well. Tegan’s abuse had occurred right under their noses. On one occasion Mrs. Creech saw Tegan walking around with a black eye. She accepted without question Helen’s excuse that, “The girl fell sometimes.”
She’d tell Jonathan that his living situation was inappropriate for a child, but he always got aggressive and defensive when it was brought up, so she dropped the subject. Mrs. Creech considered reporting the situation to Child Protective Services but abandoned the idea because she didn’t want Helen to lose custody of her child. If Mrs. Creech hadn’t turned a blind eye to the truth, Tegan could still have been removed from Helen’s custody and placed into the care of her loving grandparents, Gerald and Sarah Skiba. Many in the community saw Jonathan’s grandparents just as guilty as Helen.
Some however believed that people were too hard on the Creeches. Pastor Dennis Pollock was a vocal defender of the couple. He said, “I hear people talk saying they should have known what was going on in their backyard. I understand that, but we know people that their teenagers down the hall were doing terrible things on the computer and they didn’t know about it. I know that the Creeches did not know that child was being abused or they would have done something about it.” It’s hard to say how valid Pastor Pollock’s defense of the Creeches is.
While it’s true they likely didn’t know the extent of what was going on, Mrs. Creech admitted to seeing Tegan sporting a black eye. She also heard her son shout at her. Not only that, consider the distance between the shed and the house. Based on the map dimensions, this shed is roughly 150 feet from the house. I find it difficult to believe that at such close distance between these two buildings that they couldn’t hear a child screaming from being heinously tortured over the course of 10 days. Surely they would have heard something at least once during that period of time, wouldn’t they?
Tegan’s case came at a dark time in Johnston County’s history. In a short period of time they had three other DV cases that robbed the lives of their victims. On July 20th, 2010, Tegan and the other victims were honored at a vigil. Gatherers met with candles to mourn and remember the lost lives. The song “Fly Like an Eagle” was sung as tribute. Tegan’s funeral services were private. She was laid to rest at the Raleigh Memorial Park. In an online memorial, Tegan’s paternal grandparents, Gerald and Sarah Skiba, left the following message: “When you left us, it felt by you leaving half of my heart was taken too. It hurts so much every day.”
“The pool is not the same without you. Your rock with your name on it, your flower bed. Every Saturday morning your first words are ‘The sun is shining, it’s a sunny day,’ then you would want Papa or Grandma to make you maple oatmeal so you could go outside and play with Papa in the pool. Play with the pink car her dad got for her; she outgrew it but wouldn’t stop playing with it. Then play with the soccer balls. Later Tegan loved art, finger painting, making things with her different colored clay. We had so many great times, Grandma and I couldn’t wait to see you. Being around you made us so happy. We miss you Tegan. RTD,” they concluded. As of the date of this recording in August of 2023, if Tegan Skiba was still alive, she would be 17 years old.
