SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota—What happened to Rachel Cyriacks?
How did she vanish? Is she dead? If so, where is her body? And who would have killed her?
Those questions haunt the mother of the Woonsocket, South Dakota, woman who disappeared in November 2013. No one has seen or heard from Cyriacks for almost eight years.
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Her mother Mary Schabot, 65, Sanborn County Sheriff Tom Fridley and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Tyler Neuharth are almost positive she is dead. And even though no one has been arrested they believe the evidence points to one main suspect.
“I have been crying and going crazy for over seven years,” Schabot told The Daily Beast.
Those who knew Cyriacks are left only with memories of a bubbly blonde whose life was marked by deep troubles.
She was the only child born to Schabot and Clifton Eaton. Both had a boy and girl from earlier relationships before they married in 1983. Rachel was born 11 days later, on Halloween.
“We called her our little pumpkin,” Schabot said.
She was a bit of a wild child, her mom admits. Rachel stole beer out of the fridge when she was a teen, and her mom called the sheriff to come over and talk with her.
She grew into an attractive blonde with hazel eyes, 5-foot-5 and approximately 140 pounds, with tattoos on her right forearm and the left side of her neck. But she got involved with a shady group of people in east-central South Dakota who smoked marijuana, dropped pills, and injected drugs, likely meth, Sheriff Fridley said. DCI Agent Neuharth said Rachel was a regular meth user.
Schabot recalled seeing needles around her daughter’s home, and knew she was partying hard.
“Rachel, she had her ups and downs,” she said. “She was fun, I always liked being around her.”
Fridley, who knew Rachel since she was a little girl, said he never arrested her, but they did have some talks. “We had conversations about lifestyle and activities,” he said.
The two constants in Rachels’s life were drugs, sometimes with binges that lasted for days or even weeks, according to investigators, and her husband Brad, whom she was on and off with for 11 years.
Rachel lived hard and her attitude reflected that, Fridley said. He knew she and her husband were regular drug users. “They were not afraid to imbibe. They weren’t beyond experimenting,” he said. “She had her days. She could be as good as gold, and as mean as mean.”
On her Facebook page, Rachel offered a description of herself.
“Well I'm easy going and easy to get along with. I'm laid back and like to go with the flow. I'm very spontanious! I'm a tomboy mostly. Love snowmobling, racing, painballing, car stereos, mud running, demolition durby, shotting guns, hanging with friends, love getting tattoos, doing constrution, walking my pitbull, and so on..lol. I dont care to watch sports. I love to shoot hoops thou! I love my 3 Beautiful children. I love my husband brad dearly. He is my soul mate.”
Her final post, made on Nov. 10, 2013, was a photo of her with two other people. The comments shortly after reveal how her disappearance impacted people.
“Hey were u at hunni,” Scott Mcnutt wrote.
“Were are you Rach we are all worried,” Patricia Maestas wrote.
“Rachel Is Missing,” Daisy May Larson wrote.
“I sure wish she was answering!! hope your safe wherever you are!!!” Deb Cleveland wrote.
Rachel i hope your ok!!,” Alicia Nicole wrote.
They then took on a different, darker tone.
“I truly miss my friend! Hope that he gets what is coming to him!” Tiffany Johnson wrote 15 weeks ago.
There is still a joint Facebook page for Rachel and her former husband Brad Cyriacks. Its final post was made days before she vanished.
Brad Cyriacks has spent a lot of time behind bars.
According to South Dakota Department of Corrections records, he went to the South Dakota state prison in Sioux Falls several times, either when he was sentenced on a drug crime or for violating his parole. He spent time in prison in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. After a few years of freedom, he returned to custody in 2011, 2012 and 2013. He was freed in 2013 and rejoined Rachel but he was arrested that Halloween, this time ending up in a county jail.
In 2016, he was back in prison after he was convicted of violating a protection order issued on behalf of a girlfriend, finally walking free in 2017. He appears to have been a free man ever since, with just a seat-belt ticket on his record.
Rachel also served a prison sentence for marijuana distribution and possession of controlled substances, according to prison records. She was inside for 17 months, and was discharged from parole on Aug. 5, 2013.
The couple had two sons, Levi and Skiler, and a daughter, Aftnn. It wasn’t an easy childhood, living with two parents involved with drugs and in and out of jail and prison. Over the years, Levi broke an arm and Skiler had both legs in casts after falling down stairs, Schabot said.
Brad Cyriacks abused Rachel, Schabot says Rachel told her. Once, Rachel told her that he threw a can, striking her in the face. Schabot says Rachel shared a photo of the bloody wound with her.
Brad allegedly beat up Rachel again on Halloween 2013—her 30th birthday. This time, Rachel called the sheriff’s office, which took down her allegations in a report, Neuharth told The Daily Beast. The sheriff’s office said it no longer has a record of the report but court records viewed by The Daily Beast show that Brad was arrested for resisting arrest, jailed, then released two weeks later. A summons was issued on Dec. 12, 2013, but returned the following day as he couldn’t be located; the case was dismissed on May 15, 2020.
That summer, Schabot asked Brad why he wouldn’t let her daughter go.
“I asked him why he didn’t divorce her. He said she was going to follow his rules or she wouldn’t exist,” she recalled. “If she didn’t, he would feed her to pigs, put her in a manure pile or put her in the river in a place he knew.
“He said, ‘There would be no body to be found. No body, no crime.’”
Rachel sat in the pickup and listened to this exchange. She seemed beaten down, unable to fight anymore, Schabot said.
“Rachel just said to me, ‘Just let it be,’” she said.
The last time Rachel was seen was on Nov. 13, 2013, when she drove over to Huron to collect Brad from jail, two weeks after he was arrested on Halloween. She has never been seen since.
She had only been free for two months herself when she left home and drove their 1995 Chevrolet pickup to get him from the regional jail, according to Neuharth, who has been investigating the case for nearly eight years.
When he was released, Brad walked out a jail door that was not monitored by cameras. Neuharth said Brad told investigators that Rachel gave him a ride home, but they soon parted and he returned to Huron.
But no one has heard from Rachel since that day. Schabot’s birthday was the next day, and she thought it was odd her daughter didn’t contact her.
“I started worrying on Friday [Nov. 15] but she has left before. Rachel told me on Sunday that she would not be running away because she had nowhere to go,” she said. “I felt something but I didn’t know what to do. Others told me she would show up, so l waited.”
She said Brad never seemed very upset about his wife’s disappearance, based on what she observed. No report was filed with authorities for a month; Neuharth said people assumed she was “on another drug bender.”
Schabot doesn’t buy it. She said Rachel had started seeing another man while her husband was in jail. After Brad was released, the man stopped by to see Rachel, but Brad, who was at their home, told him she wasn’t around.
Later that month, Rachel and Brad were scheduled to appear before the Sanborn County Commission for a hearing on unpaid taxes. Brad showed up, Schabot said, but Rachel didn’t.
Within a month, Brad was dating again, but the woman later obtained a protection order that Brad violated three times, Neuharth told The Daily Beast. Court records and South Dakota Department of Corrections records viewed by The Daily Beast confirm he was convicted of two counts, one a felony, and sentenced to two years in prison starting on March 8, 2016.
Neuharth said the pickup vanished with Rachel, but it was recovered in Huron, although not where Brad was living.
Schabot hasn’t seen Brad in years, but would like to. She was in contact with a woman he was living with in Rapid City, but the woman blocked her on Facebook.
“She said, ‘Don’t you be threatening me,’” Schabot said. “I thought, ‘I’m just warning you. You’re next. So if you’re next, that’s not my fault. I warned you.’”
She would like to see him return to Woonsocket. “I’d like to have him around so I can antagonize him,” Schabot said.
She said she is not worried about confronting him, nor would she fear him if he appears at her home.
“I’d just shoot his ass,” Schabot said. “What do I have to lose? I don’t give a shit.”
Brad and Rachel’s children were eventually adopted by another family, and their last names changed. When their dad was arrested on Halloween 2013, they were living with family, the boys with Brad’s father, the girl with Brad’s sister. But their mother’s death, and subsequent events, shattered their already fractured family.
“Better for them,” Schabot said. “They have nothing to do [with their father]. I don’t even think his family has anything to do with him. I know his sister doesn’t.” Brad’s sister, Michelle Scheid, confirmed to The Daily Beast: “He is estranged from our family.”
Schabot said the whole series of events is still shrouded in mystery. When exactly did her daughter vanish? Where is her body?
When reached by The Daily Beast on Friday, Brad Cyriacks cut the call short. “How did you get my number?” he said.
He said he would not discuss the case, saying people were trying to harm him. “We’re not doing this,” he said. “We’re not having this conversation.”
In response to a detailed list of questions sent via text, he wrote: “Good luck on your story. Because that’s exactly what it is.”
Schabot said Brad once claimed two Hells Angels came to Woonsocket and picked Rachel up but Sheriff Fridley dismissed that theory.
Schabot said she also was told Rachel had been given $10,000 worth of drugs to distribute but had used them. A drug dealer came and took her away, the story goes.
She said that seems highly unlikely. Her daughter was a user, and drug dealers wouldn’t hand her a large amount of dope.
“I called the cops and they said, ‘She is an adult,’” Schabot said. “I called the cops on Friday, Dec. 6, and again on the 8th with the same results. I talked to Cliff about it and he called [Sheriff] Tom [Fridley]. Then things started rolling.”
Murders are rare in Sanborn County, with a population of around 2,400 people; Fridley, 70, said he has only investigated a couple during his career. But before he retires in a few years, after 30 years as sheriff, he is determined to solve this one. “Oh, it’d be super if I could,” he said.
Brad was interviewed several times by the sheriff’s office and the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. He has declined to take a polygraph test.
“He never really divulged anything,” Fridley told The Daily Beast.
Without more evidence, a witness and a body, the case cannot move forward, the sheriff said. But it hasn’t been forgotten, and there are occasional reminders, as in April 2014, when the house the Cyriackses lived in was vandalized.
Someone wrote “Fuck you pigs” and “Riverside for life.” There is no town named Riverside in the state, but there is a Riverside Cemetery in Huron. Also, Huron is known as a river city, set on the banks of the James River.
Was that an odd tip? Did the killer do it to taunt authorities or to throw them off?
“We tried to exhaust all Riverside connections,” Neuharth said.
Neuharth said while there are other possibilities, Brad Cyriacks remains the “prime suspect.”
He believes Rachel was killed on Nov. 13, 2013. But, he added: “There’s a million places in South Dakota to dispose of a body.”
There has been talk of laying charges without the body being discovered, but that is a difficult case to prove. “We have had those conversations,” Neuharth said. “Do we take that chance?”
In addition, if he was found not guilty in a trial, and a body was later discovered, charges could not be filed a second time.
Fridley said the case is “still active” and investigators pursue any tips that come in. But they’re now “few and far between.”
In 2016, ground-penetrating radar was used at an irrigation ditch in Beadle County, but nothing turned up. Cadaver dogs, which can detect the smell of human remains, have been used as well and Fridley said they checked with inmates he served time with but none offered information.
Fridley said he’s even been contacted by psychics offering assistance. One New York psychic suggested he look near water, hills and trees, which didn’t narrow down possible locations very much in the rural county.
Rachel’s mother is convinced of Brad’s guilt. She said he harmed her daughter many times, and even tried to kill her.
“He’s a person of interest,” Schabot told The Daily Beast. “He’s the last person known to be with her. I think he’s guilty as hell.”
Schabot wonders if someone knows the details of Rachel's disappearance. Maybe a suspect slipped up and said something to someone, and that person will contact law enforcement.
Schabot said she won’t give up on trying to solve this mystery.
“I try to stir the pot as much as I can,” she said.
Anyone with information about the case can call the DCI at 605-773-3331 or send Neuharth an email at tyler.neuharth@state.sd.us or https://atg.sd.gov/OurOffice/Departments/DCI/contact.aspx
