The Murder of Riley Crossman

On the night of May 7, 2019, Riley Crossman was home at her family's residence on Greenway Drive in Berkeley Springs. Around 7 p.m., her grandmother last saw her there. By 10:30 p.m., her mother Chantel Oakley had checked on Riley's room — the light was on and the door was closed. Andy McCauley was downstairs, asleep. Sometime that night, the last message Riley ever sent went to her boyfriend: "Andy's in my room and I'm scared." He was asleep when it arrived.

Prosecutors established at trial that McCauley entered Riley's bedroom that night and suffocated her with her own pillow. Riley's blood and saliva were found on the pillow and blanket in her room. He then wrapped her body in contractor garbage bags and transported her in the bed of his green work truck to a remote wooded hillside in Berkeley County, where he left her over an embankment. Construction debris — drywall mud matching material from his truck, and roofing screws from a Pennsylvania manufacturer used on his current worksite — was found on her body and on the road near where she was discovered.

The next morning, May 8, Chantel found Riley's room empty and assumed she had walked to school — until the school texted to say she was absent. Chantel called police. Riley had been missing for nine days when her body was found on May 16, 2019. The community had spent those nine days searching. Andy McCauley knew where she was the entire time. He said nothing.

The investigation was led by the Morgan County Sheriff's Office, with significant involvement from the West Virginia State Police Crime Scene Team. McCauley was identified as a suspect from the first day. The evidence against him built through a combination of digital, physical, and behavioral strands that ultimately left no reasonable doubt. The case was prosecuted by Morgan County Prosecuting Attorney Daniel James and Assistant Prosecutor Courtney Moore.

The physical evidence was decisive. Riley's blood and saliva on her bedroom pillow and blanket established the crime scene. Drywall mud on her body matched material in McCauley's truck. Roofing screws manufactured by a Pennsylvania company used on McCauley's current project were found on the road above the embankment where Riley's body lay and under the seat of his work truck. A cadaver dog alerted on the truck bed for the presence of human remains. Surveillance footage and witness testimony placed McCauley's movements on May 8 in direct contradiction to his own statements to police. He changed his story multiple times about where he had been that day.

McCauley never explained himself. He did not testify at trial. He did not speak at sentencing. He has never said what happened or why. As Judge McLaughlin noted from the bench at sentencing, his silence left others to speculate — and his silence is the only thing he has consistently maintained throughout the years since Riley's death. Chantel Oakley said it directly: "He's the only one who can tell us what happened to our daughter."

Riley Crossman was 15 years old. She was a dancer. She had a smile that filled a room. She was a freshman in high school with three more years ahead of her — graduation, whatever came after, a whole life that should have been hers. She was supposed to feel safe in her own bedroom. She was not.

The last thing Riley did was reach out for help. She texted her boyfriend that Andy was in her room and she was scared. That message is the last record of her voice, and it is also, in the end, part of what convicted the man who killed her. She tried to tell someone. She was not able to be saved in time, but she was heard.

Andy McCauley knew where her body was for nine days while her community searched and her mother prayed. He sat through an entire trial and a sentencing without saying a word. He appealed and the court said no. He will die in prison. That is the outcome, and it is not enough — no one close to this case has pretended otherwise. But Riley Crossman's name is known, her story is told, and the man who killed her is where he belongs. She is not forgotten.