The Call That Never Came: The Disappearance of Rachel Cyriacks

Her mother’s birthday is November 14.

In the fall of 2013, Rachel Cyriacks made her mother a promise about that date. She said she would call.

It wasn’t strange for Rachel to go quiet for a while. The phone never rang. Mary Schabot has said that’s how she knew.

That was 13 years ago this November. Rachel hasn’t called anyone since. Her husband was the last person known to have seen her. He has never been charged in connection with her disappearance.

Sources for this section: 2, 3, 4, 12

Horses

When Rachel was five or six, the family kept horses, and she loved to ride. Her mother remembers a tomboy who wanted to be outdoors for everything. She was the baby of the family.

She grew up outgoing, her mother says. Fun to be around.

She had hazel eyes, dark blonde hair and a dimple in her right cheek. On her right forearm were tattoos of red flowers, stars, a tree and the initials RJ.

Sources for this section: 2, 5, 6, 15

A giver

Mary tells a story when people ask who Rachel was. If a friend’s kid had a birthday coming and there was no money for presents, Rachel would show up at her mother’s house, because Mary kept a stash. Rachel would take what she needed and deliver it herself. She loved handing out presents.

“She was a giver,” Mary said.

She had three kids. She also had a quilt she cherished, which she kept at home in Woonsocket. Dakota News Now called her a mother of two in 2023.

Rachel and Brad Cyriacks married young. Both had a history with drugs, and by 2013 their three children were living with relatives. Mary says Rachel was fighting her way back. She was seeking a divorce and working to regain custody.

“She loved her kids,” her mother said.

Sources for this section: 3, 4, 5, 15

The protection order

In August 2013, Rachel filed for a temporary protection order against Brad in Sanborn County, citing domestic abuse, according to court documents.

Mary says that in the week before Rachel disappeared, Rachel told the family the abuse was happening again.

Sources for this section: 3, 6, 7

Halloween

Rachel turned 30 on October 31.

That same Halloween evening, according to news reports, there was a domestic violence incident, and Brad went to jail in Huron.

Thirteen days later, he was getting out. Somebody had to go pick him up.

Rachel did.

Sources for this section: 3, 9, 16

The Silverado

On Wednesday, November 13, Rachel climbed into her gray 1995 Chevy Silverado, plates 4CH634, and drove from Woonsocket to Huron.

Her phone records show an incoming call from a gas station in Huron. A voicemail came in while she was passing through a dead zone. Then there was one outgoing call, back to a gas station in Huron. That’s where investigators believe she picked Brad up.

A few missing persons databases list her last day as November 11 or 12. The state says November 13.

Sources for this section: 1, 3, 4, 15, 16

Brad’s account

Brad told investigators they drove home to Woonsocket and stayed a short while. Then, he said, Rachel drove him back to Huron and dropped him off at a friend’s house. That was the last time he saw her. The phone records line up with his account.

Brad has been questioned. He has never been charged in connection with her disappearance.

No one else has come forward to say they saw her again.

Sources for this section: 3, 4, 12, 16

Fourteen

The next day was the fourteenth. A 2023 Forum report puts her mother’s birthday on November 13 instead.

Mary gave it a week. Then she took the key she had to her daughter’s house and let herself in. She has said she didn’t know what she was going to walk into.

There was no sign of a struggle. There was no sign of Rachel. Mary called friends. She called neighbors. Nobody had seen Rachel since the thirteenth.

Mary went back to law enforcement and kept pushing. About a month after Rachel vanished, the Sanborn County Sheriff’s Office opened an official investigation.

Sources for this section: 3, 7

The quilt

The quilt was gone.

Investigators looked for it and couldn’t find it. They came to believe it disappeared at the same time she did. They put its picture on her missing poster, beside her face.

The state describes the quilt as green, pink and white. One database describes it as red and white with green squares.

Sources for this section: 2, 4, 16

The Quonset

In January 2014, the truck turned up. The attorney general’s 2023 release says it was found in December 2013.

It was parked behind a Quonset on a bee farm outside Huron, more or less out of sight. The farm belonged to the family of the same friend Brad said Rachel dropped him off with. The truck couldn’t run. Its undercarriage was badly damaged, and the drivetrain had been pulled out.

Brad and his friend told investigators they’d been working on repairs. Brad said he’d been driving the truck regularly after the thirteenth. How the truck got from Rachel’s hands to that farm has never been explained.

Investigators searched every inch of it. They tested it for DNA. “We searched the undercarriage of it, wondering if maybe some of the damage under there was related to her death,” Tyler Neuharth, the state agent on the case, told Forum News Service. He said all of it failed to answer any questions.

The state still has the truck.

Sources for this section: 3, 4, 16

Wells and junkyards

A tip sent searchers to the Sand Creek area near Wolsey with ground-penetrating radar.

They brought cadaver dogs, dive teams, sonar and a highway patrol plane. They checked 20 wells, junkyards and abandoned buildings, and they worked the James River where it runs through Huron.

As of late 2021, none of it had turned up a single thing connected to Rachel.

Sources for this section: 3

The river

On November 29, 2023, crews searched a farm northeast of Huron, working the banks of the James River with boats. For the first time, items were recovered and sent off for analysis. Agents began interviewing witnesses who had never been interviewed before.

In December, Attorney General Marty Jackley announced a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. He said investigators were close, and that a couple of people had information about what happened.

“It is time to bring Rachel home,” his office wrote.

In December 2023, the attorney general’s office wouldn’t say whether the items had been analyzed. The public record doesn’t say what they were. “I mean, she’s not alive,” Mary told Dakota News Now in 2024. No one has been charged. As of the attorney general’s November 2023 release, the quilt was still missing.

Sources for this section: 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Thirteen years

On October 31, Rachel turns 43. On November 13, it will be 13 years since that drive to Huron.

The day after that is November 14. Her mother’s birthday. The day Rachel promised to call.

Sources for this section: 2, 3, 16

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