Meekins, Dyer families seek closure

Palm Coast Observer
News

A jury recommended William Gregory be put to death for the 2007 murders of Skyler Meekins and Daniel Dyer. A judge will decide April 1.

Some day soon, in the mountains of Georgia, Hap Meekins will be panning for gold. He’ll sift the gravel from the creek, put it in the sluice box and extract the powder. And he’ll continue the delicate balance of remembering the life of his 17-year-old daughter, Skyler, and forgetting the way it ended.

William Gregory, who had a child with Skyler, was found guilty of murdering Skyler while she slept in the early hours of Aug. 21, 2007. He also shot Skyler’s new boyfriend, Daniel Dyer, in the head, as they slept in Skyler’s grandmother’s home on John Anderson Highway. A jury recommended the death penalty for the crimes, and Judge William A. Parsons will give the final sentencing April 1.

Meekins has a cabin in Georgia, where he and his family will soon move permanently. He plans to cut firewood, start a tree-service business and farm much of his own food.

“It’s a way of life I like,” Meekins said Wednesday, March 9, the day of penalty phase in the trial, on the courthouse steps, in Daytona Beach. “It’s the way Flagler County used to be when I was young … The way I remember it.”

Meekins, 51, has lived in the county for almost his whole life. He recalls hunting and fishing wherever he pleased. Before the development began. Before life got complicated. He plans to return to a simpler life, as though he could go back in time, before Skyler was killed.

“We need to get away,” Meekins said. “We’ve been spending all this time (the last three years, since the shootings) talking about it … We want to put it to rest and move on. People ask me about it all the time.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Dyer’s mother, Theresa, has since moved out of Palm Coast and farther west into Flagler County, on County Road 304. It’s the same house where Daniel grew up.

On her entertainment center, where she will see it often, is a sort of memorial to Daniel and to her husband, who died in 2005, of cancer. Photos of both men are accompanied by their ashes.

“I cry for the kid every day,” Dyer said. “That hasn’t stopped. What more can I say? There was a book that I read shortly after Dan’s death. It was called, ‘A Broken Heart Still Beats.’ My heart is broken, but it’s still beating. I just go about my business.”