- [Narrator] What is up, EWU crew?
Today, we're going to talk about
the very horrific murder of Skylar Neese,
a young high school girl from Star City, West Virginia.
This is a solved case,
but we've had a lot of requests to cover it,
and it will definitely make you think
about who you trust for sure.
That's because Skylar was viciously stabbed to death
by her own best friends.
Although they had been plotting her demise for months,
the girl never saw it coming.
It's a horrifying story that you would see
on a teenage soap opera like the show "Pretty Little Liars."
So, Skylar was born in 1996,
which made her just 16 years old at the time of her death.
She lived in a tiny town of less than 2,000 people,
called Star City, West Virginia,
where violent murders basically never happen.
She attended University High School in nearby Morgantown
and had a part-time job at a local Wendy's.
Her parents, Dave and Mary,
along with her friends and other relatives,
described Skylar as a joyful, bubbly person
who had a contagious giggle, and she was always giggling.
They say she was a good girl, compassionate and outgoing.
Skylar met her best friend,
Sheila Eddy when she was eight years old.
They were extremely close, and Dave and Mary
said they almost thought of Sheila as a child of their own,
because the two spent so much time together.
They were quite fond of her and never could have imagined
she'd hurt their daughter, much less kill her.
In September 2010, Sheila started her freshman year
at a different school than Skylar.
There, she met a fiery redheaded girl
by the name of Rachel Shoaf.
Sheila and Rachel quickly became super close.
The following school year, Sheila transferred
back to Skylar's school, University High.
The trio became inseparable,
even calling themselves the Three Musketeers.
Classmates and friends said you'd almost never see
one of them without the other two.
They were besties, and they were just
your average American teenagers.
They went for joyrides in Sheila's car,
took seflies and posted videos of themselves
interacting with each other, just normal teenager-y stuff.
Eventually, it seems that Sheila and Rachel
developed an edgier side.
They began experimenting with alcohol and drugs.
It appeared that they were much closer with each other
than either of them were with Skylar.
And, although their friendship had become somewhat strained
in the months leading up to Skylar's disappearance,
they continued to hang out almost all of the time.
That's why what happened next was such a shock
to their families and the community they lived in.
You see, on July 6th, 2012, Skylar went missing.
That morning, her parents left for work
without checking their daughter's bedroom.
They assumed that, because her bedroom door was closed,
she was still sleeping, and they didn't wish to bother her.
By that afternoon, neither of them
had heard from her all day.
Her father looked around her room
and noticed that the window was slightly open.
Outside the apartment, he discovered a small stool
beneath her bedroom window.
He and his wife decided that she must have snuck out
the night before to go out with friends.
Dave told himself and Mary not to panic just yet.
They knew she was scheduled to work at Wendy's that evening,
and Skylar never missed a shift.
However, moments later,
his sense of calm would be overturned
when the fast food restaurant called to ask
if their daughter was still planning on coming into work.
Dave and Mary were instantly concerned,
because this was very out of character
for their teenage child.
They made several calls to her friends and family,
hoping someone had seen or heard from her, but no one had.
That's when they received a call from Sheila,
who explained that she had to tell them the truth
about what happened the night before.
The girl explained the Skylar had snuck out the night before
and had joined her and Rachel in going for a drive.
She stated that they had returned Skylar to her home
just before midnight, dropping her off
about two blocks from the apartment complex
for fear of getting caught by Dave and Mary.
Sheila said she was worried about her friend.
At that point, Mary called the cops
to report Skylar as missing.
Fortunately, the apartment complex had video surveillance,
and Mary immediately requested to look at the footage
from the night of July 5th.
She hoped she would be able to see
what happened to her daughter.
Although the quality of the video was quite bad,
they were able to see Skylar walking out of the complex
and willingly entering a vehicle
before it drove away around 12:30 a.m.
However, due to the grainy nature of the recording,
they could not make out the license plate number,
nor the make and model of the vehicle.
Actually, nothing on the vehicles was clear enough
to allow for identification of who it may belong to,
not even the color of the car.
The girl's parents were super confused.
Had Skylar returned home
and then left again with someone else?
Who was in the car? Where did they go?
None of it made any sense,
and that's when Dave and Mary really started to panic.
It didn't help that the police said
they couldn't do much,
because she had gotten into the car voluntarily.
The next day, Sheila joined Skylar's family
in the search for her friend,
but Rachel left for a two-week stay
at her church summer camp,
because that's totally normal, right?
Your best friend has mysteriously vanished,
you were one of the last people to see her,
and you're just like, "Well, it's time for me
"to go to church camp now, so, bye!"
Hmm.
Dave and Mary immediately took to the media,
pleading with the public
for the safe return of their daughter.
They were unaware of any problems in her life
that would cause her to run away.
The family had very close relationships with one another,
and she didn't seem to have any issues at school or work.
She didn't have a boyfriend
with whom she may have left the area, either.
It was all very perplexing.
As you can imagine, the rumor mill began
at University High School.
People even speculated
that she had gone to a party with the girls,
and that a terrible accident could have happened.
Some even say that she may have overdosed,
and that the scared party goers may have hid her body
for fear of getting in trouble.
But that didn't sound like Skylar,
and none of these rumors could be verified by police.
When law enforcement initially interviewed
Sheila and Rachel, their stories were spot-on identical.
They had enticed Skylar with a fun adventure.
They picked her up, went for a ride, smoked,
and took her home, and that was it, they said.
The two told this story over and over without deviation.
Everyone, including the police,
thought the young lady would turn up in the next few days.
But a week went by, and there was no Skylar.
A month passed, and there was still no Skylar.
Several months later, she was still gone.
She had simply disappeared.
But police had kept on eye on Skylar's best friends
for all of that time.
They identified the car from the video as Sheila's
and brought her and Rachel in for questioning
several times in the following months.
Always, their stories were the same and mostly unwavering,
but occasionally, their behavior seemed odd.
Law enforcement dug deeper on a hunch
that the two knew more than they were willing to divulge.
Initially, the girls told the cops
that they had stayed in the Morgantown area
for their joyride and smoke session
on the night Skylar went missing.
However, as the cops reviewed pings
from the girls' cellphones,
they discovered that they had actually gone over
to Blacksville, West Virginia, about 20 miles away.
They then acquired hours of surveillance footage
from sites around Blacksville
in an effort to confirm that the girls had been there,
and they were successful.
They were seen on a video
from a convenient store that night.
The police wondered why the girls had lied,
but did not inform them that they were on to them.
Instead, they told Skylar's parents
and asked them to keep the information confidential.
Dave and Mary began to indirectly pressure Sheila and Rachel
using social media posts.
Other community members followed suit,
and the girls began to feel the heat.
Rachel couldn't handle the stress,
and it took a toll on her sanity.
She began to act bizarrely, even around her own parents.
At some point later that year,
law enforcement asked the girls to submit a polygraph test.
Sheila volunteered herself,
but it would later be revealed that she failed the test.
Everything came to a head when it was Rachel's turn.
On the way to the testing facility,
Rachel apparently jumped out of the vehicle
and fled on foot with her parents following behind.
She fought with them, screaming loudly,
and even struck her mother,
before she crumbled into a nervous breakdown.
Rachel was taken to a psychiatric unit
at the local hospital, where she was closely monitored.
It isn't exactly clear what transpired
during her stay there, but when she was released,
she was taken immediately to the police station.
An investigator claimed that,
when Rachel Shoaf arrived that day,
the first words out of her mouth were, "We stabbed her."
The officers did not reveal any of this to Sheila.
Instead, they watched to see what she would do,
and she continued to live her normal, daily life
without any cause for concern.
With Rachel's cooperation,
they were able to locate Skylar's remains
in Wayne Township, just over the border, in Pennsylvania.
They did not inform the public of this
until more than two months later.
Even then, Sheila continued to act
as if she knew nothing about what had happened.
She tweeted things like, "Rest easy, Skylar.
"You will always be my best friend,"
and, "This is the worst day of my whole life."
What Rachel would go on to tell police
was beyond disturbing.
She said that they had driven to a remote location
in Wayne Township, where they had frequently gone
in the past to smoke together.
Upon their arrival, she and Sheila told Skylar
they had forgotten a lighter.
When Skylar turned to get hers from the vehicle,
her two best friends counted to three in sync
before launching their attack.
There, in the early morning hours of July 6, 2012,
Rachel and Sheila murdered Skylar Neese,
apparently stabbing her more than 50 times.
Although the young woman fought hard for her life,
she was overpowered by her killers.
They then attempted to bury her body,
but were unable to dig into the densely compacted soil.
Instead, they covered her corpse
with tree limbs, brush, and other organic debris.
The duo was well-prepared for the incident,
as they had been planning it for months,
even discussing how to do it and where to hide her body.
They had brought with them a fresh change of clothes,
cleaning supplies, and a shovel,
which they had hidden in the trunk of Sheila's car.
They had also hidden kitchen knives under their clothing.
The two washed themselves off in a nearby creek
and changed their clothes before leaving the scene.
Sheila actually made reference to that night
in a cryptic tweet posted two weeks after
the discovery of Skylar's remains.
In it, she disturbingly stated, "We really did go on three,"
as if to boast about her accomplishment.
That is just ...
sick!
What a complete psycho!
But why did these girls want to kill their best friend?
There had to be a motive behind it.
When the cops asked Rachel,
she said that they just didn't like her.
Come on.
Plenty of people don't like each other,
and you don't see all of them stabbing each other to death.
The more the cops dug, the more they found.
Some reports claim that, at some point
in the months prior to her murder,
Skylar had discovered Rachel and Sheila
were more than just friends,
when she walked in on them one night.
It's said that she wrote about the incident in her journal
and made vague references about it on he Twitter account.
Although the murderers did not admit it to be true,
it seems they may have killed her
to prevent their secret from escaping,
and perhaps they no longer wanted to be her friend
after she threatened to violate their trust.
Apparently, some of their classmates
overheard the two discussing their plot
but thought they were only joking,
and did not report it to anyone of authority.
Ultimately, police discovered blood
in the trunk of Sheila's car, enabling them to arrest her
in a Cracker Barrel parking lot on May 1st, 2013.
Rachel turned herself in that same day.
Sheila pled guilty to one count of kidnapping
and one count of first-degree murder
a year and a half later.
She was sentenced to life in prison
with a chance of parole after no less than 15 years.
Her request to be tried as a juvenile was denied,
meaning she would serve her full sentence
in an adult penitentiary.
Sheila remained silent and unemotional
for the duration of her sentencing.
Because Rachel Shoaf had cooperated with the investigation
and helped police to secure evidence,
she was charged with, and pled guilty to,
murder in the second degree.
She was sentenced to 30 years in prison
and will be eligible for parole after just 10 years.
Unlike her accomplice, Rachel showed a great deal of emotion
during her sentencing, and read aloud a formal apology
to the Neese family and her parents.
Some would say she even displayed signs
of remorse and regret.
Dave Neese refuted this, stating that,
if she was indeed remorseful,
she would have never requested to serve her sentence
in a juvenile detention center until her 21st birthday.
The judge agreed to let Rachel stay
at the juvenile detention center until her 18th birthday,
at which point a hearing would be held to determine
whether or not she should be moved to an adult facility.
As of today, the murderers are being held
at the Lakin Correctional Center in West Virginia.
A number of mugshots of the two have emerged online,
in which the inmates can be seen smiling and wearing makeup,
almost as if they have not a care in the world.
In a shocking twist of events,
Sheila's first cousin, Alexis Eddy,
appeared on season six of the MTV
hit reality television show "Are You the One?" in 2017.
On one episode, she discloses that her cousin
was serving a life sentence
for the first-degree murder of her own best friend.
She pointed to a flower tattoo on her back
that contained the words "live free,"
which she explained was a tribute to her murderous cousin.
Wait, what?
Live free?
Really?
Well, in January of this year, Alexis Eddy herself
passed away from cardiac arrest.
Although it has yet to be publicly confirmed,
her grandmother did tell the media
that it was caused by an overdose.
She alleged that Alexis had relapsed
after a long struggle with substance abuse.
The one good thing to come out of all of this
has been Dave and Mary Neese's efforts to change legislation
to better protect teenagers in their daughter's situation.
You see, in most states, an Amber Alert cannot be issued
unless the case meets four criteria:
the child is believed to have been abducted;
the child is under the age of 18;
the child is at risk of death or injury;
and that there is enough information
to make the Amber Alert helpful.
Additionally, where teenagers are concerned,
the person would have to have been missing
for at least 48 hours.
Thanks to the hard work
of Skylar's parents and their supporters,
a West Virginia legislator introduced Skylar's Law,
a bill that would allow an Amber Alert to be issued
if a missing child was thought to be in danger,
regardless of whether or not they may have been kidnapped.
The West Virginia House of Delegates passed the bill
in March 2013, and it was enacted as law three months later.
So, how do you guys feel after all that?
Feeling like you might need to check your best friends?
Yeah ...
me too.
This case is crazy and is definitely an eye-opener
to what others may be capable of behind your back.
Be sure to let us know what you think of the story
in the comments below.
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