Skylar Neese: When Best Friends Kill
On July 6th 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neese snuck out of her home in Star City, West Virginia, just after midnight. She was going to meet her friends Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf. Skylar never came home.
Skylar Neese was an honour student at her high school and worked part-time at Wendy’s. People described her as bubbly and a loyal friend. She and Sheila Eddy had been friends since they were eight years old, and they met Rachel Shoaf during their freshman year. The three had become inseparable.
When Skylar’s parents woke up on the morning of July 6th to find their daughter missing, they began to worry. They reported Skylar as missing when they realised she hadn’t turned up for work that morning. The investigators thought she might have run away, but her parents thought that was very unlikely, especially as she hadn’t taken any necessities with her.
Later that day, Sheila Eddy called the Neese’s and told them that she and Rachel Shoaf had picked up Skylar that night, drove around Star City getting high, and that they dropped Skylar back off at the end of the road an hour later. When questioned by the police Eddy told the same story, stating she and Shoaf picked Skylar up at 11:00 pm and dropped her off before midnight. When police pulled CCTV from the apartment complex, they saw Skylar Neese climbing out of a window and getting into a White Sedan. However, this was just after midnight, not at 11:00 pm like Eddy had claimed and there was no footage of them returning later.
On the 7th of July, Sheila Eddy and her mother helped canvas the neighbourhood for Skylar. Rachel Shoaf, who came from a religious family, went away to a Catholic Summer camp for two weeks.
During this time, rumours started to swirl that Skylar had gone to a house party the night she disappeared and while there, overdosed on heroin. People at the party supposedly panicked and disposed of the body. Police ruled this theory out very quickly as just a rumour.
Investigators had suspicions about Eddy and Shoaf. They felt they knew more than what they were saying, but had no proof of any involvement on their part. Skylar was still missing and there was no indication of her whereabouts. Though people called the trio of friends inseparable, social media (particularly Twitter) showed some potential tension between the friends. On July 4th, two days before she disappeared, Skylar tweeted ‘sick of being at fucking home. Thanks “friends”, love hanging out with you all too.’ and the following day, one day before she disappeared, ‘You doing shit like that is why I can NEVER completely trust you.’
In the months following Skylar’s disappearance, Eddy and Shoaf carried on as normal. They were posting to Twitter about mundane things and not really seeming that upset that their best friend was missing. On 5th November 2012, 4 months after Skylar’s disappearance, Sheila Eddy tweeted ‘no one on this earth can handle me and Rachel if you think you can you’re wrong.’ Their peers had also begun accusing the two of them of murdering Skylar and that it wouldn’t be long until they were caught.
Investigators were interviewing the two girls a lot to try to get any information they could from them. On 28th December 2012, Patricia Shoaf, Rachel’s mother, called 911 frantic. She said her daughter was out of control, streaming and hitting them. Rachel Shoaf was having a nervous breakdown and was committed to a local psychiatric hospital.
On 3rd January 2013, after being discharged from the hospital, Rachel Shoaf confessed to police that both she and Sheila Eddy had stabbed Skylar to death and buried her body. The two had planned the murder in advance, agreeing that they should kill Skylar just before Shoaf left for Summer camp. Shoaf said they lured Skylar out of her home under the guise of driving around town getting high, as they had done together previously. They went to some woods just across the state line in Pennsylvania. They attacked Skylar “on three”, stabbing her, and when she managed to get away, they stabbed her in the knee so she couldn’t run again. Skylar had been stabbed to death by people she thought were her friends.
When investigators asked Shoaf why they had killed her, she simply said “We didn’t like her”. Shoaf agreed to take police to where she and Eddy left Skylar’s body, but she couldn’t remember the exact spot and the area was covered in snow which made it hard for the investigators. They later located her body, but it wasn’t until 13 March 2013, that police officially announced they had found Skylar’s body.
Although Shoaf had confessed, Eddy carried on as normal. On the day police announced they found Skylar’s body Sheila Eddy tweeted ‘rest easy Skylar, you’ll ALWAYS be my bestfriend. i miss you more than you could ever know.’ and ‘worst day of my whole life’. Then, ominously, on 30 March 2013, she tweeted ‘we really did go on three.’ corroborating the story Shoaf told investigators that they had stabbed Skylar “on three”.
During the investigation, police discovered that the car Skylar had been seen getting into on the night she disappeared belonged to Sheila Eddy. They also found blood on the car that turned out to be Skylar’s.
On the 1st of May 2013, Sheila Eddy was arrested in a restaurant car park and charged with murder. Rachel Shoaf handed herself in to the police and was also charged with murder. They were both charged as adults.
Throughout the investigation, the motive for the murder was always questioned. There were rumours that Rachel Shoaf and Sheila Eddy had some kind of sexual relationship, with Skylar supposedly detailing a time when she witnessed the two of them making out. Some people theorise that the two killed Skylar over fears she would tell everyone about their relationship.
Approximately 18 months after the murder on 24th of January 2014, Sheila Eddy pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after just 25 years. Rachel Shoaf was sentenced to 30 years in prison, a lighter sentence, believed to be because of her cooperation. Both women are currently serving their time at the Lakin Correctional Center in West Virginia.
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/teenage-killers-eerie-tweets-stabbing-friend-death/story?id=64541231
https://www.grunge.com/382849/the-tragic-murder-of-skylar-neese/
https://genwhypod.com/pages/skylar-neese
https://mycrimelibrary.com/rachel-shoaf-and-shelia-eddy-teen-killers/