What Happened to Skylar Neese? Teenagers Plot and Kill Their Best Friend
When Skylar was in second grade, she started meeting some new friends, and one of her new friends was Shelia Eddy, and they became very close, and eventually Skylar and Shelia added a third person to the group.
During their freshman year, they met Rachel Shoaf. To a lot of people, it seemed like nothing could ever break their friendship apart, but over time, they started having some intergroup jealousy, and by the summer of 2012, Shelia and Rachel were really close, and Skylar definitely felt a little bit left out. So it was clear that Skylar was hurt.
On July 6th, Friday, at about 12.30 am, Skylar snuck out of her house through her bedroom window. There is a surveillance video that shows Skylar leaving the apartment complex at 12.31 am. Footage shows Skylar walking through the parking lot across the street to where a car is waiting, and then she gets into the backseat, and they drive away.
CCTV footage of Skylar sneaking out:
That morning, Mary and Dave, Skylar’s parents, got ready for work like normal, and they assumed that Skylar was in her room. She said that she was going to bed early the night before, but when Dave got to her door, he realized that the door was locked, so he started knocking, calling for her, and she didn’t answer. And when he didn’t hear anything, he instantly just got a wave of fear; he heard absolutely nothing. So he went outside to the window so he could look, and when he got there, he saw the small bench on the ground from when Skylar had snuck out, and he saw that the window was open. He realized Skylar clearly had snuck out.
So he calls her friends and sees if they know where she is, so he calls Shelia, and she said that she had talked to Skylar around midnight the night before, but she hadn’t heard from her since. And at this point they said that the panic set in for both of them, truly so, of course they contacted the police right away; they contacted Star City Police to report Skylar missing.
And not too long into all of this panic, Shelia calls back, and she admits that she and Rachel picked up Skylar at 11.00pm, which isn’t true because the footage showed 12.31am.
When asked to shelia, where is Skylar? Where did she go?, Shelia said. Skylar insisted they drop her off at the end of the street so that her parents couldn’t hear her back sneaking in.
At this point, Dave, Mary, and the police have not seen the footage of Skylar leaving at 12,31, so they went to the landlord, and he took them to his office right away, and they started looking at the surveillance footage. They watched the footage of Skylar leaving; at this point they didn’t know who this vehicle belonged to; the footage was so blurry, and they thought that was an SUV.
Rachel and Shelia were devastated about Skylar being gone; they were very concerned. According to Mary and Dave, Sheila was most concerned; they said that she would call them often and ask for updates on the investigation, saying over and over again that, I wish I had some information; I wish I could help.
So luckily the West Virginia state police and the FBI joined the search, and FBI agent Morgan Spurlock and Star City police officer Jessica Colbank interviewed Shelia just days after Skylar was first reported missing.
Now what’s really interesting is that as soon as the investigators did her first interview on Shelia, she instantly felt like something was wrong. Her first read of Shelia was that she was a narcissist; not only that, she described her as “wrong.” On the other hand, Rachel had gone on a boat trip with her mother on July 6th, the day that Skylar had gone missing. Her mother was on the trip, and her mom’s friend was on the trip, and they both noticed a really gnarly cut on her ankle and thought it was kind of strange.
This took very long than expected to know that Shelia never picked up Skylar at 11.pm, so they tried to pull security footage from other places that Sheila said that they had gone over that hour when they picked her up. When they saw footage from a convenience store that they were at, they realized that the car that had picked up Skylar at 12.30 am was actually Shelia’s Toyota Camry.
Now that they know that Shelia and Rachel were lying, they couldn’t figure out why. However, they kept bringing Shelia and Rachel in, kept asking them questions, and tried to get a real read on them, but their story never changed; they were very much in sync about what they said was happening that night.
So by the winter of 2012, police were starting to get a little closer to the truth. Using other security camera footage from the various locations, they were able to piece together the fact that the girls had driven to Blacksville the night that Skylar disappeared, which Helia and Rachel had both originally denied, but their phone records show that the girls were texting shelia when they claimed that she was with them, which makes no sense, until one interview where Rachel told them something completely different.
She claimed that Skylar had run off into the woods that night; she said that she and Shelia tried to run after her and tried to find her, but she was gone. So it all really stared to make a picture here and put the pieces together of what may have happened, but they knew something happened, and the girls don’t want to admit that.
Rachel’s parents were divorced at that time; they ended up moving back together for Rachel’s sake because Rachel’s father lived close to Shelia; that’s how concerned they were. Her parents could see Rachel stressing out and having anxiety, and they knew something happened to Skylar that Rachel knew. They took Rachel to the chestnut Ridge Center, which is a psychiatric facility in Morgantown, West Virginia. Rachel was released five days later, and as soon as she was released, her parents took her right to their lawyer’s office. And there she finally met up with the officers, and after seeing Rachel’s demeanor after all this and how burned out she was, the police felt like they were going to get the truth from her.
The police start interviewing Rachel, thinking this is going to last a while and gonna be difficult to get the full story out of her, but only a few questions in, and Rachel shocks them all by saying, “We stabbed her.”. Rachel and Shelia stabbed Skylar Reese to death.
She told them how Skylar and Helia usually spent their spring break together, and at their sophomore year they went a week in Myrtle Beach. But according to Rachel on this trip, the girls had fought the entire time, and when she got back, Shelia complained to Rachel about how bad Skylar was, how much she didn’t like her anymore, and how she had to go. So it turns out Shelia was the one driving the Toyota Camry that picked her up that night, and Rachel was sitting in the passenger seat.
They drove downward towards Blacksville in Montgomery County, right on the Pennsylvania border, which is 25 minutes away from Star City. Shelia drove them down this winding road; this was the route they often come to to smoke weed, so this wasn’t unusual for Skylar at all, and when they got near their smoking spot, Skylar realized that she had left the lighter in the car, so she turned around to get it, and suddenly Shelia counted out “one,” “two,” and “three,” and on three they both pulled out kitchen knives and started stabbing Skylar. and they let her slowly bleed out in front of them; they stood back and watched her slowly die. And according to Rachel, all Skylar could say before she died was, “Why?”. Rachel then talked about how much they had premeditated about this; they had packed up all the gear that they would need in their car, including paper towels, rags, bleach, clean towels, and even a shovel; they had all this in their car trunk.
You’re not going to believe this. That morning, Shelia posted on Twitter, “Always keep your cool.” When Rachel talked all about this, the officers were completely shocked, so they also asked her, “Why?” to which Rachel said that they killed her because they didn’t like her, and Rachel claims that it was as simple as that.
January 4th, 2013, police got a warrant to seize every knife inside Shelia’s house, and they looked into her car and they found blood in her trunk, but just after the snow melted in that area, police were able to search that wooded area that Rachel had told them about. They found a body and did testing to make sure that this was really Skylar’s body, but this was indeed Skylar’s body. She was just left out there on the ground by her friends.
Now it was official; Skylar wasn’t missing; she was murdered.
She was still trying to maintain her innocence publicly. On Skylar’s birthday, Shelia posted:
https://twitter.com/_sheliiaa/status/311916259598036992
Rachel was doing these things too; even tough, she just confessed to the police about murdering Skylar. She wrote, “Rest in peace, baby. I love and miss you more than anything. May you finally have justice.”
On 1st April, 2013, a month before Shelia was arrested, she posted:
Was she confessing her crime?
Shelia turned herself in on May 1st, 2013 and pleaded guilty to 2nd degree murder. She was transferred from juvenile to adult status and officially pleaded to murder in the second degree by unlawfully, feloniously, willfully, maliciously, and intentionally causing the death of Skylar Neese by stabbing her and causing her fatal injuries, and the state of Virginia stated a sentence of 20 years for her.
Meanwhile, they got the results back from Shelia’s car that the blood in there did belong to Skylar Neese.
On the day Shelia got arrested, she was just chilling at the cracker barrel with her mom Tara. Police showed up at the restaurant, waited for them to come out, and as soon as they did, Tara and Sheila were approached at the parking spot, and she acted completely shocked and very upset.
She ended up deciding to pursue a plea deal instead, and in return for this, the state of Pennsylvania agreed to not press additional charges on top of what she already had.
In January 2014, Shelia did plead guilty to first-degree murder, and 18 months after she murdered Skylar Neese in cold blood, Shelia was sentenced to life in prison, but with mercy, which means she will be up for parole in 15 years.
Rachel, on the other hand, did apologize to the family on the court:
Her family also releases a public apology through their lawyer, but Dave and Mary do not accept it.
The pair have been in Lakin Correctional Center in Mason County since they turned 18 in 2014.
Rachel was up for parole. 10 years later, on May 9, 2023, the West Virginia State Parole Board confirmed to 12 News that Rachel Shoaf, who was denied parole,.
Shoaf will be eligible for parole again in June 2025. Her release date is April 30, 2028.
Eddy is serving a life sentence with mercy for first-degree murder and will be eligible for parole in 2028.
