#17: Real Life Mean Girls - Screenshots, Secrets, and a Locked Bedroom Door

Full Episode Transcript

Friday, July 6th, 2012.

It began like any ordinary summer morning in Star City, West Virginia.

Dave and Mary Neese were going about their day, unaware that by nightfall, everything they thought they knew about their world—about their daughter—would begin to fall apart. From that day on, life would be split into two distinct halves: before, and after.

The night before, their daughter Skylar had worked her regular evening shift at Wendy’s. She clocked out at ten, came home like she always did, and slipped into her routine. She dropped her uniform off for Mary to wash. She told her father goodnight—“Love you, Daddy,” she said—as he drifted to sleep on the couch.

Then she went into her room. Locked the door. That was that.

Skylar was fifteen, but she carried herself like someone much older. Responsible. Self-sufficient. She didn’t get into trouble. She didn’t cause worry.

The next afternoon, Dave walked down the hallway and knocked on her door. He needed her to give him a ride back to work. Skylar never missed a chance to get behind the wheel. But this time, there was no answer.

He called her name. Knocked louder. Still nothing.

Maybe she’d stepped out. Maybe she’d gone shopping with a friend. That was his first thought. But then something gave him pause.

The door had been locked. From the inside.

He went to the hallway closet, pulled out a wire coat hanger, and jimmied the old lock—something every tenant in the building had learned to do over time. Within seconds, the door gave way.

The bed was made. Her phone charger was still plugged in. The room was quiet. Too quiet.

Skylar wasn’t there.

No note. No sign of a struggle. Just a sealed bedroom and a creeping sense that whatever had happened—it hadn’t been an accident.

Dave stood alone in the silence, staring into the empty room. And somewhere deep in his gut, he knew something wasn’t right.

In Star City, West Virginia, nestled in the shadow of Morgantown’s rolling hills, the Neese family led a quiet life. Their world wasn’t extravagant. It didn’t need to be. Because for Mary and Dave Neese, everything began with a moment that might have seemed trivial to someone else.

It was outside a local bar where Dave—a DJ known around town—was nursing a shattered jaw after being jumped by three men. Mary, a stranger at the time, saw the crowd and pushed her way through. She didn’t ask if she could help. She told him she was taking him to the hospital.

Dave couldn’t speak. But he could listen. And while his jaw was wired shut, he was certain of one thing: Mary was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He scribbled a note asking her to the movies. Mary, who’d once had a crush on the DJ, couldn’t believe it was happening. They started dating. He still couldn’t talk but she didn’t care.

In the months that followed, their bond deepened. Mary described it as effortless, as if she’d always known he was the one. That certainty only grew stronger when she found out she was pregnant.

At first, she was terrified. She worried she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. But all of that disappeared when their daughter, Skylar Annette Neese, came into the world on February 10, 1996. Mary later called it “instant love.”

They never became wealthy. There were no family estates or expensive trips. The Neeses lived paycheck to paycheck. But in their home, love was constant.

Skylar grew up in a household where laughter and debate were daily staples. Mary held the family together with humor and resolve. Dave and Skylar were inseparable—best friends who turned the mundane into play. One of their favorite games was “Baby Body Slam.” He’d toss her gently onto the bed, her laughter echoing through the house.

She was fearless. Dave saw it early. On a trip to the beach, Skylar, despite not knowing how to swim, ran straight into the ocean.

That trip was only possible because of an accident.

A few days before Thanksgiving in 1999, Mary had just dropped Skylar off at daycare when a lumber truck in front of her suddenly reversed. She laid on the horn, tried to back away, but there wasn’t time. The truck climbed onto the hood of her car. The airbags deployed, snapping her left forearm.

When she woke up, blood was dripping down her arm. Her hand hung limply, and she had to lift it with the other just to move it. She was alone. Skylar wasn’t in the car. That was all that mattered.

The injury required surgeries, metal plates, and months of recovery. Eventually, her arm returned to near full strength. The insurance company covered her medical bills—and offered a settlement. It wasn’t a fortune. But it was enough for a modest trip to Ocean City the following summer. For a family that rarely had anything extra, that meant the world.

At home, Skylar’s sharp mind and strong sense of fairness kept everyone on their toes. She was never one to let an argument slide, even when it came to football.

Dave, a passionate West Virginia University fan, was watching a game one day when Skylar came into the room. She saw him yelling at the screen, furious at a player’s mistake.

She asked him calmly, “Daddy, what do you care? So they lose. Why get all worked up about it?”

He tried to defend himself, citing a missed play. She didn’t back down.

“How does that affect you?” she asked. “How is your life going to change if they lose? Or if they win, for that matter?”

Dave didn’t have an answer. He brushed her off, told her to go upstairs. But the question stuck. Something about the way she framed it unsettled him. Slowly, he started watching the games differently. More detached. Less angry.

That was Skylar. She didn’t just speak her mind—she made you think. Sometimes it stung. But often, it changed you.

The Neeses’ lives were shaped by resilience, love, and a daughter who never let the people around her grow stagnant. Skylar wasn’t content with the surface of things. She saw deeper. And she expected others to do the same.

They had no idea then just how much her presence, her fire, and her convictions would come to define not only their family, but the community they lived in.

Shelia Rae Eddy was an only child. Her mother, Tara Eddy-Clendenen, raised her alone in the small, economically depressed town of Blacksville after divorcing Shelia’s father in 2000. Greg Eddy had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car crash that left him permanently disabled. He wasn’t always dependable but he never stopped loving Shelia. He was known to show up at the golf course asking for a “sodie pop” for his daughter, still talking about her like she was a little girl.

Tara did what she could. She struggled financially, but worked hard to become an accountant. Neighbors described Shelia in different ways—some said she was quiet, others found her strange. One even recalled hearing Shelia threaten her own mother. Her cousin believed her parents were permissive. There were signs of trouble early on but they were easy to dismiss.

In 2010, when Shelia was 16, everything changed. Tara remarried, this time to Jim Clendenen, a coal mine foreman. The family moved to nearby Morgantown, and with that came a new life: manicured nails, straightened hair, expensive clothes. Shelia was given the world she’d never had in Blacksville.

But Shelia’s most important connection wasn’t new.

She’d known Skylar Neese since the second grade. They’d first met at The Shack Neighborhood House—a community center just outside of Morgantown—spending their summers swimming, winters at each other’s homes. Their mothers were close in age and had known each other as teenagers.

Now, they were starting high school together at UHS and Shelia was ecstatic.

To outsiders, Shelia was boy-crazy and sharp-tongued. She leaned on charm and flirtation. At her previous school, she’d been popular. At UHS, she was relatively unknown. But with Skylar by her side, she found her footing again.

Skylar’s cousin, Kyle Michaud, had already taken a disliking to Shelia years earlier. He called her a “bad seed.” Whether he saw something others missed—or just didn’t like her—it’s hard to say. But Kyle wasn’t the only one. At UHS, many students described Shelia as the least liked of the trio.

That trio was completed by Rachel Shoaf.

Rachel came from different circumstances. Her childhood had been more stable—at least financially. She was the daughter of Rusty and Patricia Shoaf. Rusty ran an upscale men’s clothing store in Morgantown until it folded. He had a son from a previous marriage and had been widowed before marrying Patricia.

Rachel was four when her parents divorced. From then on, she was raised primarily by her mother. Patricia was a single mom working in communications, known for helping other young mothers in the community. They were never wealthy, but Rachel grew up in comfort.

She was an anxious child at home, but nurturing with others. She loved to sing and act. Her favorite game, when she was younger, was playing Blue’s Clues on the family computer. As she got older, she began volunteering with the Special Olympics—where friends recalled she fiercely protected the kids she worked with.

Rachel didn’t grow up with Skylar or Shelia. Her family didn’t move in the same circles. But during their freshman year at University High School, the three girls were placed in the same class. From there, things moved quickly.

They became inseparable.

By the time Skylar Neese was fifteen, her world revolved around two people: Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf.

To those looking in from the outside, the friendship between the three seemed unremarkable—typical, even. They were inseparable. They laughed loudly, whispered behind textbooks, posted selfies with song lyrics as captions. They were almost always seen as a unit.

But under that polished surface, things were more complicated.

Skylar and Shelia's history stretched back nearly a decade. Their connection was familiar, deeply rooted.

When Shelia transferred to University High School in October 2010, it felt like a reunion. Both girls were thrilled. Shelia requested a class schedule that matched Skylar’s in full. It was a deliberate move—and one that drew them even closer.

Not long after, they met Rachel Shoaf. The three were placed together in a freshman class, and something clicked. Rachel was new to their dynamic, but it didn’t take long for her to fit in. And soon, they became what some teachers and classmates would later call a "package deal."

Each girl brought something different to the table.

Skylar was the achiever. She took honors classes, maintained strong grades, and had clear goals: a scholarship, college, law school. She was serious about her future. But she also had a quiet magnetism. Her friends described her as compassionate, sharp, and loyal to a fault. At home, she was affectionate and talkative, especially with her mother. She helped around the house, stayed up late talking about her dreams. Mary Neese later said her daughter had “a heart big enough for everybody.”

Shelia was confident and assertive. She’d been popular at her old school in Blacksville. At University High, she was starting from scratch. But she didn’t seem to mind. Her looks and sharp tongue drew attention. She knew how to work a room—or a classroom—and used flirtation to hold influence over people. Though she was bright and made good grades, classmates described her as dramatic and divisive. Rumors clung to her. Still, people gravitated toward her. Especially Skylar.

Rachel was the performer. She came from a more affluent background and had a talent for the spotlight. Singing. Acting. Leading youth events at her church. She volunteered regularly at the Special Olympics and was vocal about her Catholic faith. She came off as polite, disciplined, and soft-spoken. But in smaller groups, Rachel could be intense. She cared deeply about how others saw her—and, at times, seemed to lose herself in the personalities of the people she was around.

Together, they balanced each other out—at least on the surface.

Outside of school, they were often on the move. Driving around town. Smoking weed. Laughing at inside jokes. The joyrides gave them a sense of freedom. They’d park in empty lots, scroll through Twitter, or talk for hours about boys, their futures, their frustrations. Sometimes they’d drink at sleepovers, usually vodka. Shelia’s house was the preferred gathering place. Her mother, Tara, didn’t set many rules. She trusted the girls to take care of themselves. They used that space as their own. A little kingdom where they could be reckless without consequence.

Skylar, in particular, cherished the friendship. In a journal entry written for Honors English in September 2011, she described her feelings with unmistakable sincerity:

“I’m closer to Shelia than anyone I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine life without her.”

Of Rachel, she wrote:

“We’ve formed a bond that will last a lifetime. Without her, life would be dull.”

To Skylar, these weren’t passing friendships. They were central to her identity.

But the power within the trio wasn’t equally distributed.

Shelia had an undeniable pull. In one video posted online, the three girls are seen playing a game: “Which Way Would You Rather Die?” The camera captures the tone clearly—Shelia is directing, setting the terms. Rachel and Skylar echo each answer with near-simultaneous agreement. Their voices are lighter, almost performative, while Shelia’s is firm. She’s in control.

When Shelia got a car, that control only expanded. It was a gift from her mother and stepfather after she turned sixteen. With it, she gained mobility—and autonomy. She became the driver, in every sense of the word. Other teens speculated she used her car to manipulate situations. Deciding who got a ride. Where they’d go. When they’d leave. It was subtle, but unmistakable.

And Skylar began to change.

Her mother noticed it first. The girl who used to stay up late laughing in the kitchen had grown more irritable. She argued more. Her tone had shifted. She’d picked up on Shelia’s sarcasm, even using it against her parents. Mary Neese believed her daughter was trying to impress Shelia—trying to match her attitude, her confidence, her edge.

Still, Skylar held onto the friendship. She saw the best in people. She didn’t back away from those she loved, even when they started to drift.

But behind the scenes, tensions were beginning to build.

Shelia was becoming more erratic. There were small things. She once manipulated a classmate into stealing test answers from a teacher’s desk. Not for advantage—but for amusement. It was a power play. And Rachel went along with it.

As the months wore on, Skylar’s place in the trio began to feel less secure. And while she may have sensed the shift, she didn’t know how deep it went—or what it would eventually lead to.

For now, the three girls remained close. Laughing. Posting. Sharing every corner of their lives online and in person.

But the tone was starting to shift. And Skylar, unknowingly, was moving closer to a breaking point.

It was a warm spring night in Cheat Lake, West Virginia. The kind of evening that lures teenagers out of their homes and into the illusion of freedom. No destination. No plan. Just the pull of the open road and the thrill of doing something they weren’t supposed to.

Skylar Neese had orchestrated the outing.

She called it joyriding—driving around, music turned up, windows down, tweeting from the back seat, passing a joint between laughs. She and Shelia Eddy had done it many times before. Their parents didn’t know.

There was just one problem: neither of them could drive at that moment.

Skylar reached out to a nineteen-year-old acquaintance named Floyd Pancoast. She convinced him to give them a ride. Floyd brought along an eighteen-year-old friend, Brian Moats, who ended up behind the wheel. Once they had the car, they picked up Shelia and Rachel Shoaf. Shelia lived just a few minutes from Skylar’s apartment. By the time they pulled away, there were five of them in the car.

As they cruised downhill through Star City, they weren’t thinking about the curfew. But Officer Mike Teets was on patrol. And he noticed the vehicle moving too quickly.

He pulled them over.

Star City enforced a strict curfew—10:00 p.m. for anyone under the age of eighteen. When Officer Teets checked IDs, he immediately knew what he was dealing with. The two young men—Pancoast and Moats—were released. They were legal adults. The girls were not.

Officer Teets drove Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar to the Star City police station. From there, he began making calls.

Rachel and Shelia were prepared. They hadn’t given their mothers’ numbers. Rachel claimed her mother might become violent. Shelia thought her father would be more lenient. So Officer Teets called the fathers instead.

Both men arrived, quietly collected their daughters, and slipped them back into their homes. Neither Tara Eddy-Clendenen nor Patricia Shoaf found out what had happened that night.

Skylar didn’t have the same option.

Her family didn’t own a home phone. Mary and Dave Neese didn’t have cell phones—only Skylar did, and only for emergencies. So Officer Teets drove her home himself.

When he pulled up outside the apartment, Mary and Dave were waiting.

Skylar stepped out of the patrol car nearly hysterical.

She was inconsolable, not because of the scolding she expected from her parents, but because she believed Rachel was going to be beaten. “It’s all my fault!” she sobbed. She admitted she’d planned the whole thing, that the joyride had been her idea. Her guilt was raw and immediate.

Mary tried to cut through the panic. She warned her daughter of what could have happened—of what teenage boys were capable of. “What if they hurt you?” she asked. “What if they raped you? Killed you?”

Skylar didn’t argue. But her focus remained on Rachel. “Rachel’s going to be in such trouble,” she kept repeating. Over and over.

It was a side of Skylar her parents hadn’t seen before—this level of self-reproach, this fear for someone else’s safety. It hit Mary and Dave hard.

She had already punished herself. That much was clear.

So they let it go.

There was no grounding. No confiscated phone. No restrictions. Just a long talk and a silent, mutual decision that the lesson had been learned.

The Neeses believed Skylar had internalized the risk. That she’d come through this shaken, but smarter.

What they didn’t know—what no one knew—was that this night, this one moment of rule-breaking, would later stand out as a kind of turning point. Not because it saved Skylar from punishment.

But because it offered a rare, unfiltered glimpse into how deeply she cared. How instinctively she blamed herself. And how much power these friendships held over her.

Friday, July 6th, 2012.

For Dave and Mary Neese, the morning began like any other. But by the end of the day, their world would be split into two parts—before, and after.

Skylar had worked her usual shift at Wendy’s the night before. She clocked out at ten, came home, and went through her routine. Dropped her dirty uniform off for Mary to wash. Said goodnight to her father—“Love you, Daddy”—as he dozed off on the couch. Then she went into her bedroom and locked the door.

It was nothing unusual. Skylar was responsible, self-sufficient, fifteen going on twenty-five.

The next afternoon, Dave knocked on her bedroom door. He wanted her to drive him back to work. If Skylar knew the car would be available, she never wasted time. But this time, there was no answer.

He called her name. Still nothing.

His first thought was that maybe she’d gone shopping with a friend. But then he paused. He remembered something—something that didn’t add up.

Her door had been locked. From the inside.

He retrieved a coat hanger from the hallway closet. The locks in the apartment were old and easy to pop. Within seconds, the door opened.

The bed was made. The room was empty.

There was no note. No sign of Skylar.

Dave’s unease deepened. He picked up the phone and called Mary. She told him to stay calm. Maybe Skylar had stepped out and accidentally locked the door behind her. But Dave’s instinct said otherwise. Something wasn’t right.

He didn’t wait. He took the day off from work, telling his supervisor he had to find his daughter.

He stepped out onto the small balcony to smoke, hoping it would help him think. That’s when he noticed something—something that made the bottom drop out of his stomach.

A small black vanity bench sat just beneath Skylar’s bedroom window. It was positioned carefully, angled toward the wall. Dave walked down to get a closer look. The screen was off the window, leaning against the building. The glass pane was open.

That’s when it hit him.

“Oh, my God. She snuck out.”

He called Mary again. This time, there was no calming him down. She left work immediately. And the pieces started falling into place—too late. Mary remembered noticing bruises on Skylar’s thighs recently. She’d brushed them off at the time. But now, it was obvious: Skylar had been climbing out the window.

Dave reached for the phone and called Shelia. If anyone knew where Skylar was, it would be her.

Shelia sounded casual. She said she’d spoken to Skylar around midnight, but hadn’t seen her since. Nothing out of the ordinary.

By now, Mary was home too. They waited, hoping she’d come back, that this would all turn out to be a misunderstanding.

Then Wendy’s called.

Skylar hadn’t shown up for her shift.

Mary’s voice shook. She told Dave to call 911.

Officer Bob McCauley arrived at the apartment at 4:41 p.m.

Soon after, Shelia called again—this time to tell Mary “the whole truth.” She and Rachel had picked Skylar up around 11:00 p.m. the night before for a joyride. They’d driven around for a bit, and then dropped her off near the end of the street around 11:45, far enough from the building so Skylar could sneak back in without waking her parents.

The story was plausible. Skylar had done it before. She was willful, independent, and headstrong. Mary and Dave believed it.

But Mary wasn’t satisfied. She asked their landlord, Jim Gaston, if they could review the building’s surveillance tapes. Gaston agreed, and soon the group gathered: Dave, Mary, Officer McCauley, Shelia, and Shelia’s mother, Tara.

They fast-forwarded through the early morning footage.

At 12:31 a.m., Skylar appeared. She moved quickly across the parking lot toward a waiting vehicle. It was grainy, low-res. A blurry gray car. Skylar opened the back door and climbed in. There was no struggle. No hesitation. Whoever was inside, she knew them.

Shelia looked at the screen and said the car wasn’t hers. Hers was a silver Toyota Camry. She claimed she’d dropped Skylar off before midnight.

The theory formed quickly: Shelia and Rachel dropped Skylar off. She must’ve snuck out again. Someone else—someone in that second car—must have picked her up.

The Neeses clung to the idea that this was a runaway situation. Maybe she was hiding out with friends. Maybe she was angry and needed time.

But Dave couldn’t shake the dread. He said later that when he saw that footage—the quick walk, the silent climb into the car—it felt like he was watching his daughter disappear.

The car drove off into the dark.

And Skylar Neese was gone.

In the early days after Skylar Neese disappeared, the search felt like a united front. Neighbors, friends, and strangers came forward. Volunteers combed sidewalks, wooded paths, and creek beds. The hope was fragile—but it was still alive.

One of the first to offer support was Shelia Eddy.

On Saturday, July 7th, the day after Skylar vanished, Shelia and her mother, Tara Eddy-Clendenen, joined Mary and Dave Neese to canvas the neighborhood. They printed flyers. Knocked on doors. Walked the winding trail that ran along the river—an old railway bed now used for jogging and biking. Shelia clutched the posters as tightly as Tara held Mary’s hand.

At times, Shelia broke down in tears, hugging Mary like a sister. Tara promised they'd be back the next day. And the day after that. As long as it took.

To Mary, it was comforting. The girls had been inseparable for years. Seeing Shelia cry over her missing friend—clutching a pillow in Skylar’s room, sobbing into it like she belonged there—Mary didn’t think twice. She rubbed Shelia’s arm and told her it would be okay.

Shelia kept coming back. She asked questions—lots of them.

“What are the police saying now?”

“Did they find anything?”

“Any updates at all?”

And Mary answered. She answered every time.

Unbeknownst to the Neeses, Officer Jessica Colebank was beginning to look at Shelia with different eyes.

On July 8th, Officer Bob McCauley handed off the case. Star City PD needed someone full-time and Colebank, who’d just returned from two days off, took the file.

The contents gave her pause. The cell phone records were already in. They showed a tight web—most of Skylar’s activity centered on just two names: Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy.

Colebank had a reputation. She wasn’t a detective by title, but she had the instincts for it. She studied suspects carefully. Paid attention to voice. To body language. To the cracks that formed when someone told a lie twice.

And Shelia’s story, from the beginning, didn’t sit right.

“I found it hinky,” she later said.

To Colebank, this wasn’t a runaway. Something was off. And Shelia and Rachel were hiding it.

Still, the search continued.

On July 10th, Shelia went with her distant cousin, Crissy Swanson, and another friend to put up more flyers in Fairview. Crissy had made dozens of copies. They stapled them to poles, taped them to shop windows, covered the area in Skylar’s face.

They ran out of time before they ran out of flyers.

Later, Crissy found the extras in her trunk and couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

But something strange began to happen.

The posters kept vanishing.

At a grocery store in Sabraton, they were taken down repeatedly. The same thing happened at a local beauty salon. Mary’s sister, Carol Michaud, had asked a beautician to hang one up in the window. It was taped at all four corners. But not long after, it was gone.

The shop owner remembered something. That same day, Shelia and Tara had come in. Tara was getting Shelia’s hair highlighted.

Carol didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe Shelia took it down herself. Maybe Tara did it, trying to protect her daughter from the distress of seeing her friend’s face plastered everywhere.

But the effect was the same. Skylar’s name was being erased.

On July 12th, Skylar’s cousin, Rikki Woodall, posted on Facebook. She didn’t know Skylar personally. She’d never met Mary or Dave. But she wanted to help.

“She’s a wild one,” Rikki wrote, “so we’re hoping it’s just an extended teenage party break... but the thought of it being something else is terrifying.”

It was well-meant. But inaccurate. And it reflected something deeper—how easy it was to accept the version of Skylar she projected online, not the girl who still carried childhood stuffed animals in her backpack, who planned to become a lawyer, who adored her dog Lilu and hated injustice.

Her image had become a shadow of herself. Something edited. Sharpened. Distorted.

On Friday, July 13th, a new lead came in.

A girl matching Skylar’s description had been seen in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. She’d been spotted walking the boardwalk with a red-haired girl, alone and unaccompanied.

Mary and Dave didn’t hesitate. Their car wasn’t in the best shape, but they were ready to risk it.

Carol Michaud stepped in. She offered her own vehicle. The drive would take nearly nine hours. But if it meant finding Skylar—if there was even a chance—it was worth it.

Officer Colebank didn’t share their optimism. She’d seen Skylar’s digital footprints. The fighting between the three girls—Skylar, Shelia, Rachel—was unmistakable. Even if Skylar had left on her own, the situation was more complicated than it appeared.

She called Rachel.

Rachel was at church camp.

She claimed she didn’t even know Skylar was missing.

The lead turned out to be false. The girl in North Carolina was a runaway—but not Skylar.

When Mary and Dave returned home, the weight of it all hit them like a collapse.

Skylar’s phone was still at home. Her charger untouched. Her contact lenses. Her beloved dog.

She hadn’t planned to be gone for long.

Mary said it out loud for the first time on Sunday, July 15th.

“I don’t think we’re getting her back.”

Carol felt it too. It was as if something had settled—cold and silent—in all of them.

A feeling they couldn’t shake.

A certainty they didn’t want to name.

It had been nearly two weeks since Skylar Neese vanished through her bedroom window into the quiet West Virginia night. Her parents had plastered her photo across town, hoping someone had seen her, hoping she had simply run off for a few days and would come walking back through the front door.

But Officer Jessica Colebank, now lead investigator on the case, wasn’t hopeful.

She didn’t believe the neat, rehearsed version of events being handed to her. And she especially didn’t believe Shelia Eddy.

From the beginning, Colebank had sensed something was wrong. The story Shelia told didn’t hold together under even mild scrutiny. The details were too tidy. The timeline, too convenient. The tone of her voice, detached. Emotionally hollow.

Now it was time to speak to Rachel Shoaf, the other girl who, according to Shelia, had been with Skylar the night she disappeared.

That interview took place on Thursday, July 19, 2012.

By this point, Rachel had been home from church camp for several days. She had promised to visit the station to give her account. She never showed. So Colebank, accompanied by FBI Special Agent Morgan Spurlock, decided to go to her directly.

They arrived at the Shoaf residence, a modest split-level home in Morgantown. They were let inside by a neighbor, Kim Keener, after Rachel’s mother, Patricia Shoaf, was reached by phone and gave permission for the interview to proceed.

Inside the house, the setting was casual, but the tension was palpable.

Rachel sat in the upstairs living room across from Officer Colebank on the couch, while Agent Spurlock took a nearby chair. Several others—Rachel’s boyfriend Mikinzy Boggs, Patricia’s friend Kelly Kerns, and neighbor Kim Keener—were present in the house. They eventually stepped downstairs, giving the group some space. But not complete privacy.

Rachel's demeanor during the interview didn’t exactly match that of a panicked or distraught teenager. She wasn’t trembling. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t begging for her friend to be found. Instead, she looked irritated. She doodled absentmindedly on a notepad with a pencil. She avoided eye contact. She seemed bothered by the fact that she had to answer the same questions she had already discussed with others—particularly Shelia.

And yet, that’s precisely what raised red flags.

When asked to recount what happened the night Skylar disappeared, Rachel offered the same story Shelia had already told—almost word for word. According to her, she and Shelia had picked up Skylar around 11:00 p.m. on the night of July 5. The three girls had gone out for a ride, smoked a little weed, talked, drove around for a bit, and then, sometime around 11:45 p.m., Skylar became angry for reasons Rachel couldn’t clearly explain. Rachel said that Skylar demanded to be let out—not in front of her building, but at the end of the street on University Avenue, away from where her parents might hear the car pull up. That was the last time, Rachel said, that they saw her.

She claimed she wasn’t sure exactly where they’d driven during the ride. She said she had been “pretty messed up,” that she hadn’t been paying attention to the roads. She recalled maybe being on Patteson Drive, but emphasized they stuck to “side streets” to avoid police.

That detail struck Colebank as implausible.

Patteson Drive was one of the busiest roads in the area. If they were trying to avoid attention, they wouldn’t have taken that route. And Rachel’s inability to name a single street beyond that felt, to Colebank, like deliberate deflection. Especially when Rachel quickly added that Shelia was the driver, so she would know better.

Colebank had seen this pattern before. People who lie often try to stall. They answer questions with questions. They dodge specifics. They redirect. And they do it with rehearsed certainty that begins to unravel when pressure is applied.

Rachel’s tone, her body language, and her vague account all fell into that pattern.

Worse, she had already given Colebank a reason to doubt her.

Just days earlier, when Colebank tried contacting Rachel at church camp, Rachel claimed she didn’t even know Skylar was missing. For a girl supposedly so close to Skylar—part of a trio that had once seemed inseparable—that excuse didn’t add up. When Colebank asked if she’d seen or heard anything, Rachel brushed it off and suggested she call Shelia instead. She said Shelia was closer to Skylar than she was. Another red flag.

During the interview, Special Agent Spurlock pulled out a map of Star City in hopes that visual cues might help Rachel piece together where they had driven that night. He told her plainly that no one cared about the marijuana. What they cared about was Skylar.

Rachel gave little in return.

Downstairs, Rachel’s boyfriend, Mikinzy, listened to parts of the conversation and seemed confused. Afterward, he told Kim Keener that the story he’d always heard was that Skylar was dropped off by 11:45 p.m.—home safe. What Rachel was saying now didn’t exactly contradict that, but it had shifted in tone. There were new details, subtle changes, hesitations.

Keener, for her part, didn’t hold back. She said what no one else was yet willing to say out loud:

“You don’t sneak out and get back home at 11:45,” she told Mikinzy.

“You sneak out at 11:45.”

Rachel, according to those watching her that day, seemed to be unraveling. Not all at once—but slowly. She wasn’t just repeating a story. She was trying to maintain one.

For Colebank, the interview confirmed what she had suspected from the start. Rachel wasn’t telling the truth. Neither was Shelia.

Both girls were lying.

Colebank couldn’t prove it yet. But she could feel it in the way Rachel spoke. In the inconsistencies. In the rigid timeline that didn’t account for real life. In the absence of grief or confusion. There was no genuine panic. No emotion that matched the magnitude of what had supposedly happened to their best friend.

What stood out most wasn’t what Rachel said—but what she didn’t say. There was something hollow in her tone. A trace of shame. And beneath that, fear.

Not the kind of fear that comes from being in trouble.

The kind that comes from knowing something. Something awful.

When the interview ended, Officer Colebank left the Shoaf home with more questions than answers—but with one certainty in mind.

The truth wouldn’t come willingly.

She would need phone records. She would need data. She would need to trace their movements, message by message, location by location.

Because whatever happened to Skylar Neese that night, Rachel and Shelia were at the center of it.

And they weren’t talking.

Not yet.

By late summer 2012, the search for Skylar Neese had stretched into its second month. The flyers were still up around Morgantown—some torn, some faded, many quietly removed. Her parents hadn’t given up, but they were growing more exhausted by the day. Leads trickled in, few with any substance. Rumors churned through school hallways and social media feeds. Officer Jessica Colebank remained convinced that Shelia and Rachel weren’t telling the truth—but she wasn’t the only one watching closely anymore.

On July 16, 2012, the investigation into Skylar’s disappearance took on a new layer when Corporal Ronnie Gaskins and Senior Trooper Chris Berry from the West Virginia State Police became involved.

At first, they weren’t even focused on Skylar’s case.

Trooper Berry had been transferred to Morgantown to investigate a string of bank robberies, not missing persons. But the second robbery of the Huntington National Bank in Blacksville that day brought them into a larger network of local criminal activity—and unexpectedly, into Skylar’s orbit.

Gaskins, the more senior of the two, began to wonder if the two cases were connected. It sounded far-fetched at first, but in law enforcement, coincidences are always worth testing. What if, he asked Berry, Skylar had found out something she shouldn’t have? What if she had seen something—knew something—about the robberies? And what if someone had silenced her to keep it hidden?

On July 19, during a routine interview with a suspect in the bank robberies—Darek Conaway—Gaskins cracked a joke that changed the course of the case. He asked, casually, whether Darek had been trying to “hide a dead body.” The reaction that followed was anything but casual. Darek froze. His eyes widened. His pulse quickened. He became visibly shaken. It wasn’t just nerves, Gaskins noted—it was panic. Enough to raise suspicions that something larger might be going on.

Back at his residence, the troopers recovered a revolver that closely resembled the one used in the robberies. Darek was clearly still on the hook for those crimes—but to Gaskins and Berry, it was now impossible to rule out some connection to Skylar.

That shift in perspective brought them into Skylar’s case in earnest.

By August 27, they began working more directly with the Neeses. Gaskins and Berry visited Mary and Dave Neese at home, hoping to piece together what the girls closest to Skylar were either unable—or unwilling—to tell. They were shown Skylar’s diary, a collection of handwritten thoughts, hopes, worries, and frustrations. Trooper Berry later said that reading it made Skylar “come alive in his mind.” She stopped being just a photo on a missing person flyer. She became a person—a daughter, a friend, a girl with dreams. He became personally invested from that moment forward.

It was while reviewing the case materials—alongside Officer Colebank and FBI Special Agent Morgan Spurlock—that they finally uncovered something concrete. They went back to the surveillance footage from Skylar’s apartment complex.

Shelia and Rachel had both claimed that they picked Skylar up around 11:00 p.m. on July 5, and dropped her off again around 11:45 p.m.. It was the same story, repeated verbatim in both of their interviews.

But the camera didn’t agree.

On the tape, timestamped 12:31 a.m. on July 6, Skylar could be seen leaving her bedroom window. She moved quickly across the parking lot, climbed into the backseat of a blurred-out gray sedan, and shut the door behind her. There was no earlier footage showing a car pulling in at 11:00 p.m., no sign of an earlier drop-off at 11:45.

That meant one thing.

Shelia and Rachel had lied.

The car they claimed not to recognize was Shelia’s. A silver Toyota Camry. The exact make and model Shelia drove. Once Berry caught the detail, he walked Gaskins through it. Gaskins didn’t hesitate—he agreed. The realization hit hard. “The girls are definitely lying,” Berry said. It was a turning point—described later as a “major crack” in the stone wall the girls had built around their version of the truth.

But that wall was about to collapse from another direction entirely.

That same winter, Rachel Shoaf began to unravel.

Her emotional decline had started months earlier, not long after Skylar disappeared. Friends and school staff had noticed. She cried constantly. Her grades slipped. She used marijuana heavily. At home, she picked fights. At school, she withdrew. It became harder to pretend she was just “getting on with her life.”

And by the end of December 2012, her behavior turned violent.

On the evening of December 28, Rachel exploded.

It happened at her family’s home. Her mother, Patricia, said something that triggered her—something ordinary, but enough to light the fuse. Rachel snapped. She screamed at her parents in the driveway, “You’re ruining my life!”, then hit Patricia in the face hard enough to leave a bruise. She hurled a candelabra at the wall and stormed upstairs, barricading herself in her room. Behind the locked door, she kicked holes in the wood and shoved a dresser against it.

Then she screamed something that no parent can ignore:

“I’m going to kill myself!”

A neighbor overheard the threats and called 911.

When the state troopers arrived, they found Rachel back downstairs—exhausted, trembling, sitting on the couch. Her parents were shaken, both slightly injured in the chaos. Patricia, initially furious and asking for Rachel to be arrested, was advised by the troopers to consider a different path.

They recommended a mental hygiene hearing, a legal process that would allow her to be evaluated and treated.

The Shoafs agreed.

That night, Rachel was taken to Chestnut Ridge Center, a psychiatric hospital in Morgantown. She would stay there for five days, receiving care and evaluation. During that time, Shelia Eddy tried several times to visit her, but security turned her away each time. Patricia had made it clear: only family would be allowed in.

Whatever hold Shelia once had over Rachel—emotional, social, or otherwise—was starting to crack. Even Shelia could feel it.

Rachel was at her breaking point. And in just over a week, she would do the unthinkable.

By the start of December 2012, Corporal Ronnie Gaskins believed the investigation was closing in.

On December 1, both Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf were interviewed separately. It was during these interviews that Gaskins noticed a critical inconsistency. Rachel had changed her story. She no longer claimed they’d dropped Skylar off at the end of her street. This time, she said they took her to the Conaway house, a property in Blacksville. It was a small but significant shift—one that Shelia hadn’t been warned about.

Later that day, Shelia contacted her attorney, apparently panicked, and attempted to adjust her own version of events. She now claimed they’d dropped Skylar off at a house in Blacksville as well—but it didn’t match Rachel’s version. For Gaskins, that was confirmation. Rachel had altered the story without looping Shelia in. And Shelia, trying to catch up, had only revealed how deeply their narratives were unraveling. It was the moment Gaskins quietly moved both girls from "persons of interest" to official suspects.

And yet, the case remained open without definitive proof of what had happened to Skylar.

That changed in early January 2013.

On January 3, just five days after being released from Chestnut Ridge, Rachel Shoaf met with her attorney John Angotti, FBI Special Agent Rob Ambrosini, and Corporal Ronnie Gaskins. What began as another routine inquiry about Skylar’s disappearance turned into the most pivotal moment in the investigation.

Gaskins and Ambrosini began by gently revisiting old questions. Was there an accident? An overdose? Had something gone wrong that the girls were too afraid to admit?

Rachel didn’t stall this time.

She looked at the men in the room and said it out loud:

"We stabbed her."

She added:

"Shelia and I, we stabbed Skylar."

The room went silent.

Gaskins later said he had braced himself for this possibility—but hearing it out loud was still surreal. Rachel explained that the three of them had driven out to a remote spot. There was no argument. There was no confrontation. The act, she claimed, was planned. When asked why—why she and Shelia had done this—Rachel didn’t offer justification. She didn’t try to soften it. Her only explanation was:

“We just didn’t like her.”

The confession was chilling in its flatness.

Rachel showed them a three-inch scar on her ankle. She explained that Skylar had grabbed at her leg during the struggle, clawing at Rachel’s knife in a desperate attempt to survive. The scar was a small but crucial detail—corroboration—and it marked the turning point in the case.

In exchange for a plea deal, Rachel agreed to lead authorities to Skylar’s body.

The first attempt came the very same day—January 3—but thick snow covered the hills and back roads. Rachel tried to retrace her steps but couldn’t locate the exact spot. The landscape had changed. It had been almost six months since the murder. The cold made everything look different.

But by January 16, after the snow had melted, the search resumed.

Gaskins and an FBI cadaver dog team arrived at the GPS coordinates Rachel had provided. They began walking along a gravel road off a desolate stretch about twenty miles from Skylar’s home. The cadaver dog, trained to detect human remains beneath the surface, alerted within minutes.

Under a mound of rocks, tree branches, and tangled brush, investigators found the remains of a body.

The first items Gaskins recognized were pieces of clothing—a yellow print shirt and a pair of green shorts, stained and weathered but matching exactly what Skylar had been wearing the night she disappeared. The clothing had degraded from months of exposure, but the sight of them was unmistakable.

Then came the detail that struck everyone at the scene cold: Skylar’s head was missing.

They would later confirm that animals had scattered parts of her remains in the months since the killing, but in that moment, the scene was haunting. The violence of what had happened—the casual cruelty of it—was finally visible.

Two months later, on March 13, 2013, the U.S. Attorney’s Office made it official. The body found in the woods had been positively identified as Skylar Neese, based on DNA evidence processed by the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

And even then, there was more.

On March 29, Gaskins returned to the crime scene with First Sergeant Chad Tierney. They scanned the area again, hoping to find what was still missing. Within minutes, Gaskins spotted something pale catching the light. It was Skylar’s skull, lying just feet from where the rest of her remains had been discovered.

It hadn’t been buried.

It had simply been missed.

Gaskins would later say that finding it was strangely easy, and that fact disturbed him more than he could explain.

The full truth was finally surfacing.

Rachel had confessed. Skylar’s body had been found. The forensic evidence aligned. But one question still lingered—and it would follow the case long after the legal process played out:

Why?

At first, they were nearly inseparable. Skylar Neese, Shelia Eddy, and Rachel Shoaf had formed what seemed like a tight-knit trio—a typical teenage friendship, marked by inside jokes, shared secrets, and constant texting. But over time, what began as closeness turned into conflict. As the school year progressed, their dynamic shifted. According to those who knew them, the friendship began to unravel under the weight of tension, jealousy, and hostility. What had once been a bond now bred mistrust and isolation.

Early signs of the fracture began appearing by late summer of 2011. Skylar and Shelia in particular had started arguing regularly, with many of these disputes spilling over into public view on social media. The fights were often cryptic to outsiders but deeply personal to the girls involved. Friends noticed a marked increase in emotional instability—crying spells, impulsive behavior, and self-harm. Marijuana use also intensified during this period, and the girls were reprimanded on more than one occasion by school officials.

A particularly troubling moment occurred during a sleepover in August 2011, held at Rachel’s home. All three girls had been drinking vodka. At some point that night, while Skylar was still in the room, Shelia and Rachel engaged in sexual activity. According to later accounts, Skylar was trapped—unable to leave the bedroom—and the situation quickly escalated into a loud, volatile argument. The noise was so disruptive that Rachel’s mother had to intervene. In the aftermath, Skylar wrote about what she had witnessed in her diary. She expressed discomfort, particularly about Shelia’s shifting attention toward Rachel. For Skylar, it was yet another indication that she was being left out—sidelined in a friendship that had once made her feel important.

Over the following months, the sense of exclusion deepened. Skylar began describing herself as a “third wheel.” Friends like Amorette Hughes noticed that Skylar seemed more withdrawn, frequently expressing frustration about being ignored or mocked. Rachel and Shelia, at times, would wear matching outfits. They shared their own inside jokes. Skylar’s temper grew shorter. Her tweets became more aggressive. One read: “Yet ANOTHER reason to fucking hate you. You’re realllly starting to push it. #idareyou to give me one more.” Friends like Daniel Hovatter would later recall hearing “really nasty fights” between Shelia and Skylar, with Rachel often caught in the middle, rarely intervening.

By the fall of sophomore year, the tension wasn’t just social—it was drifting into something more disturbing. During one of their biology classes, Shelia casually turned to a classmate and asked, “Hey, do you know how to dispose of a body?” Rachel, sitting beside her, reportedly leaned over and whispered, “Shhh. No names.” Not long after, Shelia turned her attention to the teacher and asked, seemingly out of nowhere, what kind of acid could dissolve a human body. According to Rachel’s later confession, this was when the idea of killing Skylar first emerged—not as a concrete plan, but as a concept. Something theoretical. A disturbing what-if that both girls entertained more seriously than they admitted at the time.

Skylar was not unaware of the shift in tone. She had been told by Nick Tomaski that Shelia and Rachel were making violent jokes about her. When confronted, the girls framed it as a game—just playing “Would You Rather,” and making dark jokes about death. Skylar tried to laugh it off. But her social media posts told a different story.

On September 6, 2011, she tweeted, “I’d tell the whole school all the shit I have on everyone, which is a lottttt #1f[CouldGetAwayWithIt].” That line—cryptic and charged—was interpreted later as a warning. Skylar, who had seen and heard more than most of her classmates realized, was signaling that she could expose secrets. Those who knew her believe this tweet was directed specifically at Shelia and Rachel—particularly regarding the incident at the sleepover and the growing sexual tension between the two.

By spring of 2012, the idea of murder no longer seemed like a joke, at least not to Rachel. She confided in classmate Wendy Evans that she “couldn’t stand Skylar” and believed Skylar would “blackmail us and tell all our secrets if we stop being friends with her.” At the end of the conversation, Rachel said quietly, “At this point, I wouldn’t mind if she died.”

The final shift occurred in June 2012, during a family beach vacation. Skylar had joined Shelia’s family for their annual trip, and by all accounts, the tension between the girls reached a breaking point during those few days. The exact nature of the conflict has never been confirmed, though it’s been speculated that a sexual advance was made and rejected, triggering the fallout. What is known is that when they returned to Morgantown, Shelia told Rachel, flatly: “Skylar has to die. Now.”

From that moment on, the plan was no longer theoretical.

Shelia and Rachel began researching methods. They debated whether to shoot her, stab her, or dispose of her in some other way. They looked up techniques for severing the jugular vein, believing it would bring a quick death. They talked about acid baths and feeding the body to pigs, before settling on a spot they both knew well: a secluded patch of land behind Shelia’s father’s property in Brave, Pennsylvania, where they had often gone to smoke marijuana. It was familiar, private, and remote.

They chose knives because neither girl knew how to use a gun. Rachel stole a shovel from her father’s house and placed it in the trunk of the car. Shelia brought two kitchen knives, hiding them under her hoodie. They packed a makeshift cleanup kit—bleach, Handi Wipes, paper towels, and clean clothes—in case something went wrong.

By the end of June, the plan was fully in motion. The arguments, the resentment, the sense of betrayal—it had all curdled into something irreversible.

All that remained was for them to choose a night.

And for Skylar to say yes.

July 6, 2012.

Skylar Neese agreed to go out with Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf that night under the impression it would be like so many of their past late-night drives—just the three of them, smoking, laughing, and venting about whatever was weighing on them. Her original plans had changed; the church camp she was set to attend had been postponed due to a violent derecho that had passed through the region. With the weather cleared and a free night ahead, Skylar saw an opportunity to unwind before Rachel left town again. She spent the evening texting with friends, including Eric Finch, unaware of what was waiting for her just beyond the city limits.

That night, she also appeared to be upset with one of the girls. At 10:48 p.m., she posted a vague but pointed message on Twitter: “you doing shit like that is why I will NEVER completely trust you.” No one knew at the time how deeply that line would resonate in hindsight.

At 12:31 a.m., Skylar climbed out of her bedroom window and quietly moved a small vanity bench she used to help lower herself from the sill. She stashed it around the corner of the apartment building and then walked toward the waiting silver Toyota Camry parked just out of view. There was no hesitation in her step, no indication of alarm. She got into the back seat without incident. It was Shelia’s car, and the people inside weren’t strangers.

The three girls set off into the early morning darkness. As they left the city limits, a State Police cruiser briefly appeared on the road ahead. Knowing they were underage and carrying marijuana, Shelia turned the car around, taking a different route to avoid being seen. They joked and laughed, outwardly calm. But inside, two of them already knew how the night would end. As one later put it, their thoughts in that moment were chillingly in sync: You have no idea, Skylar. No idea at all.

They headed north on I-79, took the Mount Morris exit, and drove west on Route 7 toward Blacksville. From there, they turned onto Morris Run Road—a narrow, rural stretch that cut through woods and hills, still scarred from the recent storm. It was a place all three knew well. They had smoked there before. Skylar had no reason to feel uneasy.

Shelia eventually pulled over about a mile south of her father’s house. It was late, and the road was quiet. The kind of silence that isolates. The kind of place where no one would hear what was about to happen. In the trunk, they had brought everything they believed they would need. Bleach. Paper towels. Clean clothes. A trash bag. And weapons—two kitchen knives, hidden under Shelia’s and Rachel’s hoodies.

—

They stepped out of the car together, heading a short distance down the road. According to later testimony, Shelia pulled out a joint, pretending to light it, but her lighter “wasn’t working.” Skylar turned back to the car to get her own. That moment—when her back was turned—was the agreed-upon signal.

Rachel began a quiet countdown. “One… two… three.” On that third beat, both girls attacked.

Skylar was struck from behind. Confused and wounded, she stumbled and tried to flee, but Rachel tackled her in the middle of the road. She fought hard. Skylar was small but physically strong and not easily overpowered. In the chaos, she managed to grab Rachel’s knife, slicing open Rachel’s ankle in the process.

Despite her resistance, Skylar was overwhelmed. The stabbing intensified. The attackers became more frantic. Rachel and Shelia continued to strike, their efforts described by prosecutors as “increasingly savage.” It was clear from the nature of the wounds—thirty to fifty stab wounds in total—that the killing was personal. Prosecutors later referred to it as “overkill.” Skylar, bleeding and fading, cried out the only question that ever mattered: “Why?”

No answer came.

As her strength drained away, Skylar stopped moving. Eventually, she stopped breathing. The girls watched her die.

During the frenzy, both Shelia and Rachel accidentally pocket-dialed people—Shelia called her own voicemail, and Rachel unknowingly dialed an ex-boyfriend. Neither call resulted in contact, but the accidental dials would later serve as quiet reminders of how frantic and disorganized the murder truly was beneath its planned exterior.

—

With Skylar dead, Shelia and Rachel dragged her body off the road and toward a shallow area near a creek, trying to dig a grave. But the ground was too hard, the soil rocky and uncooperative. After several failed attempts, they gave up. Instead, they pulled debris—branches, leaves, loose stones—over her body, covering her as best they could.

They stripped out of their bloody clothes and used the wipes and paper towels to clean themselves. They had prepared for this. They each had a spare set of clothes. Everything else—the knives, Skylar’s purse and iPod, the used cleaning supplies, and the shovel—was stuffed into trash bags.

According to Rachel’s later account, Shelia took care of the disposal. She claimed not to know where anything ended up.

Investigators would later learn that Officer Jessica Colebank suspected the girls had celebrated after the murder, possibly by having sex—a disturbing detail that pointed to the bond they believed had been solidified through killing.

The entire sequence—from the drive to the attack, to the cover-up and the cleanup—took just over three hours.

By dawn, Skylar Neese was gone. Her body was hidden. And her two killers were back in Morgantown, returning to the routines of teenage life—texting, tweeting, smiling, lying.

The plan had worked.

For now.

The discovery of Skylar Neese’s remains brought with it a complex and painful form of resolution for her parents, Mary and Dave Neese. While the confirmation of their daughter’s death marked the end of the long period of uncertainty, it did not soften the devastation—it only reinforced what they had feared all along.

In February 2013, weeks before any public announcement had been made, Mary privately shared the news of Skylar’s confirmed death with two of Skylar’s closest friends, Daniel Hovatter and Hayden McClead. She didn’t want them to hear it from a press release.

The news became public during a candlelight vigil held on February 10, 2013—what would have been Skylar’s seventeenth birthday. Monongalia County Commissioner Tom Bloom quietly pulled Dave Neese aside during the gathering. He informed him that Skylar’s body had been found and that Rachel Shoaf had confessed to her murder. Dave, stunned but composed, passed the information along to people who had spent months helping the family search—supporters like Tammy Henry and Becky Benson Bailey—so they could finally put down their flyers and stop looking.

The tragedy was far from over. Despite the confession and identification of Skylar’s remains, the Greene County Coroner, Gregory Rohanna, refused to release the body to her family. Rohanna claimed that further investigation was needed and that the FBI still had custody of the remains. His refusal sparked public backlash. Mary and Dave, exhausted and grieving, began organizing a picket in front of the coroner’s office. That protest never happened—Rohanna eventually relented, agreeing to release Skylar’s body back to West Virginia. But the damage was done. The Neeses were not only mourning the loss of their daughter, they were being forced to fight for her even in death.

—

On the morning of May 1, 2013, Rachel Shoaf turned herself in to Monongalia County Circuit Court. Having been transferred to adult status, she formally pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Until sentencing, she was held at the Northern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Her sentencing took place on February 26, 2014. Judge Russell Clawges Jr. handed down a thirty-year sentence, with eligibility for parole after ten years. Rachel stood in court and addressed the Neese family directly. She said:

"I am so sorry. I don't know if there's a proper way to make this apology, because there are not even words to describe the guilt and remorse that I feel for what I've done."

Her attorney emphasized that Rachel had shown genuine remorse and prayed daily for forgiveness—from the Neeses, from her own family, and from the community at large.

In contrast, Shelia Eddy maintained her innocence for almost nine months following Rachel’s confession. Even after failing two polygraph tests in December 2012, she refused to admit any role in Skylar’s death.

Shelia was arrested later the same day Rachel entered her plea—May 1, 2013—in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel. Corporal Ronnie Gaskins, Agent Morgan Spurlock, and Trooper Chad Tierney took her into custody without incident.

On September 4, 2013, Judge Clawges transferred Shelia’s case from juvenile to adult court. That ruling allowed her name to be released publicly for the first time.

Later that month, a grand jury indicted Shelia on four felony charges: first-degree murder, kidnapping, and two counts of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder. At her arraignment on September 17, Shelia entered a plea of not guilty to all charges.

But on January 24, 2014, Shelia changed course. In a surprise courtroom development, she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. The plea carried a sentence of life in prison with mercy, making her eligible for parole after fifteen years. She was transferred to Lakin Correctional Facility for Women on January 29.

Unlike Rachel, Shelia offered no apology and expressed no remorse. Her attorney read a prepared statement acknowledging the Neeses’ pain, but Shelia remained silent. The lack of contrition was noted by the judge—and would be remembered by the parole board.

—

The case attracted national attention, and the public's interest did not stop at sentencing. In an episode of the podcast Three, titled "Why? Why? Why?", hosts Justine Harman and Holly Millea interviewed Stormy Wilson, a former inmate who had served time at Lakin Correctional Center alongside both girls.

Lakin, nicknamed “Camp Cupcake” after Martha Stewart’s more famous stint at Alderson, is often criticized for its relatively comfortable conditions. Wilson noted that inmates have access to music, video games, and tablets, and are able to stay in near-constant communication with the outside world.

Shelia and Rachel, serving time for one of the most high-profile murders in West Virginia’s history, quickly became Lakin’s most recognizable inmates. According to Wilson, both received “stacks and stacks of fan mail,” with enough outside support that they would "never be without," even if their families were no longer involved.

Wilson described Shelia as someone who "thrives" in prison. Popular among other inmates, Shelia had formed what Wilson called her “own little colony,” adding: “She’s like the queen ant.”

Rachel’s experience behind bars appeared markedly different. Wilson said, “I don’t think she’s going to survive anywhere.”

Despite the nature of their crimes, both girls found opportunities within the system. Each earned a culinary degree. Rachel additionally obtained a cosmetology license, organized prayer groups, led the choir, and participated in holiday plays. She even married another inmate, a woman named Amy, after Amy’s release, though the marriage ended in divorce by 2022.

—

At her 2023 parole hearing, Rachel Shoaf acknowledged—publicly and under oath—for the first time that she and Shelia killed Skylar to protect a secret. The two were in a sexual relationship and feared being outed.

Dave Neese attended the hearing and repeated what he had expressed many times before. Skylar was denied every life experience—because of two people who had once called themselves her best friends. He told the board:

“Because of the malicious monster, my child will never get a limo ride to her prom. Instead, she got a ride in a coroner’s vehicle. There was no sparkling gown for Skylar, just a body bag. She will never have a certificate of graduation, only a death certificate, because of this inmate’s actions.”

The board denied Rachel Shoaf’s request for parole. She had been written up for a disciplinary infraction since her last hearing, and she still lacked a post-release housing plan—both key factors in the board’s decision. She was told to return for a new hearing no sooner than June 2025 and was advised to maintain a clean record if she hoped to be reconsidered.

According to the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Rachel’s projected release date is April 30, 2028.

Shelia Eddy, serving life with mercy, will have her first parole eligibility hearing after May 1, 2028. Whether she will show any remorse by then—or whether it will matter—remains to be seen.

For Mary and Dave Neese, life fractured permanently. The day Skylar disappeared marked the end of the future they had imagined with their daughter.

On July 3, 2013, almost exactly one year after Skylar went missing, Mary, Dave, and Skylar’s aunt Carol were brought to the Morgantown State Police detachment. Skylar’s remains were returned to them in a sealed bag. Officers recommended they not open it. They sat with it quietly, talking to Skylar, telling her they loved her, that her friends missed her. Dave kissed both ends of the bag and tried to make her smile, the way he always had. "Well, hell, I can’t tell which end is which."

The betrayal they felt was total. Their daughter’s killers weren’t strangers. They were girls who had slept over, shared meals, called themselves friends. The trust that had once existed—between families, between young people—was gone. And while some of the community mourned with them, others turned on them, spreading rumors, accusing them online of hiding information or being involved. The pain, already unbearable, was made worse by the cruelty of strangers.

The family chose cremation. Skylar’s ashes were placed in an urn with her last school portrait. A memorial was held on July 20, 2013. Over a thousand people came. Many wore purple—Skylar’s favorite color. At the end of the service, Dave Neese spoke the last words his daughter would ever hear from him: “No one can ever hurt you again, baby.”

In the years since, Mary and Dave have remained quiet, but persistent. Their work helped pass Skylar’s Law, legislation that changed how authorities respond when a child disappears in West Virginia. It’s since been used as a reference by lawmakers in other states.

The shock didn’t stop with the Neese family. Friends like Daniel Hovatter, Hayden McClead, and Shania Ammons were devastated. Many had sensed that something was wrong, but the truth—that Shelia and Rachel had planned Skylar’s murder, carried it out together, and then lied to everyone for months—left them reeling.

At University High School, administrators issued a directive that students were not to discuss the case on campus. Some felt that policy helped maintain order; others believed it suppressed the very conversations that could have led to the truth sooner. The silence, for many, became another wound.

Those closest to the investigation—Officer Jessica Colebank, Corporal Ronnie Gaskins, Trooper Chris Berry, and FBI Agent Rob Ambrosini—worked for months without knowing if the case would ever break. Each felt a personal connection to Skylar. Each carried something of the case with them after it was over. Colebank, in particular, remained angry at how quickly people had dismissed the possibility that two teenage girls could commit such a crime. “People didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “They thought pretty girls couldn’t be capable of something so brutal.”

FBI profiler Ken Lanning described it as a convergence of factors that adults struggle to make sense of—emotional immaturity, impulsivity, cruelty. Some investigators believed it was a thrill kill. Others believed it was fear, turned homicidal.

There’s no way to measure how much was lost on the night of July 6, 2012. The girl who fought for her life in the middle of a dark Pennsylvania road was kind, loyal, smart, and quick to laugh. She was 16. Her murder did not happen in an alleyway or at the hands of a stranger. It happened in the back seat of a car driven by her best friend.

Skylar’s story is remembered today not only for the brutality of what happened, but for how it unfolded—quietly, deceptively, and so close to home. Her death left behind more than sorrow. It changed how law enforcement approaches missing teens. It forced a reevaluation of the idea that danger comes from strangers. And it reminded many that the face of evil doesn’t always look like a threat.

Skylar Neese was born on February 10, 1996. She died on July 6, 2012. The exact time of death was never determined. But the pain left behind continues to mark every hour since.

The people who loved her still remember. Still fight. Still grieve. And always will.

For more information on this case, Nightwatch Files would like to recommend "Pretty Little Killers: The Truth Behind the Savage Murder” by Daleen Berry and Geoffrey C. Fuller, which heavily informed this episode.