The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese: The Truth Behind the Headlines (2 page)

Tom Bloom
: A Monongalia County commissioner and retired high school counselor, Tom is familiar with Skylar and many of the students involved in this case. He helped revise Skylar’s Law and drew the attention of state legislators to the bill.

Charlene Marshall
: When Tom Bloom came to her asking for help getting Skylar’s Law introduced into the 2013 session of the legislature, the 80-year-old Marshall went to work. She was largely responsible for getting unanimous support from both the West Virginia Senate and House of Representatives. The bill became the top priority for politicians and sailed through with bipartisan support in just one session.

Sixteen-year-old Skylar Neese kept a black cushioned vanity bench in her closet so she could climb out of her bedroom window at night. She used it when she snuck out for the last time at 12:31 a.m. on July 6, 2012. After stashing the bench around the corner of the apartment building, she hurried to a waiting silver Toyota Corolla and climbed into the backseat.

Skylar was probably apprehensive about joyriding with Shelia and Rachel that night. Her two best friends had ditched her more than once in the previous week. Her friendship with them seemed to be falling apart, and Skylar had no idea why.

When they were freshmen, they were a well-known trio at University High School. Skylar had been ecstatic when Shelia Eddy—
her
Shelia—transferred there from an outlying rural area. Skylar and the tiny blonde beauty had been friends since second grade, and she could imagine how fantastic it was going to be, because Shelia loved to laugh, have fun, and party.

Rachel was the new addition to the Skylar and Shelia club. She had graduated from middle school at Saint Francis, the local parochial school, and then chosen to attend UHS. A popular redhead, Rachel was an aspiring stage actress, and Skylar thought her singing voice was exquisite. She also thought Rachel was pretty and funny. Skylar and Shelia had met Rachel when the three had a class together, and the next thing Skylar knew, wherever she and Shelia were, so was Rachel. Which was fine by Skylar, who made friends with everyone. They were inseparable: the blonde, the redhead, and the beautiful brunette with big blue eyes.

Sitting in the backseat, watching Rachel and Shelia up front laughing, Skylar might have thought about the beach trip she and Shelia had taken and how badly it had ended. That argument between her and Shelia—the
most recent
argument, the one that ruined their six-day vacation at Myrtle Beach in June—still wasn’t resolved. Her tweets proved it. About eight that night Skylar had tweeted,
you doing shit like that is why I will NEVER completely trust you
. Skylar no doubt wondered what it would take to return to the days of their earlier friendship.

Rachel had been acting a little odd the last few days, also. She had grown distant and reserved. Skylar would have wanted to resolve whatever was happening between the three of them. Bad feelings were poison to her, as she wrote in her English class and her diary.

As Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar headed away from Star City, past the Sheetz and across the four-lane bridge over the Monongahela River, Skylar tried not to notice how closely they were following the U-Haul truck. She preferred to look out the side window and ponder their friendship problems.

The night had cooled down to the mid-seventies, and the high, clear sky full of stars belied the violence of the storm that had hit less than a week earlier. Just over the bridge, the devastation from the recent derecho became obvious. The area was heavily forested and hadn’t been cleared of toppled trees, broken branches, and general debris left behind by the eighty-mile-an-hour winds.

Skylar had only agreed to join them because she believed they were going to ride around for a while, chat, and get high. Since Rachel was leaving for church camp in a couple of days, there had been some talk of going to a party later. But a mile south of her father’s house in Brave, Pennsylvania, Shelia pulled the little Toyota off to the side of the road and parked. Skylar thought they were going to smoke a joint and decide what other fun they could have that night. She didn’t suspect that her two best friends had something much darker in mind.

Undoubtedly, neither Shelia nor Rachel mentioned the real reason they invited her to join them on that midnight drive. Nor did they say a word about the shovel, bleach, paper towels, or Handi-Wipes stashed in the trunk of the car.

Skylar never knew about any of that, so she never got the chance to restore harmony. Instead, on the count of three, Shelia and Rachel pulled out the knives they’d hidden under their clothes and savagely attacked Skylar, stabbing her again and again and again. When they finally stopped, Skylar’s “best friends” stood beside her until she stopped breathing. They watched her die. The murder, cleanup, and burial under rocks, dirt, and fallen branches took more than four hours.

***

Almost a year later, Rachel Shoaf confessed, turned State’s evidence, and pled guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Skylar Neese. Shelia Eddy insisted for almost nine months that she was innocent. But on January 24, Shelia, too, pled guilty—to first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison.

People who have followed the tragic story know that Shelia’s last-minute plea came about because Rachel confessed. They may not know that before Rachel confessed, she had an emotional breakdown and was committed to Chestnut Ridge Center, a psychiatric hospital. Some people also know bits and pieces of the puzzle: the rumored lesbian affair between Shelia and Rachel, the growing discord between Skylar and her two friends, and the fact that Shelia and Rachel planned the murder as much as a year in advance.

But few people know that Rachel’s descent into despair began the night she stabbed Skylar to death. Or that she later talked to God in the pages of her diary. Rachel wrote that only He knew what had happened the night of July 6—and it was going to stay that way. Appearances were of the utmost importance to Rachel, who treated the entire UHS student body and the community of Morgantown, West Virginia, to the performance of her lifetime, to keep anyone from finding out the truth.

For six tumultuous months, no one did. A budding actress and singer with no small amount of talent, Rachel convinced all her friends that she was innocent. That she had had nothing to do with Skylar’s disappearance.

Unfortunately for Rachel, the only person she couldn’t convince was herself.

“You ruined my life!” Rachel screamed at her parents in their driveway on December 28, 2012. “You ruined my life!”

Rusty and Patricia urged her to calm down. But to Rachel, what was happening was a disaster of epic proportions. Her father was moving back home. She loved her dad, but his house across town had been her refuge from all the tensions and fights between her and her mother. Now he was saying he would help Patricia keep an eye on Rachel. Her screams were loud enough for the entire cul-de-sac to hear.

Trying to keep their private lives out of the public eye, Rachel’s parents quickly moved toward the front door of their home. Once inside, though, the argument grew so intense it raged like a house fire.

Amidst the drama, neither Patricia nor Rusty noticed Rachel’s iPod. She held the device in her hand, FaceTiming everything live to Shelia. If they had seen it, they might have been less worried about what their neighbors could hear and more worried about what Shelia might witness.

What Shelia saw was the fight that led to Rachel’s breakdown and her involuntary commitment to the local psychiatric hospital. According to Shania Ammons, who heard the story from her close friend Shelia hours later, all hell erupted inside the Shoaf living room that December day.

Shelia told Shania all about it. Patricia was on top of Rachel on the floor. The fight was ugly and violent. The screaming grew so shrill on Shelia’s iPhone that Shelia’s mother, Tara, heard it from the next room. She rushed into Shelia’s bedroom to investigate. By then, Rachel was yelling, “Help me! Help me!”

In the ensuing melee, someone called 911. According to 911 logs, the state police arrived two minutes later, at 7:10 p.m. By then, neighbors said that both Rachel and her mom had angry red marks all over their faces.

Shelia raced to the emergency room and waited for four hours, wondering what was happening to Rachel. Shania later said that by the time Shelia was allowed to see Rachel, “her face was all bruised and knotted and swollen, and she had marks all over her.”

People close to the Shoafs say the reality was far worse than the story Shania relayed. In one version, Rachel chased Patricia with a kitchen knife. In another she picked up a lit candelabra and smashed it against her mother’s head. People who saw Patricia in the days following the family quarrel say her face was so badly bruised it hurt them to look at her.

The state troopers didn’t witness any of that; by the time two cruisers arrived on the scene, Rachel had barricaded herself in her bedroom. There, she screamed so loudly one of the neighbors went to his window to find out what all the commotion was. He heard Rachel threatening to take her own life.

“You’ve ruined my life,” she insisted between sobs. “I’m going to kill myself!”

The two troopers had to use bolt cutters to remove Rachel’s bedroom door. They dragged her out, wild-eyed and still shrieking. She was cuffed and led from the house, then placed into the backseat of a police car. She sat, still sobbing, while a single trooper interviewed Patricia and Rusty inside.

As the cruiser pulled away from the curb, Rachel continued to cry uncontrollably. She was trying to talk, too, but between the tears and the hiccups and sniffling, the young trooper had difficulty understanding her words. From what he could make out, he was certain the teenager was troubled by more than just a fight with her parents.

“… the one you’re looking for… killed her,” he thought he heard Rachel say just before she went silent.

It was almost dawn when Patricia arrived home the next day, after attending Rachel’s mental hygiene hearing. There, it was determined Rachel, just 16, was a danger—either to herself or to others—and she was committed to Chestnut Ridge Center.
¹

***

For almost six months, Rachel had performed the role of “typical teenager.” While the life of pretense and lies was emotionally exhausting for her, that was her choice. When her carefully constructed facade dissolved, her parents had no such choice: they were forced to confront reality.

Mary and Dave Neese, Skylar’s parents, didn’t have the luxury of choice, either. Skylar’s disappearance tore through them. It sapped their strength and left them drained. They lived a number of private and public hells after losing their only child. The police investigation seemed to yield little. Every day Mary and Dave volleyed between hope and despair. Family and close friends rallied around at first, but that support eventually soured, dissolving into a whirlpool of accusations and innuendo. Skylar’s absence quickly sparked fires at UHS, too, since the pretty teen trio had been a fixture there. Some teenagers said Skylar had run away. Others said she had overdosed and her body had been dumped somewhere. Rumors roared like forest fires as some students whispered that Rachel and Shelia were hiding something, while others defended them, insisting that neither Shelia nor Rachel had anything to hide.

In spite of Rachel’s amazing performance, by the time she broke down and was carted off to Chestnut Ridge, some teenagers were even saying that Skylar had been killed the night she disappeared.

***

The story of Skylar’s disappearance and murder is about much more than the smart, vibrant teenager and the two girls who called her “bestie.” It’s a story about how an online group that convened to search for Skylar and comfort Mary and Dave only ended up deepening their grief. It’s about the role social media played before and after Skylar’s murder, and it’s about broad inferences amplified fifty-fold by Twitter and Facebook. This account explains why the FBI was on the case like lightning, a scant two days after Skylar was reported missing, and the rumored connection between Skylar’s murder and a rash of bank robberies in the region. It’s also about how law enforcement managed to log thousands of hours on the case, all while appearing to do nothing—until their efforts paid off.

Finally, this story is about the rampant rumors of a lesbian love triangle at the heart of the case. Or whether Rachel’s stated motive for the murder—“we didn’t want to be friends with her anymore”—carries any validity at all.

When Skylar Neese clocked out of Wendy’s at the Glenmark Centre on July 5, 2012, she had every intention of returning to work the next day. Her shift ended at 10:00 p.m., and the drive across Morgantown to Star City took only ten minutes. When Skylar walked through the front door, she could see Mary and Dave sitting in front of the television, watching Las Vegas endure a citywide blackout on
CSI
.

After greeting her parents, Skylar headed to the kitchen for some of Mary’s homemade sweet tea. She loved the stuff, and drank it by the gallon.

“Honey, are you hungry?” Mary asked from her recliner. The Neese apartment is open and airy, so from her vantage point, Mary could see Skylar standing in the small kitchen-dining area. Even before Skylar answered, Mary knew what her daughter’s dinner had consisted of: one of those little berry ice cream desserts that Wendy’s sold. She just loved those.

“No, Mom, I ate at work.”

Skylar crossed the wood-laminate floor and came into the carpeted living room. There, she perched on the arm of the recliner and put her arm around Mary. “Love you, Mommy,” Skylar said, kissing her mother on the cheek.

Then she jumped up, leaned over the couch, and kissed Dave in the same fashion.

“Love you, Daddy,” she said. “I’m really tired. I’m going to bed.”

“Do you work tomorrow?” Mary asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to wash your uniform?”

“Yes, it smells like French fries,” Skylar said, wrinkling her nose. She hated the smell of grease on her uniform, and she always made a beeline for the shower. Not a minute later, Skylar tossed her dirty clothes out the door for Mary to throw into the washing machine. It was the same mother-daughter routine every night after Skylar finished work.

Mary waited for the wash cycle to end, then loaded Skylar’s uniform into the dryer. After switching it on, she said goodnight to Dave and went to bed. She didn’t know it, but Skylar’s slender arm peeking around the bathroom door as she tossed out her uniform was the last glimpse Mary Neese would ever have of her daughter.

Dave was more fortunate: while he was dozing on the couch, he got one last “Love you, Daddy,” when Skylar reappeared from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. She got a drink from the kitchen, went into her bedroom, and locked her door like every other American teenager who has a secret.

***

Dave Neese received no response when he knocked on his daughter’s bedroom door the next day. “Hey, honey, get up. I want you to take me back to work so you can have my car.”

Nothing.

He knocked again. “Sky?”

Again, no answer. Usually, she was up—bam—as soon as she heard the car was available. Dave knew he shouldn’t be letting Skylar drive by herself; with just a learner’s permit, the teen was supposed to have a licensed adult in the car. However, he also knew she’d drive just enough to take him to work and then go to her own job. She’d come straight home after her shift. That was their agreement. The Neeses saved on gas that way, and Dave always checked the odometer to make sure she was sticking to the arrangement.

After getting no reply, Dave went to the hall closet and grabbed a coat hanger—the door locks in the apartment easily popped open. But when he peered inside Skylar’s bedroom, she wasn’t there. Her unmade bed looked like it had been slept in, so Dave first assumed she must have gone shopping with a friend. Then he remembered her door had been locked from the inside. He called his wife at work.

“Mary, did Skylar tell you where she was going?” Dave’s voice rose as he spoke. He paced the small kitchen, feeling his worry build.

“Just calm down.” Mary knew how close to the surface Dave’s emotions ran. “Don’t flip out. She probably went shopping with one of her friends or something. She never misses work.”

“That’s what I thought, but her door was locked.”

“She probably just accidentally hit the button closing the door in a hurry. You know how she does.”

“Okay, maybe. But I’m going to look for her.”

Dave rushed back to Walmart, a few minutes away, and told a supervisor he had to take the rest of the day off. “Listen,” he said, “I can’t find Skylar. I don’t know where she’s at, but I gotta find my kid.”

He decided to check at home once more to see if she’d returned while he was gone. Skylar was largely a responsible teenager, and although she might forget to let her parents know where she was going, she would usually remember at some point to check in. But she was also fearless and willful, and that concerned Dave.

Skylar still wasn’t at the apartment when he returned. Dave walked through the kitchen and out onto the small balcony for a smoke. He wanted to think, to plan his next steps. That was when he noticed a small black bench sitting at the base of the back wall of the apartment complex, just around the corner from Skylar’s first-floor room.

Dave flipped his cigarette into the round ceramic bowl he and Mary kept for cigarette butts and went back through the apartment, out and around to Skylar’s window. The screen was leaning against the wall, her window open a finger’s breadth. That was when he knew:
Oh, my God. She snuck out.