True Crime Database

Skylar Neese

Teenage girls always seem to get a reputation for their attitudes towards their friends fluctuating: one moment they're falling out, the next they're the best of friends. They also have a tendency to overreact, though this is mostly due to hormones. Combine this with the pressures of school, finding yourself, dealing with society and peer pressure, it is no wonder teenage girls become incredibly emotional at the drop of a hat. All in all, girl drama is very common in the life of a young girl, especially those who form tight-knit friendships. But what happens when these friendships can go wrong and end in the most extreme way? The case of Skylar Neese is the epitome of this – it starts as a typical teenage girl problem but ends like a modern day mystery novel.

Like many of the most famous murders/mysteries that take place in the US, this happened to take place in the small town of Star City, Morgantown, West Virginia. Skylar Neese was born on February 10th 1996 in this town to parents Mary and Dave Neese. She was the only child and was considered the light of their life; she was bubbly and friendly with high aspirations in life, wanting to study to become a criminal lawyer, and maintained high grades as well as a weekend job at Wendy's.

Skylar met her best friend, Sheila Eddy, when she was 8. Sheila's parents had divorced when she was 4 years old and she continued to live with her mother, who struggled to be a single parent and hold down a job simultaneously. Although Sheila lived in Blacksville, a town adjacent to Morgantown, the two remained very close friends. Eventually, her mother remarried and they moved to Morgantown with her new husband and Sheila transferred to University High School for freshmen year. She was considered someone who was popular with the boys than the girls and hung around with the wrong kind of people.

They also met Rachel Shoaf in their freshmen year. Rachel had been living in Morgantown all her life and came from a very religious family, participating in a lot of church youth events and singing in choirs. Like Sheila, her parents had also divorced when she was younger. She was also an aspiring actress/singer, who liked to perform in school theatres and productions. Shortly after meeting, the three girls began calling themselves "The Three Musketeers".

As the school year progressed, the girls began to get into more and more into trouble. Nothing out of the ordinary but just involving underage drinking, smoking marijuana, sneaking out of the house after dark and going against curfew. It was for many of these reasons that friends of Rachel and Skylar's had reservations about hanging out with them while Sheila was around, with many believing that Sheila was a bad influence. Staying out after curfew seemed to be a growing problem with the girls, after having been caught by local law enforcement having to be driven home. However, their parents put this all down to growing up and becoming teenagers, but others, including friends of Skylar and Rachel, also believed that Sheila was also the reason for their personalities changing, becoming more sour towards people in general.

As well as increasing rebelliousness, their also appeared to be a total shift in the group dynamics. Arguments and fights between Sheila and Skylar escalated and happened very frequently. However, Sheila and Rachel seemed to be growing closer. This left Skylar to feel like the odd one out in the group. Sheila and Rachel seemed to dress the same, always be hanging out together, both being sexually active with their boyfriends. Skylar, on the other hand, couldn't relate and grew angry. The altercations even made their way onto social media, usually Twitter, for their venomous words to be documented on the Internet for years to come.

Skylar came home from a shift at Wendy's on July 5th 2012. According to her parents, she gave no indication that there was anything wrong and was acting completely normal. However, while her parents thought she was asleep, she climbed out of her bedroom window into a sedan and drove off. The next morning, her parents discovered that she was not in her room. Initially, her parents weren't concerned, thinking that she may have just gone to work early. However, a phone call from Wendy's, asking where Skylar was, caused them to panic and file a missing person's report.