Despite being being 38th overall in population, the small and odd-looking state ofWest Virginia is no lightweight when it comes to crime. Charles Manson spent many of his formative years in the state, while earlier serial killers like Harry Powers and Johann Otto Hoch preyed on the state throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. And even though West Virginia has one of the lowest murder rates per capita in the nation, certain high profile cases from the Mountain State have managed to capture the world's attention.
10. "We Didn't Want to Be Friends With Her Anymore"
For the sake of full disclosure, I not only grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, but actually know some of the people on the periphery of this case. However, when Skylar Neese was reported missing, I was long gone but still felt the waves of grief and horror when it was eventually discovered that she had been murdered by her two best friends, Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf.
Skylar Neese first left her Star City home after midnight on July 6, 2012. This hadn't been the first time. In fact, Skylar had skipped out on her parents Dave and Mary Neese plenty of times before, but she had always made it back home in time for school or work. But, when Skylar didn't turn up again later that day, Dave and Mary began to seriously worry. Sadly, their worst fear came true when Shoaf confessed to police that she and Eddy had not only murdered the 16-year-old Skylar, but that the pair had planned the murder in advance. Chillingly, when asked for a motive, Shoaf said "We didn't want to be friends with her anymore."
After Neese's decomposed body was found in a shallow grave across the Pennsylvania state line in Wayne Township, the full horror of the murder became clear. On the night of the murder, the three teens drove out to a desolate stretch of road in order to smoke weed. At the count of three, which was a pre-arranged signal, Shoaf and Eddy began attacking Skylar with kitchen knives. They managed to stab Skylar somewhere between 30 and 50 times before cleaning up the scene and driving back to Morgantown. Although many still question the pair's real motivation (theories range from a cover-up involving a lesbian relationship to a heartless thrill kill), the case garnered national headlines due the role played by social media in the investigation.
9. Paralyzed Before Death
The subject of an episode of Snapped, James and Michelle Michael were once a young, college-educated couple living in Morgantown. Jimmy, 33, was a local businessman, while Michelle, a 34-year-old who was known to friends as Shelly, was a former cheerleader for the West Virginia University Mountaineers. All seemed normal until the Morgantown Fire Department found the couple's Killarney Drive home ablaze on the morning of November 29, 2005. Inside, they found Jimmy's badly burnt body in an upstairs bedroom. Michelle was at work at the time, while the couple's four children from previous marriages were staying with Jimmy and Michelle's exes.
To many investigators, the whole scene stunk right from the start. When it was revealed that the fire was started in the master bedroom, the police moved in on Shelly as their primary suspect. Before long, police discovered that both the fire and Jimmy's death were intentional. The medical examiner assigned to the case discovered that Jimmy's lungs showed no signs of smoke inhalation, therefore making it obvious that he was dead before the blaze began. In fact, the toxicology report on Jimmy's body showed that his body contained a lethal dose of Rocuronium, a neuromuscular relaxant that paralyzes the body, but leaves the mind active. Given that Shelly worked as a nurse at Ruby Memorial Hospital, she could easily acquire the powerful drug.
At the trial, it was revealed that Jimmy had made out a life insurance policy worth $500,000 prior to the murder. Also, during the investigation, detectives discovered that Shelly was having an affair with a close friend named Bobby Teets, who was also married. In September 2007, Shelly Michael was sentenced to two consecutive sentences: one for arson and one life sentence with mercy for the murder of her husband.
8. The Body in the Crawlspace
A mystery began on December 14, 2007 that continues to haunt investigators in the Mountain State. On that date, Leah Hickman, a 21-year-old broadcast journalism student at Huntington's Marshall University, went missing. A week later, her dead body was discovered, thus triggering a murder investigation. As of today, there hasn't been a single arrest.
The day before Hickman was reported missing by her family, Jessica Hickman, Leah's 25-year-old half-sister entered the off-campus apartment she shared with Leah and found not only her younger sister's car in the driveway, but also her purse and car keys inside. Leah, of course, was nowhere to be found. Thinking that Leah had left with some friends, Jessica did not grow suspicious until the following day. At that point, state police and Huntington detectives began calling Leah's phone, which they discovered had a full voice mailbox. Leah's phone records proved a dead end as well. None of Leah's final calls were out of the ordinary, with her last call, which occurred at 5:40 p.m. on that Friday, being an innocuous message about picking up McDonald's for dinner.
The police ultimately discovered that Hickman had been savagely strangled to death before having her body hidden in a crawlspace inside of her own apartment. Such evidence points to a perpetrator with an intimate knowledge of the apartment's layout. It's therefore likely that Hickman knew her killer, and yet even with the possibility of mitochondrial DNA evidence, the case remains cold and without suspects.
7. The Murder of Sister Roberta Elam
Although commonly known as "Sister" Roberta Elam, Elam, 26, was only a pre-novitiate candidate when she was murdered on June 13, 1977. On that day, Elam was contemplating her future Christian life by herself near Wheeling's Sisters of St. Joseph convent. At some point, while Elam was on her knees praying, a stranger attacked her from behind, raped her, and strangled her to death. Once finished, the murderer left Elam's lifeless body by an overturned park bench not far from the popular Speidel Golf Course.
Almost four hours after her death at 2 p.m., Elam's body was discovered by a caretaker. The subsequent murder investigation proved maddeningly futile for many years. Despite questioning some 40 suspects, one of whom was 90-years-old, detectives had to rule them all out. A physic tried to break the case by telling police that the suspect lived near a church on a serpentine road, while some eyewitnesses came forward to claim that they had seen a large GM vehicle with a dog inside not far from the convent prior to the murder. A composite sketch was even produced, as well as potential links to a series of strangulation murders in Pennsylvania. It all added up to nothing.
In 2005, it was reported that detectives had closed in on a possible suspect in San Francisco, but he too was ruled out. Since then, the case has been reopened thanks to a DNA profile. Still, even though detectives have claimed that they are close to breaking the case, the murder of Roberta Elam remains a mystery.
