The Solved Disappearance of Skylar Neese

This blog post is the script that I wrote for the YouTube video of the same name that is featured in the True Crime Storytime series on my channel. You may view the episode by clicking here.

Trigger Warning: In this post, I will be reiterating a real story that affected the lives of real people and a tragic death that was caused by a heinous act. If you are not able to handle a true crime story at this time, please check out one of my other more lighthearted blog posts. I mean no disrespect to the victims of this story and ask that you please be kind in the comment section. Thank you.

Skylar Neese was a strong spirited 16 year old girl who was an honor roll student at University High School in Star City, West Virginia. She was an only child to her doting parents, David Neese and Mary Neese.

Skylar’s father, David, knocked on Skylar’s bedroom door on the morning of July 6, 2012 to inform her that he was going to let her borrow his car if she dropped him off at work at the local Walmart. He was surprised to not receive a response as she would have perked up at that suggestion. As David walked around the outside of thehouse looking for his daughter, he quickly discovered a vanity chair just outside of Skylar’s bedroom window and that the window was open by a couple of inches, indicating that Skylar had snuck out of the house at some point with the intention of returning. He called his wife, Skylar’s mother - Mary, who calmed him down by stating that she will reappear soon. Skylar had snuck out of the house before but was overall a responsible teenager.

A few hours later, Skylar’s father called the local fast food restaurant Wendy’s where Skylar worked part time and discovered that she had not shown up to work for her shift that day. This was unlike Skylar and her parents decided to call the police and report their daughter as missing.

Although the police did come to the Neese’s apartment located in Star City, West Virginia, an Amber Alert was not issued in Skylar’s disappearance because the circumstances did not meet all four criteria for an alert to be issued: (1) a child is believed to be abducted; (2) the child is under the age of 18; (3) the child may be in danger of death or serious injury; (4) there is sufficient information to indicate the Amber Alert would be helpful. A waiting period of 48 hours had to elapse before a teenager could be considered missing. Skylar was initially considered by law enforcement authorities to be a runaway.

Authorities interviewed Skylar’s closest friends who initially said that they didn’t know anything, but then one of her two best friends Sheila eventually admitted that she had picked up Skylar in her car at around 11:00PM the night before with their best friend Rachel, they took a joy ride around town for about 45 minutes and then dropped her off four blocks away at Skylar’s request so that they wouldn’t wake her parents.

Authorities then checked the surveillance video of the Neese’s apartment complex and found footage of Skylar walking away from her bedroom window at 12:30AM and getting into the backseat of a car. The video was in black and white and quite grainy, therefore they couldn’t make out the color, make or model of the car. One thing that was certain from this footage was there there was no sign of struggle and that Skylar entered this vehicle willingly. Questions began to fill the minds of the investigators. If her friends dropped her off earlier, who else was Skylar meeting up with at 12:30AM? Her parents tried to keep their hopes up that she would return home soon, but with this discovery, they couldn’t help but fear the worst. Could the person picking her up be a predator that she had met online?

Days went by with no sign of Skylar and the case of her disappearance began to go cold. Everyone in Star City and surrounding communities passed out Missing Person flyers. Her best friend, Sheila, in particular, became very involved with the investigation. At one point, she stopped by the Neese’s house and asked if she could spend some time in Skylar’s bedroom. Mary Neese allowed her to do so then found her sitting on Skylar’s bed holding her pillow and crying. Although Mary was hurting because her daughter was missing, she consoled Sheila.

A few months later, another young girl from a few counties over also went missing, which caused for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to want to take a look into Skylar’s case. Now with the help of the FBI, Star City Police was able to determine that the unidentified vehicle in the surveillance footage was a silver sedan. This is when investigators began to take a closer look at Sheila Eddy, Skylar’s 16 year old best friend who said that she had picked her up around 11:00PM because she drove a silver Toyota Camry and there was no footage of Skylar leaving her home prior to 12:30AM. It was then determined that the Skylar’s two best friends were lying and perhaps hiding something. A couple of days later, the girl who had gone missing from the neighboring county was safely found, but there was still no sign of Skylar.

Police read Skylar’s journal and social media accounts and discovered that the teenaged girl had a very toxic relationship with her best friends. She would cryptically tweet about how she would tell the entire school their secrets if she had to. Upon interviewing her fellow classmates, authorities discovered that the trio had been dwindling down to a duo as Sheila and Rachel began publicly complaining about Skylar, saying things in class like “I can’t stand her. I honestly wouldn’t mind if she died.” It was obvious from Skylar’s Twitter account that she was angry for feeling left out. In her journal, she privately wrote about one night when Sheila and Rachel had intimate relations with each other in front of Skylar and how uncomfortable it made her feel. It had become obvious that these two girls were fed up with Skylar but felt like they couldn’t simply stop being friends with her otherwise she would spill the beans on all of their secrets.

Investigators decided that Sheila and Rachel knew more than the information they had been providing, so they set up for the girls to take a polygraph test. They assumed that perhaps Skylar had died of an overdose and the girls had hid her body. Sheila failed the polygraph test twice. Meanwhile, Rachel never took her polygraph test because, while on her way to the police station, Rachel jumped out of her mother’s car and ran to Sheila’s house. Police knew that Rachel was the weaker link of the two and started putting pressure on her.

Six months after Skylar’s disappearance, with the mounting pressure of classmates and police, Rachel snapped. Her mother called 911 from their home and stated that her daughter was having a mental breakdown as you can hear Rachel screaming in the background. She was then taken to a mental institution. Once she had calmed down, she was released and she told her mother that she wanted to talk to the police.

As detectives sat down with her at the station, she began talking and the very first thing that she said was “We stabbed her.”

Authorities were shocked by this admission. This was not the confession that they had been expecting. They had suspected that the girls knew more details than they had been letting on, but not these two teenagers were the sole culprits of a murder. Rachel then explained how Sheila and her had been planning on killing Skylar for months. She admitted how they had thought of different ways of doing it and ultimately decided that using knives would be the easiest way since there were knives available right in their kitchen. Rachel then confessed how the whole thing went down.

They lured Skylar to sneak out of her house late at night to go for a joyride and smoke green stuff. They drove about 30 miles, just passed state lines into Pennsylvania, where they all got out of the car in front of a wooded area. When they walked into the woods, Sheila said that she had forgotten her lighter. As Skylar turned around to walk back to the car to get her lighter, Sheila counted to three and the two girls took out the knives that were in their pockets and began stabbing Skylar repeatedly. Rachel stated that at one point Skylar had fought back and managed to get ahold of Rachel’s knife and cut her. She showed the police the scar on her leg. Rachel said that Skylar’s last word was “Why?” and kept asking that same question over and over again.

Afterwards, the girls went back to the car and changed their clothes to clean clothes that they had put in the trunk. Then, they took out shovels and tried to bury Skylar, but couldn’t because the ground was too hard, so they just covered her body with leaves and branches instead, and then head off to continue living their lives.

When authorities asked Rachel why they killed Skylar, she replied “We didn’t like her. We didn’t want to be friends with her anymore.”

She then led authorities to where they had left Skylar’s body, but by this time of year, it had been filled with snow and ice. Authorities knew that they wouldn’t be able to find her until winter was over.

They didn’t arrest Rachel yet because her confession was unbelievable to them. People have made false confessions in the past. They needed proof.

Four months later, police went back to the scene and found Skylar’s remains were finally found. Skylar’s parents were told the news of the finding and they were able to finally lay their daughter’s body to rest.

Police had been surveilling Sheila during those months and gathered up more evidence by tapping into phone calls between her and Rachel and searching in her car. During this time, Sheila posted some now infamous tweets, such as the sadistically cryptic tweet “We really did go on three.”

Authorities worked out a deal with Rachel for confessing to the murder and leading them to Skylar’s body. She turned herself in and pleaded Guilty to second degree murder at the court. Before the news broke out, police finally made the arrest at a local Cracker Barrel restaurant where Sheila was having lunch with her mother. At first she pled Not Guilty, but when her attorney saw the amount of evidence that the prosecutor had against her, she changed her plea to Guilty.

In the end, Rachel pleaded guilty to second degree murder on May 1, 2013 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison with eligibility for parole after 10 years. Sheila plead guilty to first degree murder on January 24, 2014 and was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 15 years.

The Aftermath: A West Virginia state legislator from the Neese family home district introduced a bill called Skylar's Law to modify West Virginia's Amber Alert plan to issue immediate public announcements when any child is reported missing and in danger, regardless of whether the child is believed to have been kidnapped.

This is the condensed version of this story. Much of the information that I had gathered for this blog post is from the book called “Pretty Little Killers” by Daleen Berry and Geoffrey C. Fuller. If you want to know all of the details of this case, I highly recommend this book.

You may purchase the book using the affiliate link below. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases through this link:

Pretty Little Killers - Book in Paperback

Please be kind to each other and, as always, remember to bravely explore the beauty of life.

Respectfully,

Emely