Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf are the young ladies who admitted to killing their supposed friend Skylar Neese in July 2012, however, their confessions only came several months after Skylar had been murdered. The Skylar Neese murder case certainly stands out in the league of chilling murder stories.
It had been common knowledge among their classmates and others within the walls of University High School that the three girls were inseparable. Most believed Skylar thought Eddy and Rachel Shoaf were her best friends as the three girls were almost always together. Though unbeknownst to many, a rift had started to brew at some point, a rift between the girls that eventually turned into downright hatred for Neese by the other two.
How Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf Murdered Their Friend
Skylar Neese had left her home where she lived with her parents a few minutes past midnight on the 6th of July. She had sneaked out of her family’s home through her room window. She was never to return. Her father later mentioned that she most certainly intended to return that night because she did not leave with her mobile phone charger as she usually did whenever she planned on being out of the house for more than a few hours and that in addition to this, her bedroom window was left open.
Neese’s remains were found in a shallow grave many months after her murder. This came after Rachel Shoaf confessed that she and Sheila Eddy had perpetrated the cruel act of stabbing Neese to death.
According to Shoaf’s confession to the police, they had lured Skylar Neese into hanging out with them that night. Although Neese initially expressed unwillingness to accompany them, they insisted and after several messages and phone calls, she finally succumbed to their pressure and joined them. They picked her up in Eddy’s car and drove to a secluded area not far from the Pennsylvania state border, a place where all three of them had gone on one occasion to smoke and hang out.
After they left the vehicle, the two girls tricked Skylar into returning to pick up something from the car and as she turned her back they pounced and started stabbing her, she struggled to no avail and finally died.
Afterward, Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf had Neese’s corpse covered with tree branches as the ground was rocky and they were unable to dig a grave. The two girls who had planned the murder for months went on to clean up the murder scene as best as they could, changed into clean clothes they had brought along in preparation and went back to their respective homes.
When asked why they committed the crime, Shoaf had responded by saying that they simply did not like Skylar Nesse. However, some other mutual friends mentioned that the possible root cause of the rift between the girls was Shoaf becoming a closer friend to Eddy who had been Neese’s single best friend from childhood until Shoaf met them. Some also went ahead to state that Neese had caught Shoaf and Eddy having lesbian sex secretly and this would have heightened the division between the girls.
Conviction of Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf
Rachel Shoaf’s confession came after she suffered a panic attack and was hospitalized. The cause of which was presumably the murder investigations gradually zeroing in on Eddy and herself. She turned herself in and confessed to having connived at committing the crime with Sheila Eddy. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years after a guilty plea to second-degree murder. Both ladies were sentenced in 2013.
As for Sheila Eddy, she continued to deny her involvement. She even joined in the search for Neese after she was declared missing and posted photos of the two of them on social media to create the impression that everything was fine between them until Neese’s disappearance.
Where Are They Now?
As the evidence against Sheila Eddy piled up, she eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in 15 years. Both ladies are currently serving their prison sentences at the Larkin Correction Center in Mason County, West Virginia.
The incident led to the amendment of the Amber Alert law in the state of West Virginia which allows for a public announcement to be made immediately a child is missing without any further criteria to be met in order to make such an announcement.