It was after midnight on July 6, 2012, when 16-year-old Skylar Neese snuck out of her downstairs bedroom in Morgantown, WV, and jumped into the car of friends Shelie Eddy and Rachel Shoaf, who were waiting for her.
The three high school best friends drove to a remote wooded area in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, where Eddy and Shoaf, armed with kitchen knives, stabbed their friend to death.
Neese’s murder and the subsequent arrests of her close friends stunned the tight-knit community as well as the nation. Now the subject of a 10-part podcast series, Threeaward-winning journalists Justine Harman and Holly Millea.
“This obviously shook a small town to its core,” Harman tells PEOPLE. “I don’t think people expect girls to kill. They were beautiful. They were cute. I think people just underestimate the fierceness of young women.”
After the murder, the teenagers denied any knowledge of Skylar’s whereabouts, saying they had been driving around that night before dropping her off near her home.
Rachel Shoaf: Shelia Eddy.
Lakin Penitentiary
Shoaf later admitted her role in the murder and led investigators to the crime scene. She allegedly told police they killed the teenager because they just didn’t like her, ABC News reported.
“It’s a timeless story about girls coming together, blurring the lines between friendship and romance, hormones flying, competing with boys, experimenting sexually, and then it just goes to a level you couldn’t have imagined, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ It’s too much,” says Harman.
The podcast features interviews with Skylar’s family and closest friends, the police, and those who know Eddy and Shoaf.
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Skylar Neese and friends. Courtesy of the Neese family
Shoaf was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.
At a 2023 parole hearing, Shoaf said she had been in a relationship with Eddy and feared she would face backlash if the information became public.
“After the relationship stuff came out, there was tension between us,” Shoaf said, according to WBOY. “It was hostile and violent, in our teenage minds we didn’t know how to deal with the conflict and we just wanted it to stop.”
She was denied parole. Eddy received a life sentence for her role in the murder.
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Monument in Star City, West Virginia.
AP Photo/Vicki Smith, pool
Both are serving prison terms at the Lakin Correctional Center.
“We talked to an inmate who’s in jail with them and he says they get bags and bags of fan mail,” Harman says. “There was a lot of fan adoration.”
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Harman says the two former friends still interact, but “it doesn’t seem like they’re confidants because Rachel betrayed Shelia. Without Rachel’s confession, they probably would have gotten away with it. They see each other, I would say, on a daily basis. It’s pretty crazy situation.”
Harman hopes the podcast “promotes awareness.”
“I think the message is that it’s not just high school b—– all the time,” she says. “You have to pay attention and you have to take them seriously. People talk a lot about girls and hormones, but I don’t know. Something made these girls think that killing was an option, and it seems like it could have been prevented somehow, somehow, and it wasn’t and I don’t blame anyone but these two girls, but how did it happen? It seems that this can be avoided.”
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Source: HIS Education