The murder plot started out as a sick joke.
They never intended to carry it out, never dreamed they would actually go through with it. But they did, after something went terribly wrong. It took investigators more than a year to figure out what that “something” was.
Even then, they didn’t have the answer—the answer to the question everyone has clamored for since May 1, 2013—when Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy, two beautiful teenage West Virginia honor students, were arrested for their part in Skylar Neese’s murder.
It was the same question that fell from Skylar’s lips as she was being savagely stabbed to death:
“Why? Why? Why?”
Why did two teenage girls brutally kill their best friend?
People who know the Shoaf and Eddy families say they are all good people. In the case of the Shoaf, Eddy, and Neese families, several dynamics were at play: each family had borne at least one tragedy, each had some history of drug or alcohol use, and all three families had only one child—a little girl who, for various reasons, was accustomed to getting her way.
Many families experience similar problems but they don’t end in murder. What made this situation end differently?
The answer is complicated, and the investigators who took on the missing teen’s case in July 2012 had no idea that it would turn into one of the most complicated murder investigations they had ever undertaken, or that it would span two states and miles and miles of rural Appalachian backwoods. Nor did they have any idea how two popular and pretty sixteen-year-old girls could go from cracking jokes in biology class to plotting how to dispose of another student, someone who believed she was their best friend. Police found two options the girls entertained particularly chilling: “dunking her in a barrel of acid” and “feeding her to the pigs.”
The story of Skylar’s disappearance and murder looks at the huge role social media played in helping to expose her killers, and how broad inferences can be amplified fiftyfold by Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites such as Instagram. It’s a story of how an online group convened to search for Skylar and comfort her parents instead deepened their grief. This account explains why the FBI was on the case like lightning, a scant two days after Skylar was reported missing, and the rumored connection between Skylar’s murder and a rash of bank robberies in the region. It also tells how law enforcement managed to log thousands of hours on the case—until they put the killers behind bars.
Finally, this story is about whether killer Rachel Shoaf’s stated motive for murder, “We didn’t want to be friends with her anymore,” carries any validity at all, or if the real reason can be found in the rumors of a lesbian love triangle—or something entirely evil.
Skylar Annette Neese was the only daughter of Mary and Dave Neese, parents who struggled to provide her with the bare necessities. Extras weren’t always possible but when they were, Mary and Dave made sure Skylar had them. Even though life’s luxuries were often out of their reach, the Neeses provided Skylar with something many children never receive: unconditional love.
Mary, Dave, and Skylar, age 6.
Years before Skylar was born, Mary had a long-time crush on “DJ Dave,” a local disc jockey who played on the Morgantown bar circuit. She didn’t know if he knew her, but she always tried to dress up in case he glanced her way. With his longish brown hair and leather jacket, Mary thought he was cute, but it was his wide smile that made Mary really want to get to know him. With a mischievous sparkle in his eye, Dave looked like he would be a lot of fun.
One night after the music ended, Mary and her girlfriends were leaving a local bar where they had gone to celebrate someone’s birthday. They noticed a large crowd gathering outside and saw Dave on the ground, blood pouring from his mouth.
Mary pushed through the crowd, demanding to know what had happened and who was responsible. Someone said three rough-looking men had jumped Dave as he was walking to his car.
From what Mary could tell, they had done their best to mess up his face. She leaned over and told Dave she was taking him to the hospital. He didn’t argue.
Once there, sitting inside a little exam room, a doctor said Dave’s injuries weren’t serious. He wouldn’t be talking for a while, though, because his jaw was broken and they had to wire it shut while it healed. Perhaps because he didn’t have to worry about spinning tunes for an audience, Dave could focus on Mary. He felt like he was seeing her for the first time. With her thick black hair and big blue eyes, he thought she was the prettiest woman he had ever seen.
“Well, since I won’t be talking for a while, I should go ahead and ask you now. Would you like to go see a movie?”
Mary blushed, realizing her dream of dating the cute DJ was coming true. Dave didn’t waste any time, either. As soon as he was released he took Mary to that movie. Even though he couldn’t talk for the next three months, Mary knew he was the man for her.
“Ladies, if you don’t stop talking, I’m going to separate you.”
It was easily the rowdiest class he’d ever had, probably because the boys outnumbered the girls three to one. Every day another student was tardy. Most days, many students came to class late. Usually it was the two girls he was trying to silence that day in the autumn of 2011.
Ignoring the bearded man at the front of the class, the two pretty teenagers—one a brunette, the other a redhead—did not stop talking. They prattled on as if they were deaf. Mr. Demchak’s sophomore biology class wasn’t anything special, but students liked him because he was known as an easy teacher with lax discipline. They described him as one part Santa Claus, because of his legendary long white beard, and one part absent-minded professor.
“Hey, do you know how to dispose of a body?” Shelia Eddy asked the student behind her.
Nick Tomaski shrugged. “I dunno. That show Breaking Bad has stuff like that on there.” He was more interested in drawing in his notebook than in anything Shelia said. Besides, he knew she was a flirt.
“We want to figure out what to do with Skylar,” Shelia said. Nick just looked at her like she was stupid.
“Shhh!” Rachel Shoaf, the redhead, whispered. “No names.”
According to students in class that day, Shelia’s question came on the heels of several negative comments she and Rachel made other days in the same class, about how much they hated Skylar.
“What kind of acid would you dispose of a body in?” Shelia asked the biology teacher. One student in particular insists Demchak heard this question that day and that he said it could amount to something like conspiracy.
Demchak barked his reply at both girls, according to that student: “How dare you ask that? Get out of my class. Go to the office right now.”
The student said the girls did as instructed and, once there, they reportedly spoke to an administrator who sent them back to class. Since the girls weren’t gone long their fellow students assumed they hadn’t even been reprimanded.
This is where accounts differ. Mr. Demchak says he never heard Shelia and Rachel casually ask that specific question or mention Skylar’s name in connection with it. He is adamant he never commented on a possible “conspiracy,” and said school policy would have required he write up a report if he had. What he did say was, as he had been instructing students about DNA, that it was “very possible” the girls could have asked such a question.
Whatever Demchak did—or didn’t hear—that day, it was the last time either girl brought up the subject in class.
When Mary discovered she was pregnant, she was not happy. The thought of raising a child terrified her because she believed she would be a horrible mother. Still, she wouldn’t end the pregnancy and when Skylar was born, Mary fell in love with her.
“The first time I saw her, yes, that was the greatest moment of my life. It was instant love,” she told Andrea Canning on NBC Dateline in 2014.1
Even with a newborn daughter, Mary wasn’t sure she wanted a husband. Dave was persistent. He kept proposing, and Mary stubbornly kept putting him off. She hesitated when he said they should move in together. After Skylar’s birth, though, Mary had a change of heart, and she and Skylar did move in with Dave.
Mary became the glue that held the family together. Her humor and playfulness created the bond; her will and determination made it stick. As the years passed, Skylar became a miniature version of Mary. People even used the same words to describe them, right down to their unfailing senses of justice, iron stubbornness, and occasional flares of temper. Where Dave and Skylar were best buddies, Mary and Skylar were intertwined in the way only mothers and daughters can be. Their family photos bear this out: Skylar possessed the same bright blue eyes as her mother and occasionally flashed a similar cynical smile.
The DNA discussion could have occurred at the same time students later told police Shelia and Rachel had asked their question. Classes were abruptly dismissed early on October 6, 2011, after students were told there was a gas leak. In reality, they were sent home because police had found a body in the woods behind the school.2
When classes resumed and students learned about the dead woman, Demchak said his class discussed DNA evidence and analysis. He believes this is the most reasonable explanation for the two girls’ questions.
Whether Mr. Demchak is correct, or they asked that question with a more devious motive in mind, other students said Skylar’s name came up in connection with the idea of disposing of a body. Rachel confirmed this when she later told police the plot to kill Skylar was hatched that day during Mr. Demchak’s sophomore biology class.
When Skylar was a baby, Dave would lift her above his head and toss her onto the bed, never letting her go until his hands touched the linens. Skylar would squeal and laugh, and Dave would repeat the game over and over. He called it “Baby Body Slam.” The game soon became their favorite part of the day.
During Christmas Day the year Skylar turned three, Mary and Dave videotaped their baby girl when she found her gifts. Skylar squealed as she jumped up and down, her blond curls bouncing in time to her steps. Racing around the living room and then running toward the camera, Skylar yelled, “I love you, Daddy!”
Daddy keeping watch while Skylar (age 3) tells him stories.
The constant, daily affirmation that came from the heart of a toddler would become Skylar’s best gift to Mary and Dave—and what her parents would miss the most after Skylar was gone.
When the two teens didn’t stop talking, Mr. Demchak spoke up again.
“All right, Miss Eddy, Miss Shoaf, one of you needs to move.” He gestured to a male student. “Miss Shoaf, you and Trent switch seats.”
Shelia rolled her eyes at Rachel as she and Trent traded seats. Despite the relocation, she and Rachel continued to chat.
Demchak would later describe having had two murderers in his class as “the most bizarre thing I ever experienced in my teaching career.” At the time, though, he thought they were two girls acting out for attention.
Regardless of when the two girls asked their bizarre question, none of the people who may have heard it—Mr. Demchak, Nick, and the three other students within hearing—had any way of knowing what they actually witnessed that day in the fall of 2011 was the birth of a murder plot. They had no idea Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf, fifteen-year-old University High School sophomores, were planning to kill Skylar Neese.
Love was always a constant in the Neese household, but money wasn’t. Skylar’s parents lived paycheck to paycheck all her life, which explains why they didn’t take their first family vacation until the summer of 2000 when Skylar was four years old. They chose Ocean City, Maryland, six hours away, so Skylar could experience the beach for the first time.
The family could afford the vacation only because Mary had nearly been killed the previous year. A few days before Thanksgiving 1999, Mary dropped Skylar off at Pleasant Day Daycare. On her way home, Mary found herself behind an O. C. Cluss lumber truck. The truck missed its turnoff, stopped abruptly, and began to back up.
Mary blared the horn and tried to put her green Mercury in reverse, but she wasn’t quick enough. When the truck began to climb her hood, she threw her left arm up in reflex and the airbags engaged, cleanly snapping her forearm. Seconds later when she came to, her left arm was hanging awkwardly over the steering wheel and dripping blood. She had to lift it off the steering wheel with her right hand. When she noticed the impact had knocked the car’s ashtray into the back seat, she was instantly relieved Skylar hadn’t been in the car.
One metal plate, two operations, and several months later, Mary’s arm was functioning at nearly 100 percent. In addition, the insurance company agreed to a settlement to cover the medical expenses and pay restitution. It was not an extraordinary amount, but would be enough for a frugal trip to the beach.
While Skylar later became a big fan of the ocean, she didn’t like it during her first visit; she was small and the waves kept knocking her over. However, she loved the hotel’s swimming pool. One afternoon as Mary laid her towel on a chaise lounge and Dave stripped off his shirt, Skylar stared at the pool, an inflatable seahorse around her waist and floaters on each arm. She waddled toward the pool’s edge, peering intently at the sparkling water.
“Daddy’s not ready for you yet, honey,” Dave said. “Daddy’ll help you. You don’t know how to swim.”
“I can so swim!” Skylar shouted. To prove it, she jumped in the water. Dave panicked and leaped in after her. Mary laughed at them.
“It’s okay, Daddy!” Skylar sputtered, slapping the water with her floaters while kicking her legs. “I can swim!”
“You can’t swim, honey!” Dave grabbed at her, but the small child kept squirming.
“I can so!”
Dave had to admit the floaters gave Skylar the confidence to swim just fine. That was the moment when he began to think of his daughter as fearless. In new situations, she was watchful and held back—until she plunged right in.
Skylar was also willful: she would decide what she would or wouldn’t do, no matter what her parents or anyone else said.
Skylar didn’t believe it for a second. Shelia and Rachel would never do that.
“I’m just telling you,” Nick said the next time he saw Skylar, “I heard them ask how to dispose of a body. Then they said how much you get on their nerves, and they didn’t like you.”
Unconvinced, Skylar flashed Nick a sweet smile. “They were probably just playing a game. We always play that game, you know, ‘Would You Rather.’ We play with weird stuff, like, which way would you rather die.”
Nick shrugged. “Whatever. Might wanna ask them about it anyway.”
She, Shelia, and Rachel had every class together but biology, where students later told police they heard the exchange. According to students who heard it, Skylar did question Shelia and Rachel.
“Hey, Nick said you two were making jokes in biology class about wanting to kill me. What’s up with that?” Her voice was even, but her eyes were steely.
Shelia gave Skylar a blank stare as Rachel’s eyes darted around.
“Why would we do that?” Rachel asked, laughing.
“That kid has been smoking too much weed,” Shelia said. “See? Now there’s a lesson for all of us. Don’t smoke so much weed you think people are out to kill you.”
“Yeah, you know you can’t trust a stoner anyway,” Rachel said, laughing.