Pretty Little Killers (14 page)

Rachel had been acting a little odd the last few days. She had grown distant and reserved. Skylar would have wanted to resolve whatever was happening among the three of them. The problem was, how? Bad feelings were poison to her, as she wrote in her English class and her diary.

As Shelia, Rachel, and Skylar headed away from Star City, past the Sheetz convenience store and across the four-lane bridge over the Monongahela River, Skylar probably looked out the side window, her earbuds in and her music loud, and pondered their friendship problems.

Maybe Skylar saw it first. Maybe Shelia, who was driving, or Rachel, sitting beside her, did. But as they headed north on Route 19, planning to turn left onto Route 7 and head west toward Blacksville, they suddenly came up short.

“Oh shit, Shelia, there's the po-po!” Rachel might have said.

“Fuck!” Shelia probably replied.

Parked near the intersection of Routes 19 and 7, in front of a Hot Spot gambling lounge, was a State Police car. It matters little who saw the car first, because all three girls immediately grew skittish: they were underage, breaking curfew—and they all knew they had weed in the car. What was important is that the trooper sitting inside his patrol vehicle didn't see the little car at all.

“Quick, turn around!” Rachel suggested.

Sure enough, Shelia saw the same circular entrance to Tirelady's Rainbow Tire that Rachel did, which allowed her to easily pull off the road and on again, quickly heading back toward Star City.

“That was close,” Skylar, who would have removed one earbud as soon as she realized something was wrong, said from the back seat.

Shelia and Rachel stared straight ahead, each refusing to give in to the desire they had to turn to the other, eyes opened wide. But as Skylar stuck the little white bud back in her ear and turned to stare out the window again, not giving the police car another second of worry, their minds were on what was hidden in the trunk, and their thoughts were likely identical:

You have no idea, Skylar, no idea at all
!

Once back at the intersection where Sheetz was, Shelia would have made an easy right turn while gliding through the traffic light. That late at night her little car was one of a few still on the road, and from there, it was barely half a mile to the I-79 on-ramp that would lead them north, and on an alternate route to Blacksville.

Shelia left the interstate six miles later at the Mount Morris exit, and drove through the tiny town until she came to Buckeye Road. She steered her car through the curves in the commonly traveled shortcut, which wound its way for a few miles along the narrow, twisty roadway. The night had cooled down to the midseventies, and the high, clear sky full of stars belied the violence of the storm less than a week earlier.

The road widened as they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and then a big iron bridge that signaled the road's end. Shelia turned right at the intersection and followed Route 7 west to Blacksville past her old alma mater, Clay-Battelle High School, and finally, to the right turn that would take her and Rachel to their secret destination on Morris Run Road back in Pennsylvania.

The deeper they drove into this rural area, the more apparent the devastation from the recent derecho became. Both sides of the road were heavily forested and hadn't been completely cleared of toppled trees, broken branches, and general debris left behind by the eighty-mile-an-hour winds.

Skylar had only agreed to join them because she believed they were going to ride around for a while, chat, and get high. But a mile south of Shelia's father's house, on a dark stretch of road, Shelia pulled the little Toyota off at a place they all knew well. They'd smoked many joints there on the way to or from Shelia's dad's house. To Skylar, this was one more smoke break. She had no reason to suspect her two best friends had something much darker in mind.

Neither Shelia nor Rachel mentioned the real reason they invited her to join them on that midnight drive. Nor did they say a word about the paper towels, bleach, Handi Wipes, or clean clothes stashed in the trunk of the car. They didn't discuss the shovel Rachel had stolen
from her father's house and hidden in the trunk. Concealed under their arms and beneath the folds of their hoodies, Shelia and Rachel each carried one of the knives Shelia had brought. The weapons had been in place since they picked up the girl they planned to kill.

Skylar never knew about any of that, so she never got the chance to restore harmony among them. The three got out of the car and walked a little ways down the road. Shelia produced the joint, but the lighter she brought didn't work. Skylar remembered she'd left her lighter in the car and turned in the road to get it.

The minute Skylar's back was turned, Rachel began counting. At the count of three, she and Shelia began stabbing. With each stab wound, they released their pent-up rage and anger—at the people who had wronged them, at the parents who had disappointed them, and at the girl who loved them both, but whose jealous temper tantrums had made them despise her.

Stunned and in pain, Skylar tried at first to run. But she didn't get very far, because Rachel chased and tackled her in the middle of the road. Both girls landed on the ground as Rachel and Shelia kept stabbing. Skylar was physically stronger and a natural scrapper, though, and because she knew she was fighting for her life, she managed to grab Rachel's knife. It was Rachel's turn to shriek when Skylar left a three-inch gash just above her right ankle.

Rachel recovered her knife, however, and as they continued stabbing, only one word fell from Skylar's lips, but she cried it out over and over: “Why?”

In the end, Skylar never had a chance. She was stronger and tougher than either girl, but the fight was two against one. Skylar was weakening from wound upon wound, while Shelia and Rachel became more frenzied, their attacks increasingly savage.

After they finally stopped, Skylar's “best friends” stood above her, victorious with their win, until she stopped breathing. They watched her die. The fight had been so vigorous, both Shelia and Rachel had
accidentally pocket-dialed someone: Shelia, her own voicemail; Rachel, an old boyfriend who never got the call.

Together they dragged Skylar to the side of the road and tried to bury her near a creek, but the soil was too rocky. They covered her body with debris instead.

When they were certain no one would ever find her, they got the paper towels and Handi Wipes out of the trunk, stripped naked, and put their bloody clothes in a trash bag. The murder, cleanup, and burial under rocks, dirt, and fallen branches took just over three hours.

Then Shelia and Rachel, filled with a sense of mutual accomplishment and excitement from the kill, wiped themselves off and had sex to celebrate.
¹⁸
Afterward they carefully bagged all the bloody items and dressed in the clean clothes they had brought along.

In a town where people take great pride in having harmonious family lives, and where horrific crimes like this simply don't happen, one of the most harrowing parts of this story is comprehending the fear Skylar must have felt when her two best friends attacked her.

“Skylar must have been terrified,” one mother said. “Can you imagine the pain she felt at knowing her two friends were trying to murder her? That poor little girl.”

Skylar's story can bring the strongest person to tears, and many people have followed it and the associated rumors from the time they first heard her name.

Everyone now knows Rachel Shoaf eventually confessed, turned State's evidence, and pled guilty to second-degree murder in Skylar's death. For almost nine months after that, Shelia Eddy insisted she was innocent. In a stunning reversal, though, Shelia also pled guilty—to
first-degree murder—on January 24, 2014. She was sentenced to life in prison and given mercy, making her eligible for parole in fifteen years.

People who followed the tragic story know Shelia's last-minute plea came about because Rachel confessed. Most of them don't know that before her confession, Rachel had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Some people also know bits and pieces of the puzzle: rumors of the affair between Shelia and Rachel, the growing discord between Skylar and her two friends, and the fact that Shelia and Rachel planned the murder as much as a year in advance.

Rachel's descent into despair began within hours of stabbing Skylar to death when she went home and talked to God in the pages of her diary. Rachel wrote that only He knew what had happened the night of July 6—and it was going to stay that way.

Rachel also wrote, in page upon page, how sorry she was about what had happened. In the days to come, Rachel kept writing about “all the lies and lies, the terrible lies,” as she begged God to forgive her.
¹⁹

However, because appearances were of the utmost importance to Rachel—and because she knew how horribly she had disgraced her family—she treated the entire UHS student body and the community of Morgantown, West Virginia, to the performance of her lifetime. She did so to keep people from learning what she had done.

For six tumultuous months, no one suspected the ugly truth. A budding actress and singer with no small amount of talent, Rachel convinced all her friends she was innocent and had nothing to do with Skylar's disappearance. Rachel performed the role of “typical teenager,” living a life of pretense and lies that was emotionally exhausting. Unfortunately for Rachel, the one person she couldn't convince was herself.

Skylar's disappearance tore through Mary and Dave Neese. It sapped their strength and left them drained. They lived a number of private and public hells after losing their only child. The police investigation seemed to yield little fruit. Every day Mary and Dave volleyed between hope and despair. Family and close friends rallied around at first, but that support eventually soured, dissolving into a whirlpool of accusations and innuendo. Skylar's absence quickly sparked fires at UHS, too, since the pretty teen trio had been a fixture there. Some teenagers believed Skylar had run away. Others speculated she had overdosed and her body had been dumped down a mine shaft. Rumors roared like forest fires as students claimed Rachel and Shelia were hiding something, while others defended them, insisting that neither girl had anything to hide.

In spite of Rachel's amazing performance, by the time she broke down and was transported to Chestnut Ridge, the local psychiatric hospital, many teenagers knew the truth: Skylar Neese, they said, had been killed the same night she disappeared.

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