- I'm craig melvin
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
- She was beautiful.
Her eyes were just remarkable.
I was gonna be there for her
And she was gonna be there for me.
It didn't matter what it was.
I thought that maybe she'd been kidnapped.
No one knew what was happening.
There's nothing that I could've done
Or anyone could've done.
- Skylar.
Rachel.
Shelia.
Total bffs.
- They hung out all the time.
- You always thought of them as a team.
- The three of them became inseparable.
- Then one ended up missing.
- Nobody's heard from her, nobody knows where she is.
- Somethin's wrong, somethin's bad wrong.
- Where was skylar?
Someone was hiding something.
- I was like-- it's the fbi.
Like, they're serious.
- Twitter, instagram, facebook,
You just see things start to get ridiculously out of control.
- A clique of mean girls.
Were they mean enough to kill?
- She was like, "well, she'll blackmail me."
- It was such a shocking and scandalous kind of case.
- This was diabolical.
- Evil comes in all shapes and sizes.
♪♪
- Hello and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
Skylar neese was her parents' pride and joy,
Scoring straight as in high school
While also holding down a part time job.
But when the popular teenager went missing,
Her family feared she'd been abducted by a stranger.
But investigators suspected the crime was personal.
In the search for truth, they would discover a trail
Filled with lies, betrayal,
And a secret too horrific to keep.
Here's andrea canning with "something wicked."
♪♪
- In the gentle rolling hills of northern west virginia,
In a sweet college town in the heart of coal country
Lived three teenage girls.
Their photos capture a moment in time.
They were smart, talented, lovely.
Everything a parent could hope for in a daughter.
[laughter]
- And so who could've guessed just by looking
That some of them carried a dark secret about a friend.
- These teens played a strange and haunting game.
- Would you guys rather suffocate or get shot?
- Get shot.
- A game of betrayal that would go way beyond
Typical teenage drama.
- She's callin' out, "help me," you know,
"why, why, why?"
- And at the center of it all was a girl named skylar.
Dave and mary neese welcomed their only daughter
To the world back in 1996.
Tell me about the day she was born.
Was that the greatest moment of your life?
- I wouldn't go that far. [laughter]
- First time you saw her.
- First time I saw her, yes, I can say
That was the greatest moment of my life, yeah.
It was instant love.
- They live in star city,
A small suburb of morgantown, west virginia,
Where dave works at walmart and mary at a medical office.
Skylar was a whirlwind,
A rambunctious, precocious toddler
Who owned her parents' hearts.
- Hey, gorgeous.
- Hi, daddy.
- You a beautiful baby.
She was reading way before she was supposed to,
Doin' math and stuff way before she was supposed to,
So she was a very intelligent little girl.
- Dance for me.
Whee!
- When skylar started nursery school,
She made her first friend, morgan lawrence.
Morgan was drawn right away to skylar.
Did she kind of light up a room?
- Oh, yeah. She had the giggle and the laugh.
- The girls' families became good friends, too.
Morgan's parents, dave and cheryl say
Morgan and skylar were like sisters.
- What are your memories of skylar when she--
When she was this high?
- She giggled all the time.
It just filled our house.
- She had the biggest eyes.
You just wanted to hug her.
- They were good girls, got good grades.
Morgan dreamed of becoming a meteorologist,
Skylar a criminal lawyer.
They also had a pact that they would always be there
For one another.
And you would both be in each other's wedding parties?
- Everyone has a sister to put in their wedding,
And we had each other.
- As freshmen at morgantown's university high school,
The two girls drifted apart a little.
With a new school came new friends.
Classmate daniel hovatter says the bubbly skylar
Fit in right away.
- Friends came first with her.
She was always about hanging out with friends
If she didn't have work or school.
- Soon skylar had two new bffs:
Shelia eddy, who the neeses had known for years,
And rachel shoaf,
A striking redhead with broadway aspirations.
It wasn't long before they were calling themselves
The three musketeers,
And in pictures they looked the part.
- They were literally together every second of every day,
It seemed like. They hung out all the time.
- And like all teenage girls, they shared videos and photos
With each other and online,
Giving us a glimpse into their world.
Skylar and shelia just having fun.
- Now lemme try to get on your back with this.
- Oh! - And of course
They occasionally got into trouble,
But even then it was for typical teenage things.
Dave and mary weren't too concerned.
She's a straight a student who loves her parents.
Sid you sort of chalk it up to,
"okay we're not thrilled, but she's a teenager."
- Exactly.
- When summer rolled around after her sophomore year,
Skylar seemed happy.
She had a job at wendy's which she loved.
On Thursday, July 5th, 2012
She came home after work and got ready for bed.
- She put her arm around her mom,
Gave her a kiss and gave her hug,
And said, "I love you, mom."
She turned to me and said, "I love you, dad."
And she went to the room.
- The next day dave planned to meet skylar
In their apartment at lunchtime.
He was surprised that she wasn't there.
A little worried, he called mary.
- I thought she was out with one of her other friends.
I figured they went swimming or shopping.
- Dave called her friends, including shelia.
No one had seen her.
Next he went outside and found more cause for worry:
A small bench was tucked near skylar's window
And the window screen was missing.
- At this time I called skylar's cellphone.
I said, "yeah, you're in trouble.
You better be callin' me right away."
And so I called her cellphone about 10 times.
I called mary again.
- Again mary told him to calm down.
She said skylar was expected at work at 4:00.
- I said, "we're not gonna worry.
I'll call them about ten after 4:00,
Give her time to clock in and everything,
See if she's there."
- But mary didn't get a chance to call wendy's.
- They called us first wanting to know
If she was coming to work. - Yeah.
- Was that a big moment for you?
- Yeah.
- A few minutes later there was another big surprise:
A call from shelia.
- She said that she had to tell me the truth,
And I said, "well, what truth?"
She said, "well, we did-- we snuck out last night."
- Mary's heart fell.
Skylar had done that once before--
Gone on a late-night joyride with rachel and shelia.
That time they'd been caught for being out
After the town curfew.
And now here was a worried shelia
Saying they'd done it again.
- I said, "where did you go? Where's skylar?"
And she said that skylar insisted they drop her off
At the end of the street so we wouldn't hear her
Sneaking back in.
- Now that missing screen and bench
Outside skylar's window made sense.
Skylar had put it there to boost her self up
So she could get back in.
But it left them with a terrifying possibility.
- My first instinct was someone abducted her
From the end of the street to our house.
- Dave called the police.
- The neeses' world had fallen apart.
Their only daughter had disappeared into the night,
And now she'd been gone for nearly 24 hours.
Where was skylar?
- The investigation starts
And concern for skylar begins to grow.
- I just had this horrible feeling in my heart
That something terrible had happened.
- Usually runaways, they take items with them
That they want, especially if she had contacts and glasses.
She didn't take that stuff with her.
- A grainy piece of videotape is about to give police
One giant clue.
What can they glean from this?
- She slowly walked down to a car
And she got in the back seat.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Star city, west virginia has just 1800 residents,
Only one stoplight.
- Skylar going missing was a tough pill to swallow
For the entire community.
- Police officer jessica colebank
Caught the skylar neese case.
- First impression was it could be a runaway.
There are kids that run away all the time.
- It wasn't long before officer colebank
Got the video from the security cameras
At the neeses' building.
Skylar's friend shelia eddy had said
Skylar was home around midnight.
So what was this car doing pulling up around 12:30 a.M?
Who was in it?
Dave neese watched horrified as there on the tape,
Out walked skylar.
- She slowly walked down to a car that was sittin' there
Waitin' on her, and she got in the backseat,
I could tell that.
And she drove away.
- Police couldn't quite make out a license plate
Or tell the make or model.
Skylar's mom mary had a theory.
- She made it home, snuck back in the window,
Then a second person or persons had parked behind the building,
And she snuck out a second time.
- But why? Who was in the car?
And where did they go?
The police didn't issue an amber alert
Since it looked like skylar left voluntarily.
- Once that video came out
That she willingly got in this car,
They're not gonna come out and look for somebody
Driving around in a car.
- Skylar's friend shelia came right over.
- She spent a lot of time here telling us that,
"it'll be okay, she'll be home,"
And, "I really miss her, I love her, I want her back."
- The next day, shelia sat with mary on skylar's bed,
Both of them crying.
- Did it bring you comfort when shelia would come by
Being skylar's best friend?
- It did me a little bit, yeah, knowin' that--
How could skylar leave her behind?
- Mary and shelia took to the streets together,
Posting flyers for skylar.
- They would knock on the doors and ask,
"have you seen this girl?"
And we kept showin' the pictures to people.
Nobody had seen her.
- Shelia was very, very worried
About what had happened to skylar.
- Crissy swanson was a close family friend of shelia's
And saw shelia's distress firsthand.
- She was trying so hard to help them find anything,
So hard to help them figure out what had happened.
- The star city police are still looking
For a missing 16-year-old.
- Dave made a plea for help on local news station wboy.
- We love our baby. We want her home.
- By Sunday night, skylar had been gone the whole weekend.
Her family, including her aunt carol,
Was heartsick.
- I just had this horrible feeling in my heart
That, you know, somethin' terrible had happened,
And-and it wasn't like her to-to run away
Or disappear like she did.
- And mary, uh, told me that night, she said,
"somethin's wrong, dave. Something's bad wrong."
- The community held a candlelight vigil.
Skylar's school friends came, including rachael and shelia.
- They were crying, came up and hugged me and mary,
Just crying their eyes out.
- The only thing mary could say was,
"what can we do to help these girls?
How can we help these girls?"
- Skylar's family friend morgan lawrence
Was upset too.
She was away at camp when she read on facebook
That skylar was missing.
How worried were you?
- Oh, I was sick to my stomach all the time worried.
- So was officer colebank.
She was at it non-stop.
- I'd come back to the office in the evenings,
You know, watching the video, getting facebook records.
- Colebank was swamped with tips from people
Saying they'd seen skylar from morgantown
To new york and even california.
Each sighting was a dead end.
At the same time, colebank pulled skylar's records,
And what she found was ominous.
Skylar wasn't using her cell phone or her atm card.
Colebank now had serious doubts that skylar had run away.
- Usually runaways, they take items with them
That they want, especially if she had contacts and glasses.
She didn't take that stuff with her.
- And then police got an important new lead
In the case.
There had been two bank robberies
In the nearby town of blacksville.
Both of them had gone down around the time skylar vanished.
- I was working with other investigators
On those bank robberies.
- While looking into the robberies,
Ronnie gaskins of the west virginia state police
Was called in to skylar's case.
There had been a tip that somehow skylar
Had been at a party with the suspected bank robbers
When something bad happened.
What was the theory?
- They're just rumors, you know, gossip goin' around
That there was this teenage party, uh,
There was a possible overdose, and people there were scared,
So they hid the body.
- It seemed unlikely.
Skylar didn't use heavy drugs.
- It was just a lot of tracking down rumors--
Tons and tons and tons of rumors.
- All leading nowhere.
By now skylar had been gone more than a month.
Gaskins vowed he would find her.
- I don't like to make promises in my line of work,
But the only promise I made today was we would never stop,
You know, we would never give up in trying to find out
What happened to skylar.
- Their search for skylar had taken them
Across the united states.
What they didn't know then was that the truth was right there
In morgantown at university high.
- As investigators gathered more evidence,
Two potential suspects emerge.
Did the pair know more about skylar's disappearance
Than they were letting on?
Police were not the only ones with suspicions.
- I started posting on facebook things about karma,
"karma will get you," "you can't hide."
- Twitter, instagram, and facebook.
Things start to get ridiculously out of control.
- Whispers in the hallways.
Was someone hiding something?
- Rachel seemed distressed.
She seemed like she was very upset.
I mean, this was eating at her heart.
- Police are about to get a break.
- That was an aha moment.
Finally we have something to go on.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- The first day of school the fall of 2012
Was heartbreaking.
One of university high school's top students, skylar neese,
Had disappeared during the summer.
Classmate shania ammons.
- Starting school without her, like, that was probably
One of the hardest days through the whole thing.
Like, skylar was a go-to person,
And she was just gone.
- Skylar's friend morgan lawrence
Was dreading roll call.
- I didn't have any classes with her, thank god.
- You didn't want to hear her name called?
- It's not the same. It's--
You know, you can't tell the teacher,
"we don't know if she's coming back."
- Shelia, come here.
- In some ways, life seemed normal.
Skylar's good friend shelia eddy,
Seen here in this video taken in the classroom,
Is back in school.
- I don't want my baby to look like him.
- So is bff rachel shoaf.
Rachel got the lead in the fall play.
But everyone was worried about skylar,
And in school hallways and on social media,
Rumors flew.
- Between twitter, and instagram,
And facebook, you just see things start to get
Ridiculously out of control.
- Kids saying things from skylar had overdosed
And things that skylar's in a different country.
- Daniel hovatter was in drama with rachel
And knew how close the three girls were.
He wondered if rachel and shelia might be helping
Cover something up for skylar.
There had been rumors going around, just,
"oh, rachel and shelia know where she's hiding."
- Daniel knew rachel and shelia
Were the last ones to see skylar.
He wondered if they were protecting her,
Or maybe protecting someone else.
Either way, they had to know something.
- There were probably a good three, four, five times
Where I told rachel, "if you know anything,
You need to say what happened or where she's at."
- Daniel wasn't alone.
Writers daleen berry and geoff fuller
Live in the morgantown area and have written a book
About skylar's case.
They've spent hours combing through
What kids were saying on social media.
- The one thing that stood out to me is that people,
Teens were tweeting,
"shelia and rachel had to know something."
- "why don't you guys just talk?
Just say something," you know.
- Yeah. - "tell us what you know."
- The heat got turned up on the girls
When the fbi showed up
And started interviewing students.
- I was only interviewed once.
I guess I was nervous, 'cause I was like--
It's the fbi. Like, they're serious.
They asked me about rachel and shelia,
If they seemed any different.
And I was telling 'em they didn't seem different,
But they were secluded to themselves more.
- The normal fall rituals like football and homecoming
Were punctuated with police visits
To rachel and shelia.
Kids say rachel left play rehearsal
To meet with the fbi.
Mary and dave neese,
Desperate to find their daughter,
Thought the police were wasting their time
Investigating the girls they knew so well.
- I even went to the police and said,
"will you leave shelia alone, please."
I said, "you guys are harassing her 24/7.
The kid's goin' through enough right now.
Leave her alone."
She was like our daughter.
- But investigators were convinced the two girls
Knew more than they were saying.
That fall, ronnie gaskins interviewed
Each girl repeatedly.
How was shelia's demeanor in these meetings
You would have with her?
- Calm, collect.
Just would look at you right in the face,
Right in your eyes.
- He says rachel seemed distracted.
- She would draw on the desk, play with the pencil.
Just her nonverbal cues spoke a lot.
- Their story never varied: They picked skylar up,
Drove around morgantown, smoked a little pot,
And dropped her off a few blocks from home.
- It was like a recording with these two.
- In the meantime, the officers had begun
To collect physical evidence, and it didn't match up
With the story the girls had been telling.
Surveillance video from a convenience store
Put the girls' car not heading east as they'd said,
But heading west toward blacksville.
And the girls' phone records from that night showed
Rachel's phone pinging off a cell tower in blacksville.
- That was an aha moment.
Finally we have something to go on
That's different from their story.
- Now even skylar's parents joined the chorus of people
Trying to get the girls to talk.
- I started posting on facebook things about karma.
"karma will get you," "you can't hide."
We were pushing.
We were pushing the girls to get them
To say what happened.
- By late November, the pressure seemed to be
Taking its toll on rachel.
In an interview, she surprised police
By changing her story, admitting for the first time
That they did drive to blacksville that night,
And that's where skylar told them
To let her out of the car.
Blacksville, where those bank robberies had happened.
The next day, shelia changed her story to say the same thing.
That must have been a big red flag for you.
- Absolutely.
- At school, kids say rachel was increasingly rattled.
- Rachel seemed distressed.
She seemed like she was very upset over something.
I mean, this was eating in her heart.
- Rachel shoaf was about to crack.
- Gimme the phone. - Give it to me!
- An emergency at home and an interview with police.
What exactly was rachel shoaf about to reveal?
- We were speechless.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin.
A secret is a dangerous thing.
The bigger it is, the harder it is to keep.
Investigators suspected rachel shoaf and shelia eddy
Shared a very big one about what happened to skylar neese
On her last night alive.
Now skylar had been gone nearly six months.
And as the holidays rolled around,
One of the two was about to talk.
Here's andrea canning with more of "something wicked."
- Christmas 2012 came and went for skylar neese's parents
Dave and mary.
It had been six months since their daughter had disappeared.
The holidays must have been very tough that year,
Christmas time.
- We didn't celebrate. - No.
We didn't put up any tree, we didn't do anything.
- Just another day. - Yup.
- Around that time, rachel shoaf and shelia eddy
Stopped attending university high.
Their few remaining friends told authors daleen berry
And geoff fuller that rachel seemed agitated.
- She was acting out, getting into more,
Um, family altercations at home.
- So the walls were closing in on rachel.
- Mmm.
- And then on December 28th, rachel apparently snapped.
Her upset mother called the police.
- Give it to me!
- And rachel was taken to a mental health facility.
A few days later, corporal ronnie gaskins
Got a big surprise.
Rachel wanted to meet at her lawyer's office.
She had something she wanted to say.
Take us inside that attorney's office with rachel.
What was her demeanor?
- I remember her pulling up a wastebasket next to her.
She was afraid she was gonna throw up.
And then we started askin' her the questions
That we thought she would answer.
Did she overdose? Was there a party?
And I remember she just-- her face got really red
And she just, you know, glanced at us and said,
"we stabbed her."
- It wasn't an accident, it was a murder.
And not only had rachel and shelia killed skylar,
They had planned it for months.
- Oh, my god.
- All the while looking and acting like
The best of friends,
As shelia and skylar do in this video.
As part of the plan,
Rachel and shelia settled on the night of July 5th
As the ideal time to kill skylar.
- Earlier that day, rachel had, uh,
Obtained the shovel from her father's residence.
They put it in shelia's trunk.
They brought the clean clothes, cleaning supplies,
And according to rachel,
Shelia had provided the kitchen knives.
They called skylar to say they were on their way over.
- Pulled up to the residence.
- And there is skylar sneaking out
In that grainy surveillance video.
The car is shelia's and inside are skylar's two best friends.
- Skylar gets in the car and they go drivin'.
- And they drove for nearly an hour,
For miles and miles,
Dark winding roads out past blacksville.
- They get to the scene, they park the car,
And they found an area where they could sit and talk.
Skylar leaves to go back to the car,
And then rachel said, "on three."
- According to gaskins, rachel said she counted,
"one, two, three."
And on three, the two girls began.
- That's when her and shelia
Started stabbing skylar from behind.
- Oh, my god, matches.
- Gaskin says skylar fought hard to defend herself.
Did rachel indicate what skylar's last words were,
Her final moments, in that meeting?
- She said skylar just said, "why?"
And that was-- that's all she said.
- Rachel said the girls covered the body
With dirt and branches,
Threw their bloody clothes in the trunk,
And left skylar there.
Did rachel express how she felt when the crime was over?
- Yeah, I just remember her saying
That this was something she wanted to get done
Before she went to church camp.
- How did you feel when she said,
"I had to get this done before church camp"?
- What are we dealing with?
- Did you ask rachel why?
"why did you two do this?"
- She would not give us any specific details
Other than they just didn't like her.
And then when I asked her,
"what do you mean, you didn't like her?
Clarify that," she said, "oh, nothin',
We just didn't like her."
- After telling police the story,
Rachel led authorities down that lonely road
Past blacksville to a spot just across
The pennsylvania border.
There they eventually found a few scattered human remains
And sent them to a lab for testing.
- I just couldn't imagine the pain and suffering
And the fear she went through, bein' alone in that place
With her two best friends, and she knew what was happening
When they started stabbin' her.
- Authorities kept rachel's confession secret,
Even from the neeses,
While the investigation continued.
The fbi told mary and dave only that remains
Believed to be skylar's had been found.
- I broke down pretty bad, yeah.
- We both did. That was a bad day.
- It was so lonely
And so deserted.
And it was a horrible thing to know that she had been there
And no one knew.
- One, two, three, go.
Happy birthday, skylar.
- In February of 2013, just as they had
Since she was a little girl...
- Ready? - I'm ready, piglet.
- The neeses gathered with friends on skylar's birthday,
This time without her.
They quietly told the lawrences their awful news.
Did your heart just break for mary and dave?
- My heart was slowly breaking the entire time.
- I remember the first thing I felt,
It was just like a surreal of--
I know she's not, you know, out there in the cold.
- Ronnie gaskins had a confession from rachel,
And she'd led him to a body, but it wasn't enough.
Why wouldn't you arrest somebody right away
Who's confessed to killing someone?
- She had lied to us a number of times before.
So we had to say, "well, who's to say she's lying again?"
So we had to corroborate her statement.
- What's more, gaskins needed rachel.
So he didn't arrest her.
Instead, he was about to use rachel to get shelia.
- Grieving or pretending?
- Shelia seemed like she was so upset
To have lost her best friend.
She even asked me, "how could someone do this to skylar?"
- Will the truth catch up to shelia eddy?
- Shelia was cryin', and she kept askin' her mother,
"is-is everything gonna be okay?"
And then her mother-- "I don't know, shelia."
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Corporal ronnie gaskins was on a mission
To put two girls behind bars.
- It was one of those where you couldn't get there fast enough.
- Rachel shoaf had just confessed to teaming up
With shelia eddy to kill their friend skylar neese.
Now she was cooperating with police.
Gaskins and his fellow investigators hatched a plan.
Rachel would invite shelia to her house.
As hidden cameras rolled,
She would try to get shelia to incriminate herself.
- We were close by in case something happened.
- Shelia did come over.
The police didn't record anything to pin shelia to the crime.
- The girls did not disclose anything specific.
They were just very casual.
- A few days later the police went to shelia's house
With a warrant.
- We seized every kitchen knife we could find,
And then the fbi seized shelia's car
And they were able to find, uh, presence of dna in the trunk.
- Dna in shelia's trunk.
If it proved to be skylar's it would be critical
To gaskins's case, a direct link
Connecting the girls to skylar's death.
They shipped a sample off to the lab and waited.
Meanwhile, gaskins got a positive id
On the human remains found out past blacksville.
It was skylar.
- The search for monongalia county teenager
Skylar neese is over.
- At university high school, confirmation that skylar
Had been found dead was heartbreaking.
- I was devastated.
It was...
It was crazy.
- Shania called her friend shelia as soon
As she heard the awful news.
- I was crying, she was crying.
- There was shelia, suspected murderer,
Crying tears for skylar.
- And she's like, "who do you think could've done this?
Why would somebody do that to skylar?"
- Shelia also cried with her friend crissy swanson.
- And once skylar's body was found,
Shelia seemed like she was so upset
To have lost her best friend.
She couldn't believe that
Something like this would happen.
She even asked me, "how could someone do this to skylar?"
- And shelia let everybody know how sad she was.
She tweeted things like, "worst day of my whole life,"
"the pain is real," and, "rest easy, skylar.
You'll always be my best friend.
I miss you more than you could ever know."
But social media revealed two sides to shelia.
She could mourn skylar, but on twitter and facebook
She and rachel also seemed carefree.
As the police continued their investigation,
Rachel tweeted, "I need a mimosa... Or ten."
They were going about their lives,
Even while the police believed the girls
Were stone-cold killers.
- The locals would whisper in each other's ears and say,
"how are they still free?"
- Cole bartiromo runs a blog called newsball.Com.
Early on he started following this case
And was struck by shelia's tweets--
Things like, "ain't no rest for the wicked," and incredibly,
This apparent reference to that countdown
To skylar's murder: "we really did go on three."
- But it's unbelievable that she feels she's so invincible
To-to tweet this publicly.
- And then finally, by mid-April 2013,
Ronnie gaskins got the one critical piece
Of evidence he needed:
Confirmation that skylar's blood had been found
In shelia's trunk.
- On top of the video surveillance,
The phone records, rachel's statement,
At that point we felt confident we had the probable cause
To make the arrest.
- Now authorities told skylar's parents
The whole story.
Their daughter's two best friends had killed her.
- It, like, has to turn away.
- I think about it every day.
I think about the misery my child must've been through.
And I'm helpless.
I can't help her.
She's callin' out, "help me," you know, "why, why, why?"
- Animals got her.
They didn't even care.
- Nope, they just threw her out like a bag of trash.
- On may 1, 2013 in exchange for her cooperation with police,
Rachel shoaf pleaded guilty to second degree murder.
Within minutes, gaskins raced across morgantown,
His heart pounding.
- Obviously we were goin' lights and siren,
'cause we had a murder warrant to serve.
- Shelia was arrested and charged
With first degree murder in the parking lot
Of the local cracker barrel restaurant
Where she and her mom were having lunch.
- Shelia was cryin', and she kept askin' her mother,
"is-is everything gonna be okay?"
And then her mother just-- "I don't know, shelia."
- Gaskins had promised skylar's parents
He wouldn't quit until the case was solved.
- It felt good for once that she was comin' with us.
- The question of who had been answered,
But people were haunted by an unanswered question:
Skylar's last word, "why?"
- Coming up.
- I became caught up in something
That I did not want to do.
- The accused killers head to court,
Where they come face to face with skylar's family.
- She has done nothing but make our lives a living hell
Since this day one.
- And the motive for murder.
- They planned that crime for days, weeks, months.
- What could that be?
- I think that's somethin' for rachel and shelia to say.
They know the answers to that.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back.
Rachel shoaf pleaded guilty to killing skylar neese,
A girl she once called her best friend.
As rachel's other best friend shelia headed to court,
One aspect of the case remained an open question:
Motive.
Police believed they knew the who, what, where,
And when, but why skylar had to die remained elusive.
Here's andrea canning with the conclusion
Of "something wicked."
- Shelia eddy was not about to give in without a fight.
There she was in September 2013,
A lone blonde teen in a crowd of accused men
Pleading not guilty to the kidnapping
And murder of skylar neese.
This was terrible news for skylar's parents.
- I don't wanna go through a trial and hear
The grisly, gruesome details of all this.
That would tear me apart.
- With a trial looming,
The question on everyone's mind was why.
Investigators wanted to know, too, and in the halls
Of university high, they got glimpses of a motive,
Saw snapshots of a troubled three-way friendship.
Morgan lawrence saw a disturbing dynamic firsthand.
- I was not a huge fan of rachel and shelia.
- As far back his freshman year, morgan had worried
That her friend skylar was heading into a place
She might not belong when she became close friends
With rachel and shelia.
Morgan especially didn't like shelia.
- She hung out with the wrong crowd.
She had lots of friends that were 20-some years old.
That's just a little strange.
- Morgan says she'd watched, uneasy,
As the three girls became inseparable.
Skylar's cousin kyle adored skylar
And says he felt uneasy, too.
- You'd walk through the halls,
You don't see one without the other.
It's always shelia, skylar, rachel, always together.
- By sophomore year, he saw changes in skylar.
- It seemed like about that time,
She didn't have that same nice quality to her.
- She was more sour, I think, toward people.
She started almost acting the way that shelia acted.
- Must have been hard to see her changing.
- It's difficult to watch it in general,
And it's even harder whenever it's someone as close as,
You know, someone that you called your family.
- Students told writers geoff fuller
And daleen berry that by mid-sophomore year
The three girls' relationship had begun to deteriorate.
They've written about this in their book,
"the savage murder of skylar neese."
- Shelia and rachel were dissing skylar
When-when she wasn't around, and putting her down,
And that kind of thing.
So-so it was kind of a two-faced situation.
- Yeah.
- Students say that around this time,
They started hearing rachel and shelia discuss
The best way to kill someone,
And rachel's friend fantasia liller recalls
A chilling conversation.
- Rachel was ranting to me how much
She didn't like skylar one day.
What she said, word for word, I'm pretty sure, was,
"I wouldn't mind if she died at this point."
- Which makes this cell phone video
All the more haunting,
Because it was captured by skylar
Six months before she was killed.
- You said it two times.
- Shelia asks skylar and rachel to choose the best way to die.
- Would you guys rather suffocate or get shot?
- Get shot. - Shot.
Is-- wait, it depends on where.
- Would you rather-- in the head.
- Shot. - Shot.
- There'd be no suffering at all.
- Drowning or suffocating?
- Suffocating. - Suffocating.
- It's almost the same thing.
- I know, but--
- An incredibly disturbing scene.
Friends told investigators that in the months
Before skylar's death,
She and shelia fought constantly.
Late on July 5th, skylar tweeted this.
Later that night, skylar is seen here
On that surveillance tape driving away from home
For the last time.
What were they fighting about?
There's a possible answer:
Hallway whispers that rachel and shelia
Had developed a sexual relationship,
And that skylar knew and threatened to out them.
Did they kill her to keep their secret?
It's as close to a motive as anyone can come up with.
Do you think we'll ever know why this happened?
- I think that's somethin' for rachel and shelia to say.
They know the answers to that.
- In January 2014, dave and mary finally got
The news they'd been hoping for: A plea deal.
- Shelia eddy, how do you plead to the offense of murder
In the first degree of the felony charged
In count three of the indictment in this case?
- Guilty.
- Shelia's attorney michael benninger
Read a statement from shelia and her family.
My client and her family recognize that the neese family
Is in a constant state of despair, loneliness
And sadness as a result of skylar's death.
- Shelia was sentenced to life in prison
And is eligible for parole in 2028.
A month later, dave and mary went back to court,
This time for rachel shoaf's sentencing.
- Rachel has a profound sadness at this loss,
And a profound sadness for mr. And mrs. Neese.
- Therapist patricia bailey was hired by rachel's family
To meet with rachel in prison.
- From the day I met rachel, she has said to me,
"I deserve to be in here.
I did something terribly wrong.
I hurt somebody."
Rachel does miss skylar, very much so.
And then she also weeps for her
Because she knows that she cannot undo the past,
And that she will never see her again.
- In court rachel apologized directly to dave and mary.
- I don't know if there's a proper way
To make this apology
Because there are not even words
To describe the guilt and remorse that I feel
Each day for what I've done.
I became scared and caught up in something
That I did not want to do.
I never realized the gravity of my actions
And how many people I've hurt.
- Skylar's dad, who had once defended the girls,
Didn't mince words.
- Yes, rachel shoad did cooperate.
And rachel shoaf also murdered my daughter
In cold blood.
She can take her apologies and everything else
And sit on 'em, because that's about
What they're worth to me and my wife.
She has done nothing but make our lives a living hell
Since this day one.
- Dave and mary wish they'd known more
About what was going on in skylar's life
In the months before she died.
What is your biggest regret, if you have one?
- Not knowing the girls better, you know.
And I don't know if anyone could have known 'em that well.
There had to be a sign somewhere.
There had to be a clue.
- Rachel shoaf, would you please stand.
- Rachel was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
She will be eligible for parole in 2023.
Prosecutor marcia ashdown says, "don't be fooled
By the girls' appearance."
- They planned that crime not just for hours,
But days, weeks, months.
The horror of that really is what strikes us in the end,
Not how those girls look in shackles.
- Young, old.
Attractive, unattractive.
Male, female. Doesn't matter.
Evil comes in all shapes and sizes.
- These days around morgantown there's lingering damage.
Teenagers who feel they'll never trust anyone again.
- After I had heard all that, I didn't really want
To become friends with anybody else.
- It's like finding out your little sister
Was a murderer.
- I still to this day have trust issues.
- Skylar's friend morgan lawrence says
She thinks about all the milestones
She and skylar had planned to mark together.
You two should be doing everything alongside each other.
- Yeah, they didn't just, you know, take away a bride,
They took away a bridesmaid.
- Skylar's second parents say they'll miss out, too.
When morgan walks down the aisle...
- Yes. - Skylar won't be there.
- She will be.
- She'll be watching over? - She will.
- In June 2013, dave and mary had a memorial service
At the site where skylar was killed.
And they're proud to have helped pass skylar's law,
Which requires amber alerts even when police suspect
A teen has run away.
It's peaceful here now.
They come here often, even in the winter,
To tend the small garden they've built for skylar.
Mary, how do you want skylar to be remembered?
- The happy, loving little girl that she was.
- And, uh, the smile.
That smile could light up a room.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.