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On July 6, 2012, Skylar Neese vanished.
At first, police believed the 16-year-old honors student had run away after sneaking out of her apartment window in Star City, West Virginia, to meet up with her two best friends. But she was never seen again.
The friends, Rachel Shoaf and Sheila Eddy, told investigators they had picked Skylar up at 11 p.m., and that they later dropped her back at home. Both teens feigned shock and dismay over Skylar’s disappearance, helping the Neeses hang missing posters around town. But cops realized their stories didn’t add up.
Eventually, the pressure became too much to bear for Shoaf, who suffered a mental breakdown three days after Christmas that year, and she confessed, leading police to Skylar’s body in January 2013.
She and Eddy had stabbed Skylar to death with kitchen knives, dumping her body in the woods just over the Pennsylvania state line, Shoaf revealed. In 2014, Shoaf was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Eddy received life. As Shoaf would divulge at her first parole hearing in May 2023, the pair had been arguing with Skylar, and they “just wanted it to stop.”
On Monday, the West Virginia Parole Board denied Shoaf, now 28, her second shot at early release — which is exactly the way Dave Neese, Skylar’s dad, had hoped it would go.
“I hate her with my whole body and soul,” he told The Independent. “And I know I’m not supposed to hate people. I’m supposed to be over that.”
Neese said Shoaf and Eddy are “dangerous animals” who “belong in cages.”
“Skylar certainly didn’t get any [second] chances,” he said. “Why should they?”
Shoaf’s July 9 parole hearing was originally scheduled for May 1, Neese said. However, it was pushed back several times for an unspecified violation Shoaf allegedly committed behind bars. Neese called into the hearing, which was held remotely, to listen to the proceedings and give his own impassioned argument against Shoaf being freed.
In a prepared statement Neese read to the board and shared afterward with The Independent, he said that “Inmate Shoaf,” thus far, has shown herself … has proven to be both a narcissist and liar attempting to manipulate the system in which she resides.”
“It has been proven without any uncertainty that she cannot follow the ordinances and statutes within the maximum security prison in which she has been ordered by our judicial system to be confined to,” Neese said in his statement. “Her insubordination and deluded belief that she can scheme her way out of any situation is why we find ourselves at this place today and not two months ago.”
Although Shoaf pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, she and Eddy both confessed to having spent the better part of 12 months planning Skylar’s killing. (Eddy pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.)
At her 2023 parole hearing, Shoaf told the board that Skylar’s murder was “a mistake” she made, and that it “doesn’t make me a bad person.” However, Neese, in his statement, called Shoaf “a malicious monster” who very clearly made “a choice that was calculated, premeditated and willful.”
“She and her accomplice planned my only child’s vicious murder for upwards of a year,” Neese continued. “A year! That gave this evil monstrosity almost 365 days to change her mind, almost 52 weeks to say ‘no’ to this murderous attack, almost 8,760 hours in which to realize this decision to take another’s life was irrational, and almost 525,600 minutes to to save my beloved daughter’s life. But instead, she made the choice to murder my Skylar.”
Shoaf’s actions “devastated my life,” Neese said, beseeching the board not to grant her parole. After all, if Shoaf “slaughtered someone she called a friend, can you… imagine what she will do to her enemies?”
Speaking on her own behalf from West Columbia, West Virginia’s Lakin Correctional Center, Shoaf told the parole board that she has been productive while inside, earning a bachelor’s degree and obtaining a cosmetology license. She said she leads an inmate prayer group, participates in a prison drama club and that she believes she can become a productive member of society.
After roughly 10 minutes of deliberation, the board denied Shoaf’s early release, saying her recent violation, along with a lack of an appropriate “home plan,” had sunk her chances. She will get another chance at parole in June 2025.
Neese told The Independent that he never imagined Shoaf and Eddy could possibly have been responsible for Skylar’s murder, and remains incredulous at his ever having given the teens the benefit of the doubt. Even after Shoaf came clean to police, Eddy tried to keep up appearances. In March 2013, she tweeted, “rest easy skylar, you’ll ALWAYS be my bestfriend [sic]. i miss you more than you could ever know.”
“To think I went to bat for both these girls,” Neese went on, his tone vacillating between unadulterated outrage and profound melancholy. “You know, I even went to the police and told them, ‘Leave them alone. They’re both missing their best friend as much as we are.’ And then I come to find out they’re the reason my daughter was not here.”
Before hanging up the phone on Tuesday, Neese offered a few final thoughts.
Skylar, he said, was “a good kid. And she never deserved this at all.”
Even if she is never granted parole, Shoaf will only serve half of her 30-year term, according to West Virginia sentencing guidelines. Her projected release date is April 30, 2028. Eddy will first become eligible for parole the following month.
