Skylar Neese

**Skylar Annette Neese** (February 10, 1996 – July 6, 2012) was an American high school student who was murdered by a couple of her friends.

## Early Life

Skylar Annette Neese (born February 10, 1996) was the only child of Mary and David "Dave" Neese. At that time, Mary Neese worked as an administrative assistant in a cardiac lab and David Neese was a product assembler at Walmart. Skylar was a student at University High School who wanted to become a criminal defense lawyer. She worked at Wendy's with two close friends.

## Disappearance and Death

On July 5, 2012, Neese returned to her family's Star City, West Virginia apartment after working a shift at Wendy's. Her apartment complex's surveillance video shows Neese left the apartment via her bedroom window at 12:30 a.m. on July 6 and got into a sedan. Neese's father said she did not take her cell phone charger, her window was left open and that she planned on coming home.

On the night of the murder, Rachel Shoaf and Sheila Eddy invited Neese to sneak out with them. Neese, who had recently fallen out with the two, was initially hesitant. After a series of phone calls and texts from the girls, Neese changed her mind.

Shoaf and Eddy had been planning Neese's murder for months. They left Eddy's house prepared to carry out the assault on Neese, bringing with them kitchen knives, paper towels, bleach, cleaning cloths, clean clothes and a shovel. They concealed the knives in their purses and hid the remaining items in the trunk of Eddy's vehicle.

At approximately 12:30 a.m., Neese climbed out of her bedroom window, crossed the street and got into the back seat of a four-door sedan. Law enforcement officers later determined that the sedan had been in the possession of Eddy that evening. The three girls then headed northwest from Star City toward Blacksville via U.S. Route 19. The perpetrators had planned to travel along W.V. Route 7, but turned around after spotting a state police car parked in front of a gambling lounge. They eventually arrived at their destination just across the Pennsylvania state border, a spot where all three of the girls had occasionally smoked marijuana.

Once the girls were out of the vehicle, the perpetrators told Neese they had forgotten to bring a lighter. Neese volunteered to go back to the vehicle to fetch her own lighter. Once Neese had turned her back, Shoaf and Eddy counted to three, their agreed-upon signal, then began to stab Neese. The victim attempted to run, but was only able to run a few feet (a meter or two) before Shoaf tackled her to the ground and continued the assault. Neese managed to wrestle Shoaf's knife from her and, in an apparent attempt to defend herself, cut Shoaf's knee. Eddy continued to stab Neese until there was complete silence and, according to Shoaf, "Neese's neck stopped making gurgling sounds." Neese's postmortem examination revealed more than 50 stab wounds.

Shoaf and Eddy attempted to bury the body, dragging Neese to the side of the road, but the road ran along a creek and the soil there was too hard and rocky to dig a hole. They instead covered Neese's body with rocks, fallen branches and dirt. They returned to the car to clean themselves and the murder scene, then left the scene, disposed of their blood-soaked clothing and returned to their homes

## Legacy

An Amber Alert was not issued in Neese's disappearance because the circumstances did not meet all four criteria for an alert to be issued: (1) a child is believed to be abducted; (2) the child is under 18; (3) the child may be in danger of death or serious injury; (4) there is sufficient information to indicate the Amber Alert would be helpful. A waiting period of 48 hours had to elapse before a teenager could be considered missing. A West Virginia state legislator from the Neese family home district introduced a bill called Skylar's Law to modify West Virginia's Amber Alert plan to issue immediate public announcements when any child is reported missing and in danger, regardless of whether the child is believed to have been kidnapped. Opinion columns appeared in both West Virginia and national media in support of Skylar's Law, some of which also acknowledged criticism and drawbacks of the legislation. On March 27, 2013, the West Virginia House of Delegates approved Skylar's Law with a 98-0 vote. On April 12, 2013, the West Virginia Senate unanimously passed the law, but made minor technical changes to the bill which the House of Delegates voted to accept on the same day. West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin signed the legislation into law in May 2013.