Murder of Skylar Neese

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Discretion advised. This is ten minute
murder. In the summer of twenty twelve,

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Morgantown, West Virginia, was the
home to three teenage girls, each

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one of them from their own separate
journeys through life. First in the group

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was sixteen year old Schuylar Niece,
a girl who only a few years before

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that summer had broken down into tears
when she'd accidentally caused the death of a

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few ladybugs. That kindness, love
for life is what everyone knew Skyler for,

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especially those who were closest to her. Her father, Dave Niece,

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remembered a time when Skyler had called
him out for commenting on someone's physical appearance.

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Well how many beauty contests have you
won lately, Daddy, she asked,

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and Dave humbly took his lesson.
Her mother, Mary would often hear

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Skyler on the phone talking and treating
her best friends like they were her sisters.

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And Skyler didn't just treat her friends
like this because she was that kind.

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She was also an only child,
so for Skyler, her best friend,

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Sheila Eddie, really was kind of
her sister. Skyler and Sheila had

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known each other since they were eight
years old, Sheila was loud, larger

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than life, and not afraid to
show it. Sheila always made herself right

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at home wherever she went. Dave
and mary Nie remember that Sheila wouldn't even

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knock when she came over. She
just walked right into the house and everyone

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was happy to see her. Fun
was everything to Sheila, and people couldn't

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help but have fun around her too. And it was this zest for life

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and passion for fun that drew someone
to Sheila like a moth to a flame.

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Rachel Chauf shared that same love for
life that Sheila did, just maybe

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a little more quietly, and it
was the first year of University High School

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when Sheila and Rachel crossed paths and
sealed the trio's fate. Rachel was well

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liked and got along with others in
school. She was an active part of

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the school's theater club and helped put
on a lot of plays, but by

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twenty twelve, she was also a
teenager. Teenage life hit Rachel a little

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differently than it did to Sheila and
Skuyler. She'd grown up in a strict

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practicing Catholic household, and her parents
were on the tail end of a divorce,

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throw in the angst, peer pressure, and all of the other joys

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of growing older, and Rachel had
gone a bit quiet and shy. Rachel

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and Sheila first bonded over their shared
experiences of having divorced parents, and the

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next thing anyone knew, Rachel had
introduced Sheila to Skyler, and the trio

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was complete. Rachel was the shy, creative one, Sheila the one with

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the big personality, and Skyler the
kind one who was always there for emotional

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support. But soon after, relatives
noticed an even bigger shift in Rachel's demeanor.

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She still kept good grades at school, but she started sneaking off.

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She'd skip classes and disappeared to smoke
a little green stuff. Some might say

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that's nothing more than normal teenage behavior, but things took a turn when a

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rift formed between the girls, leaving
Skyler unofficially kicked out. Skyler's posts online

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from that spring showed how deeply she'd
been hurt. Quote too bad. My

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friends are having lives without me,
she wrote, and another post that ended

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with a string of obscenities that I'm
not going to say here, but you

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can go to ten minute murder dot
com and read about it. Classmates noticed

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the constant bickering and fire that continued
even when school was out for the summer.

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Hurt, but focused on what she
wanted to make out of the life

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ahead of her. Skyler got a
summer job working at a local Wendy's while

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she looked into what it would take
for her to become a criminal defense lawyer.

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But then she got an unexpected phone
call. Rachel and Sheila were sorry

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for how things had gone down between
them all, and they wanted to make

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it up. Skyler was hesitant.
There'd simply been too many arguments and things

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said for everything to be this easy, but Rachel and Sheila pushed, and

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Skyler had missed her friends. Around
midnight on July sixth, twenty twelve,

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Skyler propped open the window to her
bedroom and snuck out to meet her former

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best friends. Security footage from her
apartment building showed her getting into a car

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and leaving, presumably for a night
of fun. Skyler had done this before,

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and she'd done it with Rachel and
Sheila. The three of them would

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sneak out and drive around at night, sometimes ending up in a neighboring where

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they would spend a few hours smoking, but what Skyler had never done before

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was stay out the whole night.
Unaware that Skyler had even left, Dave

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and Mary went into her room the
following morning to check on her. They'd

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gotten a call from the Windys where
Skyler worked, telling them that she was

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late and for all, Dave and
Mary knew Skyler had simply slept in,

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but they found Skyler's room empty,
her window still propped open, like she

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was about to come back in at
any moment. Right away, her parents

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knew that something was wrong, but
they were also certain that Skyler hadn't just

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run away. Her phone, charger, toothbrush, and other toiletries were still

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in her room, meaning that wherever
Skyler had gone, she had not planned

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on being out for very long.
Dave and Mary called to police to report

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their daughter as missing, and Skyler's
family and friends began canvassing the area,

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putting up posters and raising awareness that
the sixteen year old Skyler was missing,

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and it worked. That very same
day, Sheila Eddy caught wend that her

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best friend Skyler had not returned home
the night before, and she called Dave

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and Mary to tell them everything she
knew. It was true, Skyler had

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snuck out with Sheila and Rachel the
night before, but they dropped Skyler back

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off at home around midnight. But
there was one big twist to the story.

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Skyler asked Sheila not to take her
all the way back to where they'd

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picked her up and where the car
had been spotted by the security camera.

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Instead, Skyler asked to be dropped
off further down the road so that the

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sound of the car would not wake
her parents up. Sheila had listened,

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and as far as the two other
girls had known, Skyler made it home

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safe and sound. It wasn't much
to go off on, but at least

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it was a start and an explanation
for why Skyler had snuck out the night

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before, and at least it added
one more person to the search party.

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The following day, Rachel was on
her way to Catholic summer camp, but

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Sheila was still around and she desperately
wanted to be there for Skyler's family and

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to join in to search for her
best friend. She spent all of July

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seventh helping Mary work her way through
the neighborhood. The search party came back

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empty handed, but it did lead
to something. Investigator Jessica Colbank, who

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would go on to be the Star
City's first female chief of police. Grew

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suspicious. Sheila is acting wrong.
Rachel is scared to death, she noted,

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and perhaps she was on to something. Rachel became even more shy and

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withdrawn. She started violently acting out
towards her family, and he got to

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the point where Sheila was the only
one who could get through to her.

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Sheila herself seemed intent on being the
emotional support for Schuyler's parents. She kept

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in their lives and made constant posts
about missing her best friend and looking for

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reassurance until November twenty twelve, when
Sheila wrote something that set investigators on edge.

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No one on this earth can handle
me and Rachel. If you think

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you can, you're wrong, the
beginning of a confession, perhaps or a

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reaction to something else. Classmates had
previously overheard Rachel and Sheila openly discussing plans

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to murder Skuyler in the classroom.
At that time, no one had actually

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believed they'd actually do it, especially
when it came across as just the two

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of them blowing off steam after the
fight happened between the three of them,

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But when Skyler went missing and the
last two people to see her alive actually

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turned out to be the very two
girls who'd openly discussed killing her. Well,

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that was a little too on the
nose for people to ignore. In

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December twenty twelve, Rachel's mother made
a desperate nine one one call. I

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have an issue with a sixteen year
old daughter of mine, she told officers.

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I can't control her anymore. She's
hitting us, she's screaming, she's

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running through the neighborhood. My husband's
trying to contain her. Please hurry.

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In the background of the call,
Rachel can be heard crying and shouting,

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give me the phone. No,
this is over, This is over.

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That night, Rachel suffered a mental
breakdown and had attacked her mother with a

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lit candelabra before barricading herself inside a
room, screaming that she wanted to take

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her own life. Once in police
custody, Rachel crumbled even further. She

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admitted that there had been a plot
to kill Schuyler for at least a month

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before Rachel and Sheila had even acted
on it, and the only reason they'd

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met up with Schuyler that night was
so that they could finally get rid of

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her. They attacked Skuyler in a
secluded forest, with Rachel giving up the

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chase after Skuyler had managed to break
free and injure Rachel. Sheila had then

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continued on her own, stabbing and
slashing Skuyler until she finally had gone quiet.

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In one of her dying breaths,
Schuyler managed to ask her two friends

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why they were doing this to her, but it's unlikely that she got an

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answer that made any sense. Rachel
and Sheila's motive is still a mystery,

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but some people who knew them claim
to know what made them snap. Schuyler

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herself had made a diary entry that
seems to back up the theory and at

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all stems from a secret relationship.
Rachel and Sheila were allegedly together in every

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sense of the term. One time, after drinking in Rachel's room, the

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two of them had even begun sleeping
together while Skuyler was still in the room

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with them. There were rumors of
a recording that Skuyler had made and allegedly

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could have been used to blackmail them
into spending more time with her. At

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her parole hearing in twenty twenty three, Rachel finally gave a motive for killing

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her best friend. Quote. After
things became known with the relationship, there

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was a tension between us. It
was hostile and violent in our teenage minds.

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We didn't know how to handle the
conflict and we just wanted it to

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stop. Growing up in a strict
and religious Catholic household could possibly have added

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to the fear that Rachel claims to
a felt about the news of her relationship

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breaking. But could it really be
motive enough to brutally stab someone to death.

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Herself has never confirmed the relationship or
given an explanation for why she acted

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the way she did. During the
months that followed the murder, she showed

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no remorse for ingratiating herself with the
victim's family, even after Dave Nice went

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to the police station and defended Shila
to the investigators, a move he would

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later deeply regret once Sheila and Rachel
both confessed to murdering his daughter. That's

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ten Minute Murder for Today, Grief
and Bingeable True Crime. My name is

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Joe, I'm the host, and
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podcast. If you're new to Ten
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and coming up on the next episode of

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ten Minute Murder. It's a story
about an up and coming pro cyclist.

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The killer was the girlfriend of a
guy that she had a thing with.

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But the interesting part of the story
is that she evaded to rest ran away

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to Costa Rica, got plastic surgery. But how she ended up getting caught

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you're not gonna believe. That's in
the next episode of ten Minute Murder.

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Thank you so much for listening to
another ten Minute Murder podcast episode. I

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will see you on the next one. Bye.