In July 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neese was reported missing by her parents. The girl, who was from Morgantown, West Virginia, didn’t appear to be the type who would run away, and her parents knew that. Although she was a typical teenage girl, she was also responsible, so when she didn’t show up for work, they knew something was wrong. They asked her two best friends, who said they’d seen her but only briefly.
Over the next six months, a fruitless search for Skylar Neese continued while it became increasingly obvious that her friends weren’t telling the truth. Now, the Hulu documentary, Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese, is revealing their unhinged murder plot.
Skylar Neese wasn’t home when her parents woke up.
Her parents discovered that she was missing on July 6, 2012, ABC News reported. Her father Dave Neese, described his daughter as “a very bubbly person.” The teen had a 4.0 grade point average, held down a part time job, and had a lot of friends.
“She was also very loyal to her friends, the people she thought was her friends,” Dave Neese said.
One of those friends was Shelia Eddy, who she’d known since she was 8. Freshman year of high school, Eddy met another girl named Rachel Shoaf. Soon, the three girls were inseparable. But then, their friendship started to crack, and it all came to a head the night of Skylar Neese’s death.
Eddy told Neese’s parents that the girls had “snuck out the night before and that they had driven around Star City, were getting high, and that the two girls had dropped her back off at the house,” Mary Neese said, per ABC News. “The story was they had dropped her off at the end of the road, because she didn’t want to wake us up sneaking back in.”
The girls were lying.
Nearly six months after their friend went missing, Shoaf admitted to police that she and Eddy had killed Skylar Neese, People reported. In the time since the murder, Shoaf’s mental health had been deteriorating to the point that she apparently was driven to confess.
“The first words out of her mouth were, ‘We stabbed her,’” Corporal Ronnie Gaskins said on an episode of 20/20, the magazine reported. When authorities asked her why she did it, she said it was because they didn’t like the teen.
Weeks after her confession, police were able to drive to where she said Neese’s body was. They found her body, as well as some of her DNA, in Eddy’s car.
After initially pleading not guilty to multiple charges, including first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, Eddy accepted a plea deal that saw her sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
Shoaf pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2013. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years. Her parole was denied in May 2023, WBOY reported.
The case is the subject of a new documentary series on Hulu.
Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese premiered on Hulu on March 6, 2026, prompting renewed interest in the case, especially now that Shoaf will be up for another parole hearing in June 2026.
“Told through social media posts, intimate interviews and Skylar’s own words, ‘Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese’ is a gripping true-crime docuseries that immerses viewers in the emotional intensity of adolescence,” a Hulu news release reads. “From the thrill of rebellion to the fragility of friendship, this three-part series captures the pressures of growing up in the digital age — and the devastating consequences when love turns to hate.”
“Early on, what we want to do is create a sort of an inside-out investigation. We look at it from Skylar’s and her peers’ perspective, and it’s all about building that world,” Clair Titley, the director, told Time Magazine.
Skylar Neese’s parents participated in the docuseries, as well as others involved in the case.
