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Murder of Skylar Neese · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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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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• 12:11
  The killer was the girlfriend of a guy that she had a thing with.
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