MORGANTOWN – On a February day back in 1996, Dave Neese’s eyes welled, as he regarded his newborn daughter with a whisper and awe.
“Hey, baby girl,” he said, gently brushing Skylar’s cheek.
“It’s me. I’m your daddy. Happy Birthday.”
On a February day back in 2014, Dave Neese’s eyes were lasers, as they bore into the back of the head of one of the people who had confessed to Skylar’s murder two years before.
Rachel Shoaf, Case No. 13-F-88.
The then-17-year-old was wearing handcuffs and jail-issued coveralls, as bailiffs led her into a Monongalia County courtroom for her sentencing.
She had a sheet of paper in her cuffed hands and made a quarter-turn in the crowded courtroom, roughly in the direction of Neese and his wife, Mary, both there on behalf of their daughter and only child.
“I am so sorry,” Shoaf began reading, in a quavering voice.
Shoaf, who was convicted of second-degree murder, was immediately transported to Lakin Correctional Center in Mason County after that appearance, where she remains behind bars today.
On Monday, she was denied another chance of leniency, when a state parole board said she had too many infractions and other write-ups on her record there.
While Shoaf has been turned down for parole three times, she still has a projected release date of April 30, 2028 – which infuriates Neese, he said, though he didn’t let it show that afternoon.
Neese’s voice was measured, as he spoke to members of a state parole board, via cellphone.
He also read a statement, penned by his good friend, Jacki Duley Morgan.
“I stand before you not only as a father, but as a father whose daughter was brutalized, betrayed and murdered by someone she trusted,” went the prepared remarks.
FATAL FRIENDS
Shoaf didn’t act alone. University High School classmate Sheila Eddy was charged with first-degree murder.
The trio was inseparable, Neese said. Best friends. Until they weren’t.
At her parole hearing three years ago, Shoaf said she and Eddy had embarked on an intimate relationship, which Skylar knew about.
With the friendship unraveling, Skylar had threatened to out the pair and Shoaf was worried about being shunned by her family and her church.
“In our teenaged minds,” she said in 2023, “we didn’t know how to handle the conflict.”
On the evening of July 6, 2012, Dave and Mary’s daughter snuck out of her bedroom to get into a car for what she thought was going to be a cruise to rekindle the friendship.
Along a desolate road in Greene County, Pa., and using knives smuggled from their kitchens at home, Shoaf and Eddy counted to three – and began stabbing.
Shoaf would suffer an emotional breakdown and eventually confess to the crime.
And Skylar’s skeletal remains would eventually be found, courtesy of directions supplied by Shoaf.
IN THE WORST DEGREE
The savagery of the crime was bad enough, Neese said. His daughter was said to have been riddled with more than 50 knife wounds.
But the premeditation leading up to the act, and the ruse that would follow, were even worse, he said.
Shoaf and Eddy would comfort Dave and Mary, while pretending to search for Skylar.
“How sick is that?” he asked.
Shoaf, Neese recounted, was active in theater and musical productions at UHS. She’s been drawing that talent the whole time, he said, sarcastically.
“You know what she told the parole board on Monday? That she could ‘finally say Skylar’s name.’ She’s an actress.”
OTHER IMPRISONMENT
Now, he’s steeling himself for when Eddy goes up for parole two years from now.
“They’re dangerous animals,” he said of the two convicted accomplices.
“And dangerous animals belong in cages.”
Memories of daddy-daughter days, trips to bowling alleys and tea parties when Skylar was little are a balm against the bitterness, he said.
But those are also fleeting and thin as gossamer, a still-grieving dad said.
The void of what could have been, he said, is suffocating.
“Mary and I got a life sentence in 2012,” he said.
