True Crime Vault: How'd You Rather Die?

20/20

The episode recounts the 2012 disappearance and murder of Skylar Neese in Star City, West Virginia. It follows the investigation into her tw

Key takeaways

Skylar Neese disappeared after being seen entering a car on security footage at 12:30 a.m.
Friends Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf provided conflicting timelines that were debunked by Sheetz gas station cameras.

Main topics

Skylar Neese disappearance
Criminal investigation techniques

Notable quotes

She walked out and she said, I love you, Daddy. It's the last time I've ever heard her.

Conclusion

A tragic exploration of how toxic dynamics and the fear of social expo

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) On October 19th, 2025, the Louvre became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie. In this series, I'll take you inside the events of that day, through the eyes of the people who lived them. Then, I'll join the international hunt for the Louvre jewels. Heist at the Louvre, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favourite podcast app. Or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free. Step into the 2020 True Crime Vault where you'll hear our most gripping stories. A high school girl sneaks away from home and disappears. But are there clues left behind in a diabolical game of would you rather? 2020 begins right now. Speaker 4 (0:56) She walked out and she said, I love you, Daddy. It's the last time I've ever heard her. Speaker 3 (1:04) Her missing poster is up all over town. What were you looking for? Speaker 7 (1:12) Anything and everything. Speaker 5 (1:14) Dave Neese called me and said, Speaker 6 (1:17) Tom, we have something. Speaker 1 (1:19) And what were you thinking when you saw her head flash on that screen? Speaker 6 (1:23) There was no evidence of a kidnapping. There was no abduction. There was no ransom. Speaker 2 (1:30) We're combing through everything, just hours and hours, dissecting every picture, every message, everything. If Speaker 3 (1:37) she got angry, she would put those tweets out there too. A girl, a girl, a bitch, a bitch. And I'm like, who is she talking about? No one realized how bad it was growing. The fridge of two Speaker 1 (1:52) versus one. Speaker 7 (1:54) She said that she had to tell me the truth about what happened last night. Speaker 3 (1:59) Would you guys rather suffocate or get shot? I don't think that most kids play would you rather in terms of how would you rather die. Speaker 1 (2:35) It's the phone call no parent ever wants to have to make. A desperate 911 about a missing child. Speaker 4 (2:55) What were you feeling at that point for your little girl? I was scared to death. I mean, I didn't know where my baby was. I mean, how would you feel? It was horrible. Speaker 1 (3:05) Nothing would ever be the same for Dave Neese and his wife Mary after that call in July 2012. Speaker 4 (3:11) That was one of my favorites. That was number one. It had to be. Speaker 1 (3:14) Or for the small suburban community of Star City, West Virginia, who would grapple with the mystery of Skylar Neese's disappearance. Speaker 5 (3:29) Star City is a small little city off of Morgantown. It is a great place to live. It is a wonderful place to raise your family. As much as we have this real Speaker 2 (3:39) small knit community, we also have a university. Morgantown was more college town. Your crime was more college, property crimes, college kids having parties, typical stuff that any other college town would have, but nothing really serious. It Speaker 8 (3:55) has that college town shine and bounce. It's not a podunk town, and it's not an urban metropolis. It's a combo, and it's breathtakingly beautiful there. Speaker 1 (4:05) A blue-collar, middle-class town with working families like Dave and Mary Neese. He worked at Walmart, and she had a doctor's office. And that's the norm for this area. Speaker 4 (4:14) Morgantown's a fairly decent community. It's peaceful. It's a small town that's growing really fast. Speaker 1 (4:22) It's the kind of area where outside of college football, not much happens. So when 16-year-old Skylar Neese went missing on a summer evening in July, people were stunned. Now, more than a decade after her disappearance, a new podcast has topped the charts, exploring Skylar's story, which is still reverberating. Speaker 8 (4:43) My name is Holly Moulet. My name is Justine Harmon, and we are the co-hosts and co-creators of Three. The story felt like a gothic reimagining of everyone's teenage experience. When you peel apart who these people were and what the circumstances were, they're fairly universal and human and relatable, and those are the things that interest me. Speaker 3 (5:05) This is episode one. Skylar is missing. Speaker 1 (5:09) Part of the intrigue, the podcasters say, is that often treacherous intersection of adolescence and social media, a big deal for high school-age girls like Skylar. Speaker 1 (5:20) Like so many her age, Skylar used her voice on social media as a stream of consciousness, updating friends on what she had for lunch that day, what she's watching on TV, and her emotions in the moment. Speaker 8 (5:35) You can see flickers of her personality. It was really empowering at the time to have... A voice. Yeah, Speaker 3 (5:42) a voice. And also highly dangerous. It's one thing to write in a diary about that stuff, but when you start broadcasting those thoughts, it can lead to some trouble. Speaker 1 (5:55) Let's talk about Skylar. How would you describe her? Speaker 4 (5:59) I spoil her beyond rotten. Skylar was a very bubbly person. She had a smile that light the room up. She was also very loyal to her friends. She was all those things wrapped into one. Speaker 7 (6:12) She loved the Disney Channel. And every Friday night they would have a new Disney movie. Speaker 7 (6:21) We'd curl up on the couch to watch a new Disney movie, and she Speaker 1 (6:24) just loved that. Dave Neese also told me a story that sticks out for him when Skylar was growing up. Speaker 4 (6:32) She had a tea party for me, and after Mary came home, she noted that Skylar couldn't reach a faucet. I've been drinking toilet water for the whole tea party. That was a good memory. At Speaker 5 (6:47) the time, Speaker 1 (6:47) it wasn't a good memory. Speaker 1 (6:52) At 16, the nieces say Skyler is thriving with a 4.0 grade point average and a part-time job at a fast food restaurant. Speaker 1 (7:01) But in the early afternoon of July 6, 2012, everything changes. It's a summer Friday, and Dave Neese goes to the bedroom to wake up his daughter, who he thinks has overslept and has work in a couple of hours. Speaker 4 (7:14) We never bothered Skylar in the morning. She was up all hours of the night talking to her friends on the phone, so we didn't bother her in the mornings. I knocked on her door. There was no answer. I knocked again, still no answer. So I said, Sky, come on, you got to get up. And I still didn't get an answer. So I took a coat hanger and opened the door. And I looked down at her bed and it hadn't been slept in. And it scared me. Speaker 1 (7:44) Dave Neese immediately calls his wife Mary, who was working, to ask if she knew where Skylar could be. Speaker 3 (7:49) And Mary's like, relax. She probably spent the night at a friend's. Don't worry about it. She'll turn up. She has to go to work at four. Speaker 1 (8:01) A few minutes go by, and Dave is still worried, so he calls Mary again. Speaker 4 (8:06) I said, what do I do? She said, well, first of all, call Sheila. That's the first person you call. Speaker 8 (8:13) Sheila, Eddie, and Skylar Neese met in the second grade at an after-school program near Blacksville where Sheila grew up. They were about eight years old, and they were fast friends. Speaker 4 (8:23) If they weren't together, they were on the phone together. And that's literally 24 hours a day. So I called Sheila. I said, you got any clue where Skylar is? She said, no. I said, when's the last time you talked to her? She said, last night about midnight. I said, you don't have any clue where she might be or who she might be with? She said, no. Speaker 1 (8:46) Dave's mind is racing. He's trying to piece together the night before in his head, remembering when he last saw her. Speaker 4 (8:53) Skylar came home from work and walked through the door and she went over and petted her dog and said, hi, mom, hi, dad. She walked out and she said, I love you, daddy. That's the last time I ever heard her. Speaker 1 (9:14) Because by the next day, Skylar hasn't been seen or heard from. She has work at 4 o'clock. Speaker 3 (9:20) The minute Skyler didn't show up for work, Mary and Dave both knew something was wrong. Speaker 4 (9:26) Wendy's called and said, hey, is Skyler coming to work today? And I said, oh, Jesus. Mary said, call 911. Speaker 1 (9:44) 16-year-old Skyler Neese needed to be at work here at Wendy's at 4 o'clock p.m. on July 6th. 4 o'clock came and went. Skyler never showed up. Speaker 4 (9:59) Wendy's called and said, hey, it's got her coming to work today. And I said, oh, Jesus. And she said, Mary said, call 911. So I did. I called 911 immediately. 911, do you have an emergency? Yeah, I have a daughter that's 16 years old. She hasn't been seen. She hasn't went to work. None of her friends can get a hold of her. I can't find her. Where does she work? She works at Wendy's. As soon as I called 911, the phone rang, and it was Sheila. And she talked to Mary. Speaker 1 (10:32) What did she say? Speaker 7 (10:33) Her words were, I have to tell you the truth about what happened last night. I said, the truth? What are you talking about? So then she proceeded to tell me that... Her, Skylar, and Rachel 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. Speaker 1 (11:03) Rachel is Rachel's show. By all accounts, Rachel is Sheila and Skylar's very best friend. But what Sheila is sharing isn't putting the nieces at ease. I don't even know what to think. I Speaker 3 (11:17) just can't believe she snuck out. Speaker 3 (11:21) She snuck out. She Speaker 8 (11:23) climbed out the window and had put a bench at the base of the window on the outside so that she could climb down. She Speaker 1 (11:31) was pretty short. But Skylar's friend tells Mary something else that's unsettling. After that joyride, they drop Skylar off a couple blocks away from the apartment building she lived in so the car noise wouldn't wake her parents. Speaker 3 (11:46) So now they're thinking that maybe Skylar could have been abducted. Speaker 3 (11:55) walking back those two blocks to get back in her house. It introduced a question of, well, Speaker 8 (12:02) what happened to Skylar after she got dropped off? Speaker 2 (12:05) When a person goes missing, a lot of times, within 24 hours, we will find them. Some took no more than 48 hours. We'd locate the child and have him returned, him or her returned back to home. Speaker 3 (12:20) Jessica Colbank, who was a police officer at the time and one of the first people on the case, she was on it right away. Speaker 1 (12:28) At some point you think, okay, a little girl is missing, 16 years old. Did you think it was a runaway case at that point? Speaker 7 (12:35) It was always possible. Based on whenever I got the case, we had Sheila's initial statement, which was that they had dropped her off at the end of the street, so it was always possible that she had run away. Speaker 4 (12:52) She didn't take her cell phone charger. She didn't take her contact lens solution or her contact lens. I mean, nothing. And nothing she would have took if she would have been running away or leaving for an extended period of time. Speaker 7 (13:04) Yeah, apparently she was planning to come back Speaker 1 (13:07) fairly Speaker 7 (13:08) quickly. Speaker 1 (13:10) The nieces are struggling to make sense of everything, including Sheila's revelation that their daughter was out smoking marijuana with her friends. It's not the Skylar they knew. Sheila, she shows up that day. She comes back to the house with you at one point, and she wants to go see Skylar's room. Speaker 4 (13:28) Yeah, she knocked on the door, and we opened it, and she said, hey. I said, what are you doing? She says, is it okay if I go back and sit in Skylar's room for a minute? Speaker 4 (13:40) I looked at Mary, and she looked at me, and we said, I guess. So she went back in Skyler's room, and I sat on the couch, and I think Mary was in the kitchen, and Mary heard some sobbing and crying and stuff, so she went back. Speaker 7 (13:57) She was crying, Sheila was, crying pretty hard, and she was sitting on her bed, so I just sat down on the bed beside her and rubbed her back, and she was upset because Skyler was gone and hadn't come back. So I was trying to, you know, console her, make her feel better. Speaker 1 (14:18) Everyone I spoke to said these three girls were inseparable. Speaker 1 (14:23) People like Rachel's close family friend, Kelly Kearns. She was like a daughter to you. Yes. You know, once she went to high school and she took singing lessons and she Speaker 3 (14:32) always had piano lessons and acting lessons, was in the drama. Speaker 7 (14:37) Rachel's personality is bubbly, I'd say. Her voice was absolutely amazing. Like, I really thought she was going to be on Broadway one day. She's absolutely stunning with her voice. Breathtaking, actually. I had never heard anything bad about Rachel. She seemed like she was just, you know, she was another Schuyler. Speaker 3 (14:57) Rachel had gone to a Catholic school previous to university high school. And all of these girls are only children. So the three of them became very close. And Sheila gravitated towards Rachel because Rachel was, you know, popular almost immediately being a star in the theater, coming from, you know, a home that had real money. Speaker 3 (15:26) Skylar was feeling the squeeze, you know, because now her lifelong best friend is cozying up to this third person. Speaker 1 (15:39) Just like Skylar, Rachel and Sheila expressed themselves on Twitter. Speaker 5 (15:44) My dad is my favorite person to hang out with. Speaker 1 (15:47) He's a hoot. Rachel comes off like a typical teenager. Awkward. While Sheila's are a bit more rebellious. Speaker 5 (15:55) There's a reason why sober and so bored sound almost exactly the same. Speaker 8 (16:01) Sheila, her tweets are definitely the most provocative. A lot of dissing her parents, her parental figures. She seems definitely the most comfortable in pushing the boundaries and the most confident. Speaker 1 (16:16) Since they were the last to see Skylar, police take the girl's statements, which are consistent with what Sheila told Mary. They say they picked up Skylar late in the evening between 11 and 11.30 p.m., went for a joyride during which they smoked pot, then dropped Skylar off a couple of blocks from home around midnight. Whatever happened next remains a mystery. We love her, but maybe we want her home. Speaker 7 (16:43) I promised Dave and Mary whenever I started, I told them the very first day that I met him, I said, I'm a bulldog. I said, I don't care if it takes me 10 years to find the truth. I will eventually find it. But until I had Skyler back, I wasn't stopping. And Speaker 1 (17:00) police are about to uncover their biggest clue yet, when some grainy security camera footage captured at the apartment building after midnight is analyzed. Is that Skyler getting into an unknown car? Speaker 5 (17:17) This show is sponsored by Aura House. 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Said, we now have a video of her sneaking out of the house, going in a car and leaving. So now we're got to try and find out who owns the car. Speaker 3 (20:23) She went to her room and after midnight, she snuck out. She Speaker 8 (20:29) ran to a waiting car, which you can see in the CCTV footage from the apartment building. Speaker 2 (20:39) It was typical black and white, grainy footage, and it just shows Skylar walking across the parking lot and getting into a car and them taking off. Speaker 1 (20:50) Remember, Sheila and Rachel said they picked up Skylar in the 11 o'clock hour and dropped her off close to home about 30 minutes later. Speaker 1 (20:59) Now the clock reads 1230 a.m. Skyler not only gets into the waiting car, she does so willingly. Speaker 6 (21:06) There was no evidence of a kidnapping. There was no abduction. There was no ransom. There was nothing to indicate that she was kidnapped. That changed everything for me because Speaker 5 (21:15) it meant she was with somebody else and somebody else was controlling