loves them and she wants them to be successful and have good lives. >> she did not deserve the way her life ended on that cold december morning in deer park, washington. >> i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline." rales. and this is "dateline. >> and i'm natalie morales she was beautiful. her eyes were remarkable i was going to be there for her and she was going to be there for me it didn't matter what it was i thought maybe she had been kidnappe no one knew what was happening.. there was nothing i or anyone ne could have done. >> skylar, rachel, sheila. total bffs. >> they hung out all the time. >> you thought of them as a hu team.ho >> the three of them became inseparable. hr >> one ended up missing. >> nobody's heard from her. nobody knows where she is.y' >> something's wroong. something's bad wrong. hi >> where was skylar. someone was hiding something.

>> it was the fbi. they were serious. >> twitter, instagram, facebook. you just see things. ridiculously out of control. a click >> a clique of mean girls. were they mean enough to kill? >> it was such a shocking and scandalous kind of case. >> this was diabolical. >> evil comes in all shapes and sizes. hello and welcome to "dateline". for skylar's parent, their daughter what all they could have hoped for. friends and happy at her job. their world turned upside down when their only child seemed to vanish without a trace. at first police thought she ran

away, but hints on social media would point to a more sinister reason forni her disappearance. here is andrew au canning with "something wicked." >> in the gentle rolling hills of northern west virginia, in a sweet college town in the heart of coal country lived three teenage girls. their photos capture a moment ii time.ot they were smart, talented, lovely. everything a parent could hope for in a daughter. and so who could have guessed just by looking that some of them carried a dark secret about a friend. >> 911. do you have an emergency? >> i have a 16-year-old av daughter.e she has not been home, hasn't went to work. i'm scared to death. >> these teens played a strange and haunting game. >> would you rather suffocate or get shot? >> get shot. >> a game of betrayal that wento way beyond typical teenage drama. >> she's calling out help me. you know, why, why, why. >> at the center of it all was a girl named skylar.

david and mary neese welcomed their only daughter skylar to the world in 1996. tell me about the day she was d born. was that the greatest moment of your life? >> i wouldn't go that far. >> first time you saw her. >> first time i saw her, yes, i can say that was the greatest moment of my life.th yeah.f it was instant love. >> they live in star city, a small suburb ever morgantown, west virginia, where dave works at walmart and mary at a medical office.rt skylar was a whirlwind, a rambunctious, precocious toddler who owned her parents' hearts. >> hey, gorgeous. >> hi, daddy. >> you're beautiful, baby. >> she was reading way before she was supposed to, doing maths and stuff way before she was supposed to. she was a very intelligent little girl. a >> dance for me.ir wee! >> when skylar started nursery school, she made her first friend, morgan lawrence. morgan was drawn right away to

skylar. >> did she kind of light up a room?he >> oh, yeah, she had the giggle and the laugh.ea >> the girls' families became good friends. dave and sheryl say morgan and skylar were like sisters. >> what are your memories of skylar when she was this high? >> she giggled all the time. it just filled our house. >> she had the biggest eyes. you'd just want to hug her. >> they were good girls, got good grades.re morgan dreamed of becoming a meteorologist.re skylar a criminal lawyer. they also had a pact, that they would always be there for one another. ys and you would both be in each other's wedding parties. >> everyone has a sister to put in their wedding, and we had each other. >> as freshmen at morgantown's university high school, the two girls drifted apart a little.ty with a new school came new friends. classmate daniel said the bubbly skylar fit in right away. >> friends came first. she was always about hanging out with friends if she didn't have work or school. >> soon, skylar had two new bffs, sheila eddy who the meeses

had known for years and rachel shoaf, a striking redhead with broadway aspirations. it wasn't long before they were calling themselves the three musketeers. th and in pictures they looked the part. >> they were literally together every second of every day, it seemed like.nd they hung out all the time.ik >> and like all teenage girls they shared videos and photos with each other and online. >> giving us a glimpse into their world.g skylar and sheila just having fun. nd >> let me try to go on your e back. >> and of course they occasionally got into trouble, but even then it was for typical teenage things. dave and mary weren't too concerned. >> she is a straight-a student who loves her parents. did you sort of chock it up to, we're not thrilled but she's a teenager?t >> exactly. >> when summer rolled around after her sophomore year, skylar seemed happy.r she had a job at wendy's which she loved. on thursday july 5th, 2012, she came home after work and got

ready for bed. >> she put her arm around her mom, gave her a kiss and hug and said, i love you, mom, turned to me and said, i love you, dad, and she went to the room. >> the next day, dave planned to meet skylar in their apartment at lunchtime. he was surprised she wasn't there. a little worried he called mary. >> i thought she was out with one of her other friends. i figured they went swimming and shopping. >> dave called her friends . including sheila. no one had seen her.g next he went outside and found more cause for worry. a small bench was tucked near skyler's window, and the window screen was missing. >> at this time i called skyler's cell phone. i said, hey, you're in trouble. you better be calling me right away. so i called her cell phone about ten times. i called mary again. >> again mary told him to calm down. she said skylar was expected at work at 4:00. >> i said, we're not going to worry. i'll call them about 10 after 4:00, give her time to clock in, everything, see if she's there.

>> but mary didn't get a chance to call wendy's. >> they called us first wanting to know if she was coming to work. >> was that a big moment for you? >> yeah. >> a few minutes later, there was another big surprise. a call from sheila. >> she said she had to tell me the truth. i said, well, what truth? she said, we snuck out last night. , >> mary's heart fell. skylar had done that once before, gone on a late-night joyride with rachel and sheila.o that time they were caught for being out after the town curfew. now here was a worried sheila saying they had done it again. >> i said, where did you go? where is skylar? w she said skylar insisted they drop her off at the end of the o street so we wouldn't hear her sneaking back in. >> now that missing screen and bench outside skyler's window made sense. skylar had put it there to boost herself up so she could get back in. but it left them with a terrifying possibility.

>> my first instinct was, someone abducted her from the end of the street to our house. >> dave called the police. >> i have a daughter that's 16 years old.e apparently she snuck out of her room last night and she hasn't been seen since. none of her friends can gotten i ahold of her.he i can't find her. h >> what's her name?fi >> skylar. >> their world had fallen apart. their only daughter had been gone for almost 24 hours. where was skylar? the investigation begins and concern for skylar begins to grow. >> coming up. >> ieg just had this horrible feeling in my heart that something terrible had happened. >> maryg told me that night, something's wrong, baby, something's bad wrong. >> a grainy piece of videotape ise about to give police one giant clue. what can they glean from this? >> she slowly walked down to a

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little pot, and dropped her off a few blocks from home. >> it was like a recording with these two. >> in the meantime, the officers had begun to collect physical evidence, and it didn't match up with the story the girls had been telling. surveillance video from a convenience store put the girls' car not heading east as they had said but heading west towards blacksville. and the girls' phone records from that night showed rachel's phone pinging off a cell tower in blacksville. >> that was an aha moment. finally, we have something to go on that's different from their story. >> now even skylar's parents joinled the chorus of people trying to get the girls to talk. >> i started posting on facebook things about karma, karma will get you, you can't hide. we were pushing. we were pushing the girls to get them to say what happened. >> by late november, the sa pressure seemed to be taking its toll on rachel. s

in an interview, she surprised police by changing her story. admitting for the first time that they did drive to blacksville that night and that's where skylar told them to let her out of the car. blacksville, where those bank robberies had happened. the next day, sheila changed her story to say the same thing. >> that must have been a big red flag for you. >> absolutely. >> at school kids say rachel was increasingly rattled. >> rachel seemed distressed. she seemed like she was very upset over something. i mean, this was eating at her heart. >> rachel shoaf was about to crack. coming up -- >> please hurry. >> an emergency at home. and an interview with police. what exactly was rachel shoaf about to reveal? >> we were speechless. >> when "dateline" continues. tis pain happens.

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hello, i'm dara brown. here is what is happening. the suspected santa clarita high school shooter who killed two others has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the dead. day two of the impeachment inquiry hearings review that ambassador yovanovitch. now back to "dateline". >> welcome back to "dateline". i'm natalie morales. in the mont after her disappearance skylar neeses's parents were heartbroken. many wondered if her bffs, rachel and sheila, knew something. investigators were convinced of it. both girls were sticking to the same story, but that was about to change. one of them was ready to talk.

here is andrea canning with more of "something wicked." christmas 2012 came and went for skylar neeses' parents. it had been six months since their daughter disappeared. the holidays must have been very hard that year, christmastime. >> we didn't celebrate. >> nah. we didn't put up any tree. we didn't do anything. >> just another day. >> yep. >> around that time, rachel shoaf and sheila eddy stopped attending university high. their few remaining friends told the authors that rachel seemed agitated. >> she was acting out, getting into more family altercations at home. >> so the walls were closing in on rachel. >> uh-huh. >> 911, we have an emergency. >> i have an issue with a 16-year-old daughter of mine. i can't control her anymore. >> then on december 28th, rachel apparently snapped. her upset mother called the

police. >> she's screaming. she's running through the neighborhood. give me the phone. this is over! this is over. my husband is trying to contain her. please hurry. >> and rachel was taken to a mental health facility. a few days later, corporal ronnie gaskins got a big surprise. rachel wanted to meet at her lawyer's office. she had something she wanted to say. >> take us inside that attorney's office with rachel. what was her demeanor? >> i remember her pulling up the waist basket next to her. she was afraid she was going to throw up and then we started asking her the questions that we thought she would answer. did she overdose at a party? i remember her face got really red. she glanced at us and said, we stabbed her. >> it wasn't an accident. it was a murder. and not only had rachel and sheila killed skylar. they had planned it for months.

all the while looking and acting like best friends. as sheila and skylar do in this video. as part of the plan, rachel and sheila settled on the night of july 5th as the ideal time to kill skylar. >> earlier that day, rachel had obtained the shovel from her father's residence, put it in sheila's trunk, brought the clean clothes, cleaning supplies and according to rachel, sheila had provided the kitchen knives. >> they called skylar to say they were on their way over. >> pulled up to the residence. >> and there is skylar, sneaking out in that grainy surveillance video. the car is sheila's and inside are skylar's two best friends. >> skylar gets in the car and they go driving. >> and they drove for nearly an hour for miles and miles, dark, winding roads out past blacksville. >> they get to the scene.

they parked the car. and they found an area where they could sit and talk. skylar leaves to go back to the car and then rachel said, on three. >> according to gaskins, rachel said she counted, one, two, three. and on three the two girls began. >> that's when her and sheila started stabbing skylar from behind. >> gaskins said skylar fought hard to defend herself. >> did rachel indicate what skylar's last words were, her final moments in that meeting? >> she said skylar just said why? that's all she said. >> rachel said the girls covered the body with dirt and branches, threw their bloody clothes in the trunk and left skylar there. >> did rachel express how she felt when the crime was over?

>> i just remember her saying that this is something she wanted to get done before she went to church camp. >> how did you feel when she said, i had to get this done before church camp? >> what are we dealing with? >> did you ask rachel why? why did you two do this? >> she would not give us any specific details other than they just didn't like her. then when i asked her, what do you mean you didn't like her? clarify that. she said, oh, nothing. we just didn't like her. >> after telling police the story, rachel led authorities down that lonely road past blacksville to a spot just across the pennsylvania border. there they eventually found a few scattered human remains and sent them to a lab for testing. >> i just couldn't imagine the pain and suffering and the fear she went through being alone in that place with her two best friends. and she knew what was happening when they started stabbing her. >> authorities kept rachel's confession secret even from the neeses while the investigation

continued. the fbi told mary and dave only that remains believed to be skylar's had been found. >> i broke down pretty bad, yeah. >> we both did. that was a bad day. >> it was so lonely and so deserted. and it was a horrible thing to know that she had been there and no one knew. >> one, two, three, go! happy birthday, skylar! >> in february of 2013, just as they had since she was a little girl -- >> i'm ready. >> -- the neeses gathered with friends on skylar's birthday. this time without her. they quietly told the lawrences their awful news. >> did your heart just break for mary and dave? >> my heart was slowly breaking the entire time. >> i remember the first thing i felt it was just like a surreal of, i know she's not out there

in the cold. >> ronnie gaskins had a confession from rachel and she had led him to a body. but it wasn't enough. >> why wouldn't you arrest somebody right away who confessed to killing somebody? >> she lied to us a number of times before. who's to say she isn't lying before? we had to corroborate her statement. >> once more, gaskins needed rachel so he didn't arrest her. instead, he was about to use rachel to get sheila. coming up -- >> i was devastated. it was crazy. >> i was crying, she was crying. >> grieving or pretending? >> sheila seemed like she was so upset to have lost her best friend. she even asked me, how could someone do this to skylar? >> would the truth catch up to scheely eddy when "dateline" continues. ine" continues. airborne gummies have 50% more vitamin-c than emergen-c...

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♪ corporal ronnie gaskins was on a mission to put two girls behind bars. >> it was one of those where you couldn't get there fast enough. >> rachel shoaf had just confessed to teaming up with sheila eddy to kill their friend skylar neese. now she was cooperating with police. gaskins and his fellow investigators hatched a plan. rachel would invite sheila to her house. as hidden cameras rolled, she would try to get sheila to incriminate herself. >> we were close by in case

something happened. >> sheila did come over. police didn't record anything to pin sheila to the crime. >> the girls did not disclose anything specific. they were just very casual. >> a few days later, the police went to sheila's house with a warrant. >> we seized every kitchen knife we could find. the fbi seized sheila's car and they were able to find presence of dna in the trunk. >> dna in sheila's trunk. if it proved to be skylar's, it would be critical to gaskins' case. a direct link. connecting the girls to skylar's death. they shipped the sample off to the lab and waited. meanwhile, gaskins got a positive i.d. on the human remains found out past blacksville. it was skylar. >> the search for monnin gala teenager skylar neese is over. >> at university high school, confirmation that skylar had been found dead was heartbreaking.

>> i was devastated. it was crazy. >> shania called her friend sheila as soon as she heard the awful news. >> i was crying and she was crying. >> there was sheila, suspected murderer, crying tears for skylar. >> she was like, who do you think could have done? why would somebody do this with skylar? >> shania also cried with her friend chrissy swanson. >> once the body was found, sheila seemed like she was so upset she had lost her best friend. she couldn't believe something like this could happen. she even asked me, how could someone do this to skylar? >> and sheila let everybody know how sad she was. she tweeted things like, worst day of my whole life. the pain is real. and rest easy, skylar. you'll always be my best friend. i miss you more than you could ever know. but social media revealed two sides to sheila.

she could mourn skylar but on twitter and facebook, she and rachel also seemed carefree. as the police continued their investigation, sheila tweeted, i need a mimosa or ten. they were going about their lives even while the police believed the girls were stone-cold killers. >> locals would whisper in each other's ears and say, how are they still free? >> coalbart aroma runs a blog calls newsball.com. early on he started following this case and was struck by sheila's tweets. things like ain't no rest for the wicked. and incredibly this apparent reference to the countdown to skylar's murder. we really did go on three. >> it's unbelievable that she feels she's so invincible to tweet this publicly. >> and then finally by mid-april 2013 ronny gaskins got the one critical piece of evidence he needed.

confirmation that skylar's blood had been found in sheila's trunk. >> on top of the video surveillance, the phone records, rachel's statements at that point we felt we had confidence to have probable cause to make the arrest. >> now authorities told skylar's parents the whole story. their daughter's two best friends had killed her. >> i think about it every day. i think about the misery my child must have been through. and i'm helpless. i can't help her. she's calling out "help me, why, why, why." >> animals got her. they didn't even care. >> no. they just threw her out like a bag of trash. >> on may 1st, 2013, in exchange for her cooperation with police, rachel shoaf pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. within minutes, gaskins raced across morgantown, his heart pounding. >> obviously we were going lights and sirens because we had a murder warrant to serve.

>> sheila was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the parking lot of the local cracker barrel restaurant where she and her mom were having lunch. >> sheila was crying. she kept asking her mother, is everything going to be okay? and her mother said, i don't know, sheila. >> gaskins had promised skylar's parents he wouldn't quit until the case was solved. >> it felt good for once that she was coming with us. >> the question of who had been answered. but people were haunted by an unanswered question, skylar's last word. why? the girls had their day in court, but what will they say? coming up -- >> i became caught up in something that i did not want to do. >> the accused killers head to court and the motive for murder? >> they planned that crime for days, weeks, months. >> what could that be? when "dateline" continues.

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. welcome back skylar neese's best friend rachel pleaded guilty to killing her, and prosecutors were busy building their case against skylar's other best friend, sheila, but in a killing that seemed so senseless, there was one question that hung over everything. why? here is andrea canning with the conclusion of "something wicked." sheila eddy was not about to give in without a fight.

there she was in september 2013, a lone blonde teen in a crowd of accused men pleading not guilty to the kidnapping and murder of skylar neese. this was terrible news for skylar's parents. >> i don't want to go through a trial and hear the grisly, gruesome details of all this. that would tear me apart. >> with a trial looming, the question on everyone's mind was why. investigators wanted to know, too. and in the halls of university high, they got glimpses of a motive, saw snapshots of a troubled three-way friendship. morgan lawrence saw a disturbing dynamic firsthand. >> i was not a huge fan of rachel and sheila. >> as far back as freshman year, morgan had worried that her friend skylar was heading into a place she might not belong when she became close friends with rachel and sheila. morgan especially didn't like sheila. >> she hung out with the wrong crowd. she had lots of friends that were 20-some years old. that's just a little strange.

>> morgan had watched uneasy as the three became inseparable. skylar's cousin kyle adored skylar and said he felt uneasy, too. >> you would walk through the halls, you don't see one without the other. >> it was always sheila, skylar, rachel together. >> by sophomore year, he saw changes in skylar. >> it seemed like about that time she didn't have that same nice quality to her. >> she was more sour, i think, toward people. she started almost acting the way sheila acted. >> must have been hard to see her changing. >> it's difficult to watch it in general and it's even harder when it's someone as close as someone you called your family. >> students told the writers that by mid sophomore year the three girls' relationship had begun to deteriorate. they've written about this in their book "the savage murder of skylar neese." >> they were dissing her when

she was wasn't around and putting her down and that kind of thing so it was kind of a two-faced situation. >> students say that around this time they started hearing rachel and sheila discuss the best way to kill someone. and rachel's friend fantasia liller recalls a chilling conversation. >> rachel was ranting to me how much she didn't like skylar one day. she said word for word, i'm pretty sure, i wouldn't mind if she died at this point. >> which makes this cell phone video all the more haunting because it was captured by skylar six months before she was killed. >> you said it two times. >> sheila asked skylar and rachel to choose the best way to die. >> would you rather suffocate or get shot? >> get shot. >> shot. >> depends on where? >> would you rather -- in the head. >> shot. >> shot. >> there would be no suffering. >> drowning or suffocating? >> suffocating. >> it's almost the same thing. >> i know. >> an incredibly disturbing scene. friends say in the months before skylar's death, she and sheila fought constantly. late on july 5th, skylar tweeted this.

you doing blank like that is why i will never completely trust you. later that night, skylar is seen here on that surveillance tape driving away from home for the last time. what were they fighting about? there's a possible answer. hallway whispers that rachel and sheila had developed a sexual relationship and that skylar knew and threatened to out them. did they kill her to keep their secret? it's as close to a motive as anyone can come up with. >> do you think we'll ever know why this happened? >> i think that's something for rachel and sheila to say. they know the answers to that. >> in january 2014, dave and mary finally got the news they had been hoping for, a plea deal. >> sheila eddy, how do you plead to the offense of murder in the first degree, the felony charge in count three of the indictment in this case? >> guilty. >> sheila's attorney michael benninger read a statement from sheila and her family. >> my client and her family

recognize that the neese family is in a constant state of despair, loneliness and sadness as a result of skylar's death. >> sheila was sentenced to life in prison and is eligible for parole in 2028. a month later, dave and mary went back to court, this time for rachel shoaf's sentencing. >> rachel has a profound sadness at this loss and a profound sadness for mr. and mrs. neese. >> therapist patricia bailey was hired by rachel's family. she's been meeting with rachel in prison since the summer of 2013. >> from the day i met rachel, she has said to me, i deserve to be in here, i did something terribly wrong, i hurt somebody. rachel does miss skylar very much so and then she also weeps for her because she knows she cannot undo the past and she will never see her again. >> in court, rachel apologized

directly to dave and mary. >> i don't know if there's a proper way to make this apology because there are not even words to describe the guilt and remorse that i feel each day for what i've done. i became scared and caught up in something i did not want to do and never realized the gravity of my actions and how many people i've hurt. >> skylar's dad who had once defended the girls didn't mince words. >> yes, rachel shoaf did cooperate. rachel shoaf also murdered my daughter in cold blood. she can take her apologies and everything else and sit on them because that's what they're worth to me and my wife. she has done nothing but make our lives a living hell since day one. >> dave and mary wished they had known more about what was going on in skylar's life in the months before she died. >> what is your biggest regret, if you have one? >> not knowing the girls better. and i don't know if anyone could have known them that well. there had to be a sign somewhere. there had to be a clue. >> rachel shoaf, would you please stand?

>> rachel was sentenced to 30 years in prison. she will be eligible for parole in 2023. prosecutor marsha ashdown says don't be fooled by the girls' appearance. >> they planned that crime, not just for hours, but days, weeks, months. the horror of that really is what strikes us in the end. not how those girls look in shackles. >> young, attractive, unattractive, male, female, it doesn't matter. evil comes in all shapes and sizes. >> these days around morgantown there's lingering damage. teenagers who feel they'll never trust anyone again. >> after i heard all that, i didn't really want to become friends with anybody else. >> it's like finding out your little sister was a murderer. >> i still to this day have trust issues. >> skylar's friend morgan lawrence says she thinks about all the milestones she and skylar had planned to mark together.

you two should be doing everything alongside each other. >> yeah. they didn't just take away a bride. they took away a bridesmaid. >> skylar's second parents say they'll miss out, too. >> when morgan walks down the aisle, skylar won't be there. >> she will be. >> she'll be watching over her? >> she will. >> in june 2013, dave and mary had a memorial service at the site where skylar was killed and they're proud to have helped pass skylar's law, which requires amber alerts even when police suspect a teen has run away. a national version of skylar's law is currently making its way through congress. it's peaceful here now. they come here often, even in the winter, to tend the small garden they've built for skylar. >> mary, how do you want skylar to be remembered? >> the happy, loving little girl that she was.

>> and the smile. that smile could light up a room. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm natalie morales, thanks for watching. good morning, i'm dara brown in new york at msnbc world headquarters. here's what's happening, a new day in d.c. and more testimony in the house inquiry a short time from now. a senior white house budget official could hold an important piece to the impeachment trial. the first direct account of an overheadphord phone call whe the president allegedly asks about the investigations. a round of applause as the testimony of the former ukraine ambassador came to a close. the big takeaways from what marine yovanovitch said. guilty on all counts.

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