THE father of a 16-year-old girl who was viciously stabbed over 50 times by two classmates whom she considered her best friends has blasted his daughter’s killers’ cushy lives behind bars.
For Dave Neese, the joyous memories of raising his daughter Skylar Neese remain ingrained in his mind nearly 14 years after his only child was lured out of her home and left for dead in a wooded area.
The horrific 2012 murder of Skylar rocked her small town of Star City, West Virginia, after her close friends Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf were charged and convicted of her gruesome killing.
Eddy is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years, while Shoaf was sentenced to 30 years with a chance of parole after 10 years.
But 12 years into her sentence, Shoaf will have another chance at parole in June after being denied freedom twice by a parole board.
Neese, 63, has accepted the fact that one of his daughter’s killers will eventually be released from prison, but railed against justice system.
“Those two little witches that did this – I like to say they’re getting what they’re supposed to get, but they’re not,” Neese told The U.S. Sun.
“One of them will be released in two years. Is that justified? To take a human life and do 15 years in jail?
“Rachel will be released in 2028 because her sentence is over. She got 30 years.
“They said that it will be a 30-year sentence and I said, oh that’s good, I’ll be dead and gone by then.
“And later on, they tell me it’s a day for a day – get a day of good time for each day you spent, so that’s only 15 years and that is preposterous. It’s stupid.
“I don’t understand where the justice system is going. It’s going straight to hell is where it’s going.”
West Virginia Department of Corrections offers good time credit to inmates with a well-behaved track record, or who enroll in programs like substance abuse treatment, educational programs, anger management, and life skills.
Inmates could have their sentences reduced by one day for every one day served with good behavior.
An exasperated Neese voiced his frustration that Shoaf and Eddy are being housed in the same prison that has been commonly referred to as “Camp Cupcake.”
“When I think of prison I think of hard time,” Neese said about Shoaf and Eddy’s imprisonment at Lakin Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison where celebrities like Martha Stewart were once held.
Neese said he’s seen photos of Shoaf and Eddy from behind bars that appear to show them dolled up with their hair and makeup done.
“They show me pictures now of Rachel and Shelia in their orange jumpsuits, or brown, and they got their hair done and makeup on, like what the hell is this prison,” the irate father said.
Inmates have access to secured handheld tablets where they can access educational materials, music, games, email, and video visits, according to the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security.
The tablets are an incentive for prisoners who display good behavior.
“It’s not supposed to be a walk in the park. They call it camp cupcake for a reason,” Neese added.
“Martha Stewart was there, and they’ve never heard of a place that’s horrible. I just don’t think the punishment fit the crime.
“They get fan mail in jail; you gotta remember there’s people just like them.
“They get fan mail. People send them money, people send them games to play on their X-Boxes and whatever else they have in their cell.
“Is that prison? That’s not prison. That’s a day camp. The only thing they can’t do is go home.”
Neese acknowledged that not a day goes by that he does not think about Skylar and the joy it was raising her throughout her 16 years of life.
“Skylar was truly a joy to raise. She was a good kid. She had a heart of gold,” Neese told The U.S. Sun.
“She never did really anything bad. She did normal stuff, sneaking out of her window and stuff like that, but that stuff eventually cost her her life.
“And no fault of hers, the fault of sickos.”
Skylar, who was a sophomore at University High School in Morgantown at the time of her death, was last seen climbing out of her bedroom window just after midnight on July 6, 2012, and jumping into a vehicle that was being driven by Eddy and Shoaf, both 16.
The teenagers were inseparable; Eddy had known Skylar since childhood, and Shoaf joined their tight-knit circle during their freshman year of high school.
However, what Skylar did not know was that for months Eddy and Shoaf had been planning to kill her and arranged to carry out the sinister act that evening.
Eddy and Shoaf drove Skylar to a wooded area near the Pennsylvania border over an hour away from Star City, where together they stabbed her over 50 times in the neck and back with kitchen knives.
Star City police and the FBI launched a large-scale search for Skylar after her father reported her missing, but months went by without any significant leads.
After several months, the investigation took a major turning point after police obtained Eddy and Shoaf’s phone records, showing major inconsistencies in their talks with investigators about what routes they took on the night Skylar disappeared.
Data showed the two girls’ phones had been in Blacksville, West Virginia, around 4:00am on the night Skylar was last seen, when the two said they were home asleep.
Police then obtained security footage in the area where they spotted a car matching Shelia’s vehicle description at a Sheetz gas station around midnight, heading in the direction of Blacksville.
But while the FBI continued to gather evidence, Shoaf eventually cracked and confessed to authorities how she and Eddy repeatedly stabbed Skylar dozens of times, killing her, and led investigators to her remains.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16190120/skylar-neese-hulu-rachel-shoaf-shelia-eddy/
