A storm had postponed a Catholic Church camp1 Rachel was supposed to attend in early July 2012. Knowing she would be gone for two weeks, Rachel told Shelia they'd have to go ahead with their plan before that. On Thursday July 5, Skylar got home from her work at Glenmark Center's Wendy's around 10:00 pm. She kissed her parents goodnight and went to her room. Around midnight, Shelia and Rachel either called or texted her, asking her for a joyride. Shelia parked her car2 next to the Neeses' apartment on Fairfield Street, and Skylar, as had become a habit, snuck out of her room, placing a small bench beneath the room's window, and joined the two girls. Unbeknownst to Skylar, the trunk of Shelia's cary contained a shovel, fresh clothes, towels and bleach.

The planned route. The dashed line is the state line. (Google Maps)

Shelia and Rachel had originally planned to follow Route 7 west through Cassville and continue toward Blacksville. However, a police car parked near an intersection linking Route 19 to Route 7 scared them off. They then took an alternative route north through Mt. Morris, and then headed west toward Blacksville. Roughly two miles west of Blacksville, on a road near Brave, the girls turned north, crossed some railway tracks and drove into Morris Run Road, a lonely one-lane backroad (see more info about the location here). The road was familiar to all three as they had driven it many times on their way to or from Eddy's father, who lives on Eddys Run Road3, a road parallel to the Morris Run Road.

The route taken. The star marks the murder site. (Google Maps)

Shelia parked the car on a spot about a mile into the road. They chatted for a while, and when Skylar started walking toward the car to pick up a lighter (they intended to smoke weed), the girls counted to three and, on this pre-arranged signal, starting stabbing Skylar with knives they had kept hidden beneath their hoodies. Skylar tried to run but she was tackled by the five-foot-eight Rachel. Skylar managed to grab her knife and fight back, inflicting a cut above Rachel's ankle, but was overpowered by the two girls stabbing her repeatedly4. The girls then stood over her, watching her die. In her dying moments, she could only whimper "Why?"

Shelia and Rachel had planned to bury Skylar but the ground turned out to be too rocky for their shovels. Instead, they moved the body next to a big tree and covered her with rocks and branches. After washing themselves in a creek (Morris Run) that runs right behind the site, the girls disposed of their bloody clothes and knives, but left Skylar's turned off cellphone next to her body. All this took a few hours and the girls were back home at dawn. Only shortly after this, in a demonstration of her narcissism, arrogance and social-media addiction, she retweeted at 09:09 am: "Always keep your cool." 5


1Camp Tygart, now Camp Bosco.
2A silver 2006 Toyota Camry.
3The name of the road is not a coincidence; it's named after the Eddy family.
4Pretty Little Killers and some TV segments such as Real Life Heathers put the number of stabs at several dozen while the prosecution gave a more conservative estimate (based on Rachel Shoaf's confession) of less than a dozen stabs.
5While Shelia's Twitter marks the tweet as posted on July 3, this is the date of the original tweet, rather than the retweet. Elle magazine puts the time at 06:09 in the morning, but this seems to be the GMT time (EST+4) of the retweet. There were further confusions because Shelia had apparently set her Twitter timezone to Pacific Time. Topix user "ADI ABX" claims the real time is 09:09 am (Eastern Daylight Time), based on the timestamp found within the Twitter site code.