New Podcast Three Revisits Brutal Murder of Teen by Friends: 'People Don't Expect Girls to Kill' 

It was just before midnight when 16-year-old Skylar Neese sneaked out of her Morgantown, W.V., ground-floor bedroom and jumped into the waiting car of friends Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf.

The three high school best friends drove to a remote wooded area in Wayne County, Pa., where Eddy and Shoaf, armed with kitchen knives, stabbed their friend to death.  

Neese’s July 6, 2012 murder and the subsequent arrests of her close friends stunned the tight-knit community as well as the nation. It is now the subject of a 10-part podcast series, Three, by award-winning journalists Justine Harman and Holly Millea.

“This obviously rocked a small town to its core,” Harman tells PEOPLE. “I think people don't expect girls to kill. They were pretty. They were cute. I think people just underestimate the ferociousness of young women.”

After the murder, the teens denied any knowledge of Skylar’s whereabouts, saying they drove around that night before dropping her off near her home.

Shoaf later confessed her part in the slaying and led investigators to the crime scene. She allegedly told police they killed the teen because they just didn’t like her, ABC News reported.

“It's a timeless story of girls getting close, blurring the lines between friendship and romance, hormones flying, being competitive with boys, sexual experimentation and then it just goes to a level that you couldn't imagine, and you're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's too much," Harman says.

The podcast features interviews with Skylar's family and closest friends, law enforcement and those who know Eddy and Shoaf.

Shoaf was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

At her parole hearing in 2023, Shoaf said she was in a relationship with Eddy and feared they would face outcry if the information came out.

“After things became known with the relationship, there was tension between us,” Shoaf said, per WBOY. “It was hostile and violent, in our teenage minds we didn’t know how to handle the conflict and we just wanted it to stop.”

She was denied parole. Eddy was given life in prison for her role in the slaying.

Both are serving their prison sentences in Lakin Correctional Center.  

“We spoke with an inmate who is in prison with them who says they receive bags and bags of fan mail,” says Harman. “There’s been a lot of fan worship of them."

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Harman says the two former pals still interact but “it doesn't seem like they are confidants because Rachel ratted Shelia out. Without Rachel's confession, they probably would've gotten away with it. They see each other, I would say, on a daily basis. It's a pretty crazy situation.”

Harman hopes the podcast “promotes awareness.”

“I think the message is it's not just high school b------ all the time,” she says. “You have to pay attention and you have to take them seriously. People talk a lot about girls and hormones, but I don't know. Something led these girls to think that murder was an option, and it seems like this could have been prevented somehow, someway, and it wasn't and I'm not blaming anyone other than these two girls, but how did this happen? It seems so avoidable.”