DoctorOz: The Betrayal and Murder of Skylar Neese | Oz True Crime

Mean girls. It's a term made popular by Hollywood stories of teenage girls who turn on their friends at the drop of a dime. We've all seen the news in real life. The effects of bullying have reached an all-time high. On today's True Crime, we're going to inside the world of killer classmates. And we're finding out what happens when mean girls turn deadly. It's a growing epidemic, schoolgirls around the country engaging in violent bullying. What may start out as teasing and name-calling can turn into much more. From intense online cyberbullying to being set on fire, young girls around the country are being subjected to more mental and physical abuse than before. These physical altercations can result in injury and, in some extreme cases, death. In the infamous Slender Man Stabbing, where two girls were inspired by an online horror story to stab their friend 19 times, the victim made it out alive. Others, like 16-year-old Skylar Neese, were not as lucky. Skylar was bullied and then murdered by her two closest friends. If these so-called mean girls can be fellow classmates or even best friends, parents are left to wonder, who are their children safe around? Joining me now is investigative correspondent Tia Brown. Now, you all know those popular movies like Mean Girls and Jawbreaker that show how cruel young girls can be towards each other in school. So, Tia, help me understand what constitutes a mean girl and what makes it even worse than real old-fashioned bullying. Yeah, it's really important for us to understand that this is not the same as the bullying we saw back in the day because it doesn't stop. Social media means that, or it allows people the opportunity to bully you in so many different ways and just make it ongoing. So we're seeing as many as one in four to one in three students saying that they have personally experienced bullies. 70% of students saying that they've seen it. And tens of thousands of students have said that they'd rather stay home than go to school. because of bullying. Now, Mean Girls is a whole different phenomenon because it really gets deep into the sense of belonging and identity, right? So Mean Girls are really about cliques, telling you who's important, you know, who should be around us, who belongs. They really are big on establishing hierarchy and punishment. So it's a really dangerous thing. It's very scary. And what makes bullying become deadly? When does it go past? Really hurtful stuff and put your life at risk. What we're really seeing on the rise is this sense of apathy and detachment and behavior of students and young adults, right? So there's violence happening on so many different levels. On one level, there's games like the Slenderman, where you have, for example, two little girls took one of their friends who was out at a slumber party into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. So we see people committing violence on others, right? And then we also see it turning inward. And suicide is on the rise. The CDC reports that it's higher than ever. And more and more young girls are committing suicide specifically. So we have girls like Mallory Grossman, Brenda Vela, and even Rosalie Avila who took their lives all because of cyberbullying. This is an epidemic. People have to take it seriously. And the social media has taken it to a whole new level. I want to take a look at this important tweet. Stress will be the death of me. Followed by, sick of being home, said sarcastically, thanks friends, love hanging out with all of you too. Now these were the last tweets of 16-year-old Skylar Neese. She posted them just hours before being murdered, murdered, by her two best friends. So what was Skylar going through when she was typing out these tweets? You know, on surface level, it looks like a girl who might be frustrated or, you know, just kind of left out. But she was really experiencing extreme bullying and mean girl treatment. Her friends had decided to literally push her out of the clique. Now, a little investigation revealed that Skylar was privy to some information about two of the girls that they had been possibly intimate. But no one really knows. Without going into too many details, we're going to touch on them. What did they actually do? They decided that they were going to take her life. So they took her life, and she was only a teenager. And what was the motive? The motive is something that seems so ridiculous. And again, it speaks to the level of detachment and apathy. They said they didn't like her anymore. Can you imagine taking someone's life because you didn't like them anymore? And unfortunately, it came about in the worst way. These girls were her friends. They spent time with her. They even helped when she went missing to look for her. But one of them ended up having a mental breakdown. And when she had that mental breakdown, she confessed to the murder. Now, two young girls are spending life in prison because they took someone else's life. And these are all, again, teenagers. Teenage mean girls. Up next, Skylar's parents. That's the young woman whose tweets we just showed you, whose life was taken by her friends. They are here. What do they say led to their daughters' two best friends turning into killer mean girls? And what warning signs should you be looking for in your own kids? Don't go away. We're back investigating when mean girls turned deadly. Mary and Dave join me now. They lost their only child, 16-year-old Skylar, when two girls who were supposed to be her friends, Rachel and Sheila, stabbed her to death. I want to thank you both for being here. I know this is very difficult. I can only imagine. But it's helpful. Describe Skylar to us. What would you want people to remember about her? She was bubbly. She was happy. She was a fighter for the underdog. She was a good kid. She was really just a good kid. Was she strong? Oh, yes. Very strong-willed, very opinionated. I mean, she... Very thoughtful of others. She always... Worried about the other person, you know, the underdog. She cared. So Sheila had been Skylar's friend since they were eight years old. Yeah. Did you have any inkling? What was their friendship like? At the time, we thought it was just a normal friendship. You know, as kids, you know, each other's houses for sleepovers, going to the mall, running around. Now, they seemed to get along good from what we could see. Inseparable. They were. Yeah. Always on the phone. Inseparable, you said? Yes. Yeah. So your daughter disappeared, and you searched for her for months. Did you ever suspect that these girls, Sheila in particular, since they've been lifelong friends, could be responsible? Sheila, at one point, Sheila did not knock on our door. She was our family. She walked right in. Never knocked. One day when Skylar was missing, I got a knock on the door and Mary was laying down sleeping. It was Sheila. And I was kind of shocked as to why she would be knocking on the door. So I opened the door and she came in and I said, what's up? And she said, can I go to Skylar's room? I said, sure. So she went back to Skylar's room. Mary had woken up and said, what's up? And I said, Sheila's here and she wanted to go to Skylar's room. So she said, I got this, and she walked back, and about a minute later, I heard weeping. I went back to Skylar's room, and Mary is sitting on Skylar's bed with her arm around Sheila, and Sheila's saying, how can my best friend leave me like this? How can my best friend run away and not tell me where she went? That is total betrayal. But at the time, we... We're feeling bad for her because she's so upset, and here she was the one who did it. How did you finally learn what happened to your beautiful daughter, Skylar, what Sheila and Rachel had done to her? Well, how did we finally? Take your time. We kind of knew beforehand. Rumors had hit us as well as, you know, other people, and some very close friend came up and told me, Dave, you have a child. I have children. I've got to talk to you. I've got to tell you something. And he said, Rachel and Sheila stabbed Skylar to death. Your friend told you that? It was an insider in the... That knew more than we did. Like in the police department? The police couldn't tell us anything at this point. They couldn't even tell us... They told us they found Skylar, and that was all they would tell us. Why do you think, Mary, that these two girls wanted to hurt your daughter? Rumor has. Yeah, rumor has it that... Skylar had a journal, a diary, and inside the diary we found evidence that Rachel and Sheila had a romantic escapade in front of Skylar. While they were doing a sleepover and Skylar could not leave the room because Sheila's mother would have found out that they were drinking and shouldn't have been drinking. And I guess this happened right in front of Skylar and she journaled about it in her diary. It was disgust, or is what the word she used, isn't it? Yeah, but it was, they were afraid Rachel's mother would find them. It was in Rachel's house. I'm sorry, it was in Rachel's house, yeah. Do you know what happened that final evening? There's evidence that she left your home and got into their car. Do you remember any of this? We were actually asleep in bed at night when that happened. And, you know, from Rachel's confession, they've pretty much put together What happened, you know, they took her out to this dark, deserted road and with the pretense that the three of them were going to party, get high. And when they got there, the girls all got out of the car and went to this little wooded area. Well, she, I don't remember if it was Sheila or Rachel, one of the girls had said they had forgot their lighter. So Skylar said, well, let me go back to the car and get the lighter. Well, when she did... Which one was it? Rachel counted to three. Rachel counted one, two, three, and I guess that was their signal to attack. And they had kitchen knives hidden in their hoodies that they had on. So they pulled the kitchen knives out, and that's what they used to stab Skylar over 50 times. And then they lost count. Fifty times, and then they lost count. They lost count. They stabbed her more than 50 times, but that's when they lost count. And stood over her and watched her quit breathing and make gurgling sounds. That's how sick these two individuals are. Makes you angry. Sorry. I miss your daughter. You wouldn't believe it. If there's one message out there I want everybody to know, it's not okay to let your kids do whatever you want. It's not okay to not know who they're hanging out with. You guys have got to dig deeper. Don't trust anyone. I didn't do it for that. Do you have any idea why Rachel confessed? Well... She said it was getting to her. Yeah. It was starting to really eat at her, and she just couldn't stand it anymore in her personal life with her mother and was going nowhere and getting in fights and everything else. She supposedly had this... Very religious background, and she had made the statement that she needed to make things right with her God and her family, so she confessed. So what's going to happen to these two girls? They have, one got life, Sheila got life and eligible for parole in 15 years, and Rachel got 30 years eligible for parole after 10 years in the same prison. Sheila's never come to terms with what she's done, never admitted it. She said, I'm guilty, and that was all. So as far as her being eligible for parole, I don't ever see it happening. Rachel, at one point, will get out. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. I want to thank you both. It's a lot to go through. It means a lot to everybody that you want to talk about this horrendous crime. Thank you. I wish you the best trying to heal. I know it will never happen fully, but... hope to bring some closure to it. Well thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Anything else you want to say? Yeah, Skylar's Law. There's a law in West state of West Virginia called Skylar's Law. It makes it easier to issue a non or issue an AMBER alert Make sure that your state Enact and get Skylar's law, a federal law, so that this doesn't happen to anyone else. We never want anyone to go through the hell we've been through. Thank you. Yeah. Up next, what are the signs of dangerous being girls? Stay with us. Today's true crime, what happens when mean girls turn deadly? How do we know if a vicious pattern has started and what can we do to stop it? Joining us now, Ross Ellis. She's the founder and CEO of a national bullying and cyberbullying prevention program for kids and teens in the United States. Earlier we heard about killer mean girls, especially the tragic case of 16-year-old Skylar Neese. Skylar's parents never thought her friends were capable of hurting her, let alone killing her. So what are the signs, Russ, we should be aware of that mean girls could be capable of violence? Right. Well, first of all, my heart goes out to Skylar's parents. Yes. Not all mean girls are violent. It's the ones that grow up in families that, and I'm not blaming the families, but that don't have empathy, that they don't, they just don't care about anything. So we have to teach kids empathy within the home and within schools, and it's imperative. What's the best way to address a mean girl? To stop a bully in their tracks. That's easy. That's so easy. I mean, never, ever ignore it. What we tell everyone is if the mean girl calls you a name or she's just nasty, look her straight in the eye. And if she says you look fat, just look at her and say whatever and walk away. Do not have a conversation. And that stops it. Now we know it can be hard sometimes for kids to stand up for themselves and that can be really a challenge. What are some of the things parents can do to help the kids? How can they intervene? What signs should they be looking for? Well, I think parents really need to communicate a lot and constantly. And don't ask your children if they're being bullied because they will not answer you. So, you know, you can say, gee, I've been reading a lot about bullying, you know, in the paper and on the news. Does that exist in our schools, in our neighborhood? Do you know of anyone who's being bullied? Start the conversation. One of the things you said earlier when we were talking was that everybody kind of needs to be a part of making this change. How can people, you know, other students, how can other family members, people in the community, really help stop bullying? You know, it's really interesting. We have a program with the New York Jets, and every kid gets nominated if they're doing upstanding. And it's called Upstander, so it's Upstander of the Week. And it's so important that if a kid sees something in school, say something, help the kid who's being tormented. Take them away if you feel safe. If you don't feel safe, get a teacher, get an adult. But you can't allow this behavior to happen. Russ, thank you very much to you. I appreciate all your insights, as always. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.