Woman Had Florida Man Torture and Murder Her: Cops
00:00Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now.Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.Okay, so real quick, like, first instance of personal family being affected by AI scam calls.That's Dwayne Hall, warning about scam calls days before he would be accused of murdering a woman from the UK, who he met on a fetish website.The strange twist.Paul says that Sonia Exelby wanted him to kill her.I go through the unbelievable and tragic case out of Florida.I'm Anjanette Levy, and this is Crime Fix.
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01:23And with their new unlimited plans, custom removals feature, you can submit custom links whereyour data shows up and a team of privacy experts will remove it for you. So if you care aboutyour online safety and you should take your data back with incogny, use code crime fix for 60%off an annual plan. Dwayne Hall is in jail in Marion County, Florida facing murder and kidnappingcharges. Investigators say that he tortured and murdered Sonia Exelby, a woman from the UnitedKingdom whose loved ones reported her missing in October. Hall claimed to detectives.that Sonia wanted him to kill her. This case, it's incredibly sad and very disturbing. Last month,a man named Stevie posted on Facebook that Sonia was missing and described her as a vulnerable person
02:13who was really struggling with her mental health. Stevie wrote, we believe she got on a plane on Fridayand made her way to Florida, Tallahassee from the UK. We believe she has arranged to meet someonethere and has got herself into an extremely vulnerable situation. That's all I can really say onthat. Sonia, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, had missed her scheduled flighthome to the UK from Florida on Monday, October 13th. Now, there was a lot of concern for Sonia.Police in the UK actually reached out to Interpol. And Interpol then contacted law enforcementin the United States to search for her. In affidavit states, according to information from UK authorities,Exelby had known mental health diagnoses and at least one previous documented police incident from
03:022024, which involved a credible concern that Exelby wanted to end her life and planned to travelto the United States with the intention of meeting with online individuals who would be willingto kill her violently. Exelby had possibly communicated with these individuals on Telegram.Telegram is an online application that individuals used to communicate more securely.That attempt was thwarted, and Exelby received treatment.Most recently, Exelby left evidence on her computer indicating that she was again consideringending her life and traveling to the United States to be possibly sexually abused,tortured, and murdered by unknown individuals living in the United States.
03:45Sonia had arrived in Florida on October 10th, a Friday,and planned to return to the UK three days later. Police said after she arrived at the GainesvilleAirport on October 10th, two UK phone numbers were seen roaming briefly in the United States,but then those phones turned off. Almost immediately, investigators in Florida were able to determinethat 53-year-old Dwayne Hall was tied to Sonia Exelby's trip to Florida. It really wasn't that hardfor them to put the pieces together. Investigators wrote in an affidavit. During the time thatExelby was known to be in the United States, Solver Wolf's roadside assistance attempted to chargeExelby's Lloyd's bank account debit card on October 11, 2025. There were seven attempts at varying
04:31amounts within an approximately 10-minute time frame. All were declined. FDLE later found out thatduring the same time frame at approximately 1.10.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, a payment for $1,200,dollars was successfully charged to a Tesco bank debit card belonging to Exelby.FDLE contacted the owner of Solver Wolf's roadside assistance, Dwayne Hall.Hall is the only current employee of this business.Of course, police went to talk with Dwayne Hall and police said he denied knowing SoniaExelby at all.Detectives wrote in their affidavit, Hall was initially contacted on October 13th by telephone
05:13and then on October 14th by telephoned and also in person during the missing person caseand asked about the transactions. He recalled the declined bank card transactions and claimedthat an unknown woman called him in need of roadside assistance the weekend of October 10th throughthe 12th, 2025. This woman was willing to pay him a large sum of money to respond and help her,but when her card was declined multiple times, he did not respond to a sister. He also claimednone of the charges went through. He stated multiple times he did not know Exilby, nor did hetravel to meet this unknown woman to provide her assistance. Paul could not produce any informationabout the woman's car, location, nor cell phone records to support his assertion that he received
05:59a call during the time he said he received the call and charged Exelby's credit cards.The evidence was mounting. An investigators say they verified that Sonia checked into an Airbnb thatshe rented in Reddick, Florida. Then detectives said they were made aware of messages on discord thatcame from Exelby's account on October 11th. There are typos, so I'm going to interpret what they'resupposed to say. The affidavit states, this message appeared to come from Exelby's account sometime onOctober 11th, 2025. The message was long, and at times disjointed, it starts by saying, I'm sorry,he keeps taking my phone, he doesn't trust me with it. She then writes, he made it clear there wasno way out unless I shoot him. I was questioning it last night. I can't kill anyone. She went on to
06:48write that last night was so bad and he's in the shower, but I'm locked in and there is no signalin the middle of nowhere. She also writes, I thought he'd do it quick and not give my mindtime to stew and realize this is the last thing I'll ever do to anyone if I don't take his offerof shooting him. He showed me about to use it and where to aim it. She ends the message by writing.I'm so, so scared. I'm so broken and in so much pain. All I can do is lay here and doing what he wants makes him respect me enough not to do the things I really hate. Everything, but some are. I'm sorry I don't even know what I'm saying and I'm trying to be quick and my time's up. The message indicated that the person who she was with wouldn't let her leave and that the same person always had a gun on him. Exelby did not name the person but said he told her that the only wayout is for her to kill him. Additionally, in this message, Exelby said this person made her recordthree disclaimer videos and write a letter to her family because he thought it was funny. All right,so I told you that investigators interviewed Dwayne Hall. And they say he told them a number of different
07:58stories at first denying he knew Sonia at all and then saying that a high profile client named Haroldpaid him to pick her up from the airport. Finally, investigators said that Dwayne Hall admitted that hehad met Sonia on a fetish website two years ago and that he had begun to mentor her.Hall's username on that site, Alpha Sadist. And there was more. Paul told investigators that he hadviolent tendencies, but that changed when his wife became ill. They wrote that Hall eventually admittedto having sex with Sonia, calling it vanilla. But then they found a four-minute, 16-second video onhis phone where he was questioning her. Hall had bruises and abrasions on her. He had bruises and abrasions onher face and chest, according to the detectives. In the video, detectives said that Hall asked
08:46Sonia, Exelby, why she was there, and she responded, because I'm an awful person. And he thenasks her why that is, and she responds, I've crushed everyone who ever loves me. The video isincredibly disturbing. Detectives wrote, she goes on to speak about other reasons she believes she's anawful person and is visibly upset with tears in her eyes. As she is talking about this, Hall asks her howshe would want to die and to describe it, she does not answer. And he then asks her what she has been consenting to here today. She asks him hesitantly if he means about the way he's talked about killing her. Paul asks Exelby about what treatment she consents to beforehand. She hesitates and then tells him to be stabbed. Paul goes on to ask Exelby about her treatment the last day or two and she seems confused and then tells him that she doesn't remember because they've talked about so many different.ways. Hall then asks Exelby about her face. She responds, you've beaten me. He asks her if that is whatshe asked for and she does not immediately respond but then says, I guess literally speaking,Hall asks if she is being forced or coerced. Again, Exelby does not immediately respond and when
09:57she does respond, she only shakes her head no. Detective said Hall told them that Sonia had promisedto help him with some trouble that he was having with the IRS and that she would bring $4,000dollars with her to give to him, but she didn't. So that's why he charged that $1,200 to her credit card.Detective said they searched the Airbnb and found evidence tying Hall to Sonia Exelby's murder.They wrote, FDLE searched the Airbnb, and during that search, located receipts in the trashthat showed on October 10, 2025 at approximately 547 p.m.Hall, using his bank card, purchased a paracord, gun cleaner, 50 feet of rope, and loom spray,a Walmart located in Gainesville, Florida.
10:43That same day at 5.54 p.m., Hall made another purchase at the same Walmart for a shovelusing his same bank card.Surveillance video and transaction history confirmed that Hall was the one who purchasedthese items.Investigators said they found Sonia Exelby's remains buried on Friday, October 17th,with a shovel that Dwayne Hall bought at Walmart, an autopsy revealed that she had beenstabbed to death.And get this.
11:09Investigators say that Dwayne Hall actually mailed a knife that he owned, along with the knife sheath, to a friend in Ohio.They say it was a black, cold steel, seven-inch tonto knife marked Dork Wharf, which was a nickname his friend had given him.The investigators say that that knife had Sonia's blood on it.Also included in that package was some silver.All right.So to talk about this incredibly disturbing case, I want to bring in Mark Weaver.He works as a prosecutor in the state of Ohio and also sometimes as a judge in the state of Ohio. Mark, I mean, you've had some doosies in your day. This case, it is so disturbing. Dwayne Hall is in a world of trouble. And it looks like they've got a mountain of evidence against him.It's a good way to put it. He also picked a really bad state to commit this heinous crime because Florida not only has.
12:08has the death penalty, but is willing to carry out executions. If he had done this in stateswhere there is no death penalty, would be different. But yeah, the prosecution's case, based on whatwe know right now, is very strong. This guy is using credit cards, which create records. His caris being picked up on license plate readers, which creates records. He's using Airbnb, which createsrecords. He's sending the murder weapon across state lines to other witnesses in Ohio,the state where I prosecute. He's making all the mistakes that criminals shouldn't makeif they don't want to get caught. And that's just, that's setting aside this notion of thepure evil that you would take advantage of a woman who clearly is mentally ill, who for some
13:05sad reason wants to take her own life. And he sees this as his opportunity to perhaps commit amurder that he had been hoping to commit for many, many years. And that, and that's what this reallylooks like. I mean, this looks like somebody who admitted to cops, according to the affidavit,that he had violent tendencies. Okay. But, oh, those went away for a little bit. He says,you know, he's trying to minimize, this is, this is how I'm reading it. Or like, maybe this is how the copswant you to read it. Who knows? But he's got a knife. And as you mentioned, he sends this knifewith blood on it with a sheath to his friend in Ohio with silver. And he says, hey, buddy, just hold on to thisfor me for a little bit. Can you just hold on to this for me for like six months until this storm passes?
14:01the storm might be pretty bad.I expect it to be maybe pretty bad.And of course, you know, the cops, they reach out to this guy and they're like, did he sendyou a package?And they're like, yeah, he sent me a package.And they, so they've got the knife with Sonia's DNA on it.They have the murder weapon.I mean, I just can't even imagine in what world, on what planet, this guy thought, oh, yeah,
14:27this storm will pass.Yeah, it's a category five.storm and it's going to hit them hard. If you think about it, you and I have done numerous programsdiscussing the Brian Coburger murders in Idaho where he killed those four college students.It was really hard to find evidence tying Brian Coburger to those crimes because Brian Coburger,a graduate student in criminology, appears to have gone to great lengths to destroy and hideevidence. This guy's the opposite of that. It's almost like I used to teach a law school for manyyears. And so if I had written a final exam where I put these facts in, students would have said to me,
15:09come on, can you be a little more realistic? No criminal would ever leave these many cluesleading back to them. And as a result, it's a pretty easy case for the prosecutors.although perhaps we'll have future shows about this, if his defense is one of consent,that's not recognized under Florida law, but he may go for jury nullification if he goes to trialsaying she wanted this to be done to her, she asked me to do it, I have her on video sayingshe wanted me to do it, and so I shouldn't be held accountable. I wouldn't certainly as a jurorfind that persuasive, but some jurors might.but you know they say when the cops write about this in this affidavit they say basically that she
15:55looked scared when he's talking to her about this and it looked like she had changed her mindshe had sent these discord messages saying she couldn't get out of there and the guy saidthe only way she was going to get out of there is if he if she shot him and all this stuffso it's like it sounds like she wasn't really into it and she was having badservice at the Airbnb. Also, Mark, how does the defense then explain the fact that she had areturn ticket to the UK? If she really went across the pond, traveled across the pond forsomebody to do this to her and to end it and everything for her, why did she book a return flight?That is a very important point, I think. What do you think? That's a good point. We'll never know exactly
16:45what she thought. She clearly has mental health problems. She needed help. She needed interventionfrom somebody who would calm these fear or these desire for self-harm and have somebody elseharm her in her. Perhaps it was a fantasy. We know the internet is full of people who write abouttheir, you know, deeply disturbing fantasies. And maybe on both ends, both the victim and themurderer had fantasies about this and the internet connected them, which is kind of sad.But, no, I think you are right.There's all sorts of evidence to suggest that even if she wanted this at the outset, that asit was happening, she changed her mind.
17:26She's messaging to a friend.I don't want him to do this to me.This is causing more pain than I thought.And I do think there'll be a, you know, a conviction on this unless something procedurally happens.The prosecution and the investigators ought to slow.down real careful because the only way this case goes sideways with this kind of evidence is if theymake a procedural error and that would allow the case to be dismissed or changed because of thaterror. Also too, I mean, he says he's mentoring her for two years and really didn't want her life to
18:00end. This is not how you do that. That's not how you mentor somebody. If you're really, like let's sayyou're into this whole, you know, fetish website stuff.And this is what you're looking for.And she travels all the way from the UK to Florida for this.And you guys set up a rendezvous.Everything he did, I mean, this was not, he called this, he described the sex as vanilla.None of this sounds vanilla.I don't know what, if this is vanilla to him, then he needs to like be put away for a really
18:34long time. And that's probably what will likely happen in the state of Florida. But to me,it's like, this is not how you mentor somebody and this is not how you help somebody. So it soundsto me like the cops are going to say she came over. He was manipulating her. She was supposed tobring four grand. She didn't bring the cash. And that made him extra mad. So he did what he did.And it was almost like he was cajoling her.Even if she was regretting it, he was cajoling her and coercing her into consenting.So he could have this.And then this is a guy that maybe wanted to kill somebody.
19:18Yeah.The killer may have described this as vanilla, but the whole thing is 2D-frutty.And it's crazy.It's really very upsetting.If he says he's being a mentor, I've been mentored by very,kind people and I've tried to mentor people in my career. A mentor wants what's best for the personthat they're mentoring. And so if she truly had a mentor in her life, it would be somebody who wouldsay, let's get you the counseling you need so you can see that there's no need for self-harm.
19:47There's no need to have somebody want to take your life. He didn't do that. He clearly tookadvantage of a very mentally and emotionally unstable person, killed her. It's not a defense in Floridafor consent. This is a death penalty eligible case because he added another felony, in this case,kidnapping or potentially one of the sexual offenses. So it's a fairly straightforward case.Maybe like the Idaho case, the goal of the defense will be to simply get the death penalty offthe table. But as I mentioned, unlike the Idaho case, there is no way that a jury goes,acquits this person. It's really very hard to see that. There's no reasonable doubt here.And so given what I know about Florida, unlike other death penalty states, he's likely to be convicted within a year and executed within 10 years, which in death penalty prosecutions, which I've worked on throughout my career is fast.
20:45Viewers might go, 10 years is not fast.In the world of death penalty appeals, 10 years is fast.That is fast.So you think they will pursue the death penalty in this case?Because to me, it kind of screams for that.It cries out for that.I mean, this seems kind of like a guy, it's kind of like a wolf and sheep's clothing a little bit.I mean, it's very, he looks like just this like tow truck driver, you know, roadside assistance guy driving around.
21:12And now you read all of this and these facts, these allegations are so horrific.It's very scary.It makes you really realize just you could be out at the grocery store.It's like the guy standing in the produce section across from you looking at the sweet.potatoes. It's like, oh, my God, he looks normal, or maybe you think he doesn't look a littlenormal, but maybe just a little, like, odd, but you just don't know what's going on with somebodyup here. Yeah, and we can't say he's had a life of crime. I mean, his previous record had beenan adjudication for fishing without a license. And so in many cases, when we get to somebody who
21:52has killed somebody, we've looked at their criminal record and we see a long history of violence.that doesn't appear to be the case here.There's a long history of odd things in his life,particularly surrounding his family situationand other things like that.But he's not led this big life of crimethat would made us predictthat perhaps he's going to end it with murder.
22:14No, not at all.And he's warning people on his Facebookabout, you know, AI scam calls.So I was like, when I found that,I was just shocked.It really, really is something.And this poor woman, Sonia, her family and friends, you know, this is heartbreaking for them because they were crying out on Facebook, on social media, saying, help us, please help us, you know, she needs help.I mean, they were desperate.
22:44And Interpol really, they jumped on this immediately.They saw the danger that she possibly was in.I mean, things moved very quickly, it seems, from the law enforcement end of this.Yeah, let's give kudos to the law enforcement. Just reading the details of what they put forward in their affidavit for this case, they amassed so much documentary and digital evidence over a relatively short period of time. It's remarkable. I've worked on prosecutions where it takes months and months to develop this kind of evidence trail. And so great international cooperation, great cooperation between Ohio and Florida, and certainly outstanding work by the local investment.where this crime occurred.Yeah, very much so, but just so sad, so sad.And I really hope anybody having the feelings that Sonia was having will reach outbecause there are places that can help to help with those feelings.
23:43And they can be fleeting.They can come and they can go.And I think this is clear that she was regretting, traveling here from everything we're reading.Mark Weaver, thank you so much.Appreciate your time.Thank you.So Dwayne Hall is facing those murder and kidnapping charges.He also faces charges related to the use of Sonia Exelby's credit cards.
24:05He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and he remains held without bond.That's it for this episode of Crime Fix.I'm Ann Jeanette Levy.Thanks so much for being with me.I'll see you back here next time.
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