True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 2: 18-Year-Old Art Student Killed On A Walk To The Park | The Case of Antinette "Toni" Keller

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

The search for 18-year-old Antinette “Toni” Keller led investigators deep into the woods of Prairie Park, where a devastating discovery would leave the DeKalb community searching for answers. In Part 2 of TRUE CRIME WITH KIMBYR, True Crime with Kimbyr explores the investigation, the unanswered questions, and the heartbreaking aftermath surrounding Toni’s final moments. With careful research and compassion, Kimbyrleigha examines the details of a case that shocked a university and continues to haunt those who remember Toni. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cal police have identified a person of interest in the Antenet Tony Keller murder investigation, according to the Chicago Tribune. A man notified the police of a fire in a DeKal Park on October 14th, the day of Keller's disappearance. He is now being held on an obstruction of justice charge and unlawful possession of a motor vehicle in Louisiana and is awaiting extradition to Illinois. And sure enough, William begins by repeating the same story he told before, that he knows nothing about Tony's possible murder. But when the officers put even more pressure on him, he changes this story.

And that's never a good sign. The truth remains the same. There is no need to shift the narrative. Now he says he was walking through Prairie Park on October 14th. And that day, he found Tony's body lying on a trail. She was already dead. And William said that he didn't know who hurt her or what the exact cause of her death was. but I think you heard me.

He found her body. And according to William, he was so shocked at the sight of what he was looking at. He stopped thinking clearly. He decided to move Tony's remains just to drag them a little off the path, like a good Samaritan. But here's where it gets specific in a way that's really hard to ignore. As he described rolling her body and moving her, he says that's when her fingernails dragged across his chest.

that she scratched him in the process. So wait. Let me understand this. She is deceased, according to him, already gone. And yet somehow her nails are leaving marks on his skin, marks that were noticeable in the days that followed, by the way. But he said he was just moving a body, and that's when it hit him.

This could be a potential crime scene. William was moving a potential murder victim. And now he says her blood was on him. And that's when William explained, that this realization sent him into a straight panic. So rather than dispose of her body respectfully or call the police, he decided in that moment he had to destroy the evidence. Now ask yourself of an innocent person would do that.

And this isn't even the first time that we've heard this, the whole like I stumbled upon her dead body. It's truly unbelievable, but we've heard this excuse before. Any normal person would immediately call for help. especially because if you're not trained to know if somebody is actually dead, you would want them to get medical help fast in case they're not. But here's William taking a totally different set of steps, not calling for assistance at all. Instead, William explained that he decided the best thing to do was to set Tony's body on fire. Wow. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like

sitting in that interview room and hearing that. And he's not even done. He tells the detectives, it took him about 10 minutes to build a fire on top of her body. And then he just walked away without even looking back. He tells the detectives, and I want you to hear this exactly the way he said. He said, quote, I freaked out. I was going to lose everything in the world, my kid, just because I didn't call 911, end quote. Really? That's why? Because he was simply an innocent bystander who failed to call for help.

He doesn't say, I panicked because I hurt someone, or I didn't know what to do. His first instinct, by his own account, was to protect himself. To think about what he stood to lose, his own child. He didn't want his kid taken away. He said that once, her husband, body was on fire and he was far enough away from the scene. That's when he called 911 to report the blaze. His hope, he said, was that first responders would find her remains and search for her real killer, as he put it, her real killer. But also any evidence linking her to him

would be destroyed. He tells investigators, at that point he stripped down and he showered, and he tried to scrub the blood out of his clothes and his shoes. But, He couldn't. It had soaked all the way through the material staining it. So we ended up throwing them away. But let's be real here. The story makes no sense. People don't burn random dead bodies that they happen to stumble upon. So the detectives continued to press William. And finally, he confesses to a second version of events. He's just digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. Most likely because he realized there may be DNA left beyond. mind. Now he says, he was walking on a path when he ran into Tony. Oh, she's alive now, but she's also

high on ecstasy. And by his account, they start talking, they start hanging out, and they spent a good 45 minutes together. Out there in the park, 45 minutes. Now that is not a chance encounter. That's not a brief crossing of paths on a hiking trail. That's almost an hour, alone in the woods with an 18-year-old girl that he had never met before and it just gets wilder. William also admits that he has a history of problems with substances, and when he realized that Tony was under the influence, he decides to stay with her while she's tripping. Because the way he put it, Tony seemed to appreciate his company. And again, he is painting himself as the good guy. He's there to make sure she's okay. And then he claimed that she even started to flirt with him. And that one thing just led to another. And according to William,

Tony eventually agreed to have sex with him right there in the middle of the woods with a stranger. It's absurd. But investigators aren't stopping him, and he keeps talking. He said everything was going well. They're in the middle of intimacy, except while they were doing it, William says that Tony flung her head back and hit it badly on a nearby log. And then right there, before William's eyes, she began having a violent seizure. He described her foaming at the mouth and watching this happening and not knowing what to do.

But here's the thing. The detectives already know that when he's telling this story, this second story, that there was a business owner who had called in with a tip. He said that he heard a woman scream. And he heard this scream coming from the park at that same time, not a whimper, not someone calling out someone screaming loudly enough that this owner, said anyone in that park would have heard it. It's surprised that more people didn't. This was in the middle of broad daylight. The detectives confront William with this fact, and he has no answer for it.

Why would she have been screaming? The detectives are blown with him about this entire thing. One of them looks at him and says, flat out, this stuff is way too far-fetched. No one is going to believe your story. They tell him, they're going to give him one more opportunity to tell them what really happened. This was his chance. William goes quiet. And then he asked for a lawyer, which depending on how you look at it can tell you something. It can tell you all you need to know that he's a liar, that he did this, that he is guilty, or it can just tell you he has that right. You should have a lawyer if you're talking to law enforcement, especially in a potential murder investigation. But to be clear, William never actually admitted to murdering Tony.

He insisted that her death was a horrible accident. And because of the fire, it was impossible to conduct a proper autopsy. There was no way to determine Tony's actual cause of death. The chief of police said it himself in a press conference. Due to the state of the burned remains, an autopsy is not viable. The police don't believe, William. His behavior is too suspicious. The constantly changing accounts of that day, the fact that he stole his mother's car,

fled to another country, the great lengths. he went to destroy evidence. Even when he said it was just an accident. So when the investigators look at the whole picture, all of the evidence put together, they are confident enough to charge William with first-degree murder, criminal sexual assault, and arson, and more evidence starts pouring in.

January 6th of 2011, that's the date that the DNA results come back. The investigators can now confirm what they have suspected all along. The remains are in fact. Tony Kellers. They had matched DNA from Tony's mother and father to DNA extracted from a femur bone that was found in the burn pile at the park. Her family is completely devastated. Even though the homicide investigation is continuing, family and friends got together to celebrate Tony Keller's life. I want to say that I know that you're sad. We're sad and it's okay to be sad. That shows the love that you have for Tony. This has been so difficult for us. We love you, Tony, and miss you more than words can tell. As candles shone in the dim N.I.U ballroom,

Tony Keller's friends shared their feelings. And then there was another finding, a key clue about the glasses lens that was near her body. For a while now, the police have known that it wasn't Tony's. But with William in custody, they were able to pull up his medical records, and they see that he wears prescription glasses. And his prescription just happens to be the same exact strength as that lens. Even better, officers find a broken pair of glasses in his car. They only have the one lens in them,

and the missing one is the same shape and size as the one that they found. Two investigators, this meant that Tony fought back against William. She hit him hard enough to break his glasses. Now, it is another sign that she did not die in an accident, and that she certainly didn't consent to doing anything with him. She was struggling for her life. Thelma Holderness, the woman who ran the page summoning of yellow, knew Tony. She knew her well.

And she said it simply when the glasses details came out, she said, Tony fought him. She broke his glasses. I know that's a very simple statement, but it's powerful. Because after everything, the burned body, the destroyed evidence, the changing of stories, those words cut right through it all. The people who loved her and knew her knew that William was lying. They knew what really happened. This beautiful young woman, alone in broad daylight, but nonetheless, they knew what he had done, taken advantage of her. The police also think it's notable that William mentioned throwing away his blood-soaked clothes and his shoes in multiple versions of his confession.

Search teams scour the local dumps, and it takes investigators several days of digging through the county. landfill to find them several days. I want you to think about what this might look like forensic teams methodically working through garbage, looking for a specific pair of shoes based solely on a detail that a potential killer mentioned to them while trying to explain away a murder. But they found them brown suede shoes soaked through with blood. They also find people who knew William, mostly casual acquaintances. And this was when several of them say, they saw those scratches on his chest. In the days after Tony's disappearance, and again, it's as though someone was trying to fight him off. It didn't seem like anything calm or anything

consensual. And it was just clue after clue coming to light. The investigators also pull Williams' criminal history, and it is just as damning. His record shows retail theft in 1999, felony property damage in the year 2000 and a substance possession charge in 2004. Now, none of that is violent on paper, but it paints the picture of someone who has been circling the edges of serious trouble for a very long time. Now, the real red flag, though, was the incident way back in 1995. At the time, William was about 20 years old. And according to a police report, he was at a house party where a young woman became heavily

intoxicated. Reportedly, when William realized that this woman was way too drunk to defend herself or to say no, he becomes very interested in her. He managed to corner this woman in an empty room, physically standing in front of her with her back against the wall so she couldn't get away. Then he grabbed her and began to try to kiss her without her consent. Thankfully, things did not go any further. Someone called the police and they intervene and his victim, she didn't want to press charges. So this never escalated to a conviction, but it shows William has this capability, this capacity of this specific type of violence towards women. He has a history of targeting young, vulnerable women. It's just another important piece of the puzzle and more evidence that they can

present to show what kind of person William truly is. And that is a very high priority. Because even that William has already confessed to having intercourse but Tony and burning her body, there is always the chance that he could recant everything. And not to mention that he still maintained that her death was a freak accident. So this hard evidence is important to ensure that William will be convicted. The charges are announced at a news conference by the police chief Bill Thuython and the state's attorney John Farrell. Now the full list of charges might actually seem a little longer to you and this is because there's five counts, a first-degree murder, criminal assault, arson, and concealment of a homicidal death, which when you think about everything he did after Tony died, the fire, the 911 call, the fleeing to Mexico, the destroyed

clothing and shoes. That last charge feels almost like an understatement. I mean, he did a lot to conceal this homicidal death. But this is a little complicated as well, and it's worth getting into, I think, because he's actually facing those five counts of murder, even though Tony is his only victim, which I thought you might find interesting. The reasoning is that the investigators still don't know the exact circumstances of Tony's death. So each murder count represents a different theory about how she might have been killed. This gives prosecutors the freedom to present different theories in court and still get a conviction, even if the jury doesn't think every single possibility is likely, and I thought that that was a really smart move. As for the essay charges,

the officials have no way of knowing if William really did have intercourse with Tony or if it was consensual. Her body was too damaged to make that determination. These charges are solely due to the fact that William claimed that he and Tony had been together in that manner. And in the investigator's mind, this is a sign that he might have forced himself on her. And he's now telling a story about a consensual hookup to try to make himself look better. And that And that's what I think is true, and I think you would do. With all the evidence presented at this point alone, her family, her friends, people that knew her, her being only 18, and the fact that this older man, a complete stranger, would be in the middle of the woods,

and you would just say, okay, let's get to it. It just does not seem plausible. The chief of police says directly at the news conference, though William was a frequent visitor to that park, who did not know Tony. And as far as investigators can determine, this was a crime of opportunity. He picked her. Not because of anything that she did. Not because of any connection between them, but because she was there and he decided she would do. And I just have to say, that sounds so insensitive, but predators are disgusting. They're heartless and they're sick.

Earl appeared in court via close circuit TV Saturday, connection with the death of 18-year-old Tony Keller. Investigators don't believe Curl knew the teen. Instead, they think her murder was a crime of opportunity. Saturday, the judge told Curl he could get the death penalty if convicted. The thinking of law enforcement is that he wanted to violate or kill someone solely for the thrill of it. He did not care who he hurt. In October 14th, he was in that park when he spotted Tony walking alone. He knew that there were no other people nearby. They were far enough away from civilization that no one would hear her scream, even though one person said they did. So according, to the investigator's belief. William decided to attack Tony solely because he knew he could

overpower her and do whatever he wanted. When he was first charged, Illinois was still a death penalty state and two of his five murder counts specifically qualified for execution. There are two charges that potentially make him eligible for the death penalty. When you commit a murder in the course of another felony, in this case it's alleged that he committed the offense of arson as well as criminal sexual assault, that potentially makes him eligible for the death penalty. That was the sword hanging over everything, and for a while it was a very real possibility that he was looking at death.

But in March of 2011, the governor signed legislation that abolished the death penalty entirely. And just like that, the worst possible outcome was off the table for him, which changed everything for everyone involved. And there's something important I want to touch on. All this time has gone by. six months after Tony was murdered, her family still hadn't held a funeral. And there was no grave, no place for them to go to remember her. And the reason was heartbreaking. Her remains were being

held as evidence by the county. It wasn't until April of 2011 that they were able to agree to release her ashes to her family. That's all. Select remains were still potential evidentiary value. So they had to remain with the coroner's office. And at one of the hearings, the state attorney actually said about Tony's family, who was not even in the court that day, it goes without saying, we're looking forward to the day that they can take their daughter home. I mean, it was so heartbreaking for them. They couldn't even make an appearance at these hearings. They didn't want to probably be there to look at this man that they knew hurt their child. And by the time April of 2013 rolls around and William is looking at going to

trial, execution isn't even on the table anymore. But the prosecutors did make it very clear that they intended to use every piece of evidence they had so that he had to serve as much time as a law would allow. But before this case even went to trial, William agreed to a plea deal. Of course he did. He's a coward. And this is a very specific kind of of agreement. It's called an Alfred plea. Technically, he's still maintaining his supposed innocence, but he's acknowledging that the state has enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered Tony. And in court, those two things exist at the same time. He didn't do it, but yes, they can convict him. It's a legal equivalent of someone saying, I'm not admitting

anything, but I also know I'm not walking out of here because you have too much. Now, in exchange for this plea, prosecutors do drop the SA and the arson charges, and they settle for a total sentence of 37 years in prison. Now, the state attorney is very candid about why this deal was made. He tells reporters that a trial would have had to go on without witnesses, without a murder weapon, without a time of death, without a cause of death, with limited forensic evidence, and without a confession to the actual act of murder. That's a law. lot of withouts. The plea, he was arguing, guaranteed an outcome that a trial could not promise them. And I understand that point. And they even tried to make another point. They said, for what it's worth,

37 years, at a 100% chance because they know he's going to get it with the plea deal, is the longest sentence ever imposed on a negotiated non-death penalty plea in their county, in their history. But you know what? It's still felt inadequate to Tony's family. It's a mixed bag. On one hand, it spares her family the pain of a long, drawn-out trial. And not having a trial meant something very important. Not just not having to be there for all the days and how excruciating it would have been to hear details. But because of scheduling and all the logistics, the trial would have started on January 14th of 2013. And that would had been Tony's 21st birthday. And her parents begged the judges to reschedule. They talked about how

that is not the way they wanted to honor their daughter. The judge wasn't able to grant their request, but this plea deal gave them the next best thing, a chance to skip the whole legal process entirely, and he would be put in jail. Selma, who had been one of the loudest voices keeping Tony's name alive through all of this, doesn't hold back when the plea is announced. She says, I can say that if 37 years is the sentence, it is unjust for all Tony endured at this man's hands. And she wasn't just speaking for herself. She was speaking for the 12,000 people on that Facebook page. Everyone who loved Tony, even strangers who never met her, stood outside that courtroom.

In her color, dressed in yellow from head to toe, refusing to let her be forgotten. Shown up to courtrooms, refused to look away for two and a half. years. But this deal also meant that William would never have to confess to what he did. And to this day, he's never explained exactly why he killed Tony. We don't even have an official timeline of her death. All we know for sure is that Tony went missing on October 14th and her body was found two days later. Anything could have happened in that time. And I want you to also understand something even more tragic because it's easy to hear burned beyond recognition in reference to what happened to Tony. And I know we're going to picture something, but it's still not going to be the full scope

of what was done to her. There is a doctor named Dr. Clyde Snow. He is a very famous forensic anthropologist. He's the person who identified victims of John Wayne Gasey and victims of the Oklahoma city bombing, and he reviewed what was public reported about Tony's case. Now, he was not officially called into help. He just knew what he was looking at, and he said flat out. I assume that in this case, some sort of accelerant was used to burn the body. Otherwise, just ordinary fires will not cause that much destruction. Somebody wanted that body destroyed to make sure identification couldn't happen. And that's not a theory. This is a man who is seen more death than most of us could imagine. And he's telling you exactly what he was looking at.

And then he said something else that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. He explained that with fires that intense, fires fed by an accelerant, fires that are meant to destroy, the skull is gone, the teeth are gone, which is the hardest substance in the human body. They crack, they shatter, and they disappear. And that explains why there could not be dental records to compare, which is why identifying her had to take time. And this also explains why investigators that were standing in that park on October 16th couldn't confirm exactly what they were looking at

and whether it was a human being at all. And thinking about all of that, that is why Tony's family members believe that William did not get enough time. He was only 36 years old when he received his sent. He also got credit for the time he already served, 889 days, or about two and a half years, which means he'll be released when he's 71 years old. Yeah, he won't be a young man anymore. He gets out when many of his best years are behind him already,

but Tony's family still knows he could have a long life after he's released. And in their minds, that is not justice. Tony's mom was so troubled by this idea that she couldn't even bring herself to attend. the sentencing hearing. It was too painful. So a close family friend, Brenda White, was there in the courthouse, and she was the one who stood up and read Diane's words out loud to the judge and to William and to everyone in that room. In her statement, Tony's mother says, quote, when your child dies, a piece of you ceases to exist. She also talked about how she felt like she's trapped in a metaphorical time loop. She can't move on. She can't heal. And every time she starts to feel normal or okay,

even for a moment, something reminds her of Tony. And in that instant, it's almost like someone hits her wind on her life. She's emotionally transported back to that first horrible second when she realized that her daughter was dead. And the pain is just as fresh and just as cutting as the first day. And that is truly heartbreaking. When I heard that, I just thought that it goes to show you the ripple effects that a crime like this has. On the other side of it all, there were Williams' relatives who actually thought that the penalty was too harsh.

His sister, Moira, she apparently believed that he didn't do it and that the police had set him up. Because when William officially agreed to sign that plea bargain, she was loud and she had this emotional outburst right in the courtroom and she began sobbing so loudly it was enough to interrupt the entire proceedings. And then she yelled, Billy, don't take it. They're railroading you. And she kept on screaming, even after the judge told her to stop. Eventually, a bailiff had to physically remove her from the courtroom. And once she's outside of the courtroom, people can still hear her screaming down the halls, shouting he didn't do it. And even though she's

protesting the way that she is, the hearing goes forward. And as William is driven back to jail, He flashes a peace sign out the window of the vehicle. And friends of Tonys and her family, they're standing outside the courthouse in yellow, and they're watching that happen. And there is nothing peaceful about any of this, that's for sure. And I just felt like the audacity of this man. He accepted his punishment, at least for a while, because of course he appealed. Back in July of 2013, just three months after accepting his plea, he tried to withdraw it.

Except the problem was he only had a 30-day window to do that, and he didn't file it until 108 days after the deadline. And the judge told him she did not have the authority to give him more time so that Avenue closed. He spent the next two years writing motions from jail. And in May of 2015, he files a 14-page handwritten petition for post-conviction relief, the last option available to him. And that's what eventually makes this way into a courtroom and to do that's what eventually makes

his way into a courtroom in 2017. He's got to give it all he's got, I guess. His argument to the judge has three parts, and you got to hear this. First, his mental health. He said that he had a long history of conditions that were not well managed at the time of the investigation or the potential trial. He'd been having symptoms since childhood. He had been institutionalized multiple times. He had seen many doctors over the years and said that he'd received a variety of diagnosis. including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And he also mentioned a medication, depocote. Now, this is typically prescribed for bipolar, and he said he was on it at the time of Tony's murder. But when he fled to Mexico, which by the way was his fault, and then he was eventually arrested in Louisiana,

he didn't have his medication. And once he was put in jail and waiting for trial, he said, he repeatedly asked for it, almost for two years. years straight. He was begging. He begged his lawyers, his counselors, anyone he could reach to get him back on his meds. And according to William, his public defender told him flat out, he didn't want him in a courtroom being, quote, drugged up, end quote. And whether that's true or not, that is a pretty remarkable thing to say aloud in a courtroom. He takes the stand during this evidentiary hearing, and he says, I knew where I was, but I wasn't right in the head. I hear things sometimes.

I see things. And the things I think are real aren't real. So make what you will of that. A man who burned a body, fled to Mexico, gave multiple conflicting confessions, and is now sitting in a courtroom telling a judge, he can't always tell what's real. And whether it's genuine or strategic or somewhere in between, it's definitely a window into something.

Of course, I want to hear your thoughts. But now for his second argument, he says he was high during his interrogation. So his confession should be completely thrown out. The substance he said he was on was salvia. This is a hallucinogenic plant. He said he smoked it minutes before he was arrested in Louisiana. That's pretty convenient. But that becomes a problem for him, though.

Because the prosecution pointed out that during the time in the Louisiana interrogation, William told the detectives he was clean, that the only thing he used anymore was marijuana. So either he lied to them then or he's lying in court now. How about he's just a flat out liar? And now for his third and final argument, the coercion claim. He says the police strongly implied that his own son would be framed for Tony's murder if William didn't cooperate. And for the record, he does of his son.

His son's name is Michael. He was 16 years old in 2013 while the plea was going on. But he was only 13 when William was arrested and interrogated. And there's that word framed. That's an interesting way to put it, isn't it? William says the threat came from the former state's attorney himself, about a week before the case was set to go to trial. He says that he told him directly, take the deal,

or we're going to charge Michael as an accessory to the crime. And I was like, how would that even make any sense? I don't know. He was 13. But it's worth noting that Michael was actually listed as a potential witness in the original murder trial. So his name was already in the case file. Whether that's context that makes Williams claim more plausible or if it's just a detail

prosecutors had legitimate reasons to include depends on who you believe. I think it's safe to say I'm leaning away from believing William. And the courts don't buy any of this. The judge was clear. She noted that William himself led most of the discussion with officers in Louisiana, and he appeared calm and cooperative. And he quickly changed his story the moment detectives pointed out any inconsistencies. Her conclusion was direct. She wrote that it's unlikely that a person whose will was overborne would be able to fabricate a story

and instantaneously change his story in response to his specific question in order to tailor his response to the evidence. In other words, in a more simpler way that's easier to understand than the way that judge writes, William was so quick to answer the officer's questions. And the way in which he adjusted his lies to any evidence that was presented, he knew exactly what he was doing. The judge rejected his appeal. And after that, the appeal process was over. It had been exhausted. And at the time I'm recording this, William is serving his sentence at Menard Correctional Center. His release date is supposed to be October 27th of 2047. He'll be 71 years old, so he's not going anywhere for a long time. But the impact of his crime,

it is still being felt. In June of 2013, the same spring that William accepted his plea, about 25 people gathered on the grounds of the Elks Club property right near Prairie Park to dedicate a permanent memorial to Tony. It was a bench, a sunflower bench, five feet wide, made of steel shaped into sunflowers by a company called Cricket Forge out in Durham, North Carolina. It was funded partially through fundraisers, partially through donations from people who never even met her, but showed up in their yellow anyway. And this is the same place that Greg placed the white cross.

Thelma read a statement from Tony's family. that said in part, quote, having the sunflower bench is very special in our hearts, as well as all the people who helped to make this happen. Words cannot express how we feel about all the people and work that was put into this. We feel so incredibly loved, end quote. The people who organized this made one specific decision about where to place the bench. They positioned it facing away from Prairie Park, away from where Tony lost her life. She deserved it to face somewhere else entirely. Tony's parents specifically requested that the White Cross remain in place even after the bench was installed, not only as a tribute, but as a warning. Thelma said that Tony's family wanted to leave

the cross to remind kids that it's not safe to go in that park alone. And to me, that meant to cross signified death, of course, and that death occurred in that place. But it's sort of like when you see a memorial on the side of the road. It makes you think something fatal took place here. But I never thought about it being a warning or a deterrent, but it makes so much sense. That cross and that sunflower garden and the bench is maintained by a guy named Bill Lely, and he lives right next to Prairie Park. He runs through it every day, and he had been scrolling through Facebook one day. And he mentioned that he run past the cross and thought that someone was actually digging it up. And he posted about it. He said he wished people wouldn't do that.

But what it was was actually Thelma planting a sunflower next to the cross. And she saw his comment. She told him it was her. And the two of them started talking. And that's how this man became the caretaker of this memorial, a stranger protecting a cross that he thought was being disturbed. In 2012, Thelma planted just one single sunflower next to the cross, and by 2013, it had grown into a full garden. Thelma provided the seedlings, and Bill planted everything else himself and watered it every day. Tony's family, who helped design that memorial, that sent their statement to be read out loud at a dedication that they never came to. Because the park was the last place that they would ever want to be. The bench faces away from Prairie Park, the family faces away from Prairie Park.

And yet that garden grows there every summer, tended by a stranger who just happened to run past across one morning and decided that the person behind its meaning mattered. N IU has created a scholarship in Tony's memory for art students, which feels right because there's someone out there, a student with a camera and a sketchpad that was just like Tony, with their head full of ideas, and now they're going to get help because of her, because of who she was and what she loved, they're going to pursue their dreams like she wanted to. Tony's murder permanently changed the culture at Northern Illinois University. It showed that even safe, tight-knit campuses can never be 100% free of violence.

They can be sites of horrific mass shootings, like the one in 2008, or a highly targeted attack like the one that happened to Tony. Most people would agree that there's nothing inherently dangerous about going for a walk in the middle of the day or taking photos in nature in a public park. Yet Tony was killed doing that exact thing. She was behaving in a way that no one would find alarming at all, something many of us do on a regular basis without a second thought, something so ordinary, that none of her friends even thought to worry about her

until it was too late. And now over a decade later, there are still unknowns and questions, and the memories of telling Tony goodbye and thinking that they would see her again a few hours later or a day later, only for her to disappear from their lives forever. Phelma described Tony in a way

that I think is worth leaving you with now. She said, I knew that when she'd hear or see me coming, she was going to look up at me and flash me that brilliant smile we've all come to know from the photographs. Tony Keller's beautiful, brilliant smile, her sassy freckles, and her cropped Auburn hair, and that unmistakable, undeniable light that's shown about her and still does. She still does.

Her memory is what shines now. I want to leave you with saying that when I talk about these cases, I hope, that these people stay with you and that their memories can live on in us repeating their stories and sharing them. So I thank you for being here for Tony's story. I will see you in my next video. Bye.