A word of warning, this podcast explores graphic and disturbing stories and includes some strong language. It therefore may not be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who may find it disturbing.
Hello and welcome to True Crime News, the podcast covering high-profile and under-the-radar cases from across the country every week. I’m your host, Anna Garcia.
Our case this week: he communicated with her for two years on a fetish website. He promised her that he could make her dangerous fantasies come true. The young, beautiful woman from England suffered from mental illness and was seeking someone to torture her to death. Police say she found her person in a scraggly older man from Florida who police say kept the murder weapon and her silver bracelet as souvenirs.
We are recording this on Friday, May 1st of 2026. Our guest today is Don Tayback, a retired homicide detective from Los Angeles, a private investigator, and a consultant for many media outlets. But above all, he is a fan favorite here because he uses spicy language and he has no filter. So brace yourself, everyone, for Don. Don, welcome back.
“Oh, Anna, I am so glad to be back with you. Always a pleasure, obviously, but I got to tell you, I got this yesterday and we got a lot to talk about. This is sick. And in 12 years working murders with LAPD, I have had some brutal murders, but nothing is sick and depraved. It’s got me feeling so many different emotions about where I’m at with this and what should happen to this individual. I won’t even honor him by saying his name. He’s just a piece of shit.
“And you talk about, you know, we’ll get into that, but this man deserves the absolute worst kind of death sentence you can imagine. He took advantage of her. That’s the problem with this.”
“He’s disgusting and I was so upset about this case because of the level of violence. But really, it’s the taking advantage of a human being who is suffering. She was not well, and you’d have to be an idiot not to know that what she was asking for was way beyond bondage. This is way beyond having some fun in the bedroom. This is way beyond that. And she ends up losing her life.
“And I am so upset about this case. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it and everyone else because I knew this would really get to you, as it will everyone else, because it’s so wrong.”
“It is. From every aspect, this was a very sick woman who at one time wanted this to happen to her. Luckily, whoever intervened before was able to help her and at least get her away from those thoughts of wanting somebody to kill her — and not just kill her, Anna, but kill her inhumanely.
“You know, beat her to death, stab her, rape her. The worst nightmare things that you could think of, she wanted to happen to her. And it’s just wrong in every conceivable way.
“But I want to preface before we start that Rebecca McKenzie and Joe Miller, who were the law enforcement detectives and officers that handled this, they did as great a job of handling this case as I’ve ever seen in my life. They were outstanding in what they did and how they got this guy to confess and how he just casually talked about, ‘Well, I may be in trouble.’
“They did a phenomenal job. So I want to preface that, and now we can get going.”
“Yeah, the interrogations are amazing in this. So this is an international case that straddles England and Florida. The key locations in Florida are Gainesville, Ocala, and Marion County. This is just so you can understand geographically what was going on here and what was at stake.
“The murder victim: a 32-year-old woman named Sonia Exelby of Portsmouth, England. The accused here is 54-year-old Dwayne Hall, who is charged with her murder. He has entered a not-guilty plea, but his videotaped interrogations — come on. He ultimately confesses to a lot of it. Everything short of murder, though. Everything short of murder. It takes him a while to get there.
“And the sadness of this case is the taking advantage of someone with mental illness.”
“And children.”
“Right. You have Sonia, who’s a content creator, an aspiring musician, a woman who loved animals. Dwayne is married and he runs some sad roadside assistance business. He’s the owner and the only employee.
“His wife, innocent in all of this — this poor woman, another victim — she recently had a double lung transplant. Okay? So she truly understands a life-and-death situation.
“These two, Sonia and Dwayne, meet on this website, motherless.com. This was two years ago. His username: Alpha Sadist. How attractive.”
“Yeah.”
“But the stars align because that’s exactly what she was looking for.”
“And that’s just it. She was looking for someone to harm her, torture her, and ultimately take her life.”
“And he told police, you know, essentially when he finally got to it, ‘Oh, he was mentoring her.’ Really? Give me a break. Mechanic man in Florida is mentoring a woman with severe mental illness by telling her, ‘Oh sure, come here. I can help you. Come here. I can satisfy what your needs are.’
“And he’s just baiting her to ultimately get her here.
“And a sidebar to that, the first thing I recall — and I never saw one, but I knew it was going on when I was working Hollywood Vice — were snuff movies.”
“Oh yeah.”
“And I don’t know if your audience ever heard that term, but these were people that literally killed people and filmed it while it was happening.”
“Oh, I think it’s still going on. Come on. Are you kidding? Now you could do that on your phone. We’ve had a few cases of that on the podcast.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I think he was a trucker — I can’t recall the case exactly — and he finds, again, a vulnerable woman who was a sex worker, takes her to a motel room, and he’s really into these things. And then, of course, he videotapes one.”
“Yeah.”
“So obviously videotaping is going to be key here. And also this concept of deleting things. Not a brain surgeon in this one. This Dwayne thought he was really smart by deleting a bunch of things.
“I loved it during the interrogation when he’s pretending to be really helpful. It’s like, ‘Geez, I’d really love to be able to help you find this woman, but I deleted everything.’
“And the police say to him in the interrogation room, ‘Oh, we have ways of retrieving that if you really want to help her.’”
“Oh yeah. Like I said, kudos to the two detectives that knew exactly what they were doing. One of the things when you go in to interrogate an individual suspect — and the way I was taught — is you never tell them things that you can’t back up.
“In other words, you can tell them things that might not be truthful, but you’ve got something to come back with that proves the truth. They lined him, gave him everything he wanted to hear because they had everything intact. They didn’t have to lie to him.”
“Okay, so let’s go back to 2024 when Sonia apparently tried to do this before.
“She had managed to find someone through another app, through Telegram, to see if she could find someone to hurt her and kill her. Fortunately, family and friends found out about her plans and stopped her. They stopped her, and then she got help and medical treatment. So the hope was that she was healing and getting better.
“Okay, so you have to understand family and friends are very watchful of Sonia because they know that she is suffering. So when Sonia disappears, family and friends get very scared. This is now attempt number two.
“And they went to the police in England. And I’m so grateful that they took this seriously because they put out an advisory on Interpol — that international agency — and then they contacted Florida investigators looking for a woman who was vulnerable, in danger, and missing.
“And thank God that the Florida investigators honestly took this so seriously. Too late. They got there too late. But they did take it seriously.”
“Keep in mind, they spoke for and acted upon the victim and for the victim. And like I said, I’ve read a lot of homicides. I’ve been involved in a lot of murders. I’ve seen really good detective work and I’ve seen really shitty detective work, and this is textbook what these officers did in bringing this guy to justice and getting a filing against him.
“This isn’t some simple gang killing or some dope killing. This was a woman who he had no business being around.”
“And on top of it, Don, he wanted her to pay him. He owed the IRS — this is what he tells cops — he owes the IRS like $10,000 and she promised to pay him $4,000 for hurting her and killing her.
“And so, he’s mad. He’s mad because she didn’t show up with cash and he’s mad that he only got $1,200 out of this whole thing.”
“Yeah. Their cards didn’t go through except that one charge did.”
“And that’s another thing. This is like a reverse hit contract, right?”
“Yes.”
“She’s paying him to kill her.”
“So the whole point is that she is traveling from England to Florida to fulfill this fantasy of hers. And this idiot is the one who’s going to help her do it.
“So on October 10th of 2025, Sonia is booked on a flight from the UK to Gainesville, Florida. She also booked a return ticket for just three days later, October 13th, which of course she never made.
“Here’s what is very important about this case: by the time she got to the United States is when her friends and family realized, ‘Oh my God, she’s taken off. We think this is what she’s going to do.’
“And fortunately, because of her bank charges, we know the flight, we know where she went, we know where the Airbnb was, and then there is this unique odd $1,200 payment to a roadside service company in Florida.
“And it was that transaction on one card — and then there were multiple transactions right before that one went through — that police ended up calling the guy who owns this company.”
“It’s not really a tow truck company. He doesn’t have a tow truck. He has like this SUV. And that’s really important because this could go two ways, Don. How many times does it happen that you break down, you call for help, your card’s not working, and it’s a little tiny piece of the clue that police need to figure out maybe where she was and when she went? And it’s an innocent piece of the puzzle, right?”
“But this was more than that. This was gold.”
“But you don’t know it when you make your first call, right?”
“Yep.”
“And again, that gives them a start. You need somewhere to start on a murder, which again I go back to commending McKenzie and Miller on how well they perceived what they had at hand.”
“So she arrives in Gainesville, Florida. Her cell phone was indicating that it was roaming. For those of you who have traveled internationally, you know what that’s like if you don’t have an international plan. And then the phone is turned off.
“So we also know obviously whether she got on the plane or not. So there are clues about where she is, and we know where she’s headed because she rented the Airbnb. But sadly, police did not begin their search until three days after her arrival. And by this time, she was dead.
“So while everyone was working hard to find her, it wasn’t enough because she was dead. But they at least got who police say is the man responsible here.”
“So now on October 11th, this is the next day, right? We’re in Gainesville, Florida. Some weird charges popped up. As I said, there were seven attempts on her Lloyds Bank debit card. Seven attempts for various amounts in the span of 10 minutes, and all of them are rejected.
“And then about 1:30 that same day, a charge for $1,200 on a different card of hers actually goes through. And this is what leads everyone to this roadside assistance business or whatever it was. Small company called Solver Wolf’s Roadside Assistance. The company is owned by Dwayne Hall and he’s the only employee. Prosperous. This man is not all right.”
Then there’s this great tape-recorded conversation between a Florida State Police investigator and the owner of this establishment. The investigator is just making a cold call to say:
“Hey, we’re looking for someone. Do you know Sonia?”
Dwayne answers:
“Well, yes and no.”
“Really? Which is it?”
The conversation sounded weird immediately.
“Well, I kind of know her. I don’t kind of know her.”
Dwayne then tells this story in his own words:
“Well, you know, her tire blew and she needed help and I needed to make sure she could pay for it. I tried to ring up the roadside assistance and it kept getting declined. So no, I didn’t go out there to help her because if she can’t pay, I can’t help her.”
The investigator keeps asking him details:
“Where was she? What kind of car was it? What time? What day?”
And he says he doesn’t remember. He says he deleted everything. Then he casually throws out that she said she was out in Reddick, Florida.
Reddick becomes important later.
At this point, the search for Sonia goes in multiple directions. Authorities are following financial trails and physical clues. They head to the Airbnb. They continue speaking to Dwayne.
Then someone close to Sonia discovers communications from October 11th on Discord. In those messages, Sonia is writing to a friend about how horribly wrong everything has gone.
She writes:
“I’m sorry he keeps taking my phone. He doesn’t trust me with it. He made it clear there was no way out unless I shoot him.”
Remember, the arrangement was that she wanted someone to kill her. But now, according to these messages, she is having second thoughts. The only way out, according to Dwayne, is for her to kill him — and she cannot do it.
She tells the friend that the man is always carrying a gun and showing it to her. Clearly, she wants out.
Police later receive copies of these conversations, and now they understand that this is not simply a consensual fantasy gone wrong. This is a woman trapped in a dangerous situation with no escape.
She also wrote:
“I thought he would do it quick and not give my mind time to stew and realize that this is the last thing I’ll ever say to anyone if I don’t take his offer to shoot him.”
Then she ends the message with:
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I’m saying and I’m trying to be quick. My time’s up.”
“This was not consensual anymore, Don.”
“Yeah. And the fact that he’s torturing her mentally by saying, ‘The only way you’re getting out of this now is to kill me.’ She says, ‘I can’t kill anybody.’ She wasn’t that woman. She wasn’t that person.
“She is becoming more and more of a victim than any victim I’ve ever even read about. She’s having second thoughts. She’s telling him, ‘I thought it would be so easy,’ and now he’s doing all this to her.
“And we’ll get into what he did to her, and it’s not what she wanted. So there she is. She’s stuck.”
“I just wanted people to understand because I always love to see how investigations unfold and try and recount it in real time because it really gives us insight into how police operations work.
“So remember: we have the financial clues. We have now the family who has for sure told us she has a proclivity for this. And now we hear that she’s in danger.
“So the Airbnb is a big part of this, remember? Because she paid for it. So they know exactly where it is. And where is that Airbnb? Oh, it’s in Reddick.”
“Yeah.”
“Reddick. Remember where he told the state police she had broken down with her car?
“So police go to the Airbnb and they obtain security footage from the exterior of the property along with a witness account that confirms there had been a black SUV with a large sticker on the window…”
“Emergency roadside.”
“Who drives that vehicle? Police say Dwayne Hall does.”
“And they had license plate readers that picked up the license plate and the registration came back to him as well.”
“Exactly. Now we’re putting him there based on this evidence.
“And when they get inside the Airbnb is when things get really interesting and also more scary. They find a comforter with what appeared to be blood on it at the time. So now they’re scared. They also found trash, wrappers, receipts, and a Dunkin’ Donuts cup.”
“All right. Using the receipts and that Dunkin’ Donuts cup, police were able to connect Dwayne — even though these things were paid for in cash — to several locations where he is seen on surveillance video getting his Dunkin’ Donuts cup.
“There he is. And what’s that say on the side of his SUV? Emergency roadside.
“Hello. Why don’t you just put up a neon sign?”
“Thank God he did.”
“Yes. Then through those receipts they’re able to find all of the security video that corresponds with these cash receipts showing him at those locations at those times.
“And what’s really important is the timestamps. At the times these receipts were printed — and we’re going to get to the kill kit — Sonia was still flying into Gainesville. There’s no way she could have been the one buying these things.
“Sonia, who rented the Airbnb, is not the person responsible for the trash and receipts inside.”
According to court documents, Dwayne’s DNA was also found on those items inside the Airbnb.
Authorities later discovered that Dwayne went to a Gainesville Walmart where he purchased a gun cleaner, fifty feet of rope, and other items using his bank card at 5:47 p.m.
A few minutes later, he returned because he forgot something.
“What did he forget, Don?”
“The shovel.”
“He forgot the freaking shovel. So he buys that from the same Walmart. Not only do you have the receipt, not only do you have the bank charge, you have the security video of the man walking out with the shovel.
“According to police, the amount of evidence here is unbelievable. And we’re not even done.”
Less than an hour after those purchases, Dwayne’s vehicle was captured by license plate readers at the Gainesville airport at the same time Sonia’s flight landed.
“Roadside assistance includes airport pickup.”
“It’s a full-service company.”
“For four grand, you get everything.”
Additional purchases on Dwayne’s bank card placed him around the Airbnb between October 10th and 11th.
Authorities eventually obtained search warrants for Dwayne’s car and cellphone. Then came one of the most dramatic moments in the case.
Police coordinated a traffic stop with patrol vehicles and a helicopter following him on the highway. They pulled him over while he was driving the black SUV with the roadside assistance sticker.
His wife was in the vehicle with him. She had recently undergone a double lung transplant.
When officers pulled him out, he apologized and said:
“My wife just had a lung transplant. I have to get her to the doctor.”
Police arrested Dwayne, seized the vehicle and cellphone, and another officer drove his wife to her medical appointment.
At the appointment, investigators interviewed her. She told them Dwayne had been acting nervous ever since police contacted him about the $1,200 charge attempts.
She also explained that on the night police now believe Sonia was murdered, Dwayne had not been home.
“He had a really big client. He had to work overnight.”
The officers asked whether he had ever had a client like that before.
“No. This is the first time.”
Now comes the interrogation.
At first, Dwayne claims he barely knew Sonia. Instead, he says he was hired by a wealthy man named Harold.
“Harold.”
According to Dwayne, Harold asked him to pick Sonia up. Dwayne says he doesn’t know Harold’s last name, doesn’t have a phone number for him, and deleted all their communications.
He claims Harold had a driver and was riding around in a Cadillac Eldorado.
“That Eldorado killed me.”
“I don’t even think they make Eldorados anymore.”
The story is absurd. Eventually, Dwayne asks for a lawyer, ending the interview.
Meanwhile, police continue searching a wooded rural area not far from the Airbnb after GPS data from Dwayne’s phone shows he stopped there for an hour on the morning of October 12th.
At one point, officers return to Dwayne’s holding cell and inform him that he is being charged with card fraud and unlawful use of a two-way communication device.
Dwayne responds:
“But there’ll be more charges coming.”
The officers ask:
“For what?”
Later, Dwayne tells police he wants to recant his original story about Harold and the Eldorado. He asks to speak again, waives his right to counsel after being re-Mirandized, and gives another statement.
Now he says he was “mentoring” Sonia. He admits he is into bondage and fetish culture. He says he had been banned from the fetish website where they met.
“How bad do you have to be to get banned from the bad website?”
Then police confront him about a deleted video recovered from his phone.
The video lasts four minutes and sixteen seconds. Sonia appears bruised, injured, distressed. Dwayne’s voice can be heard throughout.
He asks her:
“Why are you here?”
Sonia replies:
“Because I am an awful person. I’ve crushed everyone who ever loved me.”
He asks:
“Are you consenting to this treatment?”
She hesitates.
Then they discuss her being stabbed. Dwayne asks:
“That’s how you want to die, right?”
He tells her:
“You want to be beaten and made to suffer because you’re such a piece of shit.”
She nods under obvious duress.
Then he forces her to repeat it aloud.
“He made her say she was a piece of shit. When I opened this yesterday to prepare, I was so pissed off. I haven’t been that angry in a long time.
“I don’t know how these officers sat there and talked to him calmly.”
Eventually, police locate Sonia’s body in a shallow grave exactly where Dwayne’s cellphone data placed him.
Inside the grave, investigators find a label belonging to the shovel purchased at Walmart.
Then they search Dwayne’s garage.
“What do they find in the garage?”
“The shovel.”
“And whose DNA is on the shovel?”
“Sonia’s.”
Police also matched dirt left on the shovel to the soil composition from the grave site.
The medical examiner later concludes Sonia died from four sharp-force injuries caused by a knife.
Then came one of the most disturbing discoveries in the entire case.
While sitting in jail on October 27th, Dwayne allegedly calls his wife and tells her that in six months a friend named Rick will send a package to the house.
Investigators later review Facebook messages between Dwayne and a man named Richard “Rick” Snyder.
According to police, Dwayne sent Rick a package containing “two of his most prized possessions.”
Police obtain a warrant for Rick’s home in Ohio. Inside the package, they allegedly find a seven-inch knife and a sterling silver bracelet belonging to Sonia.
Investigators believe the knife was the murder weapon and the bracelet was kept as a trophy.
“This transcends him being just a murderer. He’s probably a serial killer or has it in him to be a serial killer. You don’t take stuff like that.”
“It also makes me wonder: if he really did this, is this the first time? I find that hard to believe.”
Police say Sonia’s DNA was found on the knife.
Finally, on November 17th of 2025, Dwayne Hall was officially charged with murder and kidnapping. He has pleaded not guilty.
On April 22nd of 2026, he appeared back in court. The judge asked whether there had been any discussion of a plea agreement. Prosecutors reportedly stated that the only deal they would consider was life in prison.
“If you take the totality of the evidence, this is more evidence than what was in Simpson’s trial. There could throw out half of the stuff they recovered and he’d still get the death penalty.”
The trial is expected to begin later in 2026 with jury selection.
Toward the end of the episode, Anna and Don shift to lighter conversation, discussing Don’s interactive crime events called Crime Scene Live, where audience members help work through homicide investigations. They also briefly discuss the old Robert Blake murder case before wrapping up the show.
“This is True Crime News, the podcast. I’m your host, Anna Garcia, and as we now say: crime never stops, and neither do we.”
