In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m covering the tragic and deeply disturbing case of Sonia Exelby, a 32-year-old woman from Portsmouth, England, who traveled to the United States in October of 2024… and never made it home. According to investigators, Sonia flew into Gainesville, Florida, after connecting online with a man named Dwain Hall through a fetish website. She was expected to return to the UK just three days later, but she never boarded her flight. What followed became an international homicide investigation that shocked both sides of the Atlantic.
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m covering the tragic and deeply disturbing case of Sonia Exelby, a 32-year-old woman from Portsmouth, England, who traveled to the United States in October of 2024… and never made it home.
According to investigators, Sonia flew into Gainesville, Florida, after connecting online with a man named Dwain Hall through a fetish website. She was expected to return to the UK just three days later, but she never boarded her flight.
What followed became an international homicide investigation that shocked both sides of the Atlantic.
As I walk through the timeline of Sonia’s final days, I do so with compassion and care, because beneath the headlines was a real woman whose life mattered. A woman who trusted someone she believed she knew… and whose story ended in unimaginable tragedy.
From an investigative standpoint, I also discuss the complexities of cases involving online relationships, long-distance travel, digital evidence, and how quickly missing person cases can escalate into homicide investigations.
This episode is not about judgment or sensationalism. It’s about understanding the vulnerability that can exist in human connection, the realities investigators face in cases like this, and honoring the victim at the center of the story.
This episode contains discussion of violence, homicide, and sensitive themes involving online exploitation. Please take care of yourself while listening.
00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. I hope this microphone works. I had to recharge it. I had like half of this recorded and then it went down.
00:42
Anyway, I wanted to mention this week that we are having another True Crime Club meetup. It's going to be this Friday, May 15th at 6.30 at McCart Street Mercantile at 137 West McCart Street in Krum.
00:59
It's the same place we had our last one. At this one, it's going to be a lot of fun. Again, it's hosted by our blended table, which is a wonderful coffee bar inside the McCart Street Mercantile. My friend Tiana owns it and she's amazing and just one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
01:18
So, if you get a chance to go in there, stop by and talk to her. A game we're going to play this week is, it was developed by a lady that I met at Beyond the Crime. Her entire family are attorneys. And basically, the game uses real life scenarios to teach players about interrogations and misdemeanors and felonies.
01:44
And she read some of the cards to me and it's called, again, crime or no crime. And it basically tests you, you know, if this happened, is it a crime or not? And many of them that she asked me, I got wrong.
01:58
I thought I was fairly educated, but y'all, I would be in a lot of trouble because a lot of these things I thought were okay are not okay. I love this game. And we all know that ignorance of the law is no defense.
02:12
So, it kind of helps to learn. And some of the questions are things that you would never really think of. But a lot of them that she asked me about were things that I really thought were okay. So, it's going to be a lot of fun.
02:28
We're going to have paddles, and you'll be able to answer yes or no. We're going to give away some prizes. So come see us this Friday, at 6.30 at McCart Street Mercantile. The owner Heather is amazing too.
02:40
And y'all, there are some absolutely gorgeous handmade items in there that are the best gifts ever. I personally shop in there a lot for special events because there are things in there that you won't find anywhere else and I love it.
02:59
Check them out. 137 West McCart Street, Krum, Texas, and you can also purchase online. I do want to talk a little bit about a very interesting case this week, but also, I shipped all my stuff to CrimeCon.
03:15
I think I told you all that last week. Super excited. It's supposed to get there today. I am anxiously awaiting my UPS confirmation because I'm a little nervous. I mean, I mailed 10 boxes and I just hope that all 10 get there when they're supposed to and they go to the right place and nothing gets lost or broken or stolen because shipping is expensive.
03:40
Shipping, it was unbelievable. Anyway, we'll get on to this week, but I would love for all of you who are coming to CrimeCon to come and meet me. I'm in booth 62 in the exhibitors hall. And again, lots of giveaways at my booth, prizes to be given away.
04:02
And I will also be signing copies of my new comic book. So come and get that because those supplies are going to be limited. Okay, this week we're going to talk about Sonia Exelby. We're going to do a little forensic breakdown.
04:16
I don't know if y'all have heard this story, but we're going to give you the facts. We're going to give you what we know. On October 10th, 2025, 32-year-old woman from Portsmouth, England named Sonia Exelby boarded a flight from the United Kingdom to the United States.
04:32
Now, she landed at Gainesville Regional Airport in north central Florida, and she was met at the airport by a 53-year-old man that she'd been speaking with online for roughly about two years. Three days later, Sonia missed her return flight home.
04:48
Her parents reported her missing, and six days after that, on October 17th, her remains were found in a shallow grave in a wooded area of Marion County, Florida. An autopsy determined that she had died of four sharp force injuries, so four stab wounds from a knife.
05:08
The man who picked her up from the airport, Dwain Hall of Ocala, has been indicted by a Marion County grand jury on first-degree premeditated murder and kidnapping. And he has pleaded not guilty, and he is being held without bond.
05:24
Now, this episode is going to kind of walk you through what the investigative record actually shows from a death investigation standpoint. We're going to look at the evidence chain. So, the physical, the digital, the financial, and the medical-legal.
05:40
And we're going to talk about what made this case solvable as quickly as it was. What it tells us about the shallow grave recovery work in Florida environment. And what it tells us about a category of offender who actually uses online platforms to locate people who are already in crisis.
05:58
And we know this happens a lot. Now, before we go any further, I really want to say a couple of things. This is an active case, so we have to remember that Hall is presumed innocent until convicted. When I describe what investigators allege, I'm describing the contents of the court document and the law enforcement statement.
06:19
So, nothing in this episode is a determination of guilt. That's for a jury to decide. Second, we're going to talk about suicide and self-harm in the context of this investigation because we have to. We're not going to talk about methods.
06:35
We're not going to dramatize anyone's worst moments. And we're not going to glorify what happened to Sonia. Now, before we talk about evidence, I want to talk about Sonia as a person. And I always like to talk about the victim, because they are a person.
06:51
They're not just a victim. They're not just a number. And in our profession, it's real easy to reduce a decedent to a set of findings, to a body or a cause and manner, a file number. But that's not who she was.
07:05
Sonia was 32 years old. She lived in Portsmouth on the south coast of England. According to reporting in her local paper, the Portsmouth News, she had a boyfriend who has spoken publicly about being absolutely crushed.
07:21
She had parents who, when she didn't come home on her scheduled flight, actually contacted the police. And she had friends that she messaged. She struggled with her mental health. She'd been struggling for some time.
07:35
Court records reviewed by Court TV indicate she had a history of previous suicide attempts. Now, I want to hold on to that because everything that follows in this case actually happened to a person whose family and friends were trying to keep her alive.
07:51
And the investigative record is very clear that the people who loved her were doing what they could do. So, I do need to preface this by saying that many times those who contemplate or attempt suicide have very loving, understanding families who have tried for years to help them manage their mental health issues.
08:18
How do we know any of this? Because the volume of the details in this case is unusual, and I want to be transparent about where my information is coming from. There are four buckets of source material.
08:31
So, the first bucket is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It's state-level investigative agency. They were the lead agency in this case after the missing person's report was relayed to the United Kingdom and they have made public statements and released arrest information.
08:50
The second bucket is the court file. The arrest affidavit, the indictment has been reviewed by multiple news outlets, and these documents are the source of the specific allegations about what investigators said they recovered as far as like videos, messages, and physical evidence.
09:06
The third bucket is Sonia's hometown, the Portsmouth News. That's done a lot of work speaking with people who knew her and providing a timeline to the people of the United Kingdom. And the fourth bucket is the public statement that received the initial missing persons report and coordinated this investigation.
09:28
And when we cross-reference these four buckets, we get a fairly complete picture of the investigation. There's still gaps in it, but the contents of any electronic devices not yet released and the specifics of Sonia's mental health history beyond what authorities have confirmed, that's still ahead of us.
09:46
But with that on the table, let's kind of walk through the timeline. Now, I'm going to take this in chronological order because in a death investigation, chronology is everything. The sequence of events tells you about premeditation and it tells you about the consciousness of guilt and about the relationship between the suspect's actions and the victim's death.
10:09
So, we're going to move through this very carefully. So, in 2023, about two years before the death, that's when Sonia Exelby and Dwayne Hall first made contact. They met on a fetish website. The exact platform really hasn't been named publicly.
10:26
Hall, according to investigators, had a mentor-type relationship with her. They discussed bondage, suicide, and her desire to have someone kill her. Sometime before October 10th, 2025, Sonia Exelby books a round-trip flap from the United Kingdom to Gainesville Regional Airport.
10:48
And she also books an Airbnb in Florida in a small community. Again, I believe, according to Court TV's reportings, investigators determined that before she left for her trip, she left material on her computer indicating that she was suicidal and was traveling to the United States.
11:08
And in the words of the court record, she wanted to possibly be killed. Now, that detail is important because it tells us two things from an investigative standpoint. First, intent on her end was documented in her own digital format before she ever boarded the plane.
11:24
And second, the digital format became part of what UK authorities relayed to their American counterparts. On October 10th, 2025, Sonia lands. Dwayne Hall picks her up. Hall actually made purchases that investigators would later treat as significant.
11:43
Rope, gun cleaner, and a shovel. Now, the shovel is going to come back. So is the rope. But they go to the Airbnb. Sonia sends a message to a friend on Discord. And according to the affidavit, the message reads, he made it clear that there was no way out unless I shoot him.
12:03
I was questioning it last night. I thought he'd do it quick and not give my mind time to stew. Investigators characterize that message in a specific way. It shows that Hall was controlling her and she was afraid.
12:20
And maybe she'd made a mistake. Now, I want to pause here because as a death investigator, I have to tell you what that single message does for a case. In a homicide investigation, one of the central questions is the victim's state of mind in the period leading up to the death.
12:37
Now, we rely on what we sometimes call psychological autopsy, interviews with friends and family, reconstruction of communications, review of their documented thinking, and a message sent by the decedent from the location where she's being held 24 hours into the encounter, expressing that she's fearful and maybe regretful and unable to leave.
13:08
That's important. It's a statement of her state of mind during that event. And it's hard to overstate how valuable that actually is in an investigation like that. Also on October 11th, according to a separate piece of reporting, Hall's company attempts multiple transactions on her credit card.
13:28
Several of them were declined. Only one goes through for about £905, which is roughly $1,190. That charge actually ties Hall directly to Sonia's accounts. And that becomes a financial breadcrumb that investigators are going to follow.
13:52
Now, at some point between October 11th and 13th, the homicide occurs. We don't have anything really publicly that releases a narrower window than that, but the autopsy established that the cause of death was four sharp injuries from a knife.
14:08
The manner of death is homicide. Now, the exact window is probably going to be addressed at the trial during the forensic pathology testimony, but we don't have that information at this point. Now, on October 13th, Sonia is scheduled to fly home, but she doesn't get on the plane.
14:27
There's also on that date surveillance showing Hall leaving the Airbnb, going to Lowe's in Ocala, purchasing a plastic tarp. It also shows movement in the front seat of his vehicle. He then drives to the area where Sonia's body is later found and spends about an hour there.
14:48
Now, that hour is what we would expect for a body deposition event consistent with a shallow grave. It's enough time to remove a body from a vehicle, dig in disturbed Florida soil, place the remains, and refill.
15:04
So, this is a hurried operation, not a clandestine forensic operation. October 13th and 14th, Sonia's parents realize that she's not returned. This is reported to the police, escalated, and they are given the information about Sonia's mental health history and what she had left on her computer at home.
15:31
October 17th, a body is discovered in a wooded area in Marion County in a shallow grave, and fingerprints from the remains are matched to Sonia. Again, this is fingerprint comparison, not visual identification, not dental, not DNA.
15:48
And I want to flag that because it tells us something about the state of the remains if they're able to actually identify her by fingerprint. Fingerprints can really be processed quickly when anti-mortem prints or prints before death are available through international channels.
16:07
Now, October 18th, Hall's arrested, but not for murder. He's arrested for fraudulent use of Sonia's credit cards. The murder and kidnapping charges haven't been filed yet. So, investigators are still building.
16:20
The fraud arrest gives them custody of him while the homicide case is actually being developed. So, this is common and entirely legitimate. It's an investigative tactic that's used all the time. You hold a suspect on what you can prove right now while you finish trying to prove what you intend to prove later, if that makes any sense.
16:41
Between October 18th and mid-November, the homicide investigation proceeds. He initially denies knowing Sonia, and then he admits to picking her up at the airport. He describes their consensual sex as vanilla, and he tells investigators that she left with an unknown man in a tan Cadillac El Norado.
17:05
Of course, investigators are going to determine that that is contraindicated by digital evidence. Investigators also do something forensically important. They recovered deleted data from Paul's phone. Among that material is a video more than four minutes long, and we're going to discuss that here in a little bit and how the recovery of that matters.
17:30
But they also obtain a recorded jail phone call between Hall and his wife. He tells her to look out for a package from a friend in six months. And investigators review Facebook messages between Hall and a man in Ohio.
17:45
And they execute a search of the friend's home and recover a knife. So, it's a seven-inch knife that subsequently tests positive for blood. The blood likely contains Sonia Exelby's DNA. Hall is arrested on homicide charges.
18:04
And on November 18th, first-degree murder and kidnapping charges are formally filed, and he pleads not guilty. And a Marion County grand jury indicted him on first-degree premeditated murder and kidnapping on December 5th.
18:19
And in late December, his arraignment proceeds and he remains in custody without bond. His case is pending trial, and the original fraud charges were dropped to make room for the homicide charges. Now that's the timeline we know from public sources.
18:39
So as far as evidence, I'm going to walk through the physical evidence because in this case, the physical chain is unusually clean. When investigators recovered Sonia's body from the shallow grave, they didn't just find her remains.
18:54
They found a paper label from a shovel, a retail label. And now that's not unusual in a body deposition site where a brand new tool has been used, right? The label can come loose while they're digging or refilling it and end up incorporated in the grave field.
19:13
But the label actually gave investigators a brand and the brand let them look backwards at bank records and surveillance. They were able to find that Hall purchased a shovel of that exact brand on October 10th, which is the day that Sonia landed in Florida.
19:31
Now they recovered the shovel from Hall's garage, so this is important. DNA analysis on the shovel returned both Hall's DNA and Sonia Exelby's DNA. So, you have a closed circle. You have a label at the grave that matches a shovel.
19:48
The shovel purchased by the suspect on a traceable transaction the day that Sonia arrived in Florida. Then the shovel is recovered from his home. Carrie's DNA, his DNA, victim's DNA. That's one of the cleanest physical chains you can construct.
20:08
It exists because Paul didn't dispose of the implement. He actually brought it home. Now, the knife, the autopsy established four sharp force injuries. This instrument was not at the scene. It was not at the Airbnb.
20:25
And it was not at Hall's home. And it became findable because of the phone call that took place at the jail. When he told his wife to look out for the package from their friend from Ohio, they found messages between Hall and his friend in Ohio regarding that package.
20:44
They executed a search at a friend's home and recovered the package that contained the knife. Forensic analysis actually was positive for blood. DNA was consistent with Sonia Exelby. There was also a bracelet in the package.
21:00
So, this is the kind of evidence chain that gets built when a suspect makes a critical error in custody. So, we use the jail phone, which all those calls are recorded, and the recordings are subpoenaed in homicide investigations routinely.
21:17
And so, his instruction to his wife kind of became the roadmap to the murder weapon. Suspects with no investigative experience, they consistently misunderstand what they can say from inside the jail. So, these walls are not soundproof in the way they think they are.
21:34
So, calls and visit conversations and outgoing mail are all monitored. Again, I love dumb criminals. We don't have any released information about the depth of the shallow grave or the recovery technique used or anything like that, but the soil tends to be sandy in parts of Florida, which means that it's real easy to see when the surface has been disturbed, particularly because of the rain.
22:06
And disturbed ground in a wooded area is going to be easy to find. And in a lot of those searches, train dogs are used. The reported six-day interval made the remains identifiable. So, the fingerprints were processed and matched to the missing person's record from the UK.
22:28
And so that kind of tells you that the hands were intact enough for friction ridge comparison. And that's consistent with the timeline. Now, the forensic, the digital evidence is what's the most damning because video evidence is in its own category, right?
22:48
Hall recorded the four-minute long video at the Airbnb and then deleted it, but digital forensic examiners recovered it. Deleted media on a mobile device is generally recoverable unless the device has been factory reset and the storage has been overwritten or there's some sort of forensic grade deletion tool.
23:10
And I don't know anything about that. I don't do any of that technological stuff. I can barely use my computer. But in many cases, when things are deleted, the underlying data persists. What the video shows is Sonia covered in bruises and Hall off-camera asking questions.
23:32
In the video, she is rarely looking up. She's subdued. She becomes visibly upset. There are tears in her eyes. She's exhaling deeply. She's swallowing hard. And she's very hesitant to answer his questions.
23:47
This is someone documenting a coerced statement. It's not something that was freely given. This is also a recurring pattern in homicide cases involving sexual elements, and it's something investigators are trained to look for.
24:03
It's a suspect attempting to manufacture a record of consent through video or written statements. And this is all part of the evidence. We also talked about the credit card transactions. There are multiple attempted charges on October 11th.
24:19
One was successful. And again, there is video surveillance of his vehicle movements between the Airbnb and Lowe's and the deposition site and the recovery of Sonia's bag from a donation bin. They recovered Sonia's bag inside a donation bin in Gainesville, and that is a disposal pattern.
24:42
It's somebody attempting to put a missing person's belongings into a chain that'll move them out of proximity of the case. And it didn't work here. So, the physical and the digital chain together gives investigators the murder weapon with the victim's DNA, the burial implement with the victim's DNA, and financial records tying him to the victim's accounts, along with video evidence.
25:10
That's what we call a strong evidentiary posture. And again, Hall is presumed innocent and his defense will have its own case to make. But this is all public record. I want to spend the next few minutes on something I think is the most important question.
25:28
Can a person consent to their own homicide? So let me give you the short answer first. In every jurisdiction in the U.S., you cannot consent to being killed. Consent is not a defense to homicide. This has been settled law for a very long time.
25:47
So whatever Hall told investigators about Sonia's wishes, whatever the recovered video shows her nodding to, and whatever the messages between them said over the two years they were in contact, none of that is legal defense to the charge of homicide.
26:03
Now, the more interesting question is what role that material plays at the trial? And it can play several roles. The material about Sonia's mental health and stated wishes can be introduced at sentencing.
26:18
And that's kind of the part I want to dwell on. The material about how the relationship started on a fetish website where Paul positioned himself as a mentor to suicidal women. That is a pattern and that's worth recognizing because you have a population of vulnerable people.
26:37
There are a lot of people in mental health crisis and they're actively suicidal and they have a history of self-harm. And then you have these online spaces where people can be located by strangers. And then you have a predatory dynamic.
26:52
So again, this is not consent. He was manipulating her and she had a pre-existing crisis, and he took advantage of that. She was away from her support network in a controlled environment. And this man had violent tendencies and lied.
27:10
He described himself as a mentor. This case is going to go to trial. Hall has pleaded not guilty. He has been indicted. He's being held without bond. The actual trial won't happen for months, maybe even a year or more, because Florida's first-degree murder cases aren't quick.
27:29
But there are a few things that the trial will surface that we don't have. We'll probably learn a little more about Sonia's electronic devices in the UK. We'll probably learn more about what all was said during that full two years of communication between her and Hall.
27:48
We'll probably get a little bit clearer picture of the timing and the mechanism of the sharp force injuries. We'll also get to find out if anyone else was involved. Right now, all the documents implicate only Hall, but I mean, that's all going to come out in the trial.
28:08
So, I want to close on a few thoughts that are not about the evidence. So, the first is about Sonia. Her boyfriend's devastated. Her parents, as I mentioned, are the reason any of this came to light because they noticed she was not on her return flight.
28:25
The people who loved her were doing the work that love does in a situation like this. And the system didn't save her. It's a hard fact of how vulnerable a person can be when a determined offender is put in the picture.
28:42
Also, I want to say that the people listening to this may be in a place that resembles where Sonia was. So if you're in a crisis or you're thinking about ending your life, if you're talking to someone online who's telling you that they are the only one who understands and is positioning themselves as a mentor or guiding you or asking you to come to them, they do not care about you.
29:06
The pattern of a stranger online who recognizes your crisis and uses it is not new. And the people who do this are definitely not interested in your well-being. Around the clock in the U.S., you can dial 988, and that's a crisis line.
29:25
The third, a little bit about what we owe Sonia as people who work in this field. We don't want to dramatize her death. I haven't invented her thoughts or dialogue or described what happened to her in the Airbnb beyond public record.
29:42
And I haven't lingered on the worst details of that record. I've tried to treat her with the dignity that the work of death investigation demands. But a young woman traveled across an ocean and was killed.
29:54
And that's the case. The investigation that followed her death was very well coordinated and quick. And the man accused of killing her will have his day in court. Her family will have whatever measure of accountability the legal system can provide, but none of that will bring her back.
30:12
So, we owe her our seriousness and the absence of spectacle, and we owe her a careful account of facts and an honest account of what the evidence shows and does not show and a refusal to use her death for entertainment.
30:29
Again, if you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 in the U.S. There are a lot of people who get online and take advantage by asking for money, but they know you're vulnerable and they take advantage of that.
30:50
We see TV shows all the time where this happens to people, but people still kind of fall for that because these predators know. They know how you're feeling. They know how to take advantage of those feelings, and they'll do it and they don't care.
31:06
Anyway, I just thought that y'all might like this story. Again, it has not gone to trial yet. It'll be interesting to see. And of course, I think he's using the fact that she had reached out and originally wanted to end her life as some sort of defense for homicide.
31:25
You know, we all know because we don't think that way that that's not how it works. But again, I love dumb criminals and he left a great trail for the police. Anyway, come and see me on Friday, McCart Street Mercantile again.
31:40
And if you can't, then come see me at CrimeCon, May 29th through 31st at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. And I look forward to talking until next week. Have a great week. And thank you so much for your support.
31:50
Bye, y'all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast. This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
32:07
Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.