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A Florida man is in custody awaiting trial after prosecutors say he killed a young woman who had traveled from the United Kingdom to pay him as part of an alleged plan for her to be “sexually abused, tortured, and murdered,” according to court records.
Sonia Exelby, of Portsmouth, England, was reported missing by her family in October 2025 after she did not return home from a trip to the United States, records show.
Messages Exelby sent to a friend indicated she had second thoughts and wanted to withdraw from the alleged arrangement she made with Hall to torture and kill her, according to court records.
Sonia Exelby of Portsmouth, England, right, was found in a shallow grave with stab wounds in Ocala, Florida. Dwain Hall, left, has been charged in her killing. (Marion County Sheriff’s Office / Facebook)
By then, investigators say, it was already too late.
Days later, authorities discovered Exelby’s body in a shallow grave in a wooded section of Ocala, Florida.
Dwain Hall, 54, of Ocala, Florida, is now charged with premeditated first-degree murder and kidnapping in Exelby’s death. His trial is set for Nov. 5 in Marion County, Florida.
Hatching a deadly plan
In 2023, Hall and Exelby met on a “fetish website” where they discussed “bondage, suicide, and her desire to have someone kill her,” according to court records.
Hall, a self-described sadist, allegedly started what he described as a process of “mentoring” Exelby, investigators who reviewed their messages said.
A Facebook page attributed to Hall shows a fascination with Anubis, said to be the Egyptian god of the underworld.
In the year leading up to her death, Exelby offered to “help Hall with money he owed to the IRS,” their online conversation showed, according to investigators.
They allegedly agreed that Exelby would pay him $4,000 cash to pay his debt in exchange for his help achieving “what she wanted,” court records show. And they allegedly came up with a “cover story,” to tell their families, and potentially law enforcement, records show.
After two years of online messaging, the young woman with a love of singing booked a flight from England to a rural area of North Florida to meet Hall, investigators said.
It wasn’t the first time she’d hatched a plan for her death, reports show.
Authorities in the United Kingdom thwarted a 2024 attempt by Exelby to travel to meet “online individuals who would be willing to kill her violently,” court records show. And she had “known mental health diagnoses,” investigators said.
This time, court records show, Exelby left evidence on her computer indicating that she was “again suicidal and traveling to the United States to be possibly sexually abused, tortured, and murdered by unknown individuals living in the United States.”
Exelby flew to Gainesville Regional Airport in Gainesville, Florida, on the evening of Oct. 10, 2025. She had a return flight scheduled for Oct. 13.
A deleted video and chilling Discord messages reveal a UK woman’s final hours inside a Florida Airbnb before she was found in a shallow grave. (Sonia Exelby / Facebook)
Investigators said Hall picked up Exelby in a vehicle and took her to an Airbnb 40 minutes south in Reddick, Florida. She’d reserved it in her name, court records show.
Before picking her up at the airport, Hall purchased gun cleaner, 50 feet of rope, Lume spray deodorant, and sturdy, nylon, parachute cord at a Gainesville Walmart.
After paying for the items, he went back for one more thing—a shovel.
Those alleged details were gathered by investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who reviewed Walmart receipts and surveillance video.
‘So scared’ and ‘So broken’
On Oct. 11, after spending one night with Hall, Exelby sent “long, and at times disjointed” messages to a friend through Discord, investigators said.
Exelby allegedly wrote that “last night was so bad,” and Hall had her “locked in” and had taken her phone because “he doesn’t trust me with it,” records show. She noted there was poor cellphone signal “in the middle of nowhere.”
She fretted about regret and a gruesome choice.
“I thought he’d do it quick and not give my mind time to stew,” she wrote. She said she knew it would be her last communication “if I don’t take his offer of shooting him,” she wrote.
In the messages, she said the person she was with “made her record three disclaimer videos and write a letter to her family because he thought it was ‘funny,’” investigation notes show.
“I’m so so scared I’m so broken and in so much pain all I can do is lay here,” Exelby wrote. “I’m sorry I don’t even know what I’m saying and I’m trying to be quick and my time’s up.”
Missing, then found
On Oct. 11, the same day Exelby messaged her friend, Hall’s bank account for his roadside assistance business charged Exelby’s debit card seven times within about 10 minutes.
After Exelby didn’t show up for her Oct. 13 flight home, she was reported missing.
Shortly after, charges to Exelby’s debit card paid to Hall’s business helped lead investigators to him.
On Oct. 17, law enforcement found Exelby’s body buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area of Marion County, court records show. Four stab wounds were found on the side of her body. The label for the shovel Hall bought at Walmart was found in the top layers of dirt, investigators said.
That same day, Hall was spotted by sheriff’s deputies and was pulled over while driving his black Jeep Cherokee on Interstate 75 in the Ocala area.
Exelby’s body was found in the Ocala, Florida, area. (Photo by Nick Conzone)
Before being taken into custody, investigators said Hall allegedly messaged a friend over Facebook about a package he was sending that contained “precious and valuable personal items.” “Will need this back in 6 months if this storm passes over with no lingering fallout,” Hall allegedly wrote in the messages reviewed by investigators. “Please for the love of shadows don’t lose this box.”
Investigators later recovered the package contents from Hall’s friend. They found a bracelet and a black, seven-inch, steel knife “designed for piercing and stabbing,” court records show.
The knife blade was engraved with the words: “Dorkworf pointy end goes in the other guy.” The friend told investigators that “Dorkworf” was “making fun of Hall’s use of the Darkwolf name while online.”
DNA from blood samples recovered from the knife matched Exelby’s.
Initially, Hall denied to investigators that he knew Exelby, court records show.
But eventually, he described how he’d taken a video of her, but that she “was not behaving right so he deleted it.”
Frightening video
Investigators later recovered the video that Hall recorded the same day Exelby messaged her friend. It had been deleted three seconds later, records show.
The 4-minute-and-16-second video shows a bruised, “disheveled” Exelby “sitting on a piece of furniture” in the Airbnb. Hall allegedly can be heard asking her questions and directing her answers, reports show. In the video, Exelby “rarely looks up towards the camera where Hall would be positioned, becomes visibly upset with tears in her eyes, exhales deeply, swallows hard, and is very hesitant to answer Hall’s questions,” investigators wrote in an affidavit.
When Hall asks Exelby to tell him “why she is here,” she responds, “Because I’m an awful person.”
When pressed by Hall, Exelby explains, “I’ve crushed everyone who ever loves me.”
When pressed further to say how she “would want to die,” Exelby hesitates, then says she wants to be stabbed.
Under his questioning, she reveals that she’s been beaten over the past days. When asked if she was coerced, she silently shakes her head.
Hall demands, “This is how you wanted to die, right? You wanted to be beaten and made to suffer because you’re such a piece of s—.”
A Florida man faces a murder trial after allegedly killing a UK woman who went missing during a trip to meet him. Her body was found in a shallow grave in Ocala, Florida. (Sonia Exelby / Facebook)
She nods.
Hall orders: “Say it.”
“I needed to be beaten and suffer cause I’m such a piece of s—,” Exelby says.
“Good, good,” Hall replies. He asks her if she is happy and getting what she wants.
She nods her head.
Hall later told investigators Exelby didn’t “do what she was supposed to do,” court records show.
She didn’t bring him cash and he was upset, he allegedly told them.
Instead, she gave him her debit card to charge. But he was only able to get $1,200 from it after it was declined several times. Hall is being held in the Marion County Jail on six felony charges and could face the death penalty. His legal representative did not respond to a request for comment from News Outlet.
