Sonia Exelby was a music teacher, 32 years old, and lived in the United Kingdom. Her family remembers her as someone fragile, who struggled with depression and mental health problems her siblings knew about firsthand.
According to her family, for two years men approached her on a fetish site and gradually manipulated her. Her brother, 39-year-old Barry Wilton, told the London newspaper The Times. Her sister Gemma Isaj had already spoken about those difficulties in a fundraising campaign. The family also believes Sonia wanted to raise awareness of what she had experienced in the past. For years, she had been gathering evidence to protect other women, but as her mental health deteriorated, she ended up contacting her attacker on the very site, amid extreme manipulation. Today, her sister is calling for those sites to be shut down. They are also demanding the maximum sentence for the accused.
On October 10, 2025, Sonia traveled from the United Kingdom to Florida, and her body was found a week later in a shallow grave near Ocala. 54-year-old Dwain Hall is charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. Police maintain that she paid him to kill her; he has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for November.
