The case of Sonia Exelby, the British woman who traveled to Florida after contacting online a man willing to kill her, has revealed new and especially disturbing details: the messages she sent when she was already facing the man who was supposedly meant to end her life.
Exelby, a 32-year-old music teacher, had traveled from the United Kingdom to Florida in October 2025 to meet Dwain Hall, whom she had met through a fetish-related website. According to investigators, she had allegedly offered him around US$4,000 to torture and murder her.
But when the moment arrived, something changed.
While Hall was in the shower, Sonia managed to contact a friend through Discord. Her messages show that the situation no longer seemed to match what she had imagined before traveling.
In one of them, she reportedly wrote that she was “very scared”.
In another message, she expressed that she felt “her time was running out”, while trying to explain to her contact what was happening.
She also reportedly warned that Hall had taken her phone, making it even more difficult for her to call for help.
Investigators also found an approximately four-minute video recorded during that period. According to the prosecution, Hall appears alongside Sonia and allegedly made her repeat that she had traveled voluntarily to Florida to die.
The contradiction is chilling: while she had to pretend in front of Hall that this was exactly what she wanted, she was privately trying to contact someone and expressing that she was afraid.
Five days after arriving in the United States, Sonia was found dead and buried in a shallow grave. The autopsy determined that she died from stab wounds.
Hall, 53, faces charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping and has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
Now, those messages could become one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case, because they show what, according to investigators, was happening when Sonia was already trapped in Florida and had apparently changed her mind.