Disturbing new details have been revealed about the final days of a British woman who travelled to the United States with the intention of being killed by a man she met on a fetish website. Experts have starkly warned that this was never a mutual fantasy, but a case of calculated grooming and alleged murder.
The Tragic Journey to Florida
On 10 October, Sonia Exelby, a 32-year-old woman from Portsmouth, landed in Tallahassee, Florida. She was there to meet Dwain Hall, a 53-year-old American she had connected with online. Friends of Sonia, who had a history of mental health struggles, immediately feared she had entered an extremely vulnerable situation.
Just three days later, when she failed to return to the UK, alarm bells rang. Her remains were soon discovered in a wooded area of Marion Oaks, northwest of Orlando. An autopsy report concluded she died from four stab wounds, each between four and seven inches deep, and her death was officially ruled a homicide.
A Web of Control and Shifting Stories
Investigators found evidence on Sonia's computer indicating she was suicidal and had travelled to America to be sexually abused, tortured, and possibly murdered. Florida police later arrested Hall on charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping, linking him to transactions made with Sonia's credit cards.
Hall, who collected Sonia from the airport and drove her to an Airbnb cabin in Reddick, gave multiple accounts of events. He admitted to violent tendencies and claimed Sonia wanted to die. In one story, he said she had promised him $4,000 to help with tax debt and he grew angry when she arrived without the cash. He later withdrew £900 from her UK account.
According to an arrest affidavit, Hall described their sexual encounters as 'vanilla' and claimed if forced to help her die, he would take her to Alligator Alley where wildlife "would have taken care of her." When directly asked if he killed Sonia, he refused to answer but stated, "she's happy now because she got what she wanted."
Expert Analysis: Coercion, Not a Pact
Psychologist and criminologist Alex Iszatt has analysed the case, dismantling any notion of a mutual suicide pact. "Dwain Hall's role was never that of a participant," Ms Iszatt explained. "He didn't need to persuade Sonia; he just needed to validate her self-annihilating despair, and over two years, he mirrored her darkest beliefs, positioning himself as the sole solution to her pain."
She identified traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder and malignant narcissism in Hall's behaviour, noting his constant shifting of narratives and profound distortion of violence. "Describing an encounter where he allegedly admitted to strangling her as 'vanilla' sex is a profound distortion, reframing a premeditated act of control as mundane intimacy," she said.
Ms Iszatt believes Sonia's state aligned with psychological phenomena like 'eroticised self-destruction', where the drive toward self-annihilation becomes catastrophically intertwined with arousal. "For her, the sexual framework was not about pleasure, but a last, desperate strategy to impose order on chaos," she reflected.
The Final, Heartbreaking Messages
Tragically, evidence suggests Sonia may have realised her terrible mistake but felt trapped. Police obtained footage allegedly showing Hall filming a bruised Sonia, questioning her about why she was there. Detectives noted she appeared hesitant and visibly upset.
More damningly, messages sent via Discord to a friend on 11 October reveal her terror. "I'm sorry he keeps taking my phone, he doesn't trust me with it," she wrote. "He made it clear there was no way out unless I shoot him. I was questioning it last night... I can't kill anyone... I'm so scared I'm so broken."
Commenting on these final communications, Ms Iszatt said: "Her inability to simply leave is not evidence of commitment, but a core characteristic of coercive control. By the time she was in that Airbnb... her freeze or flight response was to stay, and walking out was a physiological impossibility."
Evidence and Next Steps
After Sonia's death, Hall allegedly sent a package to a friend in Ohio containing a seven-inch Tanto blade with Sonia's blood on it. A shovel from his garage also bore traces of her DNA. A toxicology report found cannabinoids in her system and a blood alcohol concentration of 0.064, a level that can impair judgement.
Hall, through his attorney Julia Williamson, has entered a written plea of not guilty. Ms Williamson stated he maintains his right to silence and is expected in court in February. "I express my condolences to all who grieve from this tragic loss," she added.
For Sonia Exelby, a woman described by the expert as "overwhelmed by a plan she could no longer stop," the harrowing journey that began online ended in unimaginable violence, a stark warning about predatory behaviour in the darkest corners of the internet.
