A British music teacher’s body was found in a Florida shallow grave after she flew overseas seeking death, and her family says a fetish website groomed her for years.
Dwain Hall, 54, is due to go on trial next month on first-degree murder and kidnapping charges in the death of Sonia Exelby, a 32-year-old music teacher from the United Kingdom. He denies the charges and is being held without bond.
Police say Exelby paid Hall to take her life after months of online chats and left computer evidence that she was suicidal and traveled intending to be harmed. Her family tells a harder story: they believe she was groomed for two years on a fetish website used by men in the United States, and they want those sites taken down.
New York Post reporting lays out the path from online contact to a woodland grave near a highway in Marion Oaks, just northwest of the Ocala area.
On Oct. 10, 2025, Hall bought gun cleaner, rope, a shovel, and paracord at a Walmart. That same day he picked Exelby up at Gainesville Regional Airport and drove her to an Airbnb in Reddick.
The following afternoon, authorities say, he transferred $1,200 from her bank card and recorded a four-minute video of her on his phone. The video was later said to have been deleted.
In the recording, Exelby appeared heavily bruised. She told the camera she had traveled to the United States to die and was not forced to be there.
"I’ve crushed everyone who ever loves me,"
she said on the video, according to police accounts of the footage.
Her body was discovered Oct. 17 in a shallow grave in woodland near a highway in Marion Oaks. Ten days later, Hall was arrested on credit card fraud charges tied to her bank account. In November he was charged with her murder and kidnapping.
Hall is a former pizza delivery driver. Reporting describes him as a pagan who worships the Egyptian god of death, Anubis.
Exelby suffered from depression and body dysmorphia. Police frame the trip as a paid arrangement rooted in her suicidal intent. Her brother and sister reject the idea that this was simply a private choice free of outside pressure.
Barry Wilton, 39, told The Times of London the family wants the websites removed and the full weight of the law applied.
"It is an important cause to us all to get these sites removed,"
Wilton said.
"We want the maximum sentence and full extent of justice."
Sister Gemma Isaj started a GoFundMe page so relatives can attend the trial. She also spoke to The Times.
"We all have to be there to tell Sonia’s story,"
Isaj said.
"This is about mental health [but also] there are websites and a bigger movement. We had our experience with our sister [and] we don’t know how big it goes."
The family believes she was groomed for two years. They describe a wider online culture in which vulnerable women are drawn into contact with men seeking to kill. Police have not publicly named a specific site in the material provided, and Hall has not been convicted. He denies the murder and kidnapping counts.
What is not in dispute is the basic sequence authorities describe: overseas travel, an airport pickup, purchases of rope and a shovel, a bank transfer, a video, a shallow grave, a fraud arrest, then murder and kidnapping charges with no bond.
What remains for the courtroom is whether jurors accept the state’s theory that Exelby paid Hall to kill her, and how far online grooming, if proven, reaches into that fatal bargain. Exact medical cause of death was not detailed in the available accounts. The trial is set for next month.
A young teacher with documented mental illness crossed an ocean and ended up buried off a Florida highway. Platforms that profit from anonymous cruelty do not get a free pass because the victim was sick, and a jury will decide what Hall did. Justice starts with naming the conduct and refusing to look away.
