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Hello, 911. I think there's a body out here. Please send somebody hurry. They had the body of a young woman who matched the description of Reagan.
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And I just kept saying, that has to be wrong. Who would want to hurt Reagan? Investigators would start with those closest to her.
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Is your gut telling you this is someone she knew? We were figuring that it was probably somebody that she knew.
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An ex-boyfriend, current boyfriend. But miles away, a string of alarming encounters.
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He had a knife. He put it to my neck. I heard a voice say, don't turn around or I'll shoot.
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This was somebody that wanted to do evil. Could there be a connection to Reagan's murder?
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The answer would leave an entire city infuriated. How the heck does this happen? How does this happen?
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They could have connected the dots way sooner. The system failed Reagan terribly.
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I think it's outrage times a thousand. A harrowing story that would reveal an unbelievable blind spot in law enforcement.
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I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with Unchecked Evil.
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Look at the pictures and you can see. Regan Tokes was a ray of light. She was a vivacious ball of energy.
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She was always just so fun to be around. She felt like part of my family. I still don't think I've ever met anyone that could make me laugh like she did.
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A caring friend, a devoted daughter, she radiated life from her very first breath.
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She came out eyes wide open, just ready to take on the world. Which made her final moments all the more incomprehensible, terrified, and alone in that darkened field.
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To just think about what she had to endure and what she was ultimately clinging on to.
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At the end was just to live and be able to go home. Your sister met with evil that night.
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That's all he is, is just evil. For Regan's family, the way she was taken from them wasn't just heartbreaking, it was infuriating.
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Is this a crime that never should have happened? Absolutely never should have happened.
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They had this monster in their grasp, in their control, and they let him slip through.
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Our story begins on a college campus that had long been Reagan's dream. Her dad, Toby, took her to an Ohio State football game when she was little.
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He and her mom, Lisa, say that was it. She told me that that's where she wanted to be,
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and I told her if she worked hard and got good grades, I'd make sure she could go.
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And she never applied anywhere else? No. That's where I want to go, and don't worry, I'm going to get in.
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Mackenzie is Reagan's little sister. I just remember that whole year leading up to it, she had just told everyone,
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well, I'm going to be going to Ohio State. She basically told the admissions people this is happening.
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Basically that I'm coming. Madison, Jackie, Kirsten, and Stephanie were her college roommates.
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She had a goofy streak to her. Oh, yeah. The goofiest. Yeah. She was hilarious. She was just silly.
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She was just always laughing and always making us laugh. To earn some extra cash, Regan applied for a job at this popular Columbus restaurant called Bodega.
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Kirsten and Stephanie worked there, too. She's like, I need another job. Bob, do you know anything?
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And I'm like, come work at Bodega. By February 2017, Regan was just months away from graduation.
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She made a difficult decision. She and her college boyfriend broke up. She was so heartbroken that week.
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They both really cared about each other, so it was hard, but I think it was what was best for both of them.
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Days later, on February 8th, she headed off for an evening shift at Bodega. It was just like a normal,
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I was just like, okay, bye, like, have fun, or I'll see you later. Like you had a million times before.
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Exactly. Regan's dad expected to get a call from her after work. They spoke almost every day.
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But the call never came. No. I remember just after 10 o'clock I started to get concerned that something might be wrong,
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and I tried really to get a hold of her for about four hours that night. In this case, you really had a father's intuition.
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I did. that something was wrong. The next morning, Kirsten got an uneasy feeling too
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when she passed Reagan's empty room. They were supposed to walk to class together.
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But I was like, she probably got up early. She probably went to the library. It's midterm week.
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Like there's a million things to do. But by early afternoon, it was clear no one had heard from Reagan
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since she left work the night before. What are you thinking happened to her? It's one of those, like you have that gut feeling,
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but at the same time, you're like, it's going to be fine. I thought maybe she wanted to go see one of her friends that was out of town.
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Maybe her phone died while she was driving. Like, I was not thinking the worst. I just thought it was weird.
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They went to the last place Regan was seen, Bodega. And the manager called in a missing persons report.
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As they waited for police to arrive, Kirsten overheard two employees talking about an online news story.
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He was like, oh, you got to look at this article. And he showed the bartender. And he's like, that's not good.
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Hours earlier, a man driving into a park in a Columbus suburb, 10 miles away, had spotted
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something. Hello, 911? Yeah, I think there's a body out here. I don know if this is a fake or what I can I afraid to get close to it Please send somebody Hurry Grove City Police Lieutenant Brian Davidson was on the scene within minutes When we first got here we could see a body out here probably about 18 feet or 20 feet from the roadway
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She was completely naked, and you could tell that she'd been shot in the head. Shot twice and possibly raped.
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Were you seeing any clues in the field? You know, there was nothing other than her.
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We were scanning the entire area and didn't see anything. Any idea who this woman is?
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At this time, no. The victim's clothes, wallet, and cell phone were nowhere to be found.
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We had a necklace, and then there was a tattoo on her body. What sort of tattoo?
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You know, it was a tattoo. It was on her side of her body, and it was just a circle, a dark circle.
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Davidson thought it might be a runaway they were looking for from a neighboring county.
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But then he got word that an OSU student was missing. Detectives responded to Bodega.
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One of their first questions for Regan's friends, did she have a tattoo? The answer was yes.
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The detective looked at me and said, the body we did find did have the tattoo, but we won't know for sure until a family member identifies it.
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Was that enough for you? Yeah. We all went outside and collapsed on the corner and started sobbing, obviously.
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It was the worst possible news, yet it was only the beginning. What had happened to Reagan?
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When we come back, details no one wanted to hear. I just kept saying that has to be wrong.
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Who could have wanted to hurt her? Detectives were about to talk to her ex. Just the breakup alone could be a red flag.
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Yes. In Florida, where Reagan's parents lived, they spent the afternoon working the phones,
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frantically waiting for news. All they knew was that no one had seen or heard from their daughter
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since the night before. And your mind starts going like, oh no, what if she had had a car accident
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and her car skidded off the road and it's in a ditch somewhere. your mind's all over the place and it's horrible.
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Regan's disappearance had her sister worried too. I had instantly like broken down, went into my school, was a mess.
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And everyone there had just constantly been telling me it's going to be okay. She's 21. She's fine.
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Finally, just after dark, Lisa's phone rang. They had said that they had the body of a young woman who matched the description of Regan.
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who had been found naked and shot twice in the head. And I just kept saying, that has to be wrong.
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I had just seen my parents through the door, and I knew immediately that it wasn't that she had just gotten in a car accident
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or had been found somewhere. It was worse than that, and it was a lot more violent.
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How could you tell? I could just see it in their faces. It was just like everything had been sucked out of them.
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It was just any life that was there was gone. As sure as police were that Reagan was their victim,
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official identification would still have to be made by a family member. Reagan's uncle lived within driving distance.
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I just kept remembering, too. I was so praying all through the night that it was just going to be a mistake
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and he was going to get there and he was going to call me and he was going to say no.
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They made a mistake. It's not her. But that's not the phone call we got. Regan was gone at just 21 years old.
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Now that their victim had a name, police had to figure out who killed her. Brian Davidson supervised the detective division.
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Any risk factors in her life? Was she into drugs? Anything that you found that could have led her down this path somehow?
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No, and that was the thing. I mean, you know, she was a brilliant student. She was getting ready to graduate.
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I mean, she was just a great kid. I can remember the detective asking me, is there anybody that you know of that would have wanted to hurt her?
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And I can remember I was just like, why are you, no, why would anybody want to hurt her?
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Everybody loved her. Mackenzie could see that too. When I went to apply for my first job when I turned 16,
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I walked in there and just had to say my last name. and I said, my sister actually worked for you last summer,
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and he was like, you're hired, just because I liked her. Regan spent her free time taking mission trips with her church
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and was planning a career in psychology. She knew she would be able to have a positive impact and make a difference.
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You must have just been like, I'm just so proud of her. We were. She had a gift, and she would have done anything she set her mind to.
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At OSU, Regan's roommates say that she was all about making friends, not enemies.
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She said that she looked me up on Facebook before we moved in, and she immediately knew we would be friends.
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She was right. Why? What did you put on your Facebook page? She was like, I looked at everyone that we were going to live with,
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and I picked you out to be my friend. I was like, okay. So there didn't seem to be anything in Reagan's history
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that would help shed light on what happened to her. Yet, to detectives' eyes, Reagan's murder seemed personal.
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Is your gut telling you this is someone she knew? You know, at that time, we were really figuring that it was probably somebody that she knew.
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You know, an ex-boyfriend or a current boyfriend. Remember, Regan and her boyfriend had just broken up.
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His name was Jake. Regan's friends thought he was a sweetheart. We were just like no absolutely not Why were you so sure Because he loved her and he was still our friend He was just a good guy There not a mean bone in his body
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But of course, that's not the way a detective thinks. Just the breakup alone could be a red flag.
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Yes. Detectives paid Jake a visit. They recorded the conversation. When was the last time you talked to her?
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Probably a week and a half ago. Is that normal? Well, not usually. I talk to her every day, but we're breaking up, kind of.
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Did he give a reason why they broke up? The reason, I guess, was that they both wanted to concentrate more on their schoolwork,
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and they felt that dating was just kind of getting in the way. It was just we didn't have enough time, really, for each other. We had to focus on school.
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Did he say that if they had fought? He said they never fought. He said that they just, it was a mutual breakup.
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She even said it in one of the texts. I mean, I'm one of her best friends, no matter what.
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The detective asked to look at Jake's phone. Something he said about Reagan after she died caught his eye.
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Okay, Jake. Let me ask you this. I'll take this the wrong way. Okay. Why in the world would you write that you're in a better place?
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Well, can I see what I am? I was talking to her like she's in heaven. You still hear it very often, better place when somebody was living a good life.
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Well, no, I know, but if I were to go today, I would know that I would go somewhere better.
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That's just what I believe, so. And there was something else that seemed a little strange to police.
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You said you posted on Instagram? Yes, sir. Might have got some likes. He was talking about how many likes it had.
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It did bring up a lot of red flags to us immediately. But there were other leads to chase, including one from an unlikely source.
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Coming up. That's incredible. A garbage truck gives you a huge break in this case.
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It was definitely the break that we were looking for. And then an even bigger break from some security video.
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We see the suspect. When Dateline continues. Regan Toke's friends were living a nightmare.
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A day earlier, she'd been the beating heart of their group. Now she was dead, ripped from their lives in such a violent way.
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I don't think any of us slept at all. We all stayed together the whole night. We had a lot of people.
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I think all of our parents came to our apartment and just were there to console us.
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And it really just didn't feel real at all. Trying to figure out who killed her was equally confusing.
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They felt it couldn't be Regan's ex-boyfriend. Her disappearance had hit him hard.
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I remember talking to Jake that day. You could tell he was very worried throughout the day.
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Detectives checked Jake's alibi, and it was rock solid. He tells us that he was watching a movie with his roommates,
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and we were able to interview the other roommates separately, and they all backed up his story completely.
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Did you literally cross him off your list? No, we crossed him off the list. Truth be told, their list had no promising names on it.
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So they traced Reagan's steps that last day, starting with the moment she left her apartment for work that afternoon.
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Rick Forney was the lead detective on the case. We were able to obtain that video whenever she left to see if there was anyone around the area
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whenever she left in her car. Another car seemed to follow her and we didn't find anything.
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They also took a look at Bodega's surveillance video. Here you can see Regan walking out after her shift around 9.45 p.m.
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I kept expecting to see someone get up and follow Reagan out of the bar, and we didn't see any of that.
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There was no customer that was giving her a hard time or anybody who had been stalking her, following her.
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No one. Police did receive a tip that a man posing as an Uber driver had been preying on intoxicated women around town.
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There were several attacks and even an alleged rape surrounding this man posing as a driver.
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I believe there are seven or eight individuals that reported this person posing as a rideshare driver was inappropriately touching them.
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But that didn't seem to fit Reagan's case. She'd driven herself to work. She had her car there and she wasn't intoxicated.
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She wasn't drinking. She was just leaving work. Perhaps Reagan's car was the key.
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No one had seen it since she was murdered. Big city. Reagan's car could literally be anywhere.
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Yes, it could be anywhere in the state of Ohio. and at this point in time, it could even be out of state.
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We just had no idea where it was at. They entered Reagan's plates into a police database
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that tracks vehicles nationwide. It turned up nothing. So detectives tried another private database,
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one that collects information from license plate readers mounted on commercial vehicles.
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Sure enough. The private trash truck had picked up Reagan's license plate near Children's Hospital.
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That's incredible. A garbage truck gives you a huge break in this case. It was. It was definitely the break that we were looking for.
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We want to immediately get over to that area because the camera captured the car in this neighborhood a few hours.
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The previous to us being notified that it was there. The car could be gone. It could be gone.
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But when they pulled up, there it was, Reagan's Silver Acura. This is a street that Reagan's car was found on.
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Park along here is facing that direction. The first thing detectives noticed, burn marks on the back seat and the overwhelming stench of gasoline.
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What was that telling you? Most likely that the individual tried to destroy evidence, tried to destroy the car.
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But he obviously failed because the car was intact. Failed miserably. Inside the car they found ATM receipts from different banks from the night Reagan disappeared Though only had been withdrawn from her account police suspected she been forced to withdraw the money as part of a robbery
00:18:05
Also inside the car, they found cigarette butts. Do you know if Reagan smokes? We asked her roommates and her friends, family, if she smoked,
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and they said absolutely not. So this could potentially, these butts could be the killers.
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And with butts come... DNA. They rushed the cigarettes off for testing. Did you find her cell phone?
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Her cell phone was not in the car. But when we opened the trunk of the car, there was a gasoline can that was in there that was tipped over.
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We started to think this was the killer's gas can. It appeared to be relatively new.
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Police started calling around to see if that can had been bought in the area. They got a hit at a Columbus gas station.
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Surveillance video? Surveillance video, yes. They can't get the video to download for us, so we have to take pictures of it with our cell phones.
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And we bring it back and we're showing everybody. But we see the suspect. What does he look like?
00:19:03
He's got on a hoodie and he has on something around his head. Was this Reagan's killer?
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Detectives weren't sure. But that's not the only video they uncovered. Here's Reagan withdrawing money at one of those ATMs.
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Next to her, a shadowy figure in the passenger seat. But who was he? And most importantly, where was he?
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With their friend's murderer at large, Regan's roommates were too scared to return to their apartment.
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It was your mom that first pointed out, well, you guys can't go back to your apartment because we don't know.
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That person has her keys now. Or a driver's license, maybe. Because really he had access to our house for probably 24 hours before we even realized.
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So that was kind of a terrifying afterthought. Turns out they had good reason to be afraid.
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Because around Columbus, Ohio, Reagan's murder wasn't the only recent act of violence.
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Coming up, stories of alarming encounters. He grabbed me. He had a knife. He put it to my neck.
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I heard a voice say, don't turn around or I'll shoot. To just think about what she had to endure and what she was ultimately clinging on to,
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at the end was just to live and be able to go home. It's hard to imagine the torment Regan's parents experienced in the days after her murder.
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The grief, the what-ifs, the impossible question. Could they have done anything to prevent their daughter's senseless death?
00:20:53
Taught our kids at a very young age about awareness and safety and being smart, not putting yourselves in bad situations.
00:21:05
And in Toby's mind, that included going home after working a night shift near downtown Columbus.
00:21:11
It's, you know, pretty rough around there. You had safety concerns. Yes. We did.
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We had even talked about it the last time we had been in town visiting her for a game.
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And we said, you know, you have to be extra vigilant because this is not campus.
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This is the city. And in the weeks before Reagan's murder, vigilance was called for,
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especially in and around German village, a historic section of town not far from Bodega.
00:21:38
So you were just going to get into your car? Yeah. To head out. And then I don't know, I felt a presence, something.
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Josie Merkel, a local theater actress, was the first resident to come face to face with violence.
00:21:51
So I turned around and he must have come up that alley because he came in and was standing like in this side right in the corner.
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and he had a hoodie pulled down almost to his eyebrows and then he had a mask up around his nose.
00:22:11
So all I saw were eyes. So I just started screaming. Oh my gosh. And so he just ran to me and just kept beating me, beating my face.
00:22:21
I fell to the ground between the two cars and he just kept slugging me with his fist and I kept screaming
00:22:27
and the only words he ever said were just shut up. Did you think this man might actually kill you?
00:22:33
Totally. This was somebody that wanted to do evil and hurt someone. That's what I saw.
00:22:39
So yeah, I thought he was going to kill me. So I just stayed on the ground. And then, as suddenly as he appeared, the attacker was gone.
00:22:47
And then after, he just left. Near the same neighborhood, several days later, Vanessa Edwards was on her way to work in the early morning
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when she noticed a man with a hoodie and a mask walking toward her. So I jaywalked across the street, and then as I stepped up onto the grass,
00:23:04
I kind of looked over my shoulder to get a feel for where he was, and he was right there.
00:23:09
And this time, the mysterious attacker was armed with more than his fists. He grabbed me. He had a knife. He put it to my neck.
00:23:18
And he said, shut up. Don't yell. And so I screamed. And he pushed it in a little bit harder, and he said,
00:23:28
you need to shut up or I'm going to kill you right here. And I go, somebody's going to come and get me.
00:23:36
You screamed anyway. Yeah. And he goes, no, they're not. He goes, I'm slicing your throat right now.
00:23:42
And I screamed one more time and he kind of pushed it in a little bit and then he shoved me away.
00:23:49
He grabbed my bag and he took off running down the alley. Columbus PD had a crime spree on its hands
00:23:57
when three more people were assaulted around village. They increased patrols, but couldn't prevent the massed assailant from striking again.
00:24:06
Just two days before Reagan disappeared, Julianne Beatty was taking some luggage out of the trunk of
00:24:12
her car when she felt something against the back of her head. It was a gun. I heard a voice say,
00:24:19
don't turn around or I'll shoot. And instinctively, I just turned around and the gun was pointed right
00:24:26
at my forehead and he said, give me your bag or I'll kill you. So I just started screaming and
00:24:32
yelling and struggling with him. And he was trying to get the purse off and I had it over my shoulder.
00:24:38
And as he was pulling, we struggled and he hit me with the butt of the gun. My shoes flipped off in
00:24:44
the street. My glasses ended up over besides the bushes. He cracked a couple of teeth. The man got
00:24:50
Julianne's purse and made his getaway. This man is terrorizing. Definitely. It was unchecked evil.
00:24:55
Yeah, he's just terrorizing the area, yes. I heard someone yell help, and so I ran outside.
00:25:00
The attacks, a total of seven in less than three weeks, were all over the news. Village residents are on high alert tonight.
00:25:09
Toby even raised it with Reagan. Reagan and I did talk about it, and there was a couple that occurred near downtown where Reagan worked.
00:25:18
It was just be careful. Apparently, I think everybody was pretty certain that it was one individual that was creating this havoc around town.
00:25:27
Now, in his fog of grief, Reagan's father didn't make any connections between the attacks and his daughter's death.
00:25:35
But one of the victims did. As soon as they announced that Reagan Tuck was missing and then they found her body,
00:25:42
you know, my friend called me and said, this is too coincidental. It's all within a three-mile radius.
00:25:47
I guarantee you that that individual that had murdered Reagan Tokes is somehow connected to your case.
00:25:56
Were they connected? The attacks happened miles away from where Reagan's body was found, in a different police district.
00:26:03
So maybe not. Lieutenant Davidson had been on Reagan's case nonstop for more than 30 hours when he thought about getting some rest.
00:26:12
He'd barely been home when his phone rang at 1030. One of his detectives was on the line.
00:26:18
He had received a phone call from the DNA lab, and we had a hit. That's incredible.
00:26:25
It is. To get a hit that fast. Yes. After finding a body. Mm-hmm. It was a huge break, and what it revealed would stun this veteran investigator.
00:26:36
What does he tell you? He says you're not going to believe this, but you know him.
00:26:40
Coming up, a jolt for Reagan's family. My head was going to explode. It was amazing I didn't have a heart attack or a stroke myself.
00:26:51
When Dateline continues. I mean, as soon as we entered the church, we pretty much all just started crying.
00:27:10
Reagan's wake took place in the church where she and her family celebrated their faith.
00:27:16
But when someone so young, so innocent, is suddenly gone, it's hard to say goodbye.
00:27:23
And we all walked over to look at her, and we all just kind of locked our arms and stood there.
00:27:28
I mean, we talked to her, we talked to each other. I remember I always used to braid Reagan's hair for her because she refused to learn to do it herself.
00:27:36
And I remember I just, like, touched her hair, because how many times have I braided her hair before?
00:27:42
It was just... That's heartbreaking. It was surreal, yeah. But we stood there for a while.
00:27:47
It was... That's the, like, one comfort, is that we have each other. The journey of healing had just begun.
00:27:55
And step one in that long, painful process was bringing Reagan's killer to justice.
00:28:00
That was Lieutenant Davidson's job. Two days after the murder, he had a DNA hit from Reagan's car and a name.
00:28:08
And to the lieutenant surprise it was a name he knew Brian Lee Goolsbee He put him behind bars for attempted rape and robbery six years earlier Wow Are you just floored by this news
00:28:23
I am. I am so floored by this because I thought he was still in jail. I was shocked.
00:28:27
Lieutenant Davidson learned that Goolsbee was released three months before Reagan's murder
00:28:32
and was living in a house less than a half mile from where her car was found. He sent a SWAT team to make the arrest and bring him in.
00:28:54
Detective Forney was the lead interrogator. He wanted to know what we had on him,
00:29:00
and that's all the information he was going to provide to us and what we already knew.
00:29:05
Investigators had Goldsby's DNA inside Reagan's car. He quickly copped to robbing her.
00:29:25
You get him in the car with her. You get him going to the ATM with her. I mean, you're getting close.
00:29:31
But are you getting a confession? We're not getting any confession to the murder.
00:30:02
I don't move for 30 minutes. I got in the car, I turned around, and I left. Goalsby wasn't budging.
00:30:08
I didn't shoot nobody. I've never shot a gun in my life. So detectives set a trap.
00:30:15
Though they had no evidence that another person was involved in Reagan's murder,
00:30:19
they suggested to Goalsby that an accomplice had killed her. I know you didn't pull the trigger, but I know somebody else was just caught.
00:30:27
Who was it? This person is not real. This person is not real. fictitious character that you're...
00:30:33
Does he take the bait? He does. He takes the bait. I'm in a paginar seat. He's in a backseat.
00:30:38
We're moving behind her. Now, we get down to the park. He says, check off all your clothes.
00:30:51
Get out. He says, walk until I tell you to stop. She walks. She's naked. He gets behind her.
00:31:00
And then he goes, pow. She falls. She's laying on the ground. I'm looking on the car.
00:31:10
And he bends down and shows her me and pow. This is a chilling account of this murder.
00:31:16
It was very chilling. The way that he described it, the way that he told the story,
00:31:21
you knew that he was the one that pulled that trigger. At the end of this interrogation, Brian Goldsby was charged with aggravated murder.
00:31:29
rape, kidnapping, and robbery. Reagan's dad Toby showed up to Goolsbee's first court appearance.
00:31:39
How do you feel when you're there and you're seeing him, this man that did this to your daughter?
00:31:44
Like, my head was going to explode. It was amazing I didn't have a heart attack or a stroke myself
00:31:51
during that 20 minutes in court. But what the family found out next turned their devastation and anger into unmitigated fury and a call for action.
00:32:05
I think it's outrage times a thousand. It just so unbelievable. Coming up, a jaw-dropping revelation about Brian Goldsby.
00:32:20
They had this monster in their grasp and they let him slip through. Uncovering an astonishing gap in law enforcement.
00:32:27
So this is a man out on parole with an ankle monitor and he out committing heinous crimes Absolutely And getting away scot Yes
00:32:48
The jury reached a unanimous verdict. In March 2018, Brian Goolsbee went on trial and was convicted for Reagan's murder.
00:32:56
We the jury find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
00:33:04
The first thing that went through my head is this monster will never be able to harm another person again ever.
00:33:11
But for the Tokes family, justice in the courtroom was not enough. The more I started to hear and understand about who, how, why,
00:33:21
I came to the realization that this never should have happened. This never should have happened.
00:33:27
They first learned that Goolsbee had been out of prison for just a few months. And in prison, he had a history of bad behavior.
00:33:35
Still, by Ohio law, there was no way to extend his sentence. This man had 52 violations in prison?
00:33:43
Yes. And yet, he still walks out? Still walks out. There's no punishment. 52 infractions and no consequences.
00:33:53
Goolsby, a registered sex offender, was assigned a parole officer. And what the Tokes family learned next made them sick to their core.
00:34:02
At the time of Reagan's murder, Goolsby was wearing an ankle monitor. When I hear someone has an ankle monitor, I always thought it meant like if they went outside of their zone or past their curfew,
00:34:14
that an alarm would go off somewhere and the police would show up immediately and arrest them.
00:34:18
And most people do, and that is what's even more disturbing about it, is most people think that.
00:34:24
Was anyone watching him? No. The Toks family was surprised to learn that police don't have direct access to the GPS data from ankle monitors.
00:34:33
It's usually collected by private companies that make and sell the devices and then share the data with parole officers.
00:34:40
The information generally isn't monitored by law enforcement in real time. And sure enough, a look back at Goolsbee's GPS trail revealed he was the masked assailant who for weeks had been terrorizing Columbus.
00:34:55
Every time that there was a robbery, there's Brian Goolsbee. So this is a man out on parole with an ankle monitor, and he's out committing heinous crimes.
00:35:05
Absolutely. And getting away scot-free. Yes. I was outraged. I'm mad. All the signs were there. What more do you want?
00:35:13
Somebody should have put two and two together. Did the system fail Reagan-Tokes?
00:35:17
Did it fail all of the victims? It failed all the victims. And everything went unchecked.
00:35:23
I've never seen a community so outraged. State of Ohio Representative Kristen Boggs
00:35:31
lives two blocks from where Goolsbee kidnapped Reagan. Could an astute detective with all the robberies
00:35:37
have maybe looked at a list of parolees in the area and connected the dots? Well, had that information been available to our law enforcement, yeah, I think that that could have happened.
00:35:50
After Reagan's murder, Boggs decided to investigate and possibly legislate. She discovered that GPS monitors can be and sometimes are set up to send alerts if an offender violates a curfew or moves into a restricted area.
00:36:05
But in Goolsbee's case, Boggs says Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, or DRC, told her this.
00:36:14
They put a GPS monitor on him, but they didn't have any exclusionary zones affiliated with that monitor.
00:36:23
They didn't have any curfews affiliated with that monitor. So no geographic restrictions and no curfew programmed into it.
00:36:31
What's the point of it? Exactly. Is part of it that it's supposed to be a deterrent of some kind?
00:36:37
I think that DRC believed that placing a GPS monitor on him would curtail his criminal activity, but it didn't.
00:36:44
The reality is nobody monitoring him electronically not in real time Martin Horn the former commissioner of probation for New York City and a critic of GPS monitors is not surprised by any of this
00:36:56
Is this a false sense of security? Oh, absolutely. It is not an electronic tether.
00:37:01
All it is is something that, after the fact, will either tell me where you were or where you weren't,
00:37:06
and even then, it is not foolproof. It's a great Monday morning quarterback tool.
00:37:11
Yeah, and it's also, I think, a tremendous liability for the government agencies that use them, because now they're holding the bag.
00:37:19
There are no national statistics on crimes committed by people wearing GPS monitors.
00:37:24
But we did our own search of news reports and found numerous cases over a two-year span.
00:37:30
Armed robberies, rapes, and more than a dozen homicides. For instance, a man in Virginia murdered his cousin while wearing an ankle monitor.
00:37:39
A similar story in Houston, where a parolee with a monitor murdered his mother. And in California, a GPS-tracked sex offender pled guilty to multiple sex crimes stemming from assaults on a hiking trail.
00:37:53
I think the important question is whether this type of technological solution makes us safer.
00:38:01
And in my experience, and based on my study, I don't see that it does. Ohio's DRC declined our request for an interview citing pending litigation.
00:38:11
The Tokes family sued for wrongful death, but the case was dismissed. They had this monster in their grasp and their control, and they let him slip through.
00:38:21
To know that this continues to go on and will continue to go on until they change the way the system currently is, it's maddening.
00:38:31
maddening. And you can't put a price tag on innocent human life. You just can't.
00:38:39
This pain is something I can't even put into words. Toby and Lisa have teamed up with Kristen Boggs and other Ohio lawmakers to introduce a bill
00:38:47
called the Reagan-Tokes Act. The law would mandate that restrictions are placed on every
00:38:52
GPS monitor and make it easier for police to see monitor information. It would also allow the
00:38:59
sentences of badly behaving prisoners like Brian Goolsbee to be extended. The sentencing part of
00:39:05
the bill was signed into law in 2018. The part that deals with GPS monitors is pending. The Ohio
00:39:13
governor has also directed the DRC to make changes after a task force recommended many of the same
00:39:19
reforms the family has been pushing. I refuse to let that one night define my daughter Reagan.
00:39:28
Toby, Lisa, and Mackenzie are also working hard to create a legacy for Reagan that honors her bright spirit.
00:39:36
Whatever you have to do to strike and attack. They're promoting self-defense training for women.
00:39:41
They want to see classes like these taught at colleges and high schools nationwide.
00:39:45
Reagan will undoubtedly save lives. Yeah, absolutely. He already has. And they're holding rallies and raising money for a foundation that will give annual scholarships in Reagan's name.
00:39:59
She would be so excited to know that she is sending people to college, especially Ohio State.
00:40:04
We would like to take a moment to remember... On a blue sky spring day, the girl who wanted so badly to go to Ohio State did get to graduate.
00:40:15
Reagan's family accepted a posthumous degree on her behalf. I hereby conferred the degree, Bachelor of Arts, upon Regan Delaney Toad.
00:40:26
She got a standing ovation that she deserved. And that spot, that lonely park where Regan lost her life, that's been transformed.
00:40:38
It's now a tranquility garden in her memory. I choose to believe in my heart that her presence is still here.
00:40:45
her legacy gets to be that she still is here in this world, changing this world and making a difference.
00:40:54
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.