The Abduction and Murder of Reagan Tokes | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[light gentle music] - [Lisa] That was her freshman year, the first game they went to.
- Look at what they wear to games. - I know. And then even same thing there. Ohio State gear, head to toe.
- [Makenzie] Dad looks young. - Yeah. It's definitely aged us all significantly.
[camera shutter clicks] She and I would go to a mission situation with our church, where we would go down and serve meals.
I can just remember her being so compassionate, and she was very thankful and happy
to be able to be a part of doing something to put a bright spot in their day. - When she was very excited about something
she would have the biggest, brightest smile, and she loved the fact that she could light up a room
just by smiling and being excited and kind to people, and it would really shift the tone
of anywhere that she was at. [tense dramatic music] [siren wailing] - On February 9th, 2017, it was a cold, miserable, snowy day
in Grove City, Ohio, when we got the call that a body was discovered in the Scioto Grove Metro Park.
- [Witness] Hello. - [Operator] Hello, 911. - [Witness] Yeah, I think there's a body out here.
Please send somebody, hurry! - [Operator] Okay. - I heard that there had been a body found,
I knew there was a missing student. And I just told my boss, "Hey, I'm going." - What happened to Reagan, I think,
is every woman's nightmare, every parent's, every friend's nightmare. You're just trying to live your life
and get from point A to point B safely, and it's interrupted by something violent and senseless.
- Her last words were was, "I just want to live." And that's really all she wanted.
- Some days, it feels like a lifetime, and some days, it feels like just yesterday.
I'm gonna wake up, and it's all been a nightmare and it's not real, but it is. [tense thoughtful music]
[light gentle music] - There's the picture that we used that you put on her chair for the wedding.
- Yeah. Why'd you pick this one? - 'Cause it's pretty and captures that light about her,
and all around her halo, you know? It's just so illuminating. Reagan came into this world like a burst of energy,
the shining bright light that she was. She was born at 1:08 a.m. Boy, did she let everybody know that she was there
and she was just this wide awake, and, "Hi, everybody. Here I am." And that's really who and how she was always.
- Growing up in Ohio, was in a really small community, and everybody was very tight-knit.
We knew everybody on the street. Some kids grew up and became our babysitters, and we hosted all holidays my entire childhood,
being Thanksgiving and Christmas, and everybody was welcome at our house. - Reagan and her father loved a lot of the same things.
[camera shutter clicks] Football, for example. Loved football. Loved Ohio State.
And that was her and Toby's thing. And I can remember a time that Toby took her to a football game at Ohio State
when she was like four or five, and she had her little Ohio State cheerleader outfit
and everything on. And she had said at that game that she was going to go to school there.
And sure enough, she did. [tense thoughtful music] There was a career opportunity
for Toby that came about around holiday time of Reagan's senior year. We had made the decision as a family
that she was going to be going off to college. Makenzie was willing and open to move with us
to this opportunity in Florida. And we moved that summer, and then she got settled at Ohio State.
- The last special time that I had seen her was the last time we went and visited her in Ohio.
[light gentle music] This was the first time that I got to go, and really, like, sleepover at her apartment.
She was very protective over me, and when Reagan was in the shower, her roommate came to me
and said, "Do you wanna go get some food with us?" I thought it was the coolest thing that I got to be invited
to go out and do something with these older girls, and Reagan called one of them
and was like, "What have you done with my little sister?" Like, "Is she in the car with you right now?"
And she was so not happy that they took me out of the house without telling her.
The next morning, our parents came over and they had just a really big tailgate.
And that was, I think for all of us, a really core memory that we all have, was getting to go to this game.
It was her last game as a student. [crowd cheering] - I think if Toby and I had to quantify something
that we're really proud of, it was bringing our two daughters into this world and the way our family unit and network was.
Very positive, very loving, very happy home. [light tense music] - Reagan's future was very bright.
She had just gotten her first real job outside of college, in Cleveland. She was about to move there.
She was going to utilise her degree in psychology and essentially, try to help people
because she cared so much about them. - Reagan consistently would always talk to my dad
to check in with him every day and let him know that she made it home safe. - Her and I had had a conversation that day, 3:45.
I'll never forget, because I was in a Walmart, and I was talking on the phone and pushing the cart at the same time
and I had crashed it into a display of bananas while I was on the phone with her.
And she was laughing at me, and she was like, "Seriously, Mom?" But her and I had had a very fun,
bantery conversation that day. Reagan was going to work that night, and it was a new job.
We weren't super thrilled about it, the fact that this job was keeping her out in evenings,
but she was excited about it because she was looking for additional ways to earn some money.
- On the 8th, we hadn't heard from her, and it started to get a little suspicious.
But on one hand, my dad was growing more and more concerned and on the other, you had to remind yourself
that she was 21 years old, almost 22. She was a full-fledged grownup at that point.
But I knew when we had gone to bed that night, it was just a little off in our house.
- She had talked to my husband right prior to going into work. But when she didn't text, he was uneasy
'cause he hadn't been able to get a hold of her, and her phone went right to voicemail.
[sparse tense music] - The next morning, I got up and I was getting ready for school,
and I went down and had my breakfast like normal, and my mom had my lunch sitting out.
And when I went to leave, they both told me, "If you hear from your sister today,
"let us know immediately." And to me, that was kind of a red flag. - As time had started progress,
we're getting really uncomfortable. I called her work and they hadn't heard from her.
I was not able to report her as missing because I was not the last person to see her,
so they had to call. - [Employee] So we had an employee leave work last night and she has not been home.
Her phone is off, nobody can find her. She hasn't been home at all either. Her mom's been calling, looking for her.
We can't find her car around work. - I was getting ready to tweet this photo, and I thought, "If I tweet this out,
"one, that makes this very real, "and two, if she ends up being completely fine,
"there's no way of taking this back." But I tweeted it out, and it instantly started to go off like wildfire.
And I had people get my cell phone and start reaching out to me somehow, and news stations and broadcasters and et cetera.
- The roommates had confirmed that her bed hadn't been slept in. And obviously, that was very concerning
because she never did anything like that. She always came home. And what we didn't know at that point
was there was a Jane Doe that had been found. Makenzie was at work and Toby and I were home,
but we were trying to stay off of our phones so that if we got a phone call... [tense thoughtful music]
Sorry, this is gonna take me a minute. - [Operator] 911. - [Witness] Hello? - [Operator] Hello, 911?
- [Witness] Yeah, I think there's a body out here at Scioto Grove Metro Park. I don't know if this is a fake or what.
I'm afraid to get close to it. Please, send somebody. Hurry! - [Operator] Okay, don't get near it.
- [Witness] It's bloody. It's got the arm over its face. I'm afraid to get near it.
I can't tell if it's fake or what, man. - [Operator] Can you tell if it's male or a female
or anything like that? - [Witness] It's a female. I don't think this person's alive.
[sombre tense music] - The information that we got on the call was an individual that saw what they believed to be a body
laying probably about 50 feet off the road. We immediately dispatched officers out to that area
to find out what was going on. - Working in the prosecutor's office, we would frequently hear about offences
or homicides that had took place. I found out pretty quickly after a body had been found.
There was no identifying information, her purse was gone, no cell phone, anything like that.
So the Grove City Police Department had to coordinate locally and see if there were any reports of missing people.
- We had confirmation from our patrol officers who arrived on the scene, that it was a human being.
- [Officer] But there is possibly a body. It's gonna be, he said possibly a female who was bloody
with an arm over the face. - I was one of the first investigators to approach the body,
and you could see that it was a young female in her 20s. She didn't have any clothes on, she was wearing a necklace,
and she had an apparent gun wound to the back of her head. Since she didn't have any clothes on,
we were looking for identification, purse, or anything along the lines of that. The entrance to the park,
there was a few houses out around there. We started go out there and scour the area
and talk to witnesses and see if they heard anything, if they saw anything. And no one had.
- I was in the newsroom when I heard that there had been a body found at Scioto Grove Metro Park.
And I remember, at this point, I knew there was a missing student. As a reporter, your main goal is to report true
and accurate information. So as much as your mind might want to say, "Hey, I know there's a missing Ohio State student.
"I know right now there's a young woman who has been found," you cannot in any way, tell people that.
Of course, it comes to mind, but you can't really assume anything. - We started searching databases to try to get an identity
on who the victim may be. [light tense music] We got a phone call from some females
in the campus area of Ohio State University, along with the Short North area, of a friend of theirs
that matched the description of the victim that was missing and they haven't seen or heard of from her
for over 24 hours. We showed the friends the necklace and the tattoo that we had taken photographs of.
They looked at both of those and they were able to say, "Yes, that's a matching tattoo that Reagan had,
"and that's a necklace that she would've been wearing." Once we had a pretty good idea that it was Reagan,
we still needed to make the 100% identification from a family or a friend of Reagan.
So we had to reach out to the family and let them know. - I got this phone call,
and this guy asked me if I was by myself or if Toby was with me, and I'm like, "No, Toby is here with me."
And then he just proceeded to tell me that a body of a young woman had been found
that morning in Scioto Grove Metro Park. They were fairly certain that it was Reagan.
[gentle sombre music] and there's nothing in this world that would ever prepare a parent
to get a phone call like that. And I can remember standing there, saying, "You have to be mistaken. It can't be it."
You know, "It's not her." - People around Ohio State were rightfully scared, and this could have been any Ohio State student.
So, people were rightfully upset. People were scared. People were wondering, "Do we have a killer on the loose?"
And they did. [light tense music] The day she was found, we did not find out from police
on that day that this was Reagan. They told the family, they told friends, but police did not publicly put that out there
until the next day. - Looking back on it, I mean, a lot of it is a blur. I can remember this information was out there
and the media had started to pick up on it. We knew we needed to get to Makenzie
because she had put it out on social media that her sister was missing and was asking for help and all of that,
and we did not want her hearing this from anybody but us. And so we got into the car
and we drove up to where she worked. And she took one look at Toby and I, and immediately knew
something was horribly, horribly wrong. - I instantly knew what had happened. Just from the looks of their faces,
I knew that she wasn't found alive, she had been found dead. The look on their faces
was, it's not like she had been in a car accident and something like that happened,
it was complete and utter devastation. - I just kept hoping and praying that it was a mistake.
And my brother actually was in route to go to the morgue to identify her because,
obviously, we were in Florida. And I just kept praying he was gonna get there and he was gonna call me and say, "No, it's not her."
But that's not the call that we got. [sniffles] - One of the worst things I've ever did as a journalist,
as far as the impact it had on me, is I went to Reagan's apartment, knocked on the door,
her roommates opened the door, just clearly in hysterics. At that point, it was pretty clear
that, while police hadn't told us yet, this was Reagan who had been found. We didn't have anything
until maybe 10, 15 minutes before the 11 o'clock news that we could report as fact and know that it was Reagan.
- We went from looking for her and thinking that she was out there alive, or had been in an accident and couldn't get ahold of us,
or that even maybe she was being held hostage somewhere. I don't think our mind ever went straight to
that she was not going to be found alive. So when we did hear that and hear those words,
I think we all just went into a state of complete shock. - It literally feels like
somebody has sucked all the air out of your lungs and kicked you in the stomach at the same time.
And we knew, at this point, that the person they thought was Reagan, at that point, had been shot.
[sparse tense music] - When the police discovered Reagan's body, they were initially unaware of what happened to her.
But the autopsy revealed that she had two bullet wounds in the back of her head,
one of which was fired at close range. - We believed that it was going to be a murder investigation
because there was no weapon around for this to be self-inflicted. We didn't know if this was going to be
a domestic-related issue, if the killer would've known the victim at the time, or exactly what we had on our hands
at that particular moment. [tense uneasy music] The first 24 hours of a homicide investigation
is very important because you need to track down as many leads as you possibly can find
and so that we can quickly try to recover any evidence and get the case resolved.
- There were some aspects of the way that Reagan died and what happened in her last moments that suggest
this killer really wanted to demean her in her last moments. She was forced to undress and was found laying naked.
This is, of course, very upsetting for the family, but you can imagine for Reagan, she was trying to comply,
hoping that it may save her life, but it didn't. - The police, by gathering that surveillance footage
from the Bodega Bar, they were able to determine what time she had last been seen alive,
and then kind of work their way from there to see had anybody else seen her or had contact with her within her inner circles
or anybody that knew who she was once she walked out of the bar that night. - This is a video of Reagan leaving the bar that evening.
That's her saying goodbye to the bartender. And as she walks out the door, we're watching this to see if anyone follows her.
She walks down the street over to where she normally parks her car at. - Young women are told over and over growing up,
"Be careful when you're walking in parking lots. "Be careful when you're out alone."
And so, to have it actually happen to somebody is just unfathomable. [gentle sombre music]
- They had asked for her cell phone records. And then we had talked about her vehicle,
and we reported it missing and stolen. They eventually, were able to find her vehicle,
and it was through a licence plate reader on a trash truck that was driving down the street and it pinged it.
[tense thoughtful music] - One of the biggest leads that they were following up in,
in that kind of first 24 to 36 hours, was her car, which had been located in an area that it should not have been.
- I can remember one of the questions of them asking me was, "Did she smoke?" My reaction was like, "Absolutely not."
I'm like, "No, she did not smoke. I know that for a fact." And then, one of the other things that they had called
and asked us about was, "Was there any reason "she would've had a gas can in the back of her trunk?"
And again, my reaction, I can remember being like, "No. "She wasn't stupid." Like, "Why would she drive around with a gas can?
"That's dangerous." - Once the vehicle was located, an investigator arrived and started looking in through the windows.
He was able to see that in the front seat of the vehicle looked like it had burn marks on it.
- They noticed two very important things. Number one was a gas can. In the car, it looked like the killer
had maybe tried to douse the car in gas and set it on fire, ultimately unsuccessful.
That would've been something that might have gotten rid of any kind of DNA or other evidence.
The police were also able to locate some cigarette butts, both inside the car and right outside the car.
The cigarette butts outside the car looked fresh. [tense suspenseful music] - They knew that whoever had driven that car,
whoever had left that stuff in the car, I believe, police would tell you they knew right then
that was their key to figuring out who was responsible. - So, at this point, we're probably 24,
26 hours into the investigation, and we haven't slept. So, our sergeant sent us home
while the crime lab was trying to extract DNA from the cigarette butt. And within an hour of being home,
we got a phone call from our sergeant saying that the lab made a positive identification
on the cigarette butt that was inside the vehicle. [uneasy pulsing music] [image crackling]
I immediately recognised the suspect as Brian Golsby. He was an individual that we prosecuted a few years ago,
prior to this incident, for rape and kidnapping as well. [tense thoughtful music]
- Reagan Tokes didn't know Brian Golsby at all. They had never crossed paths, they had never interacted.
He was a complete and total stranger to her. - Once we had, Brian identified as a person of interest,
we issued an arrest warrant. [gentle pensive music] The officer showed up, they identified Brian,
and immediately brought him to the Grove City Police Department to be interviewed.
[tense ominous music] - [Officer] Watch your head. Put your belt on real quick. [seatbelt clicking]
- When we found out he was arrested, I think, there's a big sense of relief that someone got caught.
And then it's almost immediately like, "Why?" Like, "Why would someone do this to an innocent girl?"
There was no connection between the two. - [Brian] So, I don't get to know what's going on?
- [Officer] You'll be able to talk to Detective Deskins here soon enough. - Brian Golsby was not a Grove City local.
And he was not known to Grove City Police, but he was certainly known to the Columbus Police Department,
as well as the Ohio prison system. Brian Golsby had been released from prison not too long before this offence.
He had committed a very similar offence against another woman where he had sexually assaulted her,
held her against her will. But in that instance, he let her live, he let her get away.
She reported it, and he ended up going to prison for several years. - There was a woman that he held at knife point
and raped in front of her child. A plea deal was given to him and he had reduced sentencing time
that he shouldn't have had. And had this ridiculous situation not happened with his prior sentencing,
he would never have been on the street that night and should have never crossed paths with my daughter,
and she would still be here with us. [gentle thoughtful music] [light tense music]
- Knowing that he only did six years in prison for his previous crimes was very disheartening.
Very disappointing to not only me but the other investigators or officers that had worked on that case.
- He was staying kind of, I believe, we refer to them as halfway houses for people who had been out of jail but still were kind of
working their way back into normal society. And that's where he had been staying at the time,
and they found Reagan's car nearby them. So he was still fresh outta jail. - So, I take it I still won't be able to get no cigarette?
- Detective Deskins will be in here, and I don't know if he's going to offer you one or not,
to be honest with you. I don't have any on me. - Once Brian was arrested and being brought to the back to the police department,
I knew that we had to formulate a plan. I knew that I had to have someone else in the room with me
so that we could effectively interview Brian. I also knew that we couldn't just go in there
with nothing in our hands. So some of the strategy was to, since we knew where Reagan was parked at, to go onto Google
and print off photographs of the Street View area, just so he wouldn't know where those photographs came from.
He wouldn't know if it was surveillance video or what type of photographs we had.
- You keep talking about me killing somebody, man. me shooting somebody. But you're still telling me you're...
You're trying to get me admit to something I didn't do. I honestly don't understand.
- Well, this is what's gonna happen. During the interview, Brian did admit to the kidnapping part of Reagan.
He admitted to making Reagan drive him around to different locations and getting money out of an ATM.
He also admitted to raping her during one of the cigarette breaks that we had. However, he would not admit
to him being the one that shot her. - He said that he had run into an old friend named TJ
and that TJ was the person that had actually pulled the trigger and killed Reagan.
- He said that once they got to the park, he's the one that exited the vehicle with Reagan,
made her take all of her clothes off, and as she was walking away, TJ pulled the gun up
and shot her back of the head, and then advanced on her again and shot her again on the side of the head.
[gun blasting] We, at no time, believed that TJ existed, it was just a way for Brian to tell us the story
by diverting the actual murder away from him and onto someone else. - I think it became clear to him
that the police had evidence, and so he had to sort of scramble, and develop this fictional TJ
that had committed the offence. - [Officer] She walks out in the grass? - Yes. - [Officer] It's kind of down the hill?
- I said, "Stop." - [Officer] And you said stop? And then you go down- - No, no. I said, "Don't move for 30 minutes."
- [Officer] What'd you say that? - She said, "All I wanna do is live. "I got you, I got you, I got you."
[tense thoughtful music] - It was very important throughout this interview process
for us to find the murder weapon. After about an hour and a half of talking to him
specifically about the location of this weapon, he finally told me, "All right, I'll tell you where the weapon's at
"if you could give me a couple hamburgers." As soon as Brian started eating one of the hamburgers,
he said that he threw it in the storm sewer grate and gave me the location of where it was at.
- One of the other detectives that was interviewing Brian Goldsby had built a rapport with him.
And when they left the interview room, to go into another part of the police station
to have a cigarette, something like that, at that time, Brian Golsby admitted that he had killed Reagan.
I don't think he ever acknowledged there was no TJ in the interview with Detective Forney.
- He says, "Walk until I tell you to stop." She walks, she's naked. She walks, he tells her to stop.
He gets behind her. At first, I heard a "click, click." Nothing happened. So I'm thinking the gun that he gave me was fake.
- Mm-hmm. - And then he goes, "Pow!" She falls. She's laying on the ground. I'm looking on the car,
and he bends down and shoots her again. "Pow!" [tense suspenseful music] - During the interview, we realised that Brian
had an ankle bracelet attached to his ankle from the conditions of his parole. At the time, we did not know that it was GPS-enabled,
that he was being tracked continuously. - He's a registered tier-three sex offender,
which means he's committed sexual crimes in the past. We know that. He's got this GPS monitor on.
It's tracking him, but they're not actively watching what he's doing, as I think a lot of people assume they would.
- What it revealed was, at the moment that he kidnapped Reagan, the GPS also had a speed, his speed that he was walking
and/or riding or driving a vehicle. And you could see where the speed went from two to three miles per hour of him walking
to, all of a sudden, now he's going 25, 35, 40 miles an hour. - GPS coordinates put him at every single place
that Reagan had been. Everything was lining up with where his ankle monitor had gone.
- So Brian took a bus from his halfway house where he was staying at, to this area.
He got off the bus couple blocks down the road, and he just started walking aimlessly around the city,
just waiting to try to find someone to take advantage of. And when Reagan was walking down this street
that presented that situation for him, and this is where he intercepted her at, down here at her car.
[tense dramatic music] And we knew, at that point, that he was in Reagan's car. It matched up the timeline with Reagan leaving the bar.
- At one point, he had Reagan Tokes drive from her place of work, Bodega, throughout some of the Downtown Columbus area.
He had her stop at several ATMs. - Reagan would've been terrified, at this point,
having a stranger in her car with a gun, not knowing what was going to happen, where she was going to go,
and him telling her to turn at different points during her drive. So, one of Brian's goals for the night was to rob Reagan.
So he forced her to drive to the first bank and withdraw some money. They're unsuccessful.
Drove to another bank and tried another card, again, they were unsuccessful. - The car was stopped for a period of time
in the German Village area, which is right on the outskirts of Downtown Columbus.
- German Village is a nice part of town, but it's also has its criminal element to it.
And they parked in this location here, probably up against one of these buildings.
So he forced her to remove her clothing. I'm sure Reagan was absolutely in shock and terrified
and unable to do much because he had the gun pointed at her while he raped her. - I think that was one of the hardest things for me to view,
that piece of evidence, and that particular part of the GPS evidence, because I could see how maybe she had some hope
that he was gonna let her go. - So once they leave this location where Brian has raped her,
now they drive to back to the first bank, the Chase bank, and go through the ATM machine again.
And Reagan is successful in withdrawing $60 from her account. The only other video that we had of Reagan and Brian
was at the gas station where they put gas into Reagan's car. [tense ominous music]
- I think as we started to get all of those details, it just made you so angry to hear that how long she had been kidnapped for.
It went on for hours. To think that she was marched out to a field and killed like an execution,
just you can't even comprehend what she must have been thinking. Other than what we do know her last words were was,
"I just want to live." And that's really all she wanted. She wanted to be able to come home
and get to see her family again. [light gentle music] - [Lisa] And look, do you remember that?
- [Makenzie] Oh, had her little jacket. - I know, with her little jacket on. And you still had your braces on there.
But, remember, we sent that to Dad for Valentine's Day. That was the picture we took
and we made him a Valentine. - What a look! [both laughing] Reagan was a very kind-hearted person.
Her friends would always say that she had a song for everything. So she was making a bagel,
she'd sing a song about the bagel she was gonna eat. Or she just was constantly talking or having chatter
or wanting to have a good time. - It was unbelievable the amount of people that attended her funeral
[gentle sombre music] and came to not only honour her but to support us as well.
- Her funeral was held on Valentine's Day. My mom and I always said we were so sore after
from so many hugs that we had given to people. - I can remember, at her funeral, a young lady talked to me
about how she was a classmate of Reagan's, and she was going through a terrible family situation
at the time that she came to the school. And Reagan was the one person that was very kind
and welcoming to her in, and invited her to sit with her at lunch and became her friend, and introduced her to other people.
And she literally ended up only being there for like a week because of what was going on in her family.
She's like, "But I went through the rest of my life "saying, 'Reagan Tokes was my friend.'"
So that's the kind of person she was. [light tense music] It was a year before this actually went to trial.
To sit in the same room with her killer was horrible. But I went into that trial resigned with the thought process
that I knew justice would serve itself appropriately for Reagan, and that we would accept the outcome.
- Brian Golsby did stand up and apologise for what he had done and admitted that there was no mysterious TJ.
There was no other person that had committed the offence. But he still was very subdued.
I think that was hard for some people to take as a genuine expression of remorse.
[tense suspenseful music] - It was a really long trial and my parents had gone to all of the days
leading up to the final sentencing day, and I had come in to attend the sentencing.
There were times where we would leave the room when they were talking about something in great detail
or showing any sort of images from the crime scene. - Brian was very well coached in court.
He would just sit there and do what his attorneys told him to do because he knew that the evidence that we had against him
was pretty substantial and that he was looking at the death penalty. So he was trying to do everything that he could
to avoid the death penalty. - Brian Golsby's defence team brought up his upbringing
because we were seeking the death penalty. I don't know that I agree with all of it
because there's a lot of people that face adversity in their childhood and do not end up committing offences like Brian Golsby did.
But in this particular instance, I think it resonated with the jury. - We were sent home, and we were worried just that
maybe it wouldn't finish up in that day. But we ended up getting a phone call that we needed to be back there almost immediately.
- The jury thought that based upon the evidence that his defence team presented,
that a sentence of life without parole in the prison system was the best result.
[tense ominous music] - Even though the evidence was so clear that this was the right person,
there's still a fear in your mind, and so I think when we all heard that he was guilty on all counts, was very relieving for us
because we knew we had done and the police had done and our counsel had done what they said they would do,
and that was to get justice for Reagan and the verdict fell on her 23rd birthday.
- My personal impression of Brian was that he didn't care that he took the life of an innocent victim.
He was very self-centered and could care less about anyone else on this planet. And if he wouldn't have been caught,
he probably most likely would've done this again. - To know that he will have to sit there forever
is a really good feeling to know that he would never be able to harm somebody again.
I hope he's haunted every day for what he's done. I hope he has hell on Earth and then he will have hell in the afterlife.
- Does it bring my daughter back? Does it give me complete peace and calm? Do I feel complete justice over it?
No, I don't. I don't. And I would be a liar if I wasn't not honest about that. - Seeing my parents go through this, it 100% broke them.
And with my mom, I think, for her, she has to be doing something, and so that's how the foundation came about
and just really wanting to find justice for Reagan and do good by her. [camera shutter clicks]
- After Reagan was murdered, her parents almost immediately jumped into action. I've never seen anything like it.
It was immediate from them. They wanted to make change. They wanted to make sure that no one else
had to endure what they had to endure. - The Reagan Tokes Act is something that her parents really championed.
Brian Golsby had been released from prison and was on supervision, and the Reagan Tokes Act allows judges
to give what we call an indeterminate sentence. - The first part of the Reagan Tokes Act
is actually now in law in the state of Ohio. The second half deals with the ankle monitoring
and the monitoring in real-time, with consequences for that as well. Because, I'm sorry, there is no price that I would put
that would be too high or too valuable on my daughter's life. Evil does not get to have the last word in this.
[camera shutter clicks] [light gentle music] - It scared me to lose her and to lose the identity of having an older sister
that I knew was always looking out for me. 100% robs you of any childhood I had left.
Reagan and I always had a back-and-forth banter of who would be the first to get married,
who would be the first to have children. And the other difficult thing is I met my husband in college,
and so, of course, he's never gotten to meet Reagan. On the wedding day, we honoured her in a few different ways.
I had a chair saved in the front row of the chapel for Reagan. And I had asked my florist
if they could incorporate her favourite flower, which was an orchid. And I asked my mom to bring a photo of her
so that it could be kind of like we saved a seat for her. - It's really quite remarkable what Reagan's legacy
through the Reagan Delaney Tokes Memorial Foundation has been able to accomplish.
And we've raised a considerable amount of money and awarded upwards of $400,000 of scholarships,
at this point, to well-deserving students. - The community definitely still remembers Reagan
and what happened to her. The park where her body was found now has a memorial, with a swing, lots of great flowers and plants.
I think that the Tokes are remarkable people, that they have taken this tragedy and really tried to make change as a result of it.
- I would love Reagan to be remembered for the kind, loving, generous, bright light spirit that she was.
She was a good friend. She loved her family. She loved the Lord, she had her faith.
She went out into the world and she did good things. - It's a very strange concept to think of
that she will no longer be a part of our present and future experiences through life.
But we know that she's looking down on us and she's watching everything that we do.
[camera shutter clicks] I think she would be really proud to know that we've created
the legacy in her honor so that she can continue on with us. [tense thoughtful music]

When Ohio State University student Reagan Tokes is abducted after her shift at a local restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, her family is left devastated when her body is discovered the following day. An investigation quickly unfolds to apprehend Reagan’s killer and police leave no stone unturned. When they finally catch a break, they’re shocked by what they learn about the perpetrator who ended Regan’s life. Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

Reagan Tokes, a college student, was murdered in 2017, prompting her family to advocate for justice and safety reforms in Ohio.

Key points

The Discovery. A body was discovered in Scioto Grove Metro Park, leading to a chilling investigation.
The Last Words. Reagan's last words were a haunting plea: 'I just want to live.'
A Bright Future. Reagan was excited about her new job and future, full of promise.
The Identification. Friends confirmed the victim's identity through a necklace and tattoo.
The Arrest. Brian Golsby was arrested, a sense of relief mixed with confusion followed.
Reagan's Last Words. In her final moments, Reagan expressed her desire to live, highlighting the tragedy of her fate.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's interrupted by something violent and senseless.

Describing the horror of losing a loved one unexpectedly.

1:49WatchOct 2, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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