Part 1: A Walk To The Park Turned Deadly | The Case of Antinette "Toni" Keller

Northern Illinois University after authorities announced that they're treating the disappearance of 18-year-old Antoinette Keller, better known as Tony, as a homicide. The 18-year-old Northern Illinois University student was last seen after she told friends she was going for a walk in a decal park. She was last seen headed toward this park near campus, October 14th. Two days later, police found human remains here, but they were so badly burned it took a week to identify them. Regardless of where you live, how good and safe you think the community is, the sad truth is bad things can and do happen anywhere. Here's a situation that we've been in countless times. Something so common, we barely think about it when it happens. You're out with your friends, you're just hanging out, you're having fun, maybe catching up on some gossip, just having a good time together, but eventually it's time to go. Everyone goes their separate ways. Maybe after they say I'll see you later or goodbye and you walk away without giving it a second thought. At that moment, you're focused on getting home, relaxing, maybe scrolling your phone, watching some TV and just unwinding, and you don't think about what's going on with everyone else that you were just with. You don't have to wonder where they are if they made it home alright because there's nothing inherently risky about heading home after a hangout, especially in broad daylight. At least there shouldn't be. You wouldn't expect to later learn that one of your friends disappeared after saying goodbye and they were never seen alive again. But that is exactly what happened in today's case. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel and if you have never been here before, I am Berlea. It's nice to finally meet you. Let's go back to October 14th of 2010. It's a scene that's very similar to the one I just described, and it's playing out on the campus of Northern Illinois University. It's a little after 11am on a Thursday, and an 18 year old freshman named Antonette Keller, who goes by Tony, is hanging out with her friends. They're having a good time and many of them are fellow freshmen just like her. They're young adults who are still getting used to living away from home, having responsibility and more independence. They're all very excited to experience new things and get a taste of real freedom. And even though they've only been on campus for a little over a month at this point, they feel really close to one another. They've bonded over the excitement that comes from trying new things and becoming adults together. Now around 11.30am, Tony says that right before lunchtime, she wants to walk around a wooded area close to campus. This area is called Prairie Park. It's a 150 acre forest that's open to the public. It's full of walking trails, but otherwise it's pretty quiet and private. It kind of feels like a little wastes in nature just tucked away. Except the truth is that Prairie Park is not remote. It's sitting right along a freeway. And to get there, Tony plans to walk past a shopping mall that sits nearby. So you can start by taking the nature trail that's on campus along Lincoln Highway and then proceeding on that same trail across the street towards Prairie Park. The University newspaper called the Northern Star has an entire write-up about this park, saying that it offers peaceful beauty and they even show a photo of a tree that has an owl carved into it. Their paper has a YouTube channel and they did an entire video showcasing the river, a mural on one of the walls, the tranquil walking trails and people enjoying the view. All this is to say, it's not as though Tony was disappearing into the wilderness. She's walking down a busy road in broad daylight and taking pictures in a public park. Students at Northern Illinois University do this all the time. This is a very popular area to go hiking, to get in some exercise or just spend time in nature. Tony tells her friends she's going to be bringing her camera with her and she's going to take some photos and then she'll be able to reference some later when she's planning on doing a painting for an art project. And no one is surprised to hear any of this. Tony is very artistic. As a matter of fact, she's already decided to major in art and her specialty is blotter painting. She loves to create nature scenes and landscapes. So it makes sense that she would want to go out there and take these photos, especially to places like Prairie Park. Tony has always been interested in both art and music. She loves classic rock. Her favorite bands are Pink Floyd and The Beatles and she's very intelligent and hardworking. She's the kind of person who does well in school, has lots of friends and I'm saying this to say that she's not the dark, mysterious type of person. She's actually known for being the opposite, bubbly and friendly. She grew up in Plainville, Illinois. She went to New Quay Valley high school over in Naperville and by every account, she was just the kind of person who brightened her day. She had a nose piercing and a self-designed sunflower tattoo and an obsession with the color yellow. This was not just a preference. It was her color. It was the kind of thing that people knew about her and associated completely with the kind of person she was. One of her friends, I believe, said she was like sunshine personified. She had that sunflower tattoo on the upper right side of her chest, three sunflowers right under her color bone, a design that she created and everyone said it was extremely appropriate for her. Tony was bright and sunny and cheerful and whenever she wore a shirt that was cut low enough you could see her tattoo, of course people would ask her about it. Tony loved that. She loved people. She loved making them feel good and always made sure everyone was having a good time. She was also very outdoorsy and she loved trying new things and being challenged. She was experienced with camping and rock climbing and she backed it up. She wasn't just bubbly. She was genuinely quietly brave in a way that most people wouldn't have even known unless they were paying close attention. Her adventure studies teacher from high school Mandy Contos told a story about Tony that I think says everything about who she was on a class trip to Kettle Morang State Forest which is in Wisconsin, the students were expected to climb a 60 foot observation tower. Tony was afraid of heights but she didn't tell anyone that. She just started to climb. It was only when she got to the top 60 feet in the air that tears finally came streaming down her cheeks and even then she wasn't upset that she had done it. She just said I was scared of heights but I didn't want to miss out that was Tony. She saw things other people walked right past on those same nature walks. She was always the one stopping to point out unusual mushrooms, the strange formations, the details that no one else would notice. She had what her teacher called a keen eye for beauty and she was also silly. While paddling a canoe with her classmates, she would start singing Disney songs but the people who knew her really well also said she was a little unassuming. She was quirky and she didn't chase the crowd. She just moved through the world on her own terms and she somehow made everyone around her feel better. Even though Tony hadn't been in college very long, she was already in love with campus life. Every time she talked to her parents Roger and Diane on the phone back in Plainville, she would describe how she loved NIU and how much fun she was having and how many people she was meeting. She did have her parents back home and it's 23 year old brother and a cousin named Mary Tarling. And according to Mary, Tony told her family almost word for word, "I finally found where I fit." This works for me. And coming from an 18 year old who had only been on campus a little over a month, that's saying a lot. That's not just someone enjoying college, that is someone who feels like they have arrived somewhere that they're supposed to be. The school is huge too. With over 25,000 students living in the dorm rooms and even more off campus. The Cal Illinois is a fairly large town for the Midwest, but when you have a big optimistic and bubbly personality like Tony did, sometimes you need a big community to fill with all of your enthusiasm and joy. In spite of the school size though, NIU felt safe. There was a real sense of community. The students had a way of coming together, even when they didn't know each other very well. Sadly, these students are also currently going through a time of grief and healing. It was just a year and a half before, in February of 2008. There was a mass shooting on this campus. It was Valentine's Day, which reminded me a lot of the Parkland High School shooting which also happened on Valentine's Day in 2018. They were both carried out by former students. The one at NIU was carried out by a 27 year old graduate named Steven Kazmerzak. He walked into Cole Hall in the middle of the afternoon and opened fire on a crowd a lecture hall with a shotgun and three pistols. Five students were killed, 18 others hurt when the gunman entered an auditorium shot 50 times. The gunman then took his own life. The school honored the five students killed on that day. He killed five students and wounded 17 more before turning one of the guns on himself. The whole thing was only about six minutes. And it remains the deadliest school shooting in Illinois history. The campus never fully healed. You can't. That kind of violence doesn't just leave, it settles into the walls, into the way people walk across the quaternite, into the back of your mind, every time you're somewhere that maybe feels a little too quiet. And that left a scar on this community. Many people were still shaken now, even after time had gone by. Because of how shocking the killing spree was. It was hard to believe that something like that could happen there. The life was moving on. And it is easy to dismiss the shooting as an isolated event, something that would never, ever happen again. An incoming freshman like Tony, who were not enrolled at the time it happened, they want to look forward. They want to focus on the good. They want to live their lives and embrace each new challenge that every day brings. Which means Tony was thinking about the future and her upcoming project. Not the best. So back to October 14th. Tony says she has this art project. She's got to work on it and she walks away heading towards Prairie Park with her camera. She's wearing blue jeans, a gray jacket and a scarf with her camera in hand. No one gives it a second thought. No one realized that this was an important moment. That this is going to be the last time Tony would ever be seen alive. But then no one hears from her the next day on Friday, October 15th. And this isn't spite of the fact that Tony's supposed to be hanging out with one of her friends. And she doesn't show up. But since this is just a casual hangout, it's nothing major or the friend just shrugs it off. They figure Tony forgot or maybe she flaked. They were not worried. However, someone else was getting worried that day. Tony's parents. That's because she also kept in touch with them all the time. But earlier that week, she talked about coming home and spending time with her family over that weekend. It was homecoming. And Tony wanted to very literally come home. Which meant about an hour's drive away. Not too far at all. But she has not worked out any specifics like when she would be leaving, when she would be getting there. Plus, she does not have a car of her own. So she can't just come home whenever she feels like it. She has to coordinate with her parents to see when she'll be able to leave and when they would be free to pick her up. And where they should meet. But now it's Friday afternoon. It's getting close to the time when her parents need to hit the road. And she still has not confirmed any details. In fact, she wasn't replying to their text messages or picking up any of their calls. And that part was completely unlike Tony. She would not just ghost her own family. And she never had before. So they are convinced that something has happened to her. So before the day is over, they contact the police to report Tony missing. From this point on, Tony's cousin Mary becomes the family's voice to the outside world while Roger and Diane and Tony's older brother are grieving privately. Mary is the one fielding calls, giving statements and keeping the public updated. It's the kind of role that nobody volunteers for. You just end up in that position because someone has to hold everything together. And that was Mary. But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself. So when her parents call the police, the officers launch an investigation right away. They don't waste any time. The police contact campus officials and they get permission to search Tony's dorm room right away. She's living at Neptune North Residence Hall. And in there, they find her art portfolio where she keeps all of her completed sketches and her paintings. Now Tony's friends tell the police. She did have her portfolio with her when she left for her walk. So now the officers can tell that she must have stopped by her dorm at some point before she went missing. But the investigators don't find her camera. So their thinking is she must have dropped off her portfolio before walking to the park, probably because she didn't want to log around a big heavy art collection on a hike. And then she must have disappeared at some point during her walk to or from the park because she never had the chance to bring her camera back and put it away. But there's no sign that she left willingly or that she ran away. But also, there's no evidence of any kind of struggle in her dorm room. More investigation is needed at this point. So from there, the faculty cooperate with the police to try to find her. And word begins to spread across campus from security teams to faculty to the students themselves. For a lot of students there, this is a reminder of the mass shooting. Like I said, just under two years before this. Even though nobody knows for sure that Tony was a victim of a crime or if she's even hurt or in trouble, many people react with intense caution. School officials hire extra security guards. They tell students if they ever feel unsafe walking across campus anytime, day or night, they can call the guards. Someone will take them wherever they need to go. And if they need a ride because they're going somewhere too far away to walk, they can call the police between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. every single day. Officers voluntarily pick up students in their squad cars and drive them around all in the name of keeping them safe. Plus, these dorm rooms are already set up with electronic key cards. So you need to swipe your student ID badge to get in and out. But originally, they were programs so visitors could get through the doors at certain times, but now the school changed the system. So only actual residents can open those doors. And they want to limit how many people are coming and going from the living spaces. The university also starts posting updates about Tony directly on the NIU website so that people can easily keep tabs on this missing person's case and follow any developments as they happen. Or so they thought, but we'll get back into that. Now several of Tony's friends do create Facebook pages dedicated to finding her. The biggest one amassed more than 12,000 followers. And many were students who never even met Tony, but they still check that page every day for updates, sometimes multiple times a day. Now this big page is called Summoning of Yellow. And that name came from Tony's mom herself. Diane asked everyone who loved and cared about Tony to wear yellow because yellow was Tony's color. The Facebook page is run by a woman named Thelma Holderness. She is an NIU employee who knew Tony personally and became close to the family. She coordinates everything. The updates, the visuals, the calls to action. And she becomes one of the loudest, most consistent voices keeping Tony's name in front of people who might have otherwise moved on and forgot about her. It's too hard on Tony's mother Diane. She had to actually be hospitalized over the stress of not knowing where her daughter was, but they kept hoping. The new precautions at the university help some students feel safer. Like they have the idea that the school is looking out for them, but for others, it is just a constant reminder that things are not quite right. That Tony is still missing. And while it's great to protect the rest of the student body, these steps aren't getting anyone closer to finding Tony. Of course, her closest friends are deeply worried about her. And this includes a fellow student named Ben Yamamoto. He lives at the same dorm building as Tony and he's gotten to know her pretty well. When Ben hears the Tony has just finished, all he wants to do is find her safe and sound. So right away, he asks around and finds out that there's a volunteer search team's going to meet and he wants to get involved. He shows up one day hoping he's going to go out there and look for Tony. But before he can even get started, a police officer steps in and tells him you cannot be part of the search team. They say that they're nervous about letting students get involved in the investigation because they don't know if there is a violent criminal on campus on the loose targeting students. And the officers say that they cannot guarantee Ben will be safe if he leaves that campus. This is understandable because the police do not want anyone else getting hurt or going missing. And instead, they tell Ben and other students who are concerned to go hand out missing person's flyers with Tony's picture and information on them. It's a safer activity. Something they can do without actually leaving campus. And there's always the chance that someone's going to recognize the photo and they may come forward with information. So it's not like they're sitting around. They're actually doing something. The missing person's flyers were being put up everywhere. They had her description, 18 years old, five foot five, 130 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. She had the right side of her nose pierced and she had a tattoo of three sunflowers on her upper right chest. The information on her missing person's poster was very informative. It said that Ansonette Tony color is 18 and missing, a student at Northern Illinois University. She was the last recorded as swiping her campus card to the food court at 11.30 a.m. on October 14th of 2010. It has been reported that she was going for a walk in or around the area near Junction Center retail complex not far from the NIU campus and had her camera with her. Her scarf and her art portfolio was located in her room. She was wearing blue jeans and a gray or green colored jacket. That was the shopping complex that I told you was right near the path she was going to take into Prairie Park. A lot of the students are also wearing ribbons and buttons to raise awareness for Tony's case. They host meetings to brainstorm other ways to get involved. There was always police officers and school officials at these meetings warning them. Do not do too much. Do not do anything that could put you in danger. And within a few days of her disappearance, officials actually have to lock down the campus. They're only allowing students, faculty and staff and, of course, investigators to come on the grounds. If anyone doesn't have a good reason to be there, they're not allowed to be there. Officers question Tony's friends, her classmates, and even her dorm mates to see if anyone knows anything. As the hours tick by, it becomes days. They speak to at least 50 different potential witnesses. The police also organize searches on and off campus using trained teams and hot students. They focus a lot on Prairie Park, where Tony said she was headed on October 14th. And after two days on October 16th, the officers find something. Something that seems like it could be a body. And I'm warning it that way for a reason. I'm saying it seems to be a body, because at first, the police aren't entirely sure exactly what they found. They're clearly remains of some kind, but they are so badly burned. Burned enough that the officers can't tell if they're from a human or if they are from an animal. A forensic anthropologist is actually brought in to assess what they're dealing with. And even before the results come back, this expert says something that is horrifying, that somebody wanted that body destroyed to obscure identification. And that's not just a theory. That is a professional who has seen a lot of bodies and he's telling you exactly what he's looking at. And this is very important, 'cause usually fires alone aren't as destructive unless they're very hot, or they're allowed to burn very, very long time. It would take an accelerant like gasoline or caracene to burn a dead body beyond all recognition, which tells these officers, whoever or whatever this was, isn't some kind of freak accident. Someone tried to destroy a corpse intentionally. And even more concerning, the search teams find several items near the burned remains. They're scattered around and in some cases, they're out of sight under bushes or under plants. So it looks like they've been deliberately hidden there. And it takes the officers several days to find all these objects. The remains and the items surrounding them are all found in the same general area, the southern stretch of Prairie Park, just below Illinois Route 38. It's talked away enough that you wouldn't have stumbled across it casually. Someone knew exactly where they were going. And within just a week or so, they've uncovered a sketch pad, a camera, a cell phone, some charred clothing, and a lens from a broken pair of eyeglasses. Now, the camera, the phone and the sketch pad were identified as Tony's, but the police don't know who the clothes and the lens belong to. The glasses lens in particular was a very odd clue. It's not Tony is because she doesn't wear eyeglasses. So who's was it? The police will log it, they bag it and they set it aside. At this point, they don't know what any of this means, but they will. Investigators make specific reference to those items and their reports, the clothing, the cell phone, the camera. Because burning a body is one thing. But making sure someone's belongings burned as well, tells them something more about the intention. If this is a human body, specifically Tony's, this wasn't a panic, this was a cleanup. Oh, and this is not hard proof that the remains are Tony's. But unfortunately, at the same time, it is not looking good either. The officers quietly reclassify her case from a missing person's investigation to a homicide investigation, very quietly. At first, they don't even announce what they've found. They also don't notify her parents. The investigators will later say that they didn't want to stress out the family or make the process any more difficult than it already was. Their fear was that if they say that they found a human body and they think that it's Tony's, this would be devastating news for her relatives. If it later comes back, that the remains belong to a dog or a deer or some other animal, it would mean that all of that grief and torment had been for nothing. Now that's one way to look at it, but it's not the way her loved ones would see it. They wanted to know every detail. They wanted to be kept apprised of the entire investigation, but instead, they were left in the dark. It was so disheartening that Tony's cousin Mary specifically mentioned it to the media how genuinely hard it was not having any information and to have to get it from where everyone else was. Online and in the newspapers. And I agree with the family. I wanna know, regardless if it turned out not to be my child, I would want to know, but they don't tell Tony's loved ones about the body. They also don't make any announcements to the press, although they do seal off Prairie Park so that no one could walk on its paths or disturb the potential crime scene. For forensic teams gathered the burnt remains and they run tests to determine where they came from. While they wait for the results, the investigators have to proceed as though they're still a chance that Tony's still alive. They're doubtful though, but it is a possibility. So they collect tips from witnesses including some people who claim they have seen Tony alive and well, even after the burned remains were found. For example, on October 20th, a tipster calls in to say that they saw Tony alive. And even though they didn't get a good look at her, the caller says they were driving down a street about three or four minutes away from campus. And as they were going past a railroad, they spotted a young woman who seemed to match Tony's description walking along the railroad tracks. Now, as soon as police take this statement, they send a huge team out to that stretch of road and they look for her. But ultimately, that tip doesn't pan out. While they're investigating, the police show this alleged witness a picture of Tony. And they say, is this the same young woman that you spotted on the train tracks? And once the person gets a better look at Tony, they admit to police, it's not her. And then it has to be frustrating because you're using resources, you're going out there and then it's a dead end. But they have to check. Now, just 12 days after Tony vanished, a white cross was put up near the entrance of Prairie Park on Elk's Lodge property. It gave the community somewhere to go that was close and visible and could be maintained since Prairie Park was now closed due to the investigation. A small memorial has been created in the park to remember her and emotions at the school are running high. Students say it's partly due to lack of information in the case and because of violence on campus two years ago when a gunman shot five students inside a lecture hall and then killed himself. The man who put up that cross was Greg Zannes. He was a carpenter from the area who had an organization run by volunteers called Crosses for losses. Greg would travel across the country, putting up his memorial crosses whenever they requested. And he never accept donations and he always volunteered his own lumber and he would use his own car and not ask for gas money. And he had been to this place before back in 2008 after the mass shooting at this university. Back then he put up five crosses on a snow-covered hill outside of Wilson Hall for the five students who lost their lives. Kale de Balski, Catalina Garcia, Juliana Gahant, Ryan Mace, and Daniel Parameter. Greg started this mission back in 1996 after his own father-in-law was shot and killed. And he personally discovered his body. These crosses mean a lot to these communities and students, students and friends were at Tony's Cross, adorning it with everything from flowers, teddy bears and little notes. And while all this is happening, the tips, the searches, the false alarms, Tony's cousin Mary is still speaking for the family publicly. She tells reporters that even with everything pointing in the worst direction, they're not giving up hope. They just wanted Tony to be brought back to them and all they really wanted were answers. It wasn't denial. It was this family bracing themselves while still refusing to let go completely. Countless tips come in and they all are dead ends. Every time it seems like the officers might have a break, it fizzles to nothing. At one point, a member of the search team says they found a shovel sitting out somewhere south of campus and the police examine it. They give it a full review just in case and ultimately they determine it doesn't have anything to do with Tony's disappearance or the remains in the park. They also send a dive team to search a river right next to this park. And even after trained divers scour the bottom of the server, which is completely muddy and hard to see from the surface, they find nothing. The police even briefly consider whether Tony may have taken her own life, but all of Tony's friends and relatives dismiss that theory they call it ridiculous. Tony wasn't depressed. She loved her life and they don't believe she vanished willingly, unfortunately. This means that the detective's best lead is still the burned remains that they found in Prairie Park, especially because on October 20th, the officers found another piece of evidence connecting those remains to Tony. They found her dorm key. The electronic key card she used to get in and out of her building, it's found in Prairie Park. But here's what's interesting. The key card was not found near the burned remains, but in a different part of the park entirely. And Tony's parents tell the police, she actually lost that key weeks ago. So they don't think this means she dropped the key on the day. she went missing. And Tony's family said they believe she was still alive and that she was going to be home soon. They truly wanted to believe that. But three days later, on October 23rd, the forensic investigators finally complete their initial tests. They collect their results, and they share them with the police. The body is indeed human. Now they cannot say whether it's Tony's at this point. That would require genetic testing because it remains were so badly damaged. They couldn't do dental identification. And tragically, a police officer has to now break this news to Tony's relatives that her body may have been found. And that's when they request DNA samples from her parents to be tested against their remains. This is also when the detectives reveal to the public that Tony's body may have been found all the way back on October 16th. And of course, this causes outrage. Even though they're clear that they have not identified them as when these remains, there's still a chance she could be alive. It is emotional whiplash. It is back and forth. People were still out there looking and now they're feeling like fools. How could the police keep that secret from the public? The city's police chief is defending the delay in announcing the discovery of human remains saying they were so badly burned it took a week to confirm that they were human. I just feel a little bit in the dark from all the information that's being withheld from the students. I feel that the university and the city could have helped out and give a little more information. It's really sad that, you know, we don't know any fine details about the situation. And I just feel I feel very unsafe. I'm sure it felt like incompetence. But the police called it, keeping things close to the vest, protecting the investigation and keeping the leads coming in. But the police were not that optimistic. They believed Tony was dead. As we continue to uncover new information and evidence in the case, we want to stress to you that we are not at liberty to disclose it. To do so would compromise our efforts. We must preserve the integrity of the investigation. We cannot compromise the ability of prosecutors to try and conduct the offender. Sure enough, after the announcement, tips about potential sightings completely dried up. However, different kinds of tips began trickling through to the police. Numerous witnesses came forward to say that on October 14th, the day that Tony went missing, they had spotted a man walking through Prairie Park and they described him as middle-aged white with blonde hair and blue eyes. Now, based on the multiple tips and the descriptions, the officers conclude that this is 34-year-old local William Curl. Now, I want to say that on its own, it's not really that suspicious that a local man is walking through a local park. A lot of other residents and locals like William like to walk on the trails in Prairie Park. It's a very popular spot. And this man went there regularly. The people in the neighborhood saw him there day in and day out. But the investigators look in him. They learned that William had lived in the town a very long time, four years, in a building called Golden Year's Plaza. It's a 16-story high rise on the 500 block of Taylor Street. It's the kind of place that was originally built for the elderly and people with disabilities. William was neither. He was just someone who qualified on income alone. He's been unemployed, long-term. He lives on the eighth floor and neighbors say the one thing they did notice about him was that he could often be found outside the building, smoking cigarettes, alone. That was about the extent of what anyone knew about his daily routine. Beyond that, nobody seemed to know much about him. People said that William was quiet. Very quiet. He kept himself. He wasn't really close to anyone. He didn't seem like he had many friends. Even his neighbors who lived in the same building as him didn't know anything about William. He never made small talk with them. He never said hi or good morning when he walked by. He just sort of kept to himself. Now there were three security cameras on every floor of that building. 16 floors worth a footage of a man who somehow still managed to remain a complete mystery to everyone around him. What can cameras really tell you about a man who just kind of moses around? But there were stories. One time, someone who lived in that building was having some car trouble in the parking lot. And by coincidence, there was William walking right by them. So the resident asked for help. And William just says, "No." He said, "I'm busy." The resident was begging him. They even offered to pay him. And eventually, William gave in and he helped put the point is that he did not want to be bothered. He made that perfectly clear. But I do want to note something. That's not a crime. People are allowed to be quiet, shy, introverted. If they can choose not to engage with people even in the same building, that's their choice. And the police know that. William's quiet with drawn personality doesn't automatically make him suspicious. And when the detectives here that William may have been near the scene, Wintony could have been potentially killed. They don't think of him as a suspect. Instead, they figure he could be a potential witness, and they need more of those. So they invite him to the station and William completely consents. However, during questioning, he doesn't say much. I mean, that's his personality. Even after showing him a photograph of Tony, he tells the officers he doesn't remember seeing her on October 14th or anything out of the ordinary for that matter. So the interview wraps up and William leaves. That was it. Until the investigators uncover a new piece of information. At some point, after Tony's disappearance, they find out that William made a very weird call to 911, reporting a fire in Prairie Park. Huh. Now that does seem like a very odd coincidence, doesn't it? And on that call, William said that he hadn't seen the flames himself, but he had spotted smoke. And he told the firefighters exactly where to go to take a look. Except this is what was interesting. It was very common for people to light up bonfires in the park. There were even a dozen or so unofficial bonfire pits all around Prairie Park, places that people had set up those rings of rocks and stacked up kindling and arranged everything you would need for a small illicit blaze. There's no reason William would have to call 911 about seeing smoke. This was an ordinary everyday occurrence. And he was always in this area. Presumably, this was the same fire that burned the remains that the officers later found, the ones they believed were Tony's. So I'm going to summarize. William walked in Prairie Park, regularly, almost every day. He had to have known about these illegal bonfires. But for some reason, he calls to report specifically the smoke on October 14th. The exact time when investigators believed that someone was trying to dispose of a body possibly Tony's by lighting it on fire. And there's another odd thing. William doesn't bring up this 911 call when the investigators were interviewing him. And you would think when they said, did you see anything odd, especially on that specific day at the park, he would have mentioned he called 911. But he said nothing. It was almost like he didn't want the police to know that he was the one who made the report. Now this is not a smoking gun. But the discrepancy is just as vicious enough that the officers wanted to follow up interview with him. But that is when they learn, William's gone around the time of his disappearance because now he's vanished. His mother also reports that her car has been stolen. And when investigators pull up William's bank account and his credit card records, they see a ton of charges out in Mexico. So now it looks like this man who was already looking suspicious has stolen his mother's car without her permission, just took it, then left the country. So this solidifies things for the officers. This man wouldn't have fled the United States unless he had something to hide, right? So now he's a wanted man. And in late October, they get lucky. Investigators out on Louisiana learn the William is in their state. He had crossed back into the US and made his way to Covington, Louisiana, where he was trying to pick up work as a day laborer. And that's where federal marshals tracked him down, not at a job site and not on the run, but just sitting in a hotel room waiting to start a shift that he would never make it to. And that is because the local Louisiana officers find him and they arrest him on charges of obstruction of justice and driving a stolen vehicle. He's then going to be extradited back to Illinois and he's about to face even more serious counts related to Tony's supposed murder. We're going to get to that. But there's an interrogation that happens in Louisiana, but it's conducted by Illinois detectives Bob Radell and Michael Stewart, who have made this trip specifically to question William. And this time, the investigators are much more aggressive and suspicious compared to his first questioning session. At that point, he was only a witness. They think William is now the person responsible for Tony's disappearance and possible murder. They know he wouldn't have skipped town unless he was guilty of something. [BLANK_AUDIO]