College Girl Kidnapped After Leaving Work, Is Then Found Dead In A Local Park And ATM Footage Reveals Who Murdered Her
Grove City, Ohio. Reagan Tokes was a 21-year-old college girl attending Ohio State University. She was studying psychology and got all As.
She was just months away from graduating in May of 2017 before her life was viciously taken away from her.
“Today my dad emailed me diploma frames and told me to pick one out and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tear up,” she tweeted, three days before her murder.
When Reagan wasn’t busy studying hard or working, she liked to go to brunch on Sundays and catch up on her beauty sleep.
Her middle name was Delaney. She had a sister named Makenzie. She was just an all-around kind and loving person. A down-to-earth, good girl. Someone we all would have liked to have as a friend.
Reagen was close to her whole family, but she shared a special bond with her dad, Toby Tokes. She texted him every single day and called him frequently too.
She worked as a waitress at a local bar in Columbus called Bodega and would let her dad know when she finished up a shift.
When she failed to text him saying that she got home safe one night, Reagen’s parents grew increasingly concerned.
Facebook; Reagan is pictured on the left with her sister on campus
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It was the night of February 8th, 2017. Toby instantly knew something was wrong when he didn’t hear from Reagan after her shift, and when she failed to reach out to him in the hours afterward.
Reagan always texted him or returned his calls. For her to go silent had to mean something terrible had happened to her.
But what actually happened to Reagan was far worse and more brutal than anyone could have imagined.
Facebook; Reagan smiles in the photo above
Reagan’s family wasted no time in trying to track Reagan down. Her sister Makenzie started contacting all of her friends, asking if they had seen her.
They also contacted Reagan’s roommates, but they confirmed she hadn’t made it back home and they didn’t know where she was.
She hadn’t made any new posts on social media.
Everyone who was close to Reagan had no idea where she had gone.
The next morning, Reagan still hadn’t come back, and her roommates said her bed was perfectly made. She never slept in it.
Reagan also failed to turn up for her classes that day, which was also a big red flag. It’s something that this straight-A student just wouldn’t do.
Where was Reagan?
Facebook; Reagan wears a black dress, above
It was now February 9th, and 15 minutes south of where Reagan worked at Bodega, a man was in Scioto Grove Metro Park. He thought he spotted something weird lying in the park’s grass.
He got out to take a closer look and realized it was a young, brunette woman. She was unfortunately not breathing.
She had two gunshot wounds to her head and no clothing on. He called 911 and police quickly arrived on the scene.
They could tell this young woman had been murdered somewhere else and dumped in the park, due to the lack of blood from her wounds.
She had been shot through her face and she also had another bullet wound on the backside of her neck.
She had no clothing and no personal things to identify her with except for a tiny tattoo and a necklace still hanging around her neck.
An autopsy confirmed she had died from the gunshot wounds, and one had been at such close range it was clearly an execution. She had also been raped.
Authorities realized that there was a recent missing persons report filed for a brunette woman in her 20s, and sadly, they were able to confirm this woman in the park was Reagan.
But who had done something so brutal to such a kind college girl?
Facebook; Reagan holds up sparklers in the photo above
Authorities started to retrace Reagan’s steps, starting with her job. There was security footage showing her exiting Bodega on the night she disappeared, just after her shift ended.
At 9:43 that evening, Reagan leaves and walks off in the direction of where she normally parked her car.
Reagan always parked her car on a side street near Bodega that wasn’t well lit and also didn’t have any security cameras.
It seemed kind of a dead-end to have Reagan walk off-screen, never to be seen again, but she still had something missing that could potentially provide a lot of evidence: her car, a 1999 four-door Honda Acura.
Facebook; Reagan smiles while at an Ohio football game, above
Authorities were able to find Reagan’s car on February 10th, on Oakwood Avenue. It was sitting in a residential area, just 4 miles away from where she worked.
Even though someone had clearly gone to great lengths to try to destroy any evidence inside of the car by dumping gasoline all over the interior, there still were several things inside that helped hunt down Reagan’s killer.
There were gas cans in the trunk of Reagan’s car.
There were receipts from several ATMs that showed Reagan had withdrawn $60 from her bank account less than an hour after she was last seen leaving Bodega.
There were cigarette butts in the backseat of Regan’s car, and also outside of it.
Authorities DNA tested the recovered cigarette butts and also set off to see what the security footage from the ATMs showed.
Sure enough, the ATM footage revealed who murdered Reagan.
Facebook; Reagan smiles in the photo above
When authorities took a look at the surveillance footage, they could clearly see there was a man sitting in the passenger’s side seat of Reagan’s car.
What was not clear was who he was, since the footage ended up being too low quality to enhance it enough. That was ok because the results of the DNA on the cigarette butts came back with a match.
His name was Brian Golsby, and he was already a registered offender.
As authorities continued the investigation, they obtained video evidence of Brian buying gas cans the day Reagan was found dumped in the park.
Chillingly enough, Brian was wearing a GPS tracking ankle monitor, and it pinpointed his every move. Authorities were able to show he was at the exact spot Reagan’s car was after she left work. He was also at the ATM locations they had receipts and video footage for. He was at the park Reagan had been dumped at.
They also had Brian’s DNA on Reagan’s body. At first, Brian refused to talk. Then, he admitted he did kidnap Reagan as she left work because he wanted to rob her.
From there, he spun a story about some guy named TJ who was a friend of his that came along for the ride that night. Brian said they both robbed Reagan after driving around to a few ATMs.
Brian then admitted to sexually assaulting Reagan, before saying TJ shot her. It turns out, there never was a TJ. Brian did it all alone.
Around a year after Reagan was brutally murdered, Brian went on trial.
Facebook; Reagan smiles at left along with her family while at a college football game
One of the key witnesses at the trial was Brian’s girlfriend. She explained to the courtroom Brian gifted her a white wallet and a black Kate Spade purse on February 8th, a day before Reagan was found.
This wallet and purse ended up being Reagan’s, and they even still had her identification inside of them after Brian gave them to his girlfriend.
She did end up bringing these things straight to the police. She also confessed that Brian had driven them both to get fast food in Reagan’s car.
So this guy brutally assaults and murders Reagan, decides to give her personal belongings to his girlfriend as a gift, and then uses Reagan’s car to drive them to get food.
Facebook; Reagan smiles with her sister in front of a fountain
Brian was found guilty of raping, kidnapping, and murdering Reagan on March 13th, 2018. The jury did struggle on whether to give him the death sentence, ultimately deciding he should get life in prison without parole.
On top of that, Brian was handed down an additional 66 years for being connected to multiple robberies that happened in the days before Reagan’s murder in an area known as German Village.
It’s important to point out that even though Brian had been wearing a GPS tracker on his ankle the entire time he committed 6 robberies, then killed Reagan, nobody monitored that information in real-time.
He was living in a housing unit geared towards reintroducing offenders into society as well, and they weren’t exactly required to keep tabs on his tracking information either.
Reagan’s family couldn’t help but think if someone had been monitoring the GPS tracker on Brian’s ankle, he never would have been able to walk the streets as a free man, hunting for victims.
A few months later, Reagan’s family worked alongside lawmakers to get the Reagan Tokes Act signed into law in December of 2018. The law has guidelines for minimum and maximum sentences for the worst and most violent offenders.
Following this, the law passed in Reagan’s memory was added onto in April of 2019. In this section of the act, it outlines ways for parolees to be monitored better.
Governor DeWine has so far replied to this saying the way parolees are currently monitored will be reviewed.
“You hear about these things on the news but you never think it could happen. I love you with all my heart gee gee,” Makenzie tweeted, along with a photo of her with her sister as children.
GoFundMe; pictured above is Reagan at right, along with her family
Reagan’s family shared on GoFundMe, “She was a true gift and words cannot describe the amount of love and joy she brought to our lives and to the lives of others.”
“There is now a tremendous void that is our present and our future due to her tragic departure from this earthly life.”
Reagan’s family has created a scholarship fund in her memory. So far they have raised $95,260 and you can donate to it here.
They went on to share this, “We are so humbled and grateful to all those who have donated and wish to share with you these words that are in a picture frame that hangs in our family home and is surrounded by Reagan’s school pictures throughout the years.”
“People are sometimes unreasonable and self-centered-love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives-do good anyway. If you are successful you may win false friends and true enemies-succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow-do good anyway.”
“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight-build anyway. People you really want to help may attack you if you help them-help anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt-give the world your best anyway. The world is full of conflict, choose peace of mind anyway. ~ Anonymous”
Facebook; Reagan smiles above, showing off her Ohio pride
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