Transcript of True Crime Vault: The Accused

In 2010, a family of 4 in California goes missing. Investigators spend years looking for answers. Is this a family on the run, or is the truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this is What Happened to the McStays? Follow What Happened to the McStays for weekly episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

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Living the dream, and it all just shattered. 3-Year-old Riley Fox was taken from her home in the middle of the night. It was something out of a movie. In an instant, my life was forever changed. Truth is a broken heart.

You know, we have followed this case for more than a decade and we've never been able to get this out of our mind. Police department. My daughter is nowhere, nowhere to be found. How old is she? 3.

So you cannot find your 3-year-old daughter? No. Did you have anything to do with the death of your daughter? Not at all. Not at all.

There was this police interrogation, 14 hours in this room, and then the young father confesses. It was just unthinkable. Something about that just did— it was like, oh my God. Most of us say, I would never confess to something I didn't do. People would be surprised.

The family believes 100% in Kevin's innocence. They were so focused on this young father that there were signs all over the neighborhood. The same night Riley disappeared, there was a burglary at the house right across the street. How could all of these signs be missed? That's when things really get intense.

For the first time, we're now hearing from the FBI. They started the case all over again, and only then did we learn what really happened. The truth is a broken heart still beats.

My first day as jailbird.

For one, I should not be here at all. I'm very disappointed in myself.

I could hear people saying, we got the baby Riley killer, kind of singing it.

And that is when it all had begun, the journey through the second nightmare of my life. I was the furthest person to do this to Riley, but yet here I am.

Wonderful family. They were living the dream, and it all just shattered.

Will you do a dance? Yeah. All right. Dance it up. Dance it up, baby.

Kevin Fox is your all-American guy. A good union job as a painter. Melissa and Kevin went to high school together. They met after a volleyball game, and she asked him out for a date. We went to homecoming together, and we went to prom together.

He's on the basketball team. She's a cheerleader. We were still dating when God made plans for us, and we had Tyler. And then we got married when he was 3 and had Riley a year after that. He was just such a loving, doting father.

I feel like that's what I was put on this earth to do, honestly. That's my joy in life. Riley. He had an especially close relationship with Riley. The two of them were inseparable.

Butch, where are you going? I'm scared. What?

She had this perfect black hair and perfect little round face. She'd just light up a room. Go real fast.

She was like a little pocket rocket. Run, run, run, run, run! Riley was a lot like Melissa. She was a spunky, sassy little girl. Hey, where you going?

She could be a little princess. She loved to have her nails painted. She was funny. She was silly. She was just a sweetheart.

Did you go fishing last night? Yes, I did. She wasn't afraid to get dirty and play. When I think of Riley, I picture her on Kevin's shoulders. She was always a daddy's girl.

Dad! Hi! Hi! I love you! I love you!

She'd just make your heart melt. Her hugs, her smile.

A really great portrait of the family emerged at the wedding of Kevin's brother. Riley stole the show. In a little snow-white princess dress, she had her hair whipped up into this confection of curls. Well, there was a real long aisle, and she was supposed to take a right-hand turn, and she kept on going up the stairs. She just wanted to be up in Kevin's arms.

She didn't really care about throwing the flowers.

One of the most moving images from that wedding was this, this photo of the family together. Kevin and Melissa, Tyler and Riley, this beautiful young family. And what became heartbreaking about it is that it was the last photo of them ever as a family together.

The weekend of June 5th is a turning point in the lives of the Fox family. Mom goes out of town on a breast cancer walk. Got up early Saturday and started the walk. It was a beautiful day. It was hard.

It was long. But we had a really good time together. We were just excited. We had matching shirts and shorts, and we got ribbons for our hair. Kevin and my brother Tony were going to go to a concert that night, Saturday night, and my mom had the kids.

We went down to Belmont Music Fest, had some beers. Stayed there for a while. Right afterwards, we went to a burrito place and then went back to Wilmington. I know that you were partying somewhat. I mean, how big of an issue was alcohol that night?

It wasn't a big issue at all. I had some beers. I was definitely not wasted. Kev was super adamant about picking the kids up at my mom's, but it was pretty late. I remember looking at the back of the car, and that was the last time I saw Riley.

1:00 AM, he picks the kids up, brings them home. It's late, so he puts them down in the living room. Because their beds weren't made, he places Tyler in a chair with an ottoman, and he puts Riley on the couch. Watched TV, went outside and got my smokes. I had a cigarette on the porch.

He remembers looking around and not seeing anyone out on the streets. It was just dead quiet.

And then I went to bed myself. You went to bed. The kids were sleeping in the living room. Yes. And what's the next thing that you remember?

Tyler waking me up and said that Riley was gone.

At 8 AM, Tyler came into Kevin's room. He shook my, my leg and said, Dad, Riley's gone. And it really didn't sink in at first. He gets up, he starts looking frantically all over the house. He thinks that she may be hiding somewhere.

He looks in closets, he runs outside, and he calls the neighbor's house. It was a complete mystery. Nobody had any explanation for where she could have gone, where she would be. So then I started panicking. He decides to call the Wilmington Police Department.

After about 30 or 40 minutes, he calls to say that he can't find his child. Wilmington Police Department. Yeah, I was wondering if you could send an officer over here. My name's Kevin Fox. I woke up this morning and my daughter is nowhere— nowhere to be found.

How old is she? 3. You're kidding me. No. You can't find your 3-year-old daughter?

No. For a 3-year-old to go missing in Wilmington This doesn't happen there. The worst news any parent could imagine. Sends chills through me.

Not at all. Not at all.

Wilmington, Illinois is the quintessential American small town.

4.2 square miles, sediment, the cornfields of the Kankakee River.

A small community outside of Chicago, about 5,000 people. It's a small town where everybody pretty much knew everybody.

On the morning of June 6th, Kevin Fox is increasingly panicked He can't find his daughter Riley. The police come to help him search. When police showed up that day, one of the first things Kevin mentioned was the front door, which he remembered having, he thought, closed and locked the night before. And when he got up that morning, that door was open. The police stated they found no sign of forcible entry.

Kevin told the investigators that the lock on the back door You know, for the most part, the house appears normal. You could see toys scattered about throughout the house, posters that the kids had made for Melissa still sitting on the kitchen table. But one of the things that they did find was that yellow blanket still sitting on the sofa where he put Riley to bed. Kevin was super distraught, on edge, crying, scared.

Kevin's wife, Melissa, the day before went to Chicago to go on a breast cancer walk with her friends. It was beautiful out. We all start walking. Obviously, everybody's pretty sore. We were like maybe an hour or so in.

I decided to call Kevin. He sounded so startled. I knew immediately something was wrong. You could just see the color from her face just kind of drop. He just said, Riley's gone.

And I immediately hit the ground. The phone fell out of my hand. She just kind of collapsed. We got in the car and drove back to Wilmington. We got off 55, and we turned left at the stop sign to head back home.

It was something out of a movie. I mean, something you never in your wildest dreams— We saw people just combing the woods in the ditches. People on four-wheelers, people are on foot. I feel like the entire town was out looking for her. I think that's when it hit me that this was, you know, this was serious.

Police and the community mounted a massive manhunt. The town mobilized immediately. Neighbors, relatives, friends, and volunteers numbering in the hundreds joined in the search.

They had tables set up, tents set up. There were cops all over. I don't like the circumstances, but it's amazing to see how much people are willing to do for us. I started out searching, and then they told me to stick around in case they had any questions, and you just feel helpless.

One of the places people began searching was Forsyth Woods. Just a big area of meadow with a creek running through it.

A mother-daughter went looking down the creek. I just felt compelled to come and look for her. Through the brambles and leaves and twigs. I can't even explain it. I just had this really bad feeling about this place, and that's why I came here.

The mother caught a glimpse of something and screams. It looked like it was a plastic bag, like a grocery bag that was bubbled up in the water.

So I walked a little closer, and that's when I saw her. She was face down, and, um, she was face down in the creek. Dad! Hi! I love you.

I love you. Remember that you came together to find one of our own. Their 3-year-old daughter Riley who'd been missing all day, had been found dead.

There was, like, a lot of commotion, and they came over and grabbed me and Kevin. They put us in separate cop cars. It felt strange. I didn't understand what was going on.

When we got to the police station, they just started asking questions, and I was like, is someone gonna tell me what's going on?

We walked into the room where they were at, and they looked at us, and we were all crying. My dad said, it's not good, she's dead.

I think, like, I punched the wall a couple times, the black wall. I just didn't want to— I didn't, I didn't want to believe it.

Catching my brother as his knees gave out on him. And, you know, everybody just sobbed.

Kevin and Melissa Fox are living a parent's worst nightmare. But on this night, at least, they have the support of an entire community. There had been a vigil that evening where the community came together. Life can be so hard.

The community, they're like, there's some predator crazy person running around snatching children. Today I let my children play out in the backyard, fenced backyard. We're not in the front, and that's not normal.

On this day, a lot is happening. Not only does Riley Fox go missing, but the police are responding to a burglary. On the very same block. There is a neighbor literally across the street from Kevin. She had a section of her screen cut out.

The door was unlocked. I think she initially reported that nothing was taken. She felt that someone had broken into her house. You gotta wonder, are these things connected? The police, the first day or so, received a couple of tips about a suspicious vehicle That neighbors had seen in the area overnight.

It was a red Chevy Beretta. The Will County Sheriff's Office says that initial reports that an unknown red car had been prowling the neighborhood early Sunday are not credible. At this point, there is no description of a vehicle used by a possible kidnapper. At one point, it seemed like there were not a whole lot of leads, and it was like, How did this even happen and who was responsible? Police weren't saying much publicly.

They were remaining extraordinarily tight-lipped in the case. But behind the scenes, they were already heading out, you know, into that creek searching for evidence. And as we got a little closer, I'm like, wow, there's a shoe in there. It can be difficult to sift out the clues. You might even overlook a piece of evidence that could practically spell out a case.

The killer's name?

Not at all. Not at all.

3-Year-old Riley Fox's drowned body was found in a creek about 4 miles from her home. Volunteers found the little girl's body in a creek in the Forsyth Woods. Police say whoever killed her took her to these woods to try to hide her body.

The thing that stood out was the Forsyth Preserve, because unless you were from that area, you would never, never find that place.

This is the location where Riley was found. This is where she floated up to. Forsyth Woods and Forked Creek, where Riley's body was found, suddenly become ground zero for this investigation. And the Will County Sheriff's Department is tasked with leading the investigation. Investigators tonight brought boats to the scene to comb for evidence.

There was a logjam further downstream that went from bank to bank, and anything that got thrown into the water was going to get caught. That's the location where I found the shoe. A little while later, they come across a matching sneaker. There was a tree branch that was in the water, and a shoe flipped up that was caught on the shoelace. 20 years, I never found a match shoe.

They take the tennis shoes, put them in evidence, and that was the end of it. And here's the thing, there's actually something written in the tongue of the shoe, the letters EBY. They never looked at those shoes. Dad! Hi.

Hi. When Riley is found, She has duct tape across her mouth. She has residue on her wrists that would suggest that she may have been duct taped on her wrists. She just had on, like, a top-type shirt. Her partially clothed body was soon discovered.

The toddler's drowned body was found in the creek. The child was held under the water, her mouth taped shut. The forensic examination revealed that Riley Fox was alive at the time she entered the creek. Additionally, the autopsy revealed that Riley Fox suffered non-lethal head injuries and that a sexual assault had taken place.

The police were hoping to get DNA evidence from her clothing or from her body. They did a rape kit, and they did test for blood, bodily fluids not belonging to Riley. There were about 20 items that were eventually sent to the FBI for forensic testing. The rape kit, the duct tape, Riley's clothes. The problem was there was this enormous backlog at Quantico.

The funeral services were held at St. Rose Catholic Church. 6,000 people showed up. We all decided that we were going to wear pink. We had ribbons and pins with her picture. The little girl who loved pink is mourned by family and friends in this small southwest suburban town of Wilmington.

Bits of pink were seen throughout the funeral service for Riley Fox. There were lots of photographers and reporters watching people come in and out of the church. The police are there too, but to surveil, to observe. To watch for the killer. There were 2 detectives with video cameras pointed at Kevin Fox.

Within an hour of the funeral ending, police came to my house, and they asked if there was any reason that I would believe Kevin to be capable of doing something like this. And before the question even came out of their mouth, my answer was no.

At one point, officers asked if they would mind if they asked Tyler, the son, a few questions. Tyler Fox is an incredibly important witness. He's the first person who sees that his sister is missing. He should have been interviewed on day one. They told me they just wanted to see if they could jog his memory, if he might have remembered something from that night that he might have been afraid to tell Kevin or I.

Fast forward 16 days, he's interviewed by the child advocacy forensic interviewer. Just have a seat there for me. The interview was a disaster from minute one. All right. I'm Julianne Himmelstein, and I'm a former federal prosecutor.

I had the opportunity to interview thousands of children. I normally do not have a desk in between Me and the child. I have a box of crayons and paper. Where was Riley? On the couch.

How did she get on the couch? Dad put her on there. The interviewer continued to ask him about where the father was, where Kevin was, to the point where he became upset. I mean, sobbing, crying.

He was visibly shaken. He pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his face. He curls up in his chair. Did you take Riley outside? No.

Did you see Dad carry her out just for a little bit? No. It's okay if you did. Did you see Dad take her out for just a little bit? No.

Was he carrying her? No. 168 times. He says his father had nothing to do with Riley's disappearance. No.

No. No. 168 times he says he didn't see anything. He was asleep. No.

But they won't take no for an answer. I need to know who took Riley out of the house. I don't know. Or who did she go with? I don't know.

A detective was behind a one-way mirror His form was outlined ghostly, like a specter watching every move Tyler made, every word he spoke. And what was his name? All right. I don't think there's any more questions for you. She shuts it down finally.

The kid is hysterically crying. Obviously, he's in so much pain. It's just very disturbing to watch it. Hurts your stomach. She made me cry.

I had just lost a child, and then to see the way that they decided to treat the one that I still had, it was, it was really terrible. After they had questioned Tyler, I knew that that was a red flag. Chad felt that the police were focusing on Kevin. They kept dropping by the house. One officer would come over just I said, would you please talk to an attorney?

No obligation. Kevin and I were like, we're fine. What do we need an attorney for? Kevin and Melissa don't realize this, but there is this dark cloud of suspicion beginning to form over Kevin Fox. One of the things detectives are looking at is this piece of grainy surveillance video from a mobile station right there in town of an SUV, a vehicle seen in those early morning hours when Riley disappeared.

And they believe that whoever's driving that car might be Riley Fox's killer. We were getting ready to have dinner, and the police called me. They said, Melissa, we need you and Kevin to get here immediately. We've got something to tell you about the case. The Foxes think, this is it.

This is what we've been waiting for. But, you know the old saying, be careful what you wish for.

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It had been 4 and a half months since Riley Fox disappeared, and there's this growing pressure on the chief prosecutor, Jeff Tomczak, for some sort of break in the case. And there's this other dynamic playing out that people recognize, which is that he was in the fight of his political life. I mean, Election Day was a week away. Jeff Tomczak wants to be reelected. He's got a tough opponent.

The race is tight. The toughest prosecutor's office in Illinois. That's what I've done for Will County, and that's what I'm proud to continue to do for the next 4 years. Tom's act seemed to be an increasingly losing battle for the state's attorney's race. There are some who begin to wonder, you know, would a high-profile arrest help his campaign?

On October 26th, police contacted Kevin and Melissa. There had been developments in the case. And I was just like, oh my gosh, this is it. They found the person. Like, we're gonna know what happened.

Now it's the evening. Kevin's been working since 4:30 that morning. But of course, he and Melissa want to know what happened to their little girl. They go down to the police station.

And then when they get there, They immediately separate them.

They took her down a hallway and they took me, um, it was like a room up on a stage. Walk up the stairs and then it was a real, real small room. It's a little tiny room, more comparable to a cell, and they have him pinned back in the corner of the room. Most interrogation rooms inside police stations are It's specially designed. No windows, no clock, nothing to connect the suspect to the outside world.

They have the capacity to videotape the entire interrogation, but they don't. I am the CEO of Evidence Video. We've been asked to do a recreation based on the testimony of Kevin Fox. And I actually had Kevin involved in it, and we recreated the whole interrogation of what had happened. We have actors, and we are recreating the interrogation based on the best of your recollection.

Sit down over there. Scott told me to sit down, and, um, and then they were asking me about the night, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he's like, He looked at me and said, we have reason to believe that you killed Riley. Tell us the truth. I didn't fucking kill Riley. Sit your ass down.

Fuck you. I freaked out. I stood up and started pointing in his face, saying, you know I didn't do this. I took a couple steps, and he's like, sit your ass down. Sit your ass down.

Well, what he said, he was just berated, barraged, yelling, swearing, being disrespectful. Threatened. I didn't kill my daughter. They said they just, they just wore him down psychologically, emotionally, just tag-teaming him left to right, left to right, left to right. Kevin says detectives then offer him a lie detector test, and he says one of the things they tell him is that this test could actually prove that he wasn't involved in his daughter's death.

They asked you, will you take a polygraph test? They kept on saying That they knew I'd flunked the polygraph test. And so you said, I'll take it? It was kind of like they were egging me on. The test says you killed Riley.

$10,000 piece of equipment says you killed your daughter. I did not kill my daughter. Yes, you did! No, I didn't. Now, this is a commonly used ruse during police interrogation.

Get the suspect to take a lie detector test, then tell them they Failed it as part of that process of breaking them down, of making them feel hopeless. I was just shocked. Like, I couldn't have failed it. That's when things really get intense. The police bring Melissa into Kevin.

Kevin failed the test. Means he killed your daughter. I don't believe that at all. I think they were really upset that the second I let Kevin know I don't believe them, it's OK, They didn't want me anywhere near him. In that moment, Detective Ed Hayes, according to a lawsuit later filed, blew up.

Fucking liar! You fucking murderer! And got right in Melissa's face and said, your fucking husband killed your fucking daughter, and he's a liar. The Will County Sheriff's Office says that Kevin's account of this interrogation is exaggerated, that it's not accurate. They deny, you know, ever trying to intimidate or threaten him.

And Sergeant Hayes says that he never yelled at Melissa. Kevin says the police came to him during his interrogation and said, look, either you're this cold-blooded baby killer, in which case it's life in prison, or if you tell us that this was a result of some accident, things will be easier for you. That's how they get Kevin talking. Just tell us about an accident. So keep in mind, he'd been up since 4:30 that morning.

He'd gone to work. Now he's in the middle of this 14-hour interrogation. And he confesses to it. Well, police construct a theory that he adopts in which Riley's killed accidentally, and he then stages it to look like a murder.

Kevin had gotten up in the middle of the night, opened the bathroom door, struck her in the head with this door, knocked her out. And he didn't know what to do. So then he said, well, he would make it look like a stranger had come in and done this, stages, if you will, a sexual assault, and then takes her to the creek and drowns her. I mean, that is an utterly preposterous story. He says, I thought everybody would see it as crazy.

He said, I really thought that they would understand that this couldn't possibly have happened. Did you have anything to do with the death of your daughter? Not at all. Not at all. A lot of people will want to know, if you didn't kill Riley, how, how do you possibly confess to it?

Say you were trapped in a burning room and, and there was only one door and the fire was just flaming around you. So you looked at this as your only way out? It was my only way out. He thought this was his only way out. Well, can you tell me another way out?

What would you do? After an all-night interrogation, police and prosecutors gathered to announce Kevin Fox had confessed. Mr. Fox gave a statement that has led detectives to believe that he killed his daughter after placing her in a nearby creek. These detectives, I want to say, and it's their instincts, their instincts, their investigative instincts that led them to this statement coming down. It was just unthinkable that a father would do this to his own 3-year-old girl, his daughter, a daughter that he adored.

Oh my God. A young girl's father now accused of a brutal crime that stunned this rural community. We were sitting there saying to ourselves, did we get fooled by this guy? Was that— was that an act? He gets arrested.

He gets taken to the Will County Jail and booked. First-degree murder in connection with the death of his 3-year-old daughter. They brought me to the booking room, and the first thing I heard, one of the guards said, hey, we got the baby Riley killer. And I kind of, like, looked around because I wanted— I wanted to see him too. And she— I realized she was talking to me.

What about the issue of this being politically motivated? You know, this is about your upcoming election. It's just crazy. I mean, the arrest of the defendant was caused by his actions himself. Prosecutors announced they plan to seek the death penalty against Kevin Fox.

The judge set bond at $25 million. I wasn't gonna let my brother be executed, so Chad approached Kathleen Zellner. A terrific attorney and said, my brother needs help. I decided to take a chance on him. Our position is that my client's innocent.

I just felt like he was somebody that was really worth trying to save.

So you're aware of a tape? Yes. We're gonna be just like Scream, kill them one by one. I'm telling Cassie's family he's gonna die. There should be no lies.

I've been doing true crime 25 years or so. I thought I had seen everything until I encountered this story. I'm never gonna forget it. These 2 boys stabbed this girl 30 times and are videoing their glee. Just killed Cassie.

This is a real shocking piece of video. I've just never seen anything like this. If you're okay with talking, about it, why did you make that video? The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story, an all-new podcast coming October 6th wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to 20/20 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen early and ad-free. Terms apply.

Welcome to the greatest show on Earth. FX's AHS 13. What do you sense? A harbinger of our doom. The star-studded cast returns.

Something wicked this way, cops. You all got to unite! I'll drink to that. If you're gonna rise up and rule the world, you better get yourself a damn sense of humor. FX's AHS: 13 premieres September 24th on FX and Hulu.

Not at all. Not at all.

A young girl's father now accused of a brutal crime that stunned this rural community. The second he's arrested, Chad goes in, the older brother, and retains Kathleen Zellner as his attorney. Kathleen Zellner is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country. We will see them in court. She is— can I say badass?

I like shooting a big gun like this because it's very powerful, and I like mastering it. She has helped exonerate 20 innocent people. Today he walked out of Joliet Prison a free man. Kathleen Zellner's bio is filled with names from cases all over the country that have made national headlines. She represents Steven Avery, who famously has been portrayed in Making a Murderer.

I have one goal, And that's to vacate the conviction of Steven Avery. Part of Zellner's great success comes from her ability to work with DNA evidence.

So Kevin Fox was sure lucky when she took his case.

Kathleen goes and interviews Kevin at the jail. He looked completely, totally in shock, like someone who'd saying a car crash. I met her at the jail. I said we needed her help because obviously I believed in Kevin's innocence 100%. Kevin issues a statement that says there's no way that he did this, that he was coerced into the confession.

Kevin Fox, in a written statement to the media, denies killing his 3-year-old daughter. He says, I tried to cooperate and answer their questions. However, they became very abusive. Yelling and screaming at me that I killed her. Was there ever a quiet, dark moment when you thought, is my husband capable of this?

Absolutely not. No. I know Kevin way too well. I've watched him be a parent to our children every day.

The family believes 100% in Kevin's innocence. It wasn't just the pat response that a wife gives when a husband is accused of doing something horrible. He knows he's innocent. I know he's innocent. She believed that, and she knew that.

What was life like for you in the jail? I couldn't, couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I was a zoo animal where people just wanted to just see me in a cell. Would they say anything to you?

Oh, yeah. Child molester, baby killer. What I was in there for is the worst possible thing you could be in jail for. The worst. Everyone hated me.

You kept this diary fearful that you might not survive the ordeal? Absolutely. With all the people that were threatening me, I thought, you know, that my family would get it if I was killed. November 15th. What a restless night.

Days in here go by so slow that your mind starts thinking about things that I do not need to be thinking about if I'm going to make it through this. To lose my daughter and then to lose my entire family 5 months later, it was, it was very hard. November 25th. When I get out, I will definitely appreciate life more than I ever have. Love is a powerful thing, and the Lord sees my love for my family, so he will reunite us.

I know he will. Well, I thought about killing myself a couple times, but I knew I'd get out one day and be with my family again.

Riley Fox's murder shocked the small town of Wilmington. It united residents together Now, Kevin Fox's arrest has divided Wilmington, some residents feeling betrayed. There were definitely a lot of people who turned on the family at that point. To find out all the stuff we've been finding out, it's terrible. How can somebody even do that, especially to their own child?

We went from being the victims of the crime and having everybody sympathize with us to all of a sudden we were bad people.

We're at a location that convinced me that Kevin's confession was untrue, that it was false. The first thing Zeller did was begin to reenact the crime to see if it comported with the way detectives were describing it. They got out a bag. It weighed £40, the same as the bag that was in the trunk.

Police reportedly say Kevin Fox confessed to leaving his daughter's body just under a bridge, but Fox's attorneys say that's impossible because the current here isn't strong enough to have carried the girl a quarter mile downstream to where she was found. Then Zellner and her investigators went to the house, looking at the bathroom door. The bathroom door was open. Was a hollow corridor, which would never have caused any kind of serious damage even if he had struck her while she was sitting on the toilet. The state's attorney should have checked all of that out because a confession has to be corroborated.

You know, in spite of her long list of courtroom victories, Kathleen Zellner is really concerned that this confession from Kevin Fox will be enough to convince a jury to convict him. I was extremely worried about what I'd gotten myself into. No matter how good an attorney I am— and I actually think I'm quite a good attorney— he was going to be convicted. So as you're sitting there with your client, what are you thinking are his chances? I felt like I was looking at a dead man.

Zellner is convinced that the only way Kevin Fox can avoid a guilty verdict and can avoid the death penalty now is DNA. While Zellner's team continued to try to poke holes in the story offered by investigators, Zellner discovered that there actually was DNA evidence. There was saliva found in the rape kit. DNA samples collected from the body of Fox's daughter, 3-year-old Riley. DNA evidence was available in the murder of Riley Fox.

It was the type of DNA that you couldn't absolutely 100% say it matches person A or person B, but you could use it to eliminate people. In court today, his attorney, in an unusual agreement with prosecutors, moved to allow an outside lab to do sophisticated DNA testing that could either implicate or clear him of murder. Or exonerate Fox. Do you remember the day she came to give you the news? She said that there is— we got the test results back for the DNA, and I just collapsed.

This morning, and, uh, my daughter is nowhere, nowhere to be found. How old is she? 3. The truth is a broken heart still beats. You know, we have followed this case for more than a decade, and we've never been able to get this out of our mind.

He just said Riley's gone, and I immediately hit the ground. The phone fell out of my hand. Their 3-year-old daughter Riley who'd been missing all day had been found dead.

There was this police interrogation, and then the young father confesses. Kevin Fox was questioned for 14 and a half hours. We see this commonly in false confession cases.

Mr. Tomczak? David Muir with ABC News. We'd like to talk to you about the Riley Fox case. Actually, I wouldn't. I have court this morning.

They were so focused on this young father, that there were signs all over the neighborhood. How could all of these signs be missed? One of the things that they found was a pair of shoes. That was something that was never followed up on. The incredible thing is, for the first time, we're now hearing from the FBI.

They started the case all over again.

We're not going to show your face, all right? And only then did we learn what really happened.

Mm. I haven't seen these boxes, I would say, for probably 10 years. 3-Year-old Riley Fox was taken from her home in the middle of the night.

It brings back a lot of memories about the criminal case, the civil case, everything. And it's just such an incredible story. After an all-night interrogation, police and prosecutors gathered to announce Kevin Fox had confessed.

Most of us say, I would never confess to something I didn't do.

Police interrogation unfolds in 2 stages. The first stage is about reducing a suspect to hopelessness. I denied the whole thing all night and said, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, and they would not believe me. They'd go back and forth between promising and threatening. It was a classic case of a false confession.

If I get done filling this out and you don't admit you murdered your daughter, you're getting 30 years to life. Kevin and Melissa agreed to actually reenact the interrogation as best as they could remember what it was like inside that room. Listen to me, you killed your daughter, child killer. The Will County Sheriff's Department, they dispute what Kevin Fox said went down in there. I didn't kill my daughter, though.

Yes, you did. Kevin Fox was questioned for 14 and a half hours. We see this commonly in false confession cases. That's not by accident. It only adds to the suspect's desire to get out of that room.

I was exhausted. I had guys yelling at me, saying I was gonna get raped. They told him, I know people in The detectives and that sergeant, they deny that they ever threatened Kevin Fox during that interrogation. And there was something else that they denied. They denied ever showing Kevin a crime scene photo of his dead daughter.

They showed me the picture of Riley in the creek, dead, bound, mud on her face. That was just the breaking point. The fact that he had to actually see it just breaks my heart for him.

Now, this goes on and on and on until another ruse happens during this interrogation. An officer rushes in and says, I've just spoken with one of the prosecutors. It's just going to be like a misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter. You can get out on bond. Everything will be okay.

If you say that you did it, they can work out a deal for you. Those are the words that led him to give the statement he gave. Some of the sheriff's investigators actually acknowledged that they did discuss involuntary manslaughter with Kevin Fox. They said they made no promises. By the time Kevin Fox confessed, It was about 8:00 in the morning.

He'd been awake for more than 24 hours. I pretty much went along with their story to get out of there.

Now police say Fox has given a videotaped statement implicating himself. These are really powerful psychological tactics. They are very good at getting confessions from guilty people. But they are so powerful that they can also cause the innocent to confess. I would never in a million years prosecute a case with only one piece of evidence, and that one piece of evidence being a confession.

I need confession plus DNA, confession plus fingerprint analysis, a whole array of other bits and pieces of evidence to corroborate the confession. A confession isn't magic. It's a piece of evidence, just like any other piece of evidence. You have to test it against what you know, against what the facts tell you happened in this case.

It's the worst hand you can be dealt as a defense attorney because jurors are gonna convict somebody who's confessed to something unless you've got DNA evidence. Remember something with Kathleen Zellner. DNA is how she has been able to free people, to get them exonerated. They did get some genetic material from Riley. The DNA was collected 2 days after the toddler's body was found in a creek near Wilmington.

The problem is, 5 months later, it still hadn't been analyzed. In November then, Jim Glasgow defeated Jeff Tomczak and took over the state's attorney's office. After Glasgow came in, there was that DNA evidence that had been sent to the FBI, had been sitting there, was recalled. They said, send it back to us. That DNA evidence was sent out to a private lab.

They're pinning their hopes to the DNA test, hoping they might prove his innocence before the case ever goes to trial. He knows he's innocent. I know he's innocent. The answers, like we say, lie in Bear in mind, if that DNA analysis had come back as Kevin, it was game over. He was gonna— he was gonna be on death row.

It makes all the difference. It makes all the difference. Test results arrived last night. The DNA did not match Kevin Fox's. They came back and said, this is not his DNA.

We can't tell you whose it is, but we can tell you it's not his. I never expected the DNA result to come back in this fashion. We were shocked at the result. Glasgow sees this, to his credit, does the right thing. I said, well, there's one thing that's certain to me.

I can't prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt, and the moment that I reach that decision, I cannot continue to prosecute that person. And that's when he said to me, I'm going to release him tomorrow. Kevin Fox is free after prosecutors concede there is now considerable doubt about his guilt. Prosecutors dropped all charges against the Wilmington father. It was a nightmare, and I don't want to relive it right now.

I don't— I don't want to. I'm happy. If you want to take away one thought in this case is do the test before you make the arrest.

Even after I got out of jail, I still had people coming up to me and saying I was a child killer, a child molester, and threatening to shoot me and my dog. This was after the DNA? After the DNA, after I got out of jail. Kevin Fox is ruled out. This is a game changer.

Now you have to refocus this investigation. The DNA proves that you didn't do it. The question becomes, who did? And then the other question becomes, what else may have gotten missed, left out? Witnesses reported seeing a strange red car parked right in front of the Fox at home.

When we found out that they had the killer's shoes in evidence and had never pursued that, it's like, wow, all this time, right there.

In ESPN's wild world of college football, every Saturday begins with a ritual, and then the migration turns to mayhem. Predators hunt, territories are defended, rivals clash. In this wild world, legends are unleashed on Saturdays. No one brings you closer to the wild than ESPN. College football is the ultimate spectacle.

Football on ESPN all season long. Witness the Wild on ABC, ESPN, and the ESPN app. A new podcast series from ABC Audio in 2020 goes inside a case that has captivated the nation. To many people, Luigi Mangione is a modern-day Robin Hood. People were cheering the demise of this person they'd never met, who was a father of 2 and a husband and had a life and was just doing a job.

From the manhunt ending in a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, to what authorities are saying about a possible motive. I'm ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmire. Listen to Burden of Proof: Luigi Mangione wherever you get your podcasts.

Not at all. Not at all. Lawsuit. Fox is suing county sheriff detectives.

Kathleen Zellner files a federal lawsuit accusing Will County Sheriff's Department and the Will County prosecutor of wrongful arrest. I felt like the civil trial was our way of shedding light on what they had done. It was to retain my reputation, to get my story out there, to tell the truth. Will County detectives on trial insist that they did not manipulate Rush to judgment or coerce a confession. Their attorney saying they had probable cause to arrest and charge Kevin Fox.

It was extremely hard for the detectives. They believed that they did the right thing. I believe that they did in their heart what was right. To this day, I do. Attorney Kathleen Zellner told jurors detectives focused on Fox, ignoring other evidence.

One key thing they don't do is look at burglaries.

A neighbor across the street from the Foxes, she said that she'd had an attempted burglary. They told us the whole time that there was no connection at all. They didn't really investigate that. That will be a momentous mistake down the road. One of the reasons that the police stated that they suspected Kevin was they found no sign of forcible entry.

In fact, the back The back door was— the lock was broken and couldn't be locked. The 2 of you sat across from me and said there must have been an intruder. We knew there had to have been. And we had said from day one that someone went in the back door and then took her and went out the front door. I talked to one of our lieutenants in charge of investigation who advised that it doesn't appear to be any forced entry.

If I heard one more time from Will County that there was no forced entry, I think I would gonna snap. You don't have to force yourself into a door that's already broken. Kathleen Zellner believes that these detectives are obsessed with a piece of security video from a local gas station that shows a vehicle going by at about the time that Riley Fox disappears. And she says detectives are convinced that that could be Kevin Fox's Ford Escape driving past that gas station. Did it look like his car?

No, it did not. You would have to have the license plate or a very clear picture of his face to ever have that hold up in court. Kathleen Zellner and, and her investigators believe that detectives are so focused on this vehicle that had been seen driving past that gas station, that piece of security video, that they actually overlooked what they'd been told about in that neighborhood. This is a suspicious other car, a red Chevy Beretta. I happened to look down there, and I did see a red car down there.

I'd never seen it there before. They said they didn't think that had anything to do with it.

And you'll remember that DNA that had been sent to the crime lab to be tested, and it wasn't actually even tested until months after Kevin Fox had been arrested. Well, suddenly at trial, there's another explanation as to why so much time had gone by. Someone from the Will County Sheriff's Department contacted Quantico. Somebody calls the FBI and says, stop testing the DNA. That infuriates me.

How dare you? The Will County investigator, the sergeant who says he called that lab, says it was all a misunderstanding. He says that he called them and told them to stop testing for DNA only on some of the items, not all of them. Which again is another sign that they were so certain in their false assumption that Kevin did this, that they didn't continue to pursue other avenues.

Today, a jury decided that Will County Sheriff's investigators crossed way over the line. The jury agreed that Will County Sheriff's detectives failed to follow up on DNA that eventually cleared Fox after he spent 8 months in jail. After a federal civil trial and After 16 hours of deliberation, jurors awarded Kevin and Melissa Fox $15.5 million. Jurors rejected the most serious charge that investigators conspired to frame Fox. The jury awarded damages to the Foxes for false arrest and other claims, but not conspiracy or false imprisonment.

An appeals court later reduced the amount to about $8 million. It's over now and it feels great. They have sent a message to Will County, and I hope Will County is listening because this kind of behavior needs to stop. All of the detectives except for one who died remain on the job. Many of the officers involved in the Riley Fox case went on to have long careers with the Will County Sheriff's Department.

Jeff Tomczak, the chief prosecutor in this case. It turns out he negotiated some sort of resolution with the Foxes before this actually went to trial without admitting any kind of wrongdoing. We wanted to know what he thought about this DNA, you know, suddenly excluding Kevin Fox and being awarded millions by this jury. Mr. Tomczak, David Muir with ABC News. We'd like to talk to you about the Riley Fox case.

Actually, I wouldn't. I have court this morning, so I'm going to run over there and do my court. Can we do it after court? Do you want to talk to us after court? Because we called you several times on the case and we'd like to talk to you about it.

Actually, no thanks. Do you think that Kevin Fox was treated fairly? I stand by the decisions I made on that case. Do you stand by the detectives? I stand by the decisions I made on the case.

Kevin and Melissa Fox hope the jury's decision sends a message not only to the Will County Sheriff's Department but also to those who still harbor suspicion that Kevin somehow played a role in his daughter Riley's death.

We're gonna continue our fight, and our next step is just to fund, uh, fund the investigation to find our daughter's killer.

I think most people in the media and also the community and even, to a degree, the family had resigned themselves to maybe never knowing what really happened, you know, who was really responsible.

In June of 2009, 5 years after the death of Riley Fox, the case gets a jolt of new energy when the FBI sends a team to Wilmington and starts an investigation from scratch. I asked my supervisor if we could work the case. His initial responses were no, no, no, no, no, but I kept asking him day after day after day, and I finally broke him down. She was on that case, and she wanted to solve it and just kept pushing, pushing, pushing. When you do that, things will break your way out of the blue.

They came across a young lady who told them that she had a suspicion this person might have been involved. I just had a bad feeling about him, and I didn't know who to tell.

Not at all. Not at all.

When Kevin Fox walked out of the Will County Jail after being cleared of charges he killed his 3-year-old daughter Riley, the investigation essentially went back to square one. Since it's not him, because the DNA rules him out, says he's not, he's not the person. Who is? Now you have to go back over the evidence and figure out who did this, because you know it isn't Kevin Fox. Authorities say they have no strong new leads in the search for Riley's killer.

The Fox family still offers a $100,000 reward for information that leads to the killer's conviction. To my daughter's killer, you will be caught no matter how long it takes.

In 2009, I just got to the point where I said, we've gotta— we've got to do something drastic here. So I asked the FBI if they would get involved. The Riley Fox case is, to me, the most important case of my career. When I see this little child that was just so beautiful and rambunctious, there's no way you They took 30 agents and descended on Wilmington and did a massive amount of interviews. Just kind of saturate the area with agents and task force officers and just to conduct a boatload of interviews and see what we could find.

They came across a young lady who told them that she had a suspicion but had no reason other than gut feeling that this person might have been involved in the murder. We are rolling. So the FBI talks to this woman, and then 20/20 ends up talking to her as well. She has since died, but at the time she agreed to do the interview as long as we blurred her face. We're not going to show your face, is that correct?

Mm-hmm. All right. When Riley Fox was abducted and killed, this woman lived right there in Wilmington, right down the street, and she actually remembers that her family helped in the search effort the day She was a little hesitant to speak with us at first. Then we identified who we were, why we were there, and she stepped outside to talk to us outside her house. She told us about a guy that she was having a relationship with who had since left the neighborhood.

I just had a bad feeling about him, and I didn't know who to tell. So when the FBI came, I said, I'm really glad you guys are here, and I just gave them his name. She told us about Scott Eby. A guy by the name of Scott Wayne Eby.

You knew a guy named Scott Eby, right? Mm-hmm. Who is Scott Eby? An ex-boyfriend of mine. Just describe him for me.

Tell me what kind of person he is. Um, a creep. The summer that Briley Fox disappeared, Scott Wayne Eby was 33 years old. He'd been married, in and out of prison. He was living right there in Wilmington with his mother, and it turns out he was living with her 1 mile from the Fox family home.

They'd had a very peculiar conversation when they were out for a walk together, walking through Riley's garden, and he had made some comment that left her chilled. I was saying, I can't believe somebody did that to that sweet little girl. And he said, oh, that was such a shame, wasn't it? And the way he said it was like cold, like he didn't mean it. She told us that he had since moved out of town and she knew he was incarcerated for a sexual assault of a family member.

Scott Eby was 5 hours away in prison in Southern Illinois, I asked Jeremy, hey, let's go ahead and try to get this guy interviewed.

It was way in the southern portion of the state. It was— it was a hike. In all honesty, he was someone I was just going to check off my list. He had no idea we were coming. We kind of showed up out of nowhere, and that was intentional.

He was very respectful, very responsive.

He was just trying to kind of collect his thoughts as to why in the world the FBI is here to talk to me and what I should do about that. He said he had heard about the case, but other than that, there wasn't really anything that he could tell us or help us with. He did remember where he was that day, which makes him no different than anybody else that we talked to, really. I shook his hand, and he shook mine, and he said, I'm sorry. And we left.

And as we were walking from the building to the car, I looked at Jeremy and I said, that is the clammiest hand I have ever shaken.

When they left, he got on the phone with his mother on a recorded call.

Hello, you have a prepaid call from Scott Eby. An inmate at Lawrence Correctional Center. Scott Eby had contacted his mother to tell her that he wanted to see her immediately. He had something to tell her. Hello?

What's the matter, Mom? Um, I don't know how to tell you this, but, uh, I got an emergency. You got to, um, you gotta drop everything you're doing and come down here. Come down here and see me as soon as you can.

We went to interview the mom, Scott Eby's mom. 20/20 obtained a recording of an FBI interview with Scott Eby's mother. I'm here with Sharon Eby and Special Agent Lori Warren, Special Agent Jeremy Rezar. He told me that I needed to get down to the prison to see him.

Immediately. I'm fixing to spend the rest of my life in a penitentiary, Mom. Did you kill somebody? You gotta come down here, Mom, so I can give you a hug and a kiss one last time, please. And he said that he did something horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.

You did something really, really, really bad? Yes, I did something really, really, really bad. I drove down there, and when he came in, you know, he hugged me and he said, you remember the little Raleigh girl?

Not at all. Not at all.

All of a sudden, my phone started ringing off the hook from the prison where Scott Eby is in. Scott Eby had attempted to commit suicide.

And he has written a letter— That was actually addressed to the FBI agents who had spoken with him. This is a confession to murder with 2 exclamation points at the end. And then that started a succession of admissions Go ahead and have a seat. You're no dummy, so you know, you know, there's some people here that's going to talk to you, okay? We knew that we needed to get down there and interview him, to do the follow-up interview based upon everything that we'd learned at this point.

Before we ask you any questions, you must understand your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. As we do with any other interview, he's in custody at the time. We read him his Miranda rights, and he immediately advised us that he wanted an attorney.

Knowing that you have those rights, do you want to talk to us? I think I'd rather have a lawyer.

All right, that's, uh, that's certainly your decision. I'll candidly tell you, uh, some frustration. Uh, you know, it was obviously our hope to talk to him, but nevertheless, both Both of us were completely understanding the fact that we could not talk to him at that point. Uh, that's your decision. That's certainly your right.

All right. Okay. Okay. So we left the room and, of course, very disappointed. Thanks for your time, Scott.

And, um— Good luck to you. Yeah, good luck to you, man. All right. Go over to the back.

About 75 seconds later, he looked up at the camera and as it was still running and said that he had changed his mind.

Hey, if you guys can hear this, I changed my mind. I'll talk to you. And we went back in and Scott Eby basically told us the story from beginning to end as he wrote in the letter.

I really don't remember much of that evening. I mean, I remember drinking a lot. That night, he advised that he had been drinking and using cocaine and looking for homes to burglarize. I guess I got it into my head to, uh, to go rob people. He told us that he got a thrill out of That's what I've been to the penitentiary for several times and stuff, you know what I mean?

I'd get drunk and I'd go and commit residential burglaries and stuff. He goes on to reveal several other things that the police missed.

I drove around a little bit, I think. I don't remember how I ended up in that neighborhood or whatever, but I did. And I started walking around from house to house and checking doors and windows and stuff like that, you know, easy access into somebody's house. The same night Riley disappeared, there was a burglary at the house right across the street. It turned out that Hebe was the person who had burglarized the home across the street.

I discovered the old lady's house a few doors down from Riley's. I cut the screen door, walked through the lady's house, seen her sleeping inside her bedroom, went into her wallet, found $40 inside her wallet. She didn't have anything else really to steal, you know what I mean? So I left out of her house. Authorities say that Eby said he walked from that neighbor's house right to the back door of the Fox home.

And that door, you'll remember, had that broken lock. When he got to the Foxes' house, he tried the back door and he said it was open, unlocked. So he didn't have to break in. He just walked in. Went into the living room, and that's where the babies were sleeping on the couch.

Scott Eby said he entered their home and didn't find anything of value to steal. And that's when he saw the children sleeping in the family room and had a sudden urge to take Riley. They didn't have nothing to steal or nothing like that, you know what I mean? Otherwise, I probably would have been in and out of there too, you know what I mean? I was getting ready to leave and I looked back and I don't know, for some reason I just I just, um, I fixated on that little girl.

Once I decided that I was gonna go through with it or whatever, I went and got my car and I backed it into the Foxes' driveway. Remember, Kathleen Zellner said detectives were so focused on that one vehicle that they saw, that security video driving past that gas station, even though witnesses in the neighborhood had mentioned And another car, this red Chevy Beretta. And then Scott Eby's mother eventually describes the car that she says her son was driving that night. Do you remember what kind of car he had at the time? He was driving a red Beretta.

Okay. Chevy. I picked her up and I put my hand over her mouth. I don't know that I've ever seen a horror movie as excruciatingly evil as his confession. I almost put it right back down, you know, walked out of the house.

Yeah, I bet. I wish to God I wouldn't have. I know you do. Yeah. He blames the, the Foxes for not having enough for him to steal, so he steals their daughter, the most precious thing that they have.

He took her from the house, put her into the trunk of his car, closed the lid, and then got in the car and left.

He had been wearing a bandana to cover his face, and it came down, and Riley saw him. And I realized that my mask is no longer on my face, and then I really panicked.

Not at all. Not at all.

Dad! Hi. Hi. I love you. I love you.

One of the things that Melissa Fox always said was that she hoped that when they found Riley's real killer, that it would provide closure for the family. But what it did was it opened a whole new chapter of pain when they realized what had happened to their little girl. I needed to know what happened to her and what she went through, but now I'm— now it's kind of like It's like torture. Now it's like I'm torturing myself with those details.

When you walked in to grab her, she was on the couch? Yes. Did you have a blanket or anything over her? How was she kind of situated? You know, I can't recall exactly.

She was laying— if you're facing the couch, she's laying on this end of the couch.

As Evie keeps talking, he describes how he put Riley Fox in the trunk of his car and took her to Forsyth Woods. And his account reveals even more mistakes in the investigation.

Eventually, we found out she was sexually assaulted in that bathroom that was on that property. To our knowledge, that had never been processed.

He had been wearing a bandana to cover his face, and then it came down and that Riley saw him. She's looking directly at my face and stuff, and I realize that my mask is no longer on my face, and then I really panic. He made that leap from sexually assaulting her to this warped idea in his head that he needed to take her life at that point. I can't fathom what he could do to somebody like that.

And this is evidently the last thing she says to him. I want my daddy. I want my daddy. The man who was accused of killing her was the man she was crying out to in her last moments.

He decided to take her and drown her in the nearby river.

And Scott Eby admits to leaving clues at the scene. Scene of that horrific crime. His shoes, his size 12 sneakers.

One of the things that they found and didn't realize the critical importance of it was a pair of shoes. They were white, all-white high tops. I think they were Rydells. I threw the shoes into the river because I had left shoe prints on the On the muddy bank. And I, uh, I got rid of the shoes, which was stupid, you know.

And you'll remember right back to the very beginning, the shoe inside it, the letters EBY. It wasn't super clear, but you could see what looked like an E, a B, and a Y on the inside of the tongue, that it was handwritten. His last name. To tell you the truth, I expected somebody to be coming, talking to me a long time ago because it had my last name printed on the tongue of the shoe. The only thing I ever heard about a shoe, they wanted to know what size shoe Kevin wore, and their sizes didn't match the size of that shoe.

And we never heard about a shoe again because it didn't fit their crime. That was something that was never followed up on, very much like the burglary at the house across the street. And so when we found out about that as a report, we were like, oh my God, it was, it was just like, are you kidding me? You've now learned that there was a suicide call at this man's house. And Wilmington police were at his house.

One of the things in looking back at this case all these years later, it's incredible when you realize that Scott Eby who killed Riley Fox, he had an encounter with Wilmington police officers just hours later that same day. A pill bottle of oxycodone. I swallowed them, hoping to kill myself.

Scott Eby said he attempted suicide the day that he killed her, later that day. Next thing I remember, Police officer was knocking on my door. I actually ended up vomiting right there in front of him and stuff. The very day of the murder, Wilmington police, not the Wills County Sheriff's Office, visited Scott Eby's home because they had been told by a friend of his that he had threatened to commit suicide. I asked him, I was like, uh, what's up with that little girl and stuff?

Did they find her? So the day Riley Fox disappears, they're called to his house. Correct. On a suicide attempt. Right.

And had they run his name through a system, they would have seen a criminal history? Yes. And he has all the red flags that they should have picked up on, from the burglary convictions to the suicide attempts to the inquiries about Riley. I mean, he did everything but set a siren off at his house. I can forgive a mistake.

People are human. I get that. But they almost completely ruined our chances of ever knowing what happened to our daughter. And so I hate them for that. For almost 6 years, you thought this was gonna be like a celebration day, and it's— it feels quite the opposite.

He stole something very important from the world. She is gone, and there's not this amazing girl here anymore, but there's disgusting people like him here.

That's disappointing.

So you have to remember, Kevin and Melissa Fox are now about to be face to face with the man who killed their daughter and who was going to allow the daughter's father to be sent away and face the death penalty himself. I'm sad that that was the last face that she saw. He's scary. He's terrifying.

Not at all. Not at all.

I just bring fresh flowers every time I come.

I focus more on her birthday on March 31st. I like to think more about the day she was given to me, not the day she was taken from me. I just wonder, for Riley, if you've had a moment to say, we did it. We never gave up. But yeah, it was nice going there and putting some roses on her stone and saying that it was over and that I'd see her sometime in the future.

Good afternoon. About half an hour ago, I appeared before the Honorable Gerald Kinney, the Chief Judge of Will County, and obtained a warrant for the arrest of Scott Eby. Scott Eby pleaded guilty in 2010, and as he was about to be sentenced to life without parole, Kevin and Melissa Fox came face to face with their daughter's killer in that courtroom. I came to face you so you would know how important standing up for Riley was to me. She was defenseless that night, and that makes you a coward and a monster.

He was given a life sentence, and he pled guilty to multiple counts of murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault. It ensured that he would be behind bars for the rest of his life. Melissa was unwavering in her support for Kevin, even as, you know, members of the community began to turn against them. They had another daughter together after all of this, Tegan. But we always wondered, how much can a marriage actually take?

Careful. It just was too much for our marriage to withhold, I guess. Melissa's a remarkably courageous, resilient person who had the character to stick with him because she knew he was innocent. It was an extraordinary story of tragedy but redemption. Both Kevin and Melissa would go on to find new love, new lives.

Kevin and I are both happy and healthy. We're both remarried and have amazing families.

The truth of the matter is they'll never get their daughter back. The little girl who was the flower girl at her uncle's wedding ran down that aisle and right into the arms of her father. She had an unmistakable bond with her father. Whose family never gave up on him, and a family that will never forget its little girl. Dad, I got a stick!

You got a stick? Yeah! It will forever be devastating, and I'll forever have a hole in my heart. But I think because I have suffered such great loss, I see the world and the blessings and the love that I have in such a different way. Hi.

Hi. I love you. I love you.

You've been listening to the 20/20 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9:00 on ABC, you can also find all new broadcast episodes of 20/20. Thanks for listening.

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna Lu. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep! Who else knows about this?

From CBC's Personally, this is Agent Layla. The story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.