Riley was just 3 years old when she had been murdered in 2004.
Warren and her staff brought new energy into an investigation that had basically postponed. The representative was excited to work the situation for a little while, she explained, and she was determined to deliver Riley’s killer to justice.
“When I visit that this small kid that was so amazing and rambunctious… there is no way you can not need justice for this youngster,” Warren told”20/20″ in an exclusive interview.
She was sexually attacked, bound and gagged.
Authorities have refused coercing Fox to admit.
Fox was charged with first-degree murder at the death of the own daughter. Facing the death penalty, he had been held in prison on a $25 million bond however, published eight weeks later after he had been exonerated by DNA evidence.
The DNA results in the state crime laboratory originally were inconclusive, but Fox’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner, had them delivered to a private laboratory with more complex technologies, and it had been determined that the DNA did not match.
The payoff later was decreased by roughly half.
Warren stated the FBI began the analysis from scratch, like the murder had only occurred. She led a group of representatives into Wilmington to conduct interviews, round the area, to see whether they could come across any new info or prospects, according to FBI Special Agent Jeremy Resar, Warren’s spouse on the circumstance.
Throughout the FBI’s picture, representatives talked to a girl who informed them about a guy named Scott Eby, with whom she had been at a previous relationship.
“I only had a bad feeling about him, and that I did not know who to inform,” the girl said in a 2010 meeting with ABC News. “20/20” agreed to not disclose her name or reveal her face. “When the FBI arrived, I said,’I am very glad that you guys are here’ … And I gave him his title.”
The FBI discovered that Eby was a person using a lengthy rap sheet, who’d been out of jail for burglary and other felonies. In the time of Riley’s murder, he had been residing with his mum in Wilmington, just a mile from the Fox’s house.
The girl remembered that one day, months following the 3-year-old’s departure, she and Eby were in Riley’s Memorial Garden, when he made an odd comment.
“I had been saying,’I can not believe somebody did to that sweet little woman,'” she remembered. And how he said [it] was chilly, like he did not mean it.
It was not far to go on, but Warren desired to chase down every possible outcome. The FBI went to interview Eby in Lawrence Correctional Center, where he had been imprisoned for sexual attack .
Warren stated he had been answered their questions, stating he did not understand the Foxes and did not have any other info, he’d heard about the situation.
Warren said she originally did not feel as though Eby was involved from the situation in any way, but she probably needed a DNA sample only in case.
Following the FBI agents left, Eby telephoned his mother . “20/20” got the recording of the call, which hasn’t been heard publicly. In that telephone, Eby was psychological and begged his mom to come see him when you can.
“I am fixin’ to devote the remainder of my life from the penitentiary, mother. And that is the one thing I could say,” Eby said on the telephone. “You have ta come down mom, so that I will provide you a hug and a kiss one final time, please.”
Days after, Warren received a call in the prison, stating Eby had tried suicide and he had written them a letter titled”A Confession into Murder.” The correspondence was instantly reverted to her.
“My mind is turning at this stage,” she explained. “We simply left this man several days ahead. … He did not give us any sign he had been included, and my mind was literally turning, for example,’Oh my goodness. This is actually occurring'”
He told investigators he was drinking, with cocaine and was likely to burglarize houses.
Eby said he had broken into the home throughout the road from the Foxes at the nighttime Riley disappeared. He informed the FBI that he would cut a hole in the door and stolen $40 in the homeowner’s pocket before departing.
This neighbor reported that the break-in into Wilmington Police exactly the exact same morning Riley went lost. But, based on Kevin Fox’s legal group, the Will County Sheriff’s detectives who headed the investigation to Riley’s murder connected this robbery for her disappearance. Instead, they assert the Will County researchers kept their attention on Fox at the moment, pointing to the absence of indications of a forcible entrance into his house as a way to make him a suspect. However, the Fox’s backdoor lock had been busted, and Eby informed the FBI he simply walked .
Once indoors, Eby stated he could not find anything of worth to steal.
“I had been preparing to depart and that I looked back, also, I really don’t understand, for some reasonI simply fixated on this little woman,” he informed the FBI.
Eby said he attracted Riley into Forsythe Woods, where he finally sexually attacked her in the park toilet and he informed the FBI he chose to kill her following a bandana he had worn to pay his face slipped off.
“She is looking right at my head and things, and I recognize my mask is no more on my head, after which I really dread,” Eby said.
Eby advised the FBI he decided to drown Riley from the creek that passes through the preserve.
Then he said he pitched his shoes into the creek. He explained it was a”stupid” error, which he’d anticipated police to locate him a lot earlier because his name was written in their tongues. Following Eby’s confession, the FBI discovered that the Will County Sheriff Office had of Eby’s sneakers in their own custody — equally with his name on the tongues — by the afternoon Riley was discovered.
Melissa Fox, Fox’s former spouse, also stated she recalls the investigators inquiring about her then-husband’s shoe size, but it did not match the shoes found in the creek.
“We heard about that shoe because it did not match their offense,” she explained.
Eby promised to have lost Riley’s trousers and panties in a garbage can next to the restroom, but they were not found at the scene by researchers.
Perhaps the biggest revelation is that Wilmington authorities seen Scott Eby’s home in the hours after Riley’s disappearance. A buddy had reported that he had been suicidal and they ran a welfare check. In accordance with Eby, when he answered the door and watched officers, he threw up and afterwards asked them”when they discovered the little woman yet?”
Zellner alleged that when the Will County researchers had conducted Eby’s name via the machine, they’d have understood his criminal background and potentially tied him to Riley’s case.
