Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Twenty-one-year-old Ohio State University student Reagan Tokes went missing in February 2017 after leaving her job late that night. That was the last time anyone saw her, and what happened to her next will shock you.
she loved the Ohio state University as much as anything……
Growing concern for safety after an Ohio student is kidnapped and killed within minutes after living her job .
this is the last time that anyone who knows her ,cares about her is going to see her alive.
911: hello.
caller: yeah , i think there’s a body out here at scioto grove metro park .. send somebody , it’s bloody, it’s got the arm over the face , i can’t ,im afraid to get meir it . i can’t tell if it’s fake or not .god almighty , i hope that’s a dummy.
the detectives bureau responded
and they were able to determined that it was a female in her 20s that was not be cloth on and was laying in the field and with two apparent gunshot wounds to her head.
it’s not something that the police typically run across in grove park
an hour or so into the investigation detectives received notification that columbus police were in a process of taking a missing person report.
body has been identified as missing Ohio state university student reagan tokes
reagan was last seen leaving work at a resturant in downtown columbus-Bodega.
no one suspicious ,no one got up and immediately followed her out, you didn’t see anybody in the windows on the street start follow her or anything at that time.
so once he abducts reagan he makes her drive the vehicle while he has a gun in the passanger seat . he makes her driv him to a chase bank and go through an ATM machine and try to withdraw cash out of the ATM. she is unsuccessful and does not get any cash out.
he then forces her to drive to another ATM machine at huntington bank to try to withdraw which she is unable to as well.
you could make out a figure that apppeared to be her and there was clearly a passenger in the car but that’s about all you could see was a shade, couldn’t identify any features or anything like that .
you don’t often see crimes on video untill you’re seeing it happened.
the car stops in this alley, this dark alley and they’re for about 12 minutes. that’s when he’s actually raping her .
after they leave the alley he makes her drive him back to the same chase bank.
she’s able to successfully get 60 dollars out of the ATM. after they leave the ATM and they go get gas at a gas station.
the video at the gas station is not that great, it’s very pixelated, it was raining and snowy that night.and they parked at the furthest pump away . detectives think that there’s a time for they think she could have taken off for sure but detectives don’t know where he is they don’t know if he’s got a gun pointed at her .
once they get gas they leave the gas station and they head down to metro park area.
it’s cold february night, it’s dark. what the police believe happened is that he told her to get out of the car, take off her clothes and keep walking.
she thought she was going to live . he’s releasing her, run , go .but he got out of the car follows her and shoots her in the back of the head . he walks up to her , puts the gun to the head and make sure she’s dead.
the first break in the case came thanks to a license plate reader connected to a police database that spotted reagan’s car.
they could see that there was scorch marks on the front sat like somebody tried to burn it.
they found a couple of cigarettes in the car. detectives call her family and friends ans asked if reagan smoked.
and they said ” no” . she doesn’t even allow anybody to smoke inside her car.
so detectives immediately shippedthat cigarette but of to Ohio BCI to have it tested for any DNA.
then there’s a gas can in the trunk , so they start investigating where did this gas can come from.
and they ended up at the speedway gas station where that exact gas can was sold.
and there he was … about a half hour after police believe reagan had been killed.
there’s a video of him engaging in that transaction at the gas station having the plan later to set the car on fire,destroying that as evidence and that was a very key thing in the case, even before detectives had the DNA they had the video at the speedwayand short time later the crime lab called with the DNA results
it was within hours which is truly tremendous.
with a match on items in the car with a registred sex offender, is brian lee Golsby
it was the same person seen on the gas station video. but he would offer a much dfferent version of what happen that night.
brian golsby was taken into custody without incident by grove city police.golsby was on probation for another attempted rape and robbery .
he had a long criminal record going all the way back to when he was a juvenile.he was a sex offenderthe prosecutor found out that there office had handled a case of his six years before .
a remarkably similar case which Golsby had abducted a women , forced her to take out money from an ATM machine and then raped her but let her go. prosecutors offered him a plea bargain and he he served six years in prison
prosecutor james lowe pulled the file ,called the prosecutor who had done the case tried to have him explain why on the rape case he only got six years ,he explained to james lowe that the victim didn’t want to go through testimony and that’s why they cut the deal .
he was in the system ,they had a file on him,he had been released the previous november he was a previously comvicted violent offender that was wearing an ankle monitor who basically was roaming about columbus unchecked , unmonitored.
he would stay out past curfew he was going to places where he probably should not have been going. one you think that there is a immediate alert that goes off and an officer is sent to investigate and found out what the situation is .
but Bennett Haeberle ,WBNS investigative reporter found out that no one was really closely tracking his whereabouts , there weren’t guard rails put into place to ensure where he was going or that he wouldn’t reoffend. because his previous conviction was for a violent crime .
the night that he killed reagan he did get on the bus .him getting on the bus and then getting off in the area where the GPS then picks him up and starts to follow him
as he just aimlessly walks around. the prosecutors could track his movement the whole night. they had the surveillance video from the ATMS , from the gas station and then to the park where reagan was killed .
and finally to Golsby girlfriend’s house…
where police discovered the black kate spade purse that belonged to reagan. the ankle monitor gave prosecutors great evidence.
Golsby was even wearing the ankle when he was arrested.
“he did not wanted to provide very much information and he would only confirm information once you called him out on it “
-rick forney
he did eventually admit that he had been with reagan that night , he tried to make statements that protected himself ,he wasn’t that culpable.
after talking to Golsby for several hours ,the detectives knew he was not going to be 100 % truthful with them.
detectives left the room for a short break and to give him a break as well .
they return with a plan to get the truth .just for two double cheeseburgers is what he want.
if he’s not going to admit to doing this, maybe he will admit to being there but someone else being involved . so the detectives interjected a possible storyline for him to use at that point.
he bought into that right away .and when he knew that detectives had a lot of information,putting him in the locations then he started saying
” well , i was there ,but this person that i knew from middle school was threatening my family…”
then he would give detectives little bit more information and a little bit more information.
” his name was TJ. and he made me do it , he made me rob her, he made me rape her and he killed her”
detectives saturated the area where he said that this TJ person hung out and nobody could come up with anyone even close to TJ .
TJ was complete fiction, this level of detail and what detectives knew matched up perfectly and ecaxtly so they knew they had the right person .
but they still needed to find the gun .
occasionally he would ask for a cigarett break so the detectives would take him out into their sallyport which is a garage area.
he asked for two burgers from a resturant .two double scheeseburgers is what he wanted and as soon as he had the hamburgers, he told detectives where the gun was located.
they found the gun in a storm sewer ,they were able to throw a magnet down and pull back a little bit there it was , matched up perfectly .
Golsby was charged with aggravated murder kidnapping rape and robbery .
detectives are reviewing other crimes such as robberies in german village in south east columbus to see if Golsby could be connected to those.
his ankle monitor showed he was at the scene of at least six armed robberies before the murder of reagan tokes.
a prosecutor decided to seek the death penalty.prosecutors said Golsby is a repeat violent offender and sexually violent predator and said his criminal history , not his race is what makes him eligible for the death penalty
” if you’re going to have a death sentence in this state or any other state, this is the kind of case that it should be used upon.”
– Ron O’brien
opening statements in the murder trial of brian Golsby , accused of rape and execution style murder of Ohio state university student reagan tokes, Golsby could face the death penalty.
since the state was seeking the death penalty prosecutors wanted to make sure that the jury knew and understood what a terrible brutal horrific crime this was.
Golsby was represented by two public defenders .
the prosecutors were up against two very accomplished phenomenal defense council and they showed it throughout this case from the very beginning.
The prosecutors played long stretches of the interrogation of brian Golsby .his claims about TJ
and his description of the last words he heard from reagan.
” she said , all i want to do is live.”
-rick forney
and there was testimony about the gun recovered from the sewer linked to the bullets removed from reagans body..
but the prosecutors strongerst witnesses were the women in brian Golsby’s life agreed to testify against him.
the purse reagan tokes had with herr the night she was murdered that Golsby had given to his girlfriend as a gift.
on th final day of the state’s case , prosecutors brought in two more women who had relationships with brian.
starting with the mother of his six year old daughter jennifer. she invoked an Ohio law that keeps witnesses faces from being shown.
next witness , Britney stepp also wisited brian the same day in jail .
both jennifer and britney asked brian if he raped reagan and he nod yes .both also asked if he killed reagan .
and he had schook his head yeas.
During closing arguments, prosecutors argued that Golsby murdered Tokes to avoid being caught. Defense counsel argued in their closing arguments that Golsby was not smart enough to plan Tokes’s murder and instead killed her as a result of panic.
” we the jury in this case being duly impanel and sworn find th defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”
“almost catatonic, didn’t see any emotion , didn’t really move a lot, not a lot of expressions. he looked pathetic more than anything else”
-james lowe.
the only thing that really was of any debate was whether he was going to get to allow to live or whether he deserved the same fate that he did to reagan. that was the only debate in that courtrom.
Golsby was convicted on all counts on March 13, which would have been Tokes’s twenty-third birthday.
When it came to determining the penalty, the jury could not agree. Four voted for life in prison and eight voted for death. Judge Mark Serrott sentenced Golsby to life in prison on March 21.
During the sentencing, Serrott told Golsby that his life was spared because of his upbringing yet Tokes’s life wasn’t. “Reagan did nothing wrong, whatsoever, and yet she forfeited her life because of your background.
You get spared because of your background, and yet she forfeited her life.” After being sentenced to life in prison, he pleaded guilty to six robberies that occurred before Tokes’s murder.Golsby is currently incarcerated at the Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax prison in Youngstown.