Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Step into the 2020 True Crime Vault where you'll hear our most gripping stories.
Living the dream and it all just shattered. Three-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. 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.
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, 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.
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Chapter 2: What happened to three-year-old Riley Fox?
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. My first day is a 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. They were high school sweethearts. 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 three. 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.
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Chapter 3: What details emerged from the police interrogation of Kevin Fox?
He had an especially close relationship with Riley. The two of them were inseparable.
Watch where you're going. 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?
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Chapter 4: How did the investigation shift focus after Riley's disappearance?
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.
Kevin 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 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. I 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.
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Chapter 5: What was the community's reaction to Riley's abduction?
Yes. And what's the next thing that you remember? Tyler waking me up and said that Riley was gone. At 8 a.m., Tyler came into Kevin's room. He shook 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.
For a three-year-old to go missing in Wilmington was a big deal.
This doesn't happen there. The worst news any parent could imagine. Chills to me. Wilmington, Illinois is the quintessential American small town. 4.2 square miles, set amid 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 was broken.
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.
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Chapter 6: Who is Scott Eby and what role did he play in Riley's case?
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. I hired actors. 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 then they were asking me about the night, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, 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. I freaked out. I stood up and started pointing at 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 threatened. I didn't kill my daughter. They said they just wore him down psychologically, emotionally, just tag-teaming him left and right, left and right, left and 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. I couldn't have failed it.
That's when things really get intense. The police bring Melissa into Kevin. Kevin failed the test. It 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 okay. They didn't want me anywhere near him. In that moment, Detective Ed Hayes, according to a lawsuit later filed, blew up. You're a liar.
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Chapter 7: How did the police initially handle the case?
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 three-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 sleep. I couldn't eat. I was a zoo animal where people just wanted to just see me in a cell. Did 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 five months later, 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's sympathy to all of a sudden, we were bad people.
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