Zellner: $100,000 Riley Fox Reward Helped Solve Murder

WILMINGTON, IL —Kathleen Zellner, the criminal defense lawyer who proved that the Will County Sheriff's Office botched the high-profile homicide investigation of 3-year-old Riley Fox, wants everyone to know that huge rewards can make the difference in solving high-profile murder cases.

The June 6, 2004, killing of the little girl from Wilmington was featured in a two-hour special aired Friday night by ABC's "20/20."

Seventeen years ago, Zellner's client, Kevin Fox, was wrongly arrested and charged with killing his little girl. Almost a year later, Fox was freed from the Will County Jail, and his murder charges were dismissed. However, the heinous killing remained unsolved for the next five years.

Riley was found dead in a creek not far from her home in Wilmington.

As the years passed, one woman in Wilmington always had a strong suspicion that 33-year-old Scott Wayne Eby might be responsible for killing the little girl and disposing of her body.

After Kevin and Melissa Fox announced a $100,000 reward was being offered for information leading to the killer's capture, Trisha Kiefer came forward, Zellner explained.

Kiefer provided incriminating information about Eby to the FBI agents who came into the investigation many years later in hopes of learning the true killer's identity.

Kiefer had been reluctant to speak with authorities for a number of years because of her fear of Eby, who had been previously convicted of sexually assaulting a family member and was involved in other criminal activity.

Friday night's "20/20" segment aired an on-camera interview it conducted with Kiefer several years ago before she died in 2012 at the age of 40.

She told ABC producers that Scott Wayne Eby had been an ex-boyfriend.

Asked how she would describe him, Kiefer said, "A creep."

Kiefer recalled that several months after the 3-year-old's death, she and Eby were at Riley's Memorial Garden, when he made a strange remark.

"I was saying, 'I can't believe somebody did that to that sweet little girl,'" Kiefer told 20/20. "And he said, 'Oh, that was such a shame wasn't it?' And the way he said it was cold, like he didn't mean it. It was like an actor reading a script that didn't know how to act, and, for some reason, it just stuck in my head."

In June 2004, Eby was driving around Wilmington burglarizing homes in the middle of the night. He burglarized a house across from Kevin Fox's place, and then he sneaked into the Fox house. When he saw Riley Fox sleeping on a living room couch, he took her with him.

Eby brought Riley to Forsythe Woods, where he sexually assaulted her. He later he told the FBI he decided to kill her after a bandana he'd worn to cover his face slipped off.

During Friday night's 20/20 segment, FBI agents talked about how they descended on Wilmington and canvassed many neighborhoods and that included an interview with Kiefer.

Along with collecting from the $100,000 reward put up by Kevin and Melissa Fox, Kiefer also collected a $10,000 FBI reward.

"I think Ms. Kiefer was very motivated to talk to the FBI when they conducted a neighborhood canvass because she knew she was dying of breast cancer, and she wanted her young son to be provided for after she was gone," Zellner told Patch. "I think our decision to make a reward offer was a critical component in solving the case.

"It seemed to prompt (Kiefer). It's not like the FBI went to her neighborhood and uncovered this."

Zellner wants people who watched the "20/20" segment to realize that a huge reward can often become the motivating factor for someone to finally come forward in an unsolved murder case. Zellner has also announced a $100,000 reward in her case trying to prove the innocence of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin's Steven Avery, the murder case made world-famous by the Netflix documentary series called "Making a Murderer."

Zellner remains hopeful that the huge reward will lead to the eventual arrest and prosecution of the real killer of Teresa Halbach.

For now, her client Avery remains in a Wisconsin prison cell as Zellner works to overturn his first-degree murder conviction, absolutely convinced of his innocence.

As for Kiefer's role in the Riley Fox case, "she finally decided to talk, and she did that because the motivation was money. I think it was absolutely the reason Trish Kiefer came forward and in the Avery case, we're hoping someone who has been previously unwilling to come forward will be motivated by the reward."

The 20/20 special also included interviews with Will County State's Attorney Jim Glasgow, who later asked the FBI to join the investigation into Riley Fox’s murder.

"In 2009, I just got to the point where I said, we’ve just got to do something drastic here, so I asked the FBI if they would get involved," Glasgow said in the segment aired on 20/20.

On May 27, 2010, Glasgow filed first-degree murder charges against Scott Wayne Eby. At the time, Eby was serving a 14-year prison sentence in the Lawrence Correctional Center for an unrelated criminal sexual assault that occurred in July 2005 in Will County.

Eby pleaded guilty to killing Riley Fox, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

For more information on Zellner's $100,000 reward in the Steven Avery case, read this 2019 Joliet Patch article here.