She made a second Instagram account just to collect sunsets, not to post them, not to build a following, not to show anyone, just to save them. Just to have them somewhere private, somewhere she could look when she needed to remember what beautiful looked like. That detail matters, not because it changes anything about what happened to her, but because it tells you exactly who Ally Kostial was before July 19th, 2019 made her a headline.
She was 21 years old. She was three months away from her senior year. And the man who drove her 30 miles from campus in the early hours of a Saturday morning to an abandoned fishing camp near Sardis Lake, the man who fired at her nearly 10 times from different angles until she could not survive, was someone she had known for three years, someone she had cried over, defended to her friends, and still believed on some level was capable of being better than he was.
This is the full story of what happened to Ally Kostial, the investigation, the evidence, the searches that told investigators everything before the arrest, and the question this case leaves behind that nobody has a comfortable answer to. Alexandria Madison Kostial was born in St.
Louis, Missouri to her parents Keith and Cindy. She went by Ally to just about everyone who knew her. Her friend Rachel described her as someone who had a natural gift for making people feel good. She knew how to make everyone laugh, and she knew how to make everyone feel loved. She went out of her way for anyone, whether she knew them well or not.
Sports had always been central to who she was. She ran track and did cheerleading in high school, and her coach remembered her as someone who refused to take the easy way out. She liked challenges. She was not afraid of hard work. That drive followed her into everything she pursued. When it came time to choose a college, Ally had her eyes set on studying business and marketing.
She loved pink, pearls, and flowers. And one of the reasons she chose the University of Mississippi, her mother Cindy shared this detail that it says everything about who Ally was, was simply because there were so many flowers around the campus. The whole atmosphere made her happy. She walked into Oxford, Mississippi, and it felt like home.
She joined the Ole Miss School of Business Administration and threw herself into every part of the experience. She became a founding member of her sorority, Alpha Phi. She served as president of the Ole Miss Golf Club. She founded several of the running clubs on campus. She taught yoga and Pilates classes. She worked as a babysitter and a lifeguard.
And in her summers, rather than going home to rest, she traveled to Peru and to parts of Africa to volunteer as an English teacher for young children. Think about that for a moment. While most college students were counting down to summer break, Ally was looking for ways to use that time to help someone she had never met.
This was not someone coasting through her college years. She was living them fully and filling them with purpose. By the summer of 2019, she was about to enter her senior year, set to graduate in the spring of 2020. She had stayed in Mississippi to take extra classes. She was the kind of person who used every available hour.
In early July, her parents came to visit her apartment. Ally was having such a good time that she asked them to stay an extra day. She wanted her mother to cook some of her favorite meals. They went shopping together and picked out beach-themed decor for her room. One of those warm, unremarkable moments that families hold on to forever, precisely because they feel like nothing special at the time.
Nobody takes a picture. Nobody thinks to say, “Remember this.” And then later, they wish with everything they have that they had. Friday, July 19th, 2019. 7:00 in the evening. Ally called her mother. She had just woken up from a nap after a test, told Cindy she was heading out with some friends. Completely normal.
Completely routine. She hung up the phone, got ready, and headed out into Oxford. At 11:52 that night, a security camera outside a bar called Funkys in Oxford Square recorded her walking out. 5 minutes later, she got into a silver minivan parked nearby. Her Uber. The driver dropped her at her apartment. Her roommates confirmed she came home that night.
Her Uber account matched the story exactly. What her roommates did not hear was Ally leaving again sometime after that. She had not called another Uber from her phone. No ride was ever requested. No notification. No digital trail of a second trip. Which meant she had left with someone she had chosen to go with. Someone she trusted.
Someone who had reached out to her or who she had contacted in the hours between arriving home and slipping back out into the night. At around 10:30 the following morning, a deputy making a routine patrol of an area called Buford’s Ridge near Sardis Lake found something that changed everything. A remote and desolate stretch of road far from campus, far from lights, far from anyone who might hear anything.
An abandoned fishing camp sat there, rarely visited except by the occasional fisherman or students on ATVs. No houses, no street lights, long winding roads cutting through thick trees. The kind of place that feels deliberately forgotten. The only reason to go there at night was because you had chosen to go there.
Ally’s body was found on the ground. She had sustained multiple serious gunshot wounds. At least nine shots. 11 shell casings were recovered at the scene. Lafayette County investigator Jared Bundren later said he had never in his entire career worked a murder case where someone had been shot that many times.
Her purse, her school ID, and her driver’s license were lying nearby, along with some empty drink cans. A person walking their dog had reported hearing gunshots at around 2:15 in the morning. The location was 30 miles from campus. Investigators reached her roommates through her school ID and began making calls.
Back in Ally’s room, they found something immediately significant. Her cell phone was gone. Whoever she had left with had taken it. But her Apple Watch was still sitting on the dresser. And some of her messages were still synced to it. What those messages contained reshaped the entire direction of the investigation.
In the fall of 2016, Ally had met a fellow student named Brandon Thiesfeld. The two had carried on an on-and-off relationship for the three years that followed. Her friends were candid about what they had witnessed. Brandon did not treat her well. He would say hurtful, degrading things. He would harass her and then go completely silent.
Block her, then unblock her, then disappear again. He could be the most charming person in the room and then suddenly reveal a genuinely aggressive, angry side. There was no warning for when the switch would happen and that unpredictability was part of what made the relationship so hard to leave because the charming version always came back.
Brandon’s roommate Rex described the dynamic plainly. He said Brandon led Ali on consistently enough that it could reasonably be described as emotional abuse. Rex also noted that Brandon had a violent streak and that he constantly referenced his father’s money, repeatedly making the point that his dad could get him out of anything.
He was dismissive and disrespectful toward people around him, especially toward women. Ali wanted something real, someone to build a life with, someone to possibly marry, someone to start a family with. Brandon was never on the same page. As her friends put it simply, she liked him more than he liked her.
And none of Ali’s friends knew how dangerous the situation had actually become. What the messages on the Apple Watch revealed was something far more serious than anyone had realized. They showed that Ali believed she might be pregnant with Brandon’s child and had been trying desperately to meet with him in person to talk through what to do.
On April 14th, Ali had sent Brandon a photo of an inconclusive pregnancy test. His reply was direct. All right. Well, if it is pregnant, we aren’t keeping it. He made clear that becoming a father at 22 would ruin his life. Almost immediately after that exchange, he began searching online. Not for information, not for options.
He searched abortion services, abortion pills, and the phrase mother wants kid, father does not. Think carefully about what those searches reflect. Not panic, not confusion, something far more deliberate, something that looked like a man mapping out what he wanted to happen. Their communication after this point moved entirely to phone calls.
Ally was not coping. When police called Brandon and asked him to come in for a conversation, he told them he couldn’t make it that day, but assured them he would be there first thing Monday morning at 8:30 sharp. Monday came and went. Brandon never showed. Investigators did not wait any longer. They began tracking his phone and his bank card activity.
What they found showed him driving away from Oxford towards Memphis, Tennessee. A bolo, be on the lookout, was issued for his vehicle. His license plate spelled out the phrase take it. About 2 hours after the notice began circulating, Brandon was located at a gas station and taken into custody. He was wearing clothes that bore visible traces of what had happened.
Inside his truck, police found a .40 caliber handgun that he had taken from his father’s house. He had posted a photo of that gun on Snapchat with the caption finally taking my baby back to Oxford. That weapon matched the evidence recovered at the scene where Ally was found. Back at Brandon’s apartment, investigators found a handwritten note addressed to his parents.
Part of it read, “Dear mom and dad, I am not a good person. It is not your fault. Something in me just doesn’t work. I’ve always had terrible thoughts. I’ve always had these demons. I know I’m going to get caught. Those thoughts have been fueled by cocaine and alcohol. I think this is the end for me. I’m either going to prison or going to die.
I’m sorry I’m a shitty son. I also know that you will love me no matter what. Those words were chilling in their clarity. But the note was only one piece of what had been building inside Brandon’s mind before that night. His search history in the days leading up to the murder added an even darker dimension. He had searched for silencers and weapons.
He had researched the serial killer Ted Bundy. Specifically, how Bundy had lured his victims. What made them trust him? What made them get into the car? He had also searched domestic violence murders, how to restrain people, and the effects of morph suits. These were not casual searches. These were not the result of morbid curiosity or stumbling across disturbing content by accident.
They were specific. They were methodical. Taken together, they described someone who had been thinking about what he was going to do, and thinking about it carefully, deliberately, over a period of time. Investigators reconstructed what had happened on the night of July 19th. Brandon had been at a friend’s house that evening with the gun and a six-pack of beer.
He disappeared from that gathering just before 1:00 in the morning without anyone seeing him go. He drove to get Ally. She slipped out of her own home without her roommates hearing her leave. She got into his truck under the impression that the two of them were finally going to talk and come up with a plan together.
Having already consumed cocaine and alcohol, Brandon drove them both toward the abandoned fishing camp near Sardis Lake, roughly 45 minutes from Oxford. Cell phone records placed both Ali and Brandon at every point along that route. The roads grew narrower and darker as they went. Trees pressing in from both sides, no lights, nothing for miles.
45 minutes in a truck in the dark with a man she had known for nearly 3 years. A man she had cried over, defended to her friends, and still believed on some level would eventually come around. What happened when they reached that place is a matter of record. Brandon circled the picnic table and fired at Ali multiple times from different angles, leaving her with no chance of survival.
On August 30th, 2021, a grand jury indicted Brandon Thiesfeld on a capital murder charge. He pleaded not guilty. The capital designation arose from prosecutors arguing that luring Ali into his truck under false pretenses constituted kidnapping in addition to the murder itself. Following a mental health evaluation, investigators concluded that Brandon had been in a sound state of mind when he took Ali’s life.
His attorney acknowledged the finding, but also wanted it on record that Brandon had been under the influence of alcohol and cocaine at the time. As though that changed what the searches had shown. As though Ted Bundy and restraint techniques were things you look up impulsively on a bad night. His defense attorneys described a young man who, on paper, had every advantage.
A loving family, a father who was a physician, a good school, no history of serious violence, not so much as a physical altercation. A childhood that, by all accounts, had been a happy one. What had led him to that abandoned fishing camp, even his own lawyer had to admit, was something no one had seen coming.
On August 27th, 2021, almost 2 years to the date of his indictment, Brandon Theisfeld pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, rather than capital murder. That plea spared him the death penalty. The story he gave his attorneys was that both of them had been drinking, that he had pulled out the gun and fired it aimlessly out over the lake, that Ally became frightened, and that moments later, he shot her.
He maintained that none of it had been planned. The evidence did not support that version. Ally had not been shot once. She had sustained nearly 10 gunshot wounds in one of the most remote locations in the county. The prosecution was unequivocal. This was premeditated. Brandon Theisfeld was sentenced to life in prison.
He will be eligible for conditional release when he reaches 65 years of age. For what appeared to be the first time since any of this had begun, he showed genuine emotion in that courtroom. He turned to Ally’s family and said, “I am sincerely sorry for the pain I’ve caused while taking Ally from you. My actions have forever changed your lives and my family’s lives.
I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t. There is no excuse for my actions, and I have asked God for forgiveness. I hope one day that you will find it in your heart to forgive me.” Those words came far too late for the family sitting in that room, and for everyone who had known and loved Ally. Brandon’s mother, Carrie, spoke about what those days felt like from the inside.
She said that when she first heard Brandon was being spoken to by the police, she she did not have a single thought that it could be him. Not even a flicker of suspicion. That is perhaps one of the most painful realizations a parent can be left with. That the person they raised, the child they thought they knew, had been living with something they never once saw.
Allie’s friends did not stand still in their grief. They started fundraising, setting a goal of $150,000 for the dedication of the Mind and Body Studio in the South Campus Recreation Center in Allie’s name. They wanted something real to carry her forward. Not just a plaque, but a place where people would actually move, breathe, and live the things Allie had always believed in.
Allie’s dad, Keith, put his grief into words that anyone who has ever lost someone will recognize immediately. He said it still feels like his daughter is simply away at school. And then he described something that people in grief understand, but rarely say out loud. That the quietest moments are the most haunting.
Not the ceremonies or the anniversaries marked on a calendar, but the moments in between. When the busyness stops, and there is no noise left to fill the space. Whenever her friends see a particularly vivid sunset now, they look up and say hi to her. It is a small ritual born entirely out of love. Her best friend, Maddie, said she was going to try to be more happy, more optimistic, and live life to the fullest the way Allie did.
But she would carry the memory of Allie’s smile in the back of her mind to keep her going. That is the kind of impression Ali Not just a memory, but a reason to keep moving forward. She collected sunsets. She made space in her life for beauty, for people, for the kind of effort that goes beyond what is required of anyone.
She traveled to Peru and Africa to teach children she had never met. She built clubs and communities and spaces where people could feel good about themselves. And then someone who had every reason to choose differently, who had every advantage, every resource, every option, chose to take all of that away on a dark stretch of road 30 miles from everything she had built.
He knew her. She trusted him enough to get into his truck in the middle of the night because she believed they were finally going to talk. That trust, that specific, named, chosen trust was the last thing he took from her. What do the searches tell you? Not the gun, not the note, not the relationship, but those specific searches in those specific days before.
What does it mean when someone researches how a serial killer got victims to trust him and then hours later someone who trusted him is gone? I want to know what you think. Drop it below. Ali Cost was 21 years old. She made a second Instagram account just to save sunsets. She deserved every single one she never got to see.
