Fellow student charged in weekend murder of Ole Miss student

Published 11:47 am Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Police have arrested a Texas man and have charged him with the murder of an Ole Miss student who was found dead Saturday morning.

Brandon A. Theesfeld, 22, who was booked at 3:45 p.m. on Monday, has been arrested for the murder of Ole Miss student Alexandria ‘Ally’ Kostial. Her bullet-ridden body was found near a lake in a rural area of Lafayette County, Mississippi, approximately 30 miles from the Ole Miss campus.

Theesfeld was a student at Ole Miss in the business department, where Kostial also was enrolled, the university reported. The school said Theesfeld has now been suspended.

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The Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations released a statement at 11:08 a.m. confirming Theesfeld’s involvement with the case.

At the time of booking, next to Theesfeld’s name, “hold” was written under the charge line in the jail docket. However, the word was crossed out Tuesday morning, and written above it in bold letters was the word “murder.”

Further details are not being released at this time, LCSO Chief Investigator Alan Wilburn said.

“As stated in the earlier press release, we are not releasing details of the investigation as this is an ongoing investigation,” Wilburn said in the statement. “We will release when it is appropriate and not before. We want to thank the family (of) Alexandria for their patience and their trust in The Lafayette County Sheriff’s Dept. Brandon is in the Lafayette County Detention Center and a booking photo will be available sometime this afternoon.”

Kostial was found at 10:23 a.m. Saturday near the Buford Ridge area of Harmontown, approximately 20 miles from the Ole Miss campus. No further details have been released by the authorities regarding how Kostial died, though other reports claim she was shot multiple times.

Kostial was a 21-year-old Ole Miss student from St. Louis, Missouri, who was studying to obtain a marketing degree.