Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

She loved the sand. She loved the water.

She said to me, "I'm gonna Myrtle Beach for spring break."

-Myrtle Beach, it's beautiful beaches,

it's clubs, it's hanging out.

-Brittanee, you need to answer my calls

to let me know you're okay. All right?

[ Cellphone beeps ]

-"Oh, my God, what do you mean you can't find my daughter?"

-Her phone was moving faster and going south.

-At 8:48 p.m.,

surveillance cameras capture her leaving the hotel.

-And then suddenly, all communications stopped.

-We need everyone's help to bring her home to us.

-You've got helicopters flying.

People running ATVs, horseback.

-I'm not gonna leave here until I have my daughter.

I can't.

-There were thousands of tips.

-She said ,"That girl." And I said, "What girl?"

-We think she was held here against her will.

-The FBI -- They had a hell of a story.

-They're describing what just happened to my best friend.

It's awful.

-Somehow that got leaked to the media.

People ran with it. They went nuts.

-You know anything about the missing teenager?

-You know what? We're gonna call the police in a second.

You better split.

-We kept hitting wall after wall after wall.

-What came next, everyone was unprepared for.

-That's, like, when my heart just dropped.

♪♪

-Brittanee, please call me back.

Please call me back.

♪♪

♪♪

-Brittanee was a good little girl.

I mean, she, like, she would do backyard shows.

You can see in the pictures

where she always had a lot of fun.

Right here. This is where she used to do her backyard shows.

Right here on this little playground.

She'd get up on the top with the little microphone

and she'd be singing away.

-♪ Itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again ♪

♪ When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall ♪

-I just wish we could go back to these days.

-I had dated Brittanee's dad when I was in my, um,

I think it was my junior or senior year in high school,

and I had ended up getting pregnant with Brittanee,

and we weren't together at the time.

When Brittanee was born, her father loved her so much,

but he felt like he couldn't take care of her

because we were both young when we had her.

And then I ended up meeting Chad, um,

and he ended up adopting Brittanee.

He was just like, "This is my little baby."

We had Myrissa probably about two years after that,

and then we had Camdyn.

Brittanee was kind of like a mom to both of them.

-Me and Brittanee were six years apart.

She loved having a little sister.

I would be just going in her room,

laying next to her, just talking.

She would advise me what to do

and what not to do in relationships when I grew older.

-Brittanee and I met when I was 15 and she was 14.

It was a relationship that formed almost immediately.

Brittanee was an athlete and Brittanee was a soccer player.

So we would see each other on the soccer field

and she was the absolute fastest player on that field.

I mean, if she had the ball, you were not gonna catch her.

Brittanee was teeny tiny, but absolutely stunning.

Her eyes just shine.

She was vibrant. She was funny.

She could make you laugh

till you had tears streaming down your face.

With her energy and the kindness that she shows,

she was constantly making friends.

John Grieco, her boyfriend,

was, to her, like, her first true love.

You're young and you're gonna go through ups and downs.

And they did just like anybody else at that age.

But John was her -- absolutely her everything.

And, you know, he felt the same way about her.

He loved her very much.

♪♪

-At the end of March of 2009, Brittanee started asking

if she could go to Myrtle Beach with her friends.

I guess a lot of her friends were talking about it.

-Everyone in Rochester goes to Myrtle Beach for spring break.

It was the fun and cool thing to do.

There's clubs and bars, there's sand and sun.

It's more lenient.

So they know they can get into the clubs.

They know they can probably get drinks

and not be ID'd at the door.

-I never did anything like that when I was younger.

I said, "Brittanee, you're not going to Myrtle Beach."

I said, "You need to catch up on school."

And she said, "But I really want to go."

I said, "Brittanee, you're not going."

I said, "There's no parental supervision

and something is going to happen to you."

You know, I would watch these things on TV

about spring break and the stuff that happens.

-Spring break is already in full swing

and so are the underage-drinking arrests.

♪♪

-With her being only 17 years old,

her being as beautiful as she was,

I didn't want anybody to take advantage of her.

She was so angry with me.

And, I mean, she called me every name in the book and --

and she was just really upset.

-Back then, I think Brittanee

was going through a tough time with Dawn and her dad.

-At the time that she wanted to go out to Myrtle Beach,

my sister was going through a depression

because my dad and my mom were going through a separation.

-At her age, she understood why they were getting a divorce,

but I think she was like,

"Am I not gonna have the same home life?

Am I not gonna be with them all the time?"

-Chad had left the house and Brittanee,

I think at that point, she just wanted to get away.

She wanted to get away from, you know, the arguing

and going back and forth and, you know, the divorce.

And I feel horrible.

I feel horrible because she was going through so much.

Later that night she said, "Mom, can I stay at my friend's house

for a few days since it's my spring break?"

And I said, "Yes.

As long as there's parental supervision,

that would be okay."

♪♪

-A few days later, me and my mom

were at a mall picking out soccer stuff

'cause me and my sister both played soccer at the time.

-I sent pictures to Brittanee of the soccer cleats

for their upcoming season.

And I said, "Well, what are you doing later?"

And she said, "We're gonna hang out here

and then watch a movie."

And then she said, like, "I'll see you tomorrow, Mom.

I love you."

That night, I was getting the kids' pajamas on

and my phone rang.

[ Cellphone rings ]

It was John Grieco.

He said, "Brittanee's in Myrtle Beach

and they can't find her."

"What do you mean you can't find my daughter?"

I was like, "Oh, my God."

-John and I knew that Brittanee was in Myrtle Beach.

She had gone down there with these girls

that were older than her.

They were people that she knew

from just going out and through mutual friends.

She had invited me to go with her.

I was working full time and I couldn't go.

She asked John, but John was working full time as well

and he told her, he was like, "Go have a good time for me."

It was between 9:30 and 10:00.

John called me absolutely frantic

that he can't get ahold of Brittanee.

-When John called me, I started calling Brittanee's phone.

[ Cellphone ringing ]

And it was ringing and ringing and ringing

and then went to voicemail.

-We knew that her phone wasn't dead because it's still ringing.

-This is not like her.

[ Ringing continues ]

Brittanee was on her phone all the time.

Brittanee would text. That's all she did 24 hours a day.

-John kept calling her.

Then I would call her from my cellphone.

-Everyone was very, very frantic.

[ Cellphone beeps ]

-And then we called the other kids that were with her,

the ones that drove her down there.

-They said they hadn't seen her since the morning.

They were all trying to find Brittanee as well.

-All of a sudden...

her phone just stopped ringing.

It just went directly to voicemail.

[ Beeping ]

-Hey, it's Britt.

Leave a message and I'll get back to you soon.

-That's, like, when my heart just dropped.

I knew that she was in danger.

♪♪

♪♪

-My name is Steph Watts. I'm an investigative journalist,

and I covered the Brittanee Drexel case.

When people think of Myrtle Beach, it's a destination area.

It's beaches, it's a strip, it's clubs, it's hanging out.

It's sun and sand. And it can be a fun place.

[ Seagulls squawking ]

Unfortunately, there's a much darker side to it.

[ Siren wailing ]

-Right now, the police department is working

with multiple agencies to help keep crime at bay.

-When you have a place like Myrtle Beach

where people are going to party,

that can open up a window to a much darker world --

human trafficking, excessive drug use and violent crimes.

-Bullets and robberies here in Myrtle Beach.

-When you actually dig in to the numbers and the crime stats,

it's pretty shocking.

Especially back in 2009,

Myrtle Beach had a violent crime rate

that was more than three times higher

than the national average.

So Myrtle Beach is not some little small-town

police department.

-When we found out Brittanee was in Myrtle Beach

and they couldn't find her, everyone was in a panic.

We called the Myrtle Beach Police Department

to report her missing.

And they said, "Normally when kids go missing,

they're there with somebody on the beach,

or they met up with somebody."

And we had to convince them like,

"No, this is not like Brittanee.

She's not answering her phone."

So they took the missing-person's report,

but it listed her as an endangered runaway.

And when he told me that, I was really --

I was really pissed.

I was mad because I know Brittanee,

she wouldn't run away.

♪♪

The next morning,

I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna go to Myrtle Beach."

I mean, I had to find Brittanee.

-When Dawn had called me, I said, "Okay, yep.

I'll definitely -- I'll come with you."

-So we packed up.

I drove all the way to Myrtle Beach.

-It was John, her boyfriend, myself,

and Brittanee's grandparents and Brittanee's mother, Dawn.

We're just gonna go get Brittanee and bring her home.

[ Birds chirping ]

-On April 26, 2009, I was at my desk

and I had one of the detectives come in with a patrol officer

that had taken a report of a missing person.

Missing-persons reports --

generally, they resolve within 24 hours,

but in this case, the detective saw

that there was a lot of red flags.

We found out that Brittanee Drexel was an athlete.

She didn't drink,

didn't do drugs and didn't have a history of being a party girl.

Also, she had been in constant communication

and abruptly stopped and no one had been able to reach her.

One of the first things we did in the investigation

is go to the hotel where she was staying.

-Brittanee had arrived in Myrtle Beach Thursday morning

and checked in to the Bar Harbor Hotel

with her friends that she traveled down with.

That's two days before she disappeared.

-All of her clothes were there. Everything was there.

When she went missing,

all she had with her was some money and her phone.

It was quite evident that she hadn't run away.

So we were very, very concerned immediately.

And then we interviewed the girls that she came down with.

They had no idea where she was or what she was doing.

They actually had very little to do with Brittanee

because she was younger than they were.

They did what they came to do.

They went out and went places she couldn't go.

-Brittanee was kind of left to fend for herself

in Myrtle Beach.

It's possible...

that's where things really went wrong for her.

-The girls were scared as well.

Someone that you came with

is no longer answering her cellphone.

No one's seen her. No one knows where she is.

-Where is she?

She was a beautiful girl.

Her heart, everything, in just...gone.

We drove 18 hours,

and I remember we just kept calling her phone,

hoping that she would answer.

Call after call after call.

[ Dialing ]

-Hey, it's Britt.

Leave a message and I'll get back to you soon.

-The mailbox is full.

-The phone's still not turned on.

Her voicemail was full, and on the drive down,

we had the sense of urgency that maybe she's not okay.

Maybe she can't get to a phone.

♪♪

The next day, as soon as we stepped outside

of that vehicle in Myrtle Beach,

it was boots on the ground for all of us.

-After we talked to law enforcement,

the first thing I did was went to the TV station

and tried to get Brittanee's name and face out there.

I had watched a lot of shows on missing persons,

and I know that awareness is everything.

Then we went down to Ocean Boulevard

to start looking for Brittanee and pass out fliers.

-We went to every surf shop,

every restaurant, every convenience store,

and then every hotel showing Brittanee's photo

asking if she had been there.

♪♪

And once it got dark that night, Brittanee's boyfriend,

John, he was like, "I'm staying out here.

I'm not done looking for her."

-That very night, a local news station airs

a story on the disappearance of Brittanee.

-Someone who could have taken her.

She could be laying dead somewhere.

-It's -- [sniffles] It's tearing me up inside.

I'm very, very, very upset.

-Within just hours of the first story airing,

multiple people reported seeing someone

who looked like Brittanee Drexel on a bus in Myrtle Beach.

-It gave us hope. We're like, "Okay, she is here."

♪♪

-There was a lead of a small blond girl,

and the description of who this person was,

was very close to Brittanee.

And we had heard it multiple times

that she was seen at a bus stop.

We went up and down that boulevard

over and over and over again,

thinking that we were just a step behind her.

-And we were able to track down the girl.

But it was not Brittanee.

♪♪

When you have a missing person, you try to look

at all possible aspects of what could have transpired.

We wanted to make a timeline

to give us a roadmap of where she went,

what she was doing for the last three days that she was here.

One of the first things we did

was get Brittanee's phone records,

and they had told everything that she was doing.

We learned that she was texting nonstop the whole time

she was here with her boyfriend, John Grieco.

-The day after Brittanee arrived,

she connected with a whole bunch of other kids from Rochester

that were down there.

Brittanee was having a great time,

but a couple of days into the trip,

things weren't going so well.

Brittanee went to Myrtle Beach to get away from Rochester,

but it was not what she expected.

-I think that Brittanee kind of felt alone.

Friday evening we found out

that Brittanee had been walking on the boulevard by herself.

-Saturday, the day Brit went missing,

detectives learned that she started the day off

by herself at the beach.

-At some point, Brittanee ran across Peter Brozowitz,

who was a boy that she knew.

-Peter was a popular and well-known club promoter

back in Rochester.

He's down in Myrtle Beach as well with a group of friends.

-She would go to events that he would throw.

-Brittanee apparently spent some time with him on the beach.

-Him and Brittanee had been close friends,

which is why I think Brittanee felt so comfortable

hanging out with him at the beach.

-That evening, Brittanee receives a text from Peter.

-The phone records also show that at 8:00 p.m.,

Brittanee went to get those shoes.

-Brittanee leaves her hotel, the Bar Harbor Hotel,

to head south down Ocean Boulevard to Peter's hotel,

the Bluewater.

That walk's about a mile and a half.

-One of the first things that we did

when we found out where Brittanee was going,

we checked all the cameras along Ocean Boulevard.

We actually were able to get one video of her walking south...

...somewhere around 6th Avenue South.

♪♪

-While she's heading to Peter's hotel,

she gets a text message from one of the friends

she's traveled down with.

-I know my sister.

She was annoyed and probably like, "'F' this girl.

Like, why are you really mad over shorts? Like, really?"

-After walking a little more than half an hour,

Brittanee arrives at Peter's hotel at 8:33 p.m.

-The Bluewater had cameras at the door

that showed Brittanee coming in,

so we knew that she had in fact reached her destination.

♪♪

♪♪

-At 8:48 p.m., surveillance cameras capture her leaving.

-She was alone going out.

There was no indication of being followed or duressed.

-But it appeared she was not in a good state of mind

when she left Peter's hotel.

-While she was heading back,

she was conversing with John Grieco.

And then suddenly, all communications stopped.

-Hey, it's Britt.

Leave a message and I'll get back to you soon.

-She never did reach the camera at 6th Avenue

that recorded her earlier.

So we knew that whatever had happened to Brittanee took place

between the Bluewater Resort and 6th Avenue.

-Detectives eventually tracked down Peter.

He said yes. Brittanee was at the hotel

and she took her flip-flops and left.

That's the last time he saw Brittanee

and he has no idea what happened to her.

-Everything we found out was he had nothing to do with this.

-It just didn't make a lot of sense

that -- that no one seemed to see anything.

She was in busy Myrtle Beach.

There's people all over the place.

She's caught on, you know, the traffic cameras

walking down Ocean Boulevard.

She was there one second and she was gone the next.

♪♪

♪♪

there have been no more reported sightings

of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel,

who went missing here in Myrtle Beach.

-But we're gonna continue looking for her.

We're one step behind her.

People keep saying that they've seen her somewhere.

But every time we'd follow up on one of those leads,

we just -- We would hit another wall.

And then we kept hitting wall after wall after wall.

I think the darkest moment for me

was when the phone records

where her cellphone had last pinged came in

and the police were like, "This doesn't make any sense."

-One of the detectives suggested

that we get a tower dump.

And that just means the cellphone pings

of Brittanee Drexel's phone.

It was quite evident that she left the Bluewater resort...

♪♪

...was heading back to the Bar Harbor where she was staying...

...walking north on Ocean Boulevard.

And then suddenly her phone started moving faster...

...and going south on Highway 17.

Every tower that she would pass would ping.

And by the rate of travel,

she was obviously in a vehicle of some kind.

She went south from Myrtle Beach and through Georgetown,

and then south of Georgetown toward the North Santee River.

The last ping was in the area called the Pole Yard.

♪♪

It's a boat landing that's used by fishermen,

shrimpers and duck hunters.

It's a very desolate, dark,

bug-infested place approximately 50 miles from Myrtle Beach.

The last ping came from the area

of roughly a one-square-mile circle.

At this point, we knew we were gonna have to have help,

so we incorporated the help of Georgetown County Police.

♪♪

-My name is Hank Carrison. I'm a senior investigator

at the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office.

Santee River Delta area is a remote area.

It's kind of dangerous.

There's wildlife out there.

There's alligators, there's feral hogs.

The last time I was out there,

there was a rattlesnake as big as my thigh.

17-year-old teenage girl from New York,

she would have had no reason to go out there.

It was immediately apparent

there was some kind of malicious act

you were dealing with at that point in time.

♪♪

-We started our searches down

along the North and South Santee River.

We're looking for any human remains.

-We were also looking for evidence of a crime

or some kind of crime scene.

-With the helicopter,

they're mapping search zones around the cellphone tower.

-Georgetown County Sheriff's Office ran boats in the river

with side-scan sonar looking in the water for anything.

There was ground-penetrating radar to see

if there were any shallow or clandestine graves

that were dug in the area.

-We were brought to the area where they were searching.

It's just all woods, like, going all the way there.

And then you have the water,

and then you keep going further and there's more woods.

I'm not gonna leave here until I have my daughter.

I can't.

Even though I have two small children at home, I can't.

They searched from sunup to sundown.

You've got helicopters flying.

You've got people running ATVs, horseback.

The CUE Center for Missing Persons

did multiple searches on Brittanee

in a lot of different areas.

You know, just everybody out there searching for your child.

♪♪

♪♪

-But they find nothing.

No traces of Brittanee, no sign of a crime,

no cellphone, no articles of clothing, nothing.

-There was no doubt in anybody's minds

that Brittanee's cellphone ended up somewhere

in the Santee River Delta

until it either was destroyed or lost power.

So we're operating under the assumption

that Brittanee was in the area at that point in time,

and there's nothing there.

It's -- it's not good news.

-But I just had to keep going as much

as I could get her out on the media

and as much as I could tell her story.

-Now we turn to the frantic search

for a missing New York teen.

The last time anyone heard from Brittanee Drexel

was on Saturday night.

-This became a national story, a big national story.

This case just, like, checked all the boxes

that the traditional media likes in a missing-persons case.

I mean, you've got a pretty young girl,

blond hair, blue eyes.

-17-year-old Brittanee Drexel left Rochester, New York,

for a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Her whereabouts since are unknown.

-We're still remaining hopeful that, you know,

she'll return home or we'll get a break in the case.

♪♪

♪♪

-But at some point, people had to get back to their lives.

John and Tara, exhausted, sad and frustrated,

returned home to Rochester.

♪♪

-I came back to Rochester after two weeks.

I didn't want to leave, but I still had a job.

Her brother and sister came over to my house.

And Camdyn looked at me. He's 5 years old.

And Camdyn looks at me and says, "Where's Britt-Britt?

Why didn't you bring Britt-Britt home?"

I had to look at a 5-year-old little boy

and tell him I couldn't find his sister,

and I didn't know where his sister was.

-The first time I was down in Myrtle Beach,

I stayed there for a total of two months.

I did go home just for a couple of days,

and then flew back to Myrtle Beach

to continue to search for Brittanee.

And then the days went into weeks,

and then the weeks went into months.

As the time passes, you lose hope.

You lose a lot of hope, you know, that --

that your child's just never gonna be found.

♪♪

♪♪

-In July of 2010,

more than a year after Brittanee disappears,

the Myrtle Beach Police Department

get a call from a young woman

who claims that someone had attempted to abduct her...

in the same area that Brittanee Drexel disappeared.

She was walking down Ocean Boulevard and a van pulled up,

and three men attempted to abduct her.

The young woman says she managed to fight them off

but was able to describe the van and what the men looked like.

Everyone's like, "These are probably the same guys

that took Brittanee Drexel."

♪♪

♪♪

-News breaks quickly

of the young woman's attempted abduction,

and it really got people excited that maybe they were gonna

find out what happened to Brittanee Drexel.

-It happened Wednesday afternoon

near 22nd Avenue South and Ocean Boulevard,

when the woman says three men pulled up in a van

and tried to abduct her.

-Myrtle Beach police take a photo lineup

and ask her to -- if any of these faces look familiar.

She identifies one of the men as her potential abductors.

The police identify him as a man named Shaun Taylor.

It turns out that Shaun Taylor lives in McClellanville,

which is close to where Brittanee's cellphone

last pinged.

Police arrest him for the attempted abduction

of this young woman.

Shaun Taylor tells police

that he had nothing to do with the abduction.

He claims he was 30 minutes away at a restaurant,

and there's no way he could have been

on the strip on Myrtle Beach,

and there's no way he could have been involved.

Police don't believe him.

-Shaun Taylor also said that he did not have anything

to do with Brittanee's disappearance.

Then at some point, he shut down and refused to talk anymore.

-Shaun Taylor's released on bail

while the police continue their investigation.

Detectives eventually tracked down security footage

from the restaurant that Shaun Taylor claims he was at,

and they see him there, placing him at the restaurant

at the same time that this young woman said

she was being abducted.

And they dropped the charges against him.

-They're convinced Shaun played no role

in this latest attempted abduction

or Brittanee Drexel's disappearance.

-You had your ups and you had your downs.

You would get a good tip in and then it didn't work out.

It was a crazy roller-coaster ride, I can tell you that.

-With no new leads, It's -- it's slowing down.

And there's other cases that they need to work on

that have evidence or have more solid leads.

Then at this point, there was nothing,

nothing until 2011.

♪♪

♪♪

-In January of 2011,

investigators get a phone call from a woman

who says that her own father may have been involved

in the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel.

Her father's name was Raymond Moody.

-Ray Moody was as bad as it gets in South Carolina.

He was a level-3 or a tier-3 sex offender,

which is the worst of the worst.

-Ray Moody is the boogeyman.

He is the kind of predator

that every parent is the most scared of.

-He did some terrible things out in California.

♪♪

Kidnaping and sexual assaults of multiple young girls.

Jump out of the bushes, snatched off the sidewalk,

walking to school, thrown in the back of the van.

Driven to a remote area, raped horrifically.

♪♪

This guy was a monster.

-Raymond Moody's daughter says she got this information

from a man named Ernie Merchant.

-And it was Ernie who had said that he had reason to believe

that Raymond was involved in Brittanee's disappearance.

♪♪

-My name is Ernie Merchant.

I am a former romantic partner of Ray Moody.

When I was visited by law enforcement,

Ray and I were not together.

I hadn't seen him in maybe a year.

I said, "Is this about the Ray Moody situation?"

And they said, "Yes, it was.

Can you come down to the sheriff's department?"

I wanted to be very cooperative

and as transparent as I could be,

so I told them my story with Ray Moody.

It was about 1998, a period of my life

where I succumbed to methamphetamine addiction,

which ultimately led me to prison,

which is where I met Ray Moody.

We talked, we told each other our life stories.

We spent a lot of time together.

He took care of me in that prison.

He kept me safe. He told me that he loved me

and I found myself falling in love with him.

When I was getting ready to be released,

he said, "I need to tell you the truth about why I'm here."

I was absolutely rocked...

sickened...

and just completely confused.

He said, "I'm not that person anymore.

I would never hurt anyone again."

When I left the facility,

Ray and I continued to communicate

and to make plans to be together in the outside world.

Ray was a native of Georgetown, South Carolina,

and in 2005 moved back to the area

after 20 plus years in prison,

and I decided to move here to be with him.

He found a job in a local cabinet-making shop.

And we just lived a very quiet life of domesticity.

It wasn't until later on that I discovered

that Ray was having an affair.

Her name was Angel Vause.

He said, "I just wanted to do something different

and just want to go have some fun."

And I just said, "That's it. You know? This is over."

He moved out of the house and moved in with Angel.

But Ray was still around.

He had the garage set up as a wood shop,

so occasionally he would still be working in there.

He would come and go.

During this period,

I heard about a young girl that had disappeared in Myrtle Beach.

You know, there were billboards.

Everybody in town knew about this.

One day he was working at my house

and his girlfriend, Angel, called.

She was obviously very inebriated and hysterical.

She did not want Ray at my house.

She wanted him to leave immediately.

I felt that she was threatening him.

And she said, "I know things.

I will send us both to prison before I will let him go."

And I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

And she said, "That girl."

And I said, "What girl?"

She wouldn't tell me who.

She wouldn't tell me what it was about.

But the first thing that came into my mind was,

"Is she talking about Brittanee Drexel?"

-In 2011, Ernie Merchant

tells investigators that during a phone call,

Ray Moody's current girlfriend hinted at Ray's involvement

in Brittanee Drexel's disappearance,

and now Ray Moody is a possible suspect in Brittanee's case.

-And I told them I confronted Ray.

I said, "Your girlfriend is on the phone

and she is talking crazy."

And he was, you know, trying to convince me

that it was nothing, that it was not important.

"She's just drinking. She's upset."

I said, "Did you have anything to do

with that girl that disappeared in Myrtle Beach?"

He told me, "Of course I didn't.

I would never do something like that.

I told you I would never hurt anybody."

And I accepted it.

I, um...

didn't have any reason not to.

And the police asked me

if I would be willing to wear a wire

to get him to say something, to expose himself.

And I told them that I did not feel comfortable with that.

If you really believe that he murdered this girl...

then what's to stop him from murdering me

if he thinks that I'm a threat to him?

-The detectives then determined

that the best probable course of action

would be to take a run at Moody's girlfriend, Angel Vause.

So Mike Hull from the city of Myrtle Beach

and Phil Hannah from Georgetown County Sheriff's Office

brought her in to the sheriff's office for an interview.

-Oh. Angel.

-She comes in. Everything's polite, convivial.

-Yeah. -Alright.

-All right. Okay.

-I think she was aware of the rapes,

but I don't think she knew the specifics behind them.

And she at least appeared to be very surprised

that the children, the victims, were that young.

-Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Um...

-In the interview, Angel's kind of smirking.

She's -- She's denying she knows what these detectives

are talking about, but her demeanor says otherwise.

-Just let me finish. Let me finish, okay?

-You got a great white shark in the neighborhood,

and there's a shark attack.

And you know that that shark has blood lust

because he's telling his girlfriend.

♪♪

-In April of 2011, Angel Vause

was interviewed by investigators.

Angel told investigators that Raymond Moody

had a fantasy of kidnaping a young girl,

taking her to a campsite and raping her.

But she did not say that Raymond Moody kidnaped

and murdered Brittanee Drexel that night.

-She never gave anything concrete.

But it just further solidified

everyone's belief that Ray's the guy.

So we decided we had no choice but to question Ray Moody.

-Now, Raymond Moody is still a registered sex offender,

so he's responsible for checking in regularly on a schedule.

-The Georgetown County Sheriff's Office

was responsible for his supervision,

and he would register like clockwork.

He wouldn't miss a day.

-At one of those scheduled appointments,

investigators approached Moody and asked him

if they can ask him some questions about Brittanee.

-Moody was extremely confrontational,

not cooperative, didn't do anything to offer an alibi.

Basically says, "You're the detective. You figure it out."

♪♪

-Investigators uncover that in 2009,

when Brittanee disappeared,

Raymond Moody was living at a place

called the Sunset Lodge Royal City Hotel

outside of Myrtle Beach and not that far

from where Brittanee's cellphone last pinged.

-Two years after Brittanee's disappearance,

investigators traveled to the Sunset Lodge

armed with a search warrant.

The fact that this search occurred two years

after Brittanee's disappearance certainly complicates things.

But it's not impossible to find blood,

DNA-type evidence in those situations.

They cut out pieces of carpet.

They cut out pieces of the floor.

This is a meticulous search for any --

any piece of evidence

that could have put Brittanee Drexel in that room.

-Myrtle Beach Police

and the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office

pulled boxes and bags full of something from the room.

-Meanwhile, the media kept their eyes on Raymond Moody

for what happened to Brittanee Drexel.

-I was watching the news in my dad's living room,

and they show Raymond Moody on TV.

-Do you know anything about the missing teenager?

-No, I do not.

-Can you tell us where you were back in April of '09?

-Goodbye.

-Ray, can we talk to you for a minute real quick?

-You know what? We're gonna call the police in a second.

You better split. Goodbye. I got nothing to say to you.

You understand that?

-I have a feeling that is the guy.

He just looks sickening to me.

-We had this person.

We had all this evidence taken out in boxes

from the Sunset Lodge.

-But the search of the Sunset Lodge turned up nothing.

Investigators struck out.

They hit a wall when it came to Raymond Moody.

-I wish we had had more going, but we were dead in the water.

We had nothing on Moody.

-If it was Raymond Moody, the police would have had him.

♪♪

-After 2012, nothing was happening with Brittanee's case

and I wasn't getting any answers.

I felt alone in doing this because it was just me.

I felt like I was the only one fighting for her.

And then I met Kim.

-I remember when Brittanee went missing in April 2009.

She stole my heart.

Brittanee stole my heart.

When Dawn called me,

I immediately went to Rochester, spent a week with her.

Dawn said, "Kim," she said,

I don't think we're ever gonna find her."

She actually had gotten to that place where,

"It's just not ever gonna happen."

-There was not a ton of communication

with law enforcement,

and I felt like, "This is my child.

I need to know what is going on."

-She was still being told that it was an active case,

but she got no answers.

And then in 2016, Dawn got a call from the FBI.

-They wanted me to come in for a meeting,

and they wanted to have that meeting

before it got out in the media.

So we went to Myrtle Beach.

They brought me in and we sat around this conference room,

and they proceeded to tell me

what they thought happened to Brittanee.

-Seven years after Brittanee disappeared,

the FBI had a theory.

They had a hell of a story

for what they believed happened to Brittanee.

-Early 2016, a tip came in from an inmate

in the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

He stated that he was present at a residence

in McClellanville, South Carolina,

two days after Drexel disappeared in 2009.

He stated that he saw Drexel at this residence.

She was being held captive...

gang-raped, uh...beaten.

And that at some point while he was there,

she managed to escape.

♪♪

And the inmate heard some gunshots.

[ Gunshots ]

And he saw some individuals

carrying what appeared to be a wrapped-up body.

And then that was disposed of...

...in an alligator pit somewhere in the South Santee region.

-The whole time we were in this meeting,

I was in tears, I couldn't talk.

Those images in your mind of what they said happened to her,

it was just horrible.

♪♪

-The informant specifically identifies

as people who were in that room with Brittanee Drexel

to be Timothy Taylor and his father, Shaun Taylor.

-Shaun Taylor is the same man who, six years earlier,

had his face plastered across the news

as a possible suspect in Brittanee's case.

-The informant said Timothy Taylor was the kidnaper.

It was Timothy that grabbed Brittanee Drexel

on Ocean Boulevard.

The FBI said, in addition to the jailhouse informant,

there were other individuals coming forward

claiming that the Taylors were involved

in Brittanee's disappearance and murder.

-Still, the FBI didn't have enough evidence

to charge Shaun and Timothy Taylor

with their alleged roles in Brittanee's disappearance.

-Timothy was interviewed by law enforcement,

and he acknowledged that the night

of Brittanee's disappearance,

he was with friends in Myrtle Beach.

-But Timothy repeatedly denies doing anything

that was alleged by the jailhouse informant.

-The FBI and members of the investigation

held a press conference to say

that the public needed to participate and assist them.

-What we've come to discover

through the course of this investigation now

is that Brittanee Drexel did leave the Myrtle Beach area.

We believe she traveled to this area around McClellanville.

We believe she was killed after that.

-Basically, they wanted people to come forward

to verify the story,

and that's what they had me do within that press conference.

We need your help so we can find Brittanee's remains

and bring her home to lay her to rest

and make sure that monsters like this

can no longer victimize this community

or kill anyone else's child.

-We need your help.

We need everyone's help to bring something from her home to us.

We need your help.

-At the press conference,

horrific and brutal details of what happened is not released

at that time to the public.

And they never, ever once say, "It was the Taylor family."

Somehow that got leaked to the media and in this case,

people ran with it. They went nuts.

This was the moment that everybody had been waiting for.

Finally, we know what happened to Brittanee Drexel.

-We are learning more tonight

about what may have happened to Brittanee Drexel.

-An FBI agent testified that witnesses have come forward

saying Timothy Taylor was involved

in Drexel's disappearance.

-Drexel was allegedly sexually assaulted, killed

and then later fed to alligators.

-I'm watching it on the screen

as they're describing what just happened to my best friend.

And it's horrific.

It's -- It's awful.

I was so angry.

They bring up the name Taylor, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh,

this is the family who killed my best friend."

-And I remember almost going, [ Sighs ]

"Ray didn't do it."

So he wasn't lying.

-But Timothy Taylor

wasn't going to court for Brittanee's murder.

-No charges have been made related to this case,

and no word on how long this investigation will take place.

-Although they were not charged, all eyes were on the Taylors

for what happened to Brittanee Drexel.

-There's no evidence to support the accusations.

This is why the homicide case hasn't been charged.

-I was waiting for the evidence.

I was waiting to hear what it was

that connected him to Brittanee.

Where was the DNA evidence? Where is her body?

♪♪

-Just a few months after the press conference,

all of a sudden, out of the blue,

a search was done by the FBI in Georgetown.

It's a very, very unsettling area.

They believe Brittanee may have been there.

There was a stash house back there.

-An excavator, K-9 unit and the FBI all on scene.

-It was a 3-day search. I was there every day for it.

On the third day, they brought in backhoes and uprooted trees.

♪♪

But nothing was found there.

♪♪

-At that point, the case against Timothy Taylor

was falling apart.

-Dawn processed that horrific tale

of what happened to her daughter

and was then told that can't be proven.

-I was pretty upset and I told them,

I said, "Look, I'm done with the smoke and mirrors."

I said, "I want my daughter found."

-But the investigators at that time believed

the Taylors were responsible.

This went on for years.

♪♪

-Finally an indictment came,

and it wasn't Timothy Taylor, it was Raymond Moody.

-Federal investigators had done everything in their power

to corroborate the allegation

that Shaun and Timothy Taylor had murdered Brittanee Drexel.

By 2019, the lead was shaping up to be just another dead end.

-A new team of FBI agents took over the investigation

into the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel.

They reexamined all of the evidence

and the interviews that had been compiled to date.

-I was brought in on the investigation

and the evidence that they had obtained thus far.

"Take the evidence that we have.

Can we do anything with it now that we couldn't do back then?

Can we re-interview witnesses?

Can anything be enhanced?"

-These investigators meticulously examined

the video evidence of the vehicles

that were traveling on Ocean Boulevard

the night Brittanee disappeared.

At some point they learned there was a Ford Explorer

Raymond Moody was driving around that time.

-The Ford Explorer had been registered

to Angel Vause's brother.

-Investigators were looking for that vehicle.

And they found it.

They know that Brittanee's last text message

was sent at 8:58 p.m.

♪♪

They identify the Explorer

in the area of Ocean Boulevard and 6th Avenue

at the very time that Brittanee disappeared.

-You can see the car was occupied by two individuals.

You can't quite make out who they are through the windshield,

but there's no doubt in my mind that was them -- Ray and Angel.

And they're a block away from Brittanee Drexel.

However, we still had no smoking gun.

It was all circumstantial.

Fairly damning, but circumstantial.

We didn't know what level of involvement she may have had,

and we won't know until we get her back in

for another interview.

♪♪

♪♪

-Okay.

-The Angel Vause that was interviewed in 2022

was a different person than investigators

originally interviewed in 2011.

Gone was the mentioning of how violent Ray had been.

Uh, she was almost speaking in defense of him.

-She may have assumed that they were there

to discuss Ray's involvement,

that they wanted her to turn cooperative

and become a witness against him.

And, uh, she didn't want to hear it.

-I don't think he did it.

-Angel started getting pretty upset, and, uh,

"I'm not gonna let you, you know, say Ray did this."

-At that point, the investigators

made it clear to Angel that they were now focusing

not only on Raymond Moody, but on her.

-Okay. Yeah.

With what?

Right. I know you do.

Right.

-Thank you. -Okay.

[ Indistinct conversation ]

-She hadn't provided anything super useful,

but ensured us

that she was gonna continue to be cooperative.

She would field our phone calls and answer our texts.

You know, when we call, when we text.

She wouldn't tell Ray anything. -We'll be out there...

-But Angel ghosted them.

Angel never returned,

and Angel did not participate in the investigation.

-We thought we were done.

We're like, "Well, back to square one."

But maybe they sensed that the walls were closing in

because what came next was... everyone was unprepared for.

[ Telephone rings ]

We get a phone call from the solicitor

for the 15th Judicial Circuit of South Carolina.

He says, "Hey, guys, Ray Moody is gonna come in

and give you a confession."

"And not only that, he's gonna take you to the body."

We are floored at that point.

He showed up at a local attorney's office

for our debrief,

our very preliminary, you know, interview.

Minimal facts, but just enough to establish where we are,

what we got, where we're going.

I take him into custody right then

and there on the spot for obstruction of justice.

The next day, we all sat down

at a very nice conference table...

♪♪

...and he lays it all out.

♪♪

♪♪

-In April of 2022,

the FBI had called me and they had told me,

"You know, we're -- we're getting to the end of this.

We're getting close."

♪♪

-Raymond Moody claims that he was present

in Myrtle Beach that night.

He and Angel had been smoking marijuana

and saw Brittanee Drexel walking alone on the sidewalk.

♪♪

♪♪

-He and Angel then drove Brittanee down to a campsite

in Pole Yard Landing, South Santee of Georgetown County.

♪♪

[ Bird squawking ]

-Okay.

He said that he then later returns that night

under the cover of even more darkness

and buries Drexel's body in a wooded area out there.

I was shell-shocked, I was speechless.

-[ Speaks indistinctly ]

-This guy is a -- is a monster, you know.

I've arrested lots of people at this point in my career.

Very few of them are actually pure evil.

But we don't have a body yet,

so we don't know if he's telling the truth.

-Ray Moody says he'll take investigators

to the burial site, but he won't do it for nothing.

-He's willing to fall on the sword. He did the crime.

But Angel can't get charged.

♪♪

-I was with Dawn at the time that the FBI contacted her

and told her that they may be able to recover Brittanee.

We knew nothing about Raymond Moody

or an arrest being made.

-They were gonna be going out to an area, um,

to -- to look for Brittanee, to search for her.

They didn't tell me the location or anything.

-So we get in the car.

We drive into Georgetown

until we got to just past his old apartment

at the Sunset Lodge.

He took us to a wooded lot.

I asked him, "Does any of this look familiar?"

"This is it right here. This is where I buried her."

♪♪

Start digging Monday morning.

We were cutting down trees and we dug and dug all day.

Finally, a Georgetown County employee,

he was working the excavator, doing the dig.

He goes, "I got something."

♪♪

♪♪

-FBI agent Mike Connolly called me

and said that they found human remains.

And they had believed that they were Brittanee's.

♪♪

-Dawn called me, and it was the first time

that I had heard tears in her voice.

I cried, too,

because I never thought this day would come myself.

-And when they finally told me who it was,

I was very, very angry

because I know that they looked at him back in 2011.

I'm not really sure how they got her into the vehicle,

but what Ray said happened that night,

that was false.

-I went down there.

-Voluntarily get in a car with Ray Moody

and go to Georgetown to party and do drugs,

that is the biggest bunch of crap that I've ever heard.

-I don't believe it at all,

what Raymond Moody said in his interview.

It's a sack full of [bleep] to me.

♪♪

-I don't think Brittanee would have got in the car

if Angel wasn't there.

-Maybe Brittanee is like, "Oh, okay, this -- this will be okay

because she's just gonna drop me off at my hotel."

-Once she was inside that vehicle,

what did she go through?

You just think of how scared she must have been...

♪♪

...and how much innocence that she lost.

♪♪

Because he stole everything from her

in those moments that he took her life.

♪♪

-The Georgetown County Sheriff's Office charges

against Mr. Raymond Moody are murder, kidnaping,

criminal sexual conduct in the first degree.

-After the press conference, the FBI released a statement

saying that there is no connection to Brittanee Drexel

with the Taylors.

-I feel terrible what the Taylor family have gone through.

-The Taylors were public enemy number one for years.

They were threatened. They were harassed.

-Timothy Taylor never did anything to my daughter.

-The latest developments in the case of Brittanee Drexel

confirm what we knew from day one.

The truth that my son Timothy was suspected

without any credible evidence of a crime he did not commit.

-I know that he has one or two children.

He couldn't get a job.

Shaun Taylor couldn't find work either,

so they were at risk of losing everything.

-Our family stood by him

and consistently spoke out against the false accusations

that too often are directed at people who look like us.

An age-old story in America.

-Our justice system is so broken.

♪♪

-I one day received a telephone call from Ray Moody.

I asked him, "How could you? How could you have done this?"

-He was willing to let the Taylors go down for this crime.

He was hoping they would be arrested for the murder

of Brittanee Drexel. That's who Raymond Moody is.

♪♪

♪♪

-All rise! -All rise!

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

-Thank you. You can be seated.

-I was in the courtroom with Dawn the first time

she laid eyes on Raymond Moody.

-But, your Honor, he is pleading to murder,

kidnaping, and rape.

CSC first.

And the state is recommending life in prison

without possibility of parole.

-This was the moment that Dawn had fought so hard for.

This was the justice that eluded her since 2009.

-Today we know the truth.

And today, Mr. Moody, you face the consequences for that.

I could just feel my blood boiling and almost in tears.

And to keep monsters like you where they belong, in cages,

so they can never harm again.

You have no power over me or my family.

Forgiveness is not part of this narrative today.

♪♪

-The Drexel family wanted to see the incident location

where it happened.

It's a remote area.

♪♪

♪♪

-She was face down.

And that really bothered me.

He just dumped her in there.

-It's sad that somebody would take her life.

-♪ Itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again ♪

-Brittanee wasn't just a victim.

Brittanee was so much more,

and she would have been so much more

had she given the opportunity to live her full life.

-She was a great person and she was a great sister.

And she'll forever be remembered in our eyes, just like that.

-I just love and miss her so, so much.

I would give anything to have Brittanee back with us,

but we have a lot of great memories of Brittanee.

-I have my -- my necklace here that has her ashes in it

and it says "My Sister's Keeper" on the back,

and it makes me feel like she's always with me.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪