[Update] Brittanee Drexel: The 13-Year Mystery Solved
Spring Break 2009
In April 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel traveled to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for spring break with friends. Her mother had told her not to go, but Brittanee went anyway—a decision that would cost her her life.
On the evening of April 25, 2009, Brittanee was walking from one hotel to another along Ocean Boulevard. She was captured on security cameras leaving the Bar Harbor Hotel around 8:45 PM. She was never seen alive again.
Brittanee Drexel had vanished.
13 Years of Searching
Brittanee's family was devastated. Her mother, Dawn Drexel, never stopped searching. She traveled to Myrtle Beach repeatedly, distributed flyers, appeared on news programs, and begged anyone with information to come forward.
Investigators pursued numerous leads. There were rumors, tips, and theories—but no concrete evidence. The case went cold.
For 13 years, Brittanee's family lived in agonizing limbo. They didn't know if she was alive or dead. They didn't know who had taken her. They didn't know where she was.
The 2022 Breakthrough
In May 2022, the case finally broke open.
Investigators arrested Raymond Moody, a 62-year-old registered sex offender who had been living in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Moody had been on investigators' radar for years, but there hadn't been enough evidence to charge him.
Using new investigative techniques and relentless pressure, detectives finally got Moody to confess.
The Confession
Raymond Moody admitted that he had kidnapped Brittanee Drexel on April 25, 2009. He raped her and then murdered her. He buried her body in a wooded area in Georgetown County, South Carolina.
Moody led investigators to Brittanee's remains. After 13 years, her family finally knew where she was.
Justice
In October 2022, Raymond Moody pleaded guilty to kidnapping, rape, and murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Brittanee's mother, Dawn, spoke at the sentencing. She described the 13 years of torment, the sleepless nights, the endless searching, and the pain of not knowing. She said that while justice had been served, nothing could bring Brittanee back.
The Legacy
Brittanee Drexel was just 17 years old when her life was stolen by a predator. She should have had a future—college, career, family, love. Instead, she became another victim of senseless violence.
Her case is a reminder of the dangers young people face, the importance of never giving up on cold cases, and the power of persistence in seeking justice.
After 13 years, Brittanee's family finally has answers. Raymond Moody will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Brittanee Drexel will never be forgotten.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Brittany Drexel, a 17-year-old from New York, vanished in April, 2009, while on a spring break in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For years her case remained unsolved leading to various theories and false accusations. In 2016, authorities focused on Timothy Taylor after an informant falsely claimed he was involved in her abduction and murder, but no evidence linked Taylor to the crime.
In 2022, the case was finally solved. When Raymond Moody, a convicted sex offender, confessed to kidnapping, raping, and murdering Brittany Drexel before burying her remains in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Moody's guilty plea did clear Taylor of any wrongdoing, but it highlighted the devastating impact of false accusations in criminal investigations.
So shortly after we actually covered the case of Brittanee Drexel, there were a bunch of huge updates, and this is one of those stories that goes over, you know, more than a decade, and the family's looking for answers. Poor Timothy [00:01:00] Taylor, he, his name was dragged through the mud. And then you have this one name, this Raymond Moody who's involved in this crime.
But I think when we were recording before, we didn't know really what was going on with the girlfriend. We knew we had a girlfriend, right? We knew she knew something, but what did she know? And so we're gonna get into the updates from this story at the end of the episode. So if you stick around, listen to the story, we'll get right into it at the end.
So the story this week is one that might hit close to home if you're a parent, which is probably a lot of our listeners at some point, or maybe even at many points, every parent has thought up the worst possible case scenario that could happen to their child. I have always been a bit of an anxious mom and some might say I even have helicoptered over my kids when they were younger, but it was and is always out of love and genuine concern and honestly just straight up fear that something will happen to them.
That same fear is why Dawn [00:02:00] Drexel was against her 17-year-old daughter, Brittany, going on a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach with her friends. Like many teenagers, Brittany was strong-willed, independent and full of life. She was in her junior year at Gates Chili High in Rochester, New York, where she was the star of the soccer team, and she was known for her speed on the field.
She once made 23 goals in a single season. In addition to soccer, Brittany had a passion for cosmetology and fashion, and she was an aspiring model. She had grown up with her mom and stepdad Chad, who she was very close with. Her biological father wasn't a big part of her life, and she considered Chad to be her dad.
He taught her everything about being self-reliant and made sure that she could do things for herself, such as change attire if she needed to. In 2009, her parents were legally separated and going through a divorce, which really upset Britney. She was living with her mom at the time and she got to see her dad often, but of course that's a really [00:03:00] tough age for, you know, for them to be separating.
Yeah. So she was taking it pretty hard that April, some friends of hers were planning a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach. These friends had plans to stay at the Bar Harbor Resort on the main strip of Myrtle Beach, which is North Ocean Boulevard. So we're not exactly sure what the plans were for the week, but personally, as somebody who grew up really living on the beach, I grew up in Daytona and did live right down there on the beach.
I experienced many spring rigs. I have a pretty good idea of what goes on during that. Yeah. And I can totally, you know, understand why Brittany's mom was like, no, absolutely not. That does not sound like. A great idea. So Dawn told Brittany that she couldn't go on this trip. She said, number one, she doesn't know these friends.
And number two, there wasn't going to be any adults or any parents on the trip. And number three, she said she just had a really bad feeling that something could happen to Brittany. And as a mom, these are all valid reasons. I totally understand where Dawn is coming from to, you know, to be [00:04:00] saying this is not something I'm comfortable with.
So when Dawn said No, this spurred this kind of all day long argument between she and Brittany. And after the argument kind of cooled off, Brittany asked her mom if she could go stay at a friend's house for a few days to calm down. So Dawn allowed this because she really felt she had no reason not to trust Brittany.
So she let Brittany pack a bag and she went to her friend's house. Unbeknownst to Dawn, she didn't go to a friend's house. Brittany actually left for Myrtle Beach, which is a 13 hour drive from Rochester with three of her friends named Jennifer, Phillip and Alana. So these four teens arrived in Myrtle Beach the following day, which was Thursday, April 23rd, and they checked into their hotel.
Other friends who were meeting them arrived separately, and one of these friends was a 20-year-old promoter at a Rochester club. So locally where Brittany lives is where she knows him from. His name was Peter. And Peter was also meeting other friends of his and sharing a hotel room in Myrtle Beach. [00:05:00] So that Thursday and Friday, Brittany kept in touch with her boyfriend named John, and he knew that she was in Myrtle Beach.
Of course, her mom doesn't know that she has gone to Myrtle Beach, but her boyfriend John does know, and while Brittany was in Myrtle Beach, she was keeping in touch with her mom and really just making it seem like she was at her friend's house. Still in New York. On Saturday, April 25th, Brittany spent some time at the beach with her friend Peter, and she texted with her boyfriend John and some other friends throughout the day.
That evening at 7:10 PM she told John that she was in the hotel room, getting ready to go out with her friends that night. At some point she realized that she had left her flip flops at the beach, and her friend Peter grabbed them for her. So she decided to walk just a little over a mile to Peter's motel to pick them up.
While she was there, Brittany talked to her friend Jennifer about borrowing a pair of black shorts to wear that night. Brittany told Jennifer she'd meet them back at the hotel after she got her shoes. There's surveillance at this motel, and it showed that Brittany entered the motel at 8:33 PM [00:06:00] and she left at 8 48.
Three minutes later, she sent her boyfriend John a text saying that she was upset. She said she was going to bug you have no idea. And so John asked her why, and she said she'd tell him later when she called, but that she was quote, so heated. So John told her, basically, don't let this ruin your time at the beach.
It's her last night there, and really she should just try to enjoy it. But Brittany responded to him and said she wasn't going out anymore, but she was going to stay at the hotel and then pack and go to bed. John asked her again, you know, what was wrong and why she wasn't going out with her friends. But Brittany never responded back.
She actually didn't respond to any texts after that, not to John, not to any other friends who tried texting her. Brittany never made it back to her hotel room that night. All of her clothing was left behind, but she did have her purse and cell phone with her when she disappeared, and the more time passed with no response from Brittany.[00:07:00]
John and her friends, of course, became increasingly worried. So finally at 10:00 PM John sends a text to Brittany saying, if you don't respond to me, I'm going to call your mom and tell her that you're not in New York. You're actually in Myrtle Beach. To me, this shows that John was super, super worried about her at this point.
Oh, for sure. Because you know what that means? You know the kind of trouble somebody's gonna be in for being in a different state. Right. For mom not knowing, like you were absolutely concerned for her wellbeing at that point, and I have a lot of respect for him, even. Doing that, definitely. Because some people would say like, oh, whatever, you know, tomorrow she'll write back.
I'm not gonna worry. But for him to really know something is definitely wrong. So there's still no response from Britney. And just a short time later, Dawn would learn for the first time that Britney had even left New York at all and that she was now missing in South Carolina. Dawn was shocked to hear that Brittany had gone to Myrtle Beach.
She had never done anything like that before, and so Dawn's unsure what to do. She [00:08:00] contacts the local police in Rochester because she didn't really even know how to get in contact with the local police in Myrtle Beach. And she also asked a friend who, uh, lived in North Carolina to go to Myrtle Beach and to tell the police that something happened to Brittany.
They also called Brittany's friend Peter, who was actually the last person to see Brittany alive, and they asked him, you know, why haven't you called the. Police and why aren't you going to look for her? And he basically said, Hey, I'm not her babysitter. So John and Dawn headed to South Carolina to look for Brittany themselves.
When Dawn and John got into Myrtle Beach, Brittany's friends were still in town. They were all questioned by local authorities, but after that, Dawn says that none of them or their parents offered to help or made any effort to search for Britney. None of them even contacted Dawn to offer support or condolences, which I, that just honestly breaks my heart and.
Makes me a little angry, like as a mom to think that like, you know, if my kids like, God forbid, something like this were to [00:09:00] happen and like something, you know, your child went missing and then they were there with friends. I feel like you would kind of, I don't know, as another parent, like I would expect them to kind of reach out.
You're, they were on the same trip together and just kind of at least say like, yeah, we're will, you know, we're here for you, or just something. I don't know. I kind of felt really bad, you know, that that made me really reach out to her. Yeah, me too. Also, wasn't some of this that like Dawn really didn't know these friends, they don't know their fam.
Like that was part of why she didn't even want her to go, right? Yeah. It's not like they're best friends. They've all grown up together. These are like new friends. So this whole thing, maybe at the beginning, you know, they, yeah, they didn't know what to do. But I agree with you like that reading that part really.
Like hurt my heart for her. Yeah, for sure. So after speaking with her friends, officers learned that Peter was the last person to see Brittany before she disappeared. They confirmed that she had gone over there to pick up the flip flops that she left on the beach, and Peter told the officers that he was staying in this room at the Blue Water Resort with four other guys.[00:10:00]
So these four other men were interviewed and they said that they didn't know Brittany, they just knew that she was Peter's friend from New York. They said Brittany came to the hotel room at about 8:00 PM and she mentioned while she was there that she'd been arguing with her friend Jennifer over that pair of black shorts that we mentioned before.
The shorts actually belonged to Jennifer and Brittany was wearing them and something about Jennifer wanting them back. And so they were kind of going back and forth, you know, Jennifer was saying, where are you? Come back to the hotel room, and Brittany was saying, I'm coming. They were kind of just going back and forth with each other about it.
It's a very high school argument that they're having Right. Over like a pair of shorts that somebody wants to wear. Right, exactly. So, uh, the men that were in the hotel room with Peter said that Brittany left about 10 minutes after she got there. So the police found out that Peter actually checked outta the hotel room at around 1:00 AM on April 26th, while the other four men stayed behind.
And naturally when you hear that, you're probably thinking that Peter looks pretty guilty, right? [00:11:00] Well, pretty much everybody at the time was thinking the same thing. Peter later went on Dr. Phil multiple times and denied knowing anything about what happened to Brittany that night. After she left his hotel room, he said that his name had been dragged through the mud unfairly.
And just a little spoiler alert here, Peter was right. He, it was later proven that he did not have anything to do with any of this. So back to the investigation though, Brittany's cell phone was tracked and investigators learned that her phone had traveled south on Highway 17 and it was pinging in Surfside at 9:27 PM Now Surfside is seven miles south of the Blue Water Resort Motel where she was staying.
So her phone continued to ping off of towers heading south and driving through different towns. Uh, one of them was Georgetown. Before they arrived in McClellanville at 10:16 PM and that was 50 miles south of the motel where she was last seen. That's a pretty long way. Yeah, so her phone continued to ping from this tower until [00:12:00] 11:58 PM that night, but her phone never pinged again.
After that. A search team spent 11 straight days looking for Britney with large scale searches happening every day for the next five to six months. Each time there would be between 200 and 500 people involved in the search for her, and one weekend they had over 800 people looking for her. Every method of searching was utilized, trying to find her, including air, water, ground, and even sonar searches.
Unfortunately, the swampy terrain in the local area made it challenging to conduct thorough searches due to the threat of alligators, snakes, and wild hogs. No one searching ever found any sign of Britney, so Dawn began to come up with her own theories about what happened to her daughter. She thought Brittany May have agreed to disobey her and go to Myrtle Beach anyway, because at the time, according to Dawn, she said her mental stability quote wasn't good.
Dawn and her husband were going through a divorce, which had been weighing heavily on Brittany, and they're going through a really tough [00:13:00] time at that point because Dawn was actually losing the house. She thinks that Nee was desperate for security and stability and could have been persuaded to go to Myrtle Beach on promises of a modeling job or something similar.
Dawn also theorized that Brittany had possibly been put into sex trafficking. Neither Dawn nor Brittany's dad or boyfriend, John believed that she ran away on purpose, but. Unfortunately it would be quite some time before police had any credible leads to follow. And we still have so much to get into this episode and we'll do that after.
One quick break to hear word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we were getting into the story of Brittany Drexel, a 17-year-old girl from Rochester, New York who. Went to, uh, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, behind her mom's back for a spring break trip with some friends. She was on her last night of the trip there and was supposed to be heading back to her hotel room, but she never showed up.
And, uh, her boyfriend in New York [00:14:00] alerted her mom, who then alerted authorities. And right before the break, we were talking about the search that had been ongoing for her. It was not very successful. They didn't have a lot of leads in the story until quite some time later. So at this point now it is 2011.
It's been two years, or close to two years since Britney Drexel went missing. So I cannot imagine being in a situation where I thought that somebody in my family could have potentially been responsible for a crime as serious as this one. But as I said in 2011, the police got a tip from somebody who wanted them to look into their family member.
A man named Raymond Moody, he had a relevant criminal past. So the name actually wasn't entirely foreign to the investigators. Raymond had been on their list of potential suspects since the day after Britney disappeared, because, yeah, he had actually gotten pulled over in Surfside Beach and it was noted during this traffic stop that his face was covered in scratches.
Raymond Moody was actually a convicted sex [00:15:00] offender with a long history of kidnapping and raping young women and children. He was convicted of such a crime in 1983 in California, and sentenced to serve 40 years in prison, but was released in 2004 after serving just half of that sentence. Upon his release, Raymond moved back to Georgetown, South Carolina, which is where he originally hailed from at the time of Britney's disappearance.
He was living in a motel there. According to a former romantic partner who saw Raymond, a few days after Brittany was last seen Raymond's face and head, which was shaved, had what this person described as claw marks all over it, and Raymond's girlfriend, angel also spoke with investigators and revealed some other suspicious things.
She said that Raymond was abusive and had these disturbing dreams and fantasies about abducting girls. Angel said that she once saw Raymond take down one of Britney's missing posters at a McDonald's because he said that he was tired of looking at it every day. And [00:16:00] she also told investigators that she'd believe it if they told her Raymond was responsible for pretty much any disappearance and that she was terrified of him.
She said that he told her things like, quote, you will disappear and no one will ever find you. End quote. Despite telling the police, you know, about this horrifying relationship that she's in, angel did continue to stay with Raymond and dated him for many, many years to come, which as we just, as we just demonstrated, she was terrified of him.
So it's totally understandable why she couldn't get away from him. So investigators went back and tried to search the room that Raymond was staying in at the time of Britney's disappearance. But as we said, it's been over two years now and the search really didn't turn up anything. Raymond also refused to speak to them, so they couldn't get anywhere with that.
In February, 2012, it was officially announced that Raymond Moody was a person of interest in the case, but there wasn't a lot of coverage on this announcement, and the police never really spoke about him again. [00:17:00] That is until just recently, 10 years later in 2022. We're getting ahead of ourselves and we'll get back to Ray shortly.
By 2014, little progress had been made in the search to find out what happened to Brittany. So Dawn actually moved to Myrtle Beach to help search and stay on top of law enforcement there that year. Police said quote, everybody has been questioned, everybody involved has been questioned. Nobody has been enrolled in or out, and there are no persons of interest to report quote.
But then in 2016, a jailhouse snitch and massive liar sent police in the wrong direction and ruined an entire family's life with his false allegations about an innocent young man named Tim Taylor. So we wanna make it clear upfront that absolutely nothing this snitch said was true. And we really wanna talk about this though, because it's important to bring awareness to this kind of situation, this whole story kind of as we get into Tim's part of the story.
Again, he had [00:18:00] nothing to do with any of this, but his name being brought up. It reminds me of how many times you'll see somebody goes missing on Facebook. You'll see, you know, this person's dead, blah, blah, blah, and just all these internet detectives writing, yes, I know it's this person. Yes, I know it's this person, and how much damage that absolutely does to people who have nothing to do with it.
That just happened with the Ida Idaho four killings. There's like a professor that some YouTuber said. This person needs to be looked into. Well, he's suing them now because yeah, it'll absolutely ruin your life. There's. Sorry, I'm like very passionate about this today. But yeah, no, this part of the story is one of the ones.
I feel like definitely this is a case that needs to be like studied, you know, so that we can avoid this ever happening or find out how we can stop this from happening to anybody else again. Yeah. 'cause yeah, it's really what happened to Tim in this case is so sad for him and his whole family. Yeah. So I'll get into it.
Sorry, I got like already like all riled up about this. In the summer of 2016, the FBI actually takes over [00:19:00] Britney's case as lead investigators and they announced that they believe they knew what happened to her and they weren't releasing all the details at that point, but they wanted to make sure the family understood the very real possibility that Britney was no longer alive.
They offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Later an alleged witness named Taquan Brown told FBI investigators that Brittany had been kidnapped near Blue Water Resort and then taken to a rural area 60 miles south near McClellanville, where she was then held against her will for four days before she was ultimately murdered.
He elaborated and said that she had gone to a quote unquote stash house in McClellanville where he personally witnessed Tim Taylor, who was just 16 years old at this time, along with seven other people sexually assaulting. Brittany Taquan said he'd gone down to this stash house to pay Tim's father Sean some money, and while they were [00:20:00] outside talking, Brittany ran from the house, but was then pistol whipped and brought back inside.
Then Taquan said that Sean Taylor, that's Tim's dad, went into the house and that's when Taquan heard two gunshots. He said Brittany was then wrapped up and taken away from the house. So at the time he spoke to investigators about this case, Taquan was conveniently only about eight months into a 25 year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.
So based on this information from Taquan, that, as we have already said, turned out to. All be a bunch of lies. The police came up with a theory, and the theory was that Tim Taylor had planned to force Britney into sex work, but then after her disappearance became really heavily publicized, he then decided to kill her.
So they believed based on multiple witnesses, that Britney's body was dumped in one of the dozens of local alligator infested swamps. One source says that there could be up to 40 of these [00:21:00] alligator pits in the local area. Police conducted a search of this stash house where Taquan alleged that Britney was murdered, but they found nothing.
They also searched local swamps and didn't find anything there either. Once the FBI announced their theory, more people came forward with little tidbits of information, some which kind of corroborated quan's story, but nothing really solid to prove that any of it was actually true. One instance of this was kind of the secondhand information that came from an inmate at the Georgetown County Jail where Taquan was serving his time.
This particular inmate said that he heard from someone else that Tim Taylor picked up Brittany and took her to McClellanville, where he showed her off and introduced her to some of his friends there, and they ended up forcing her into sex work. And then when her disappearance became big news, Brittany was quote.
Murdered and disposed of. So when the FBI started to investigate these statements made by Taquan, they learned that the man he was accusing [00:22:00] Tim Taylor had a robbery conviction from 2011, and that in 2013 he pleaded guilty to armed robbery. So some details of that. When Tim was 18, he had coordinated a robbery of a McDonald's after conspiring with somebody who used to work there.
And while Tim waited in the car, his two friends robbed the McDonald's wounding the store manager with two non-life threatening gunshots. Tim cooperated with the police when he was caught and he was given a youth offender sentence of two years probation. However, after reviewing the details of this robbery, the federal government thought it was unfair that Tim was sentenced to far less than his co-defendants.
So the gunman received 25 years, and the other robber got six years suspended After 10 months, they believed Tim deserved to be federally prosecuted for those same charges that he already served time for on the state side of things. So they charged him with two counts of Hobbes Act robbery. Which is conspiracy to commit armed robbery affecting [00:23:00] commerce, conspiracy to commit Hobbes act robbery, and a gun enhancement charge for his involvement in the 2011 robbery.
So Tim went from serving his time to now facing 10 years to life in prison. His attorney thought this was all coming because federal prosecutors were trying to squeeze information out of Tim. So when the judge asked prosecutors to explain why Tim was being charged in federal court for the same crime he'd already served time for in state court, prosecutors said it was because he was a suspect in Bri Drexel's disappearance.
Another reason was because they felt the outcome of the state court was quote unquote, fundamentally unfair since Tim got off lightly while the other two robbers did not. But that seems like a problem for. The state, like right state should have figured that out. So Tim's defense attorney pointed out how strange it was that the FBI was never involved in the Drexel case for years, but as soon as they got involved, they somehow got a confession out of someone.
They pointed out that there had been a [00:24:00] reward and billboards everywhere already. So why was Taquan just now giving a statement? Prosecutors insist that their evidence was overwhelming and that Tim was guilty and that there was a high probability of a conviction, but they made him an offer anyway.
According to them. If Tim provided truthful substantial assistance regarding crimes he knew about, including Brittanee Drexel, then the most severe charge, the one that carried a life sentence would be dismissed and Tim would plead guilty to conspiracy to commit Hobbes Act robbery. However, if Tim gave them false information, he would be given a sentence of 10 to 20 years.
So to measure whether or not he was being truthful, Tim was given a polygraph test by the FBI on June 14th, 2017, which as we know, when will we be done with polygraph tests? I feel like, don't we just need to put, put those to bed forever? Let, let's, let's be done. So this polygraph also included a summary of Britney's case and multiple people were named as [00:25:00] suspects in the report, but the names were redacted.
So during this polygraph, Tim talked about an argument that he overheard in June of 2016 between two people that he says were fighting about a time when one of them had been accused of having Britney's cell phone. So Tim said he thought the argument sounded suspicious, but neither of the two people admitted to having anything to do with Britney's disappearance.
He just thought, you know, from eavesdropping according to him, that whatever they were saying about Britney sounded suspicious to him. So Tim was then asked questions including, do you know for sure who was involved in the disappearance of Britney Drexel? And did you ever see Brittany in person? Tim said no to both questions, but the FBI claimed that he was being deceptive.
His lawyer actually looked at the test results and agreed that the test did show deception, but he allowed Tim to continue taking the test anyway, so Tim continued talking about the argument he heard, um, about the cell phone, but [00:26:00] when the examiner accused him of withholding information, Tim became really irritated and he started shouting angrily and saying that he wanted to speak to his lawyer again.
At this point the test was concluded, so Tim ended up meeting with the police a total of three times, helping them put street names to government names, giving them a map, and a lot more. The issue that the defense ran into was that Tim had no involvement in the disappearance and therefore didn't have any firsthand knowledge or information as to what happened to Brittany.
So they couldn't give prosecutors what they wanted, and that left them with deciding whether to take Tim to trial. Or to take a plea deal, they had no other choice but to accept the plea and to be given a sentence of 10 to 20 years. In the end, luckily for Tim, he was sentenced to time served, which at that time was 319 days in jail that he had spent.
So to this day, Tim maintains that he had nothing to do with Brittany's disappearance. And furthermore, he says he doesn't even know what took Quan Brown. [00:27:00] Tim's mom, Joan has vouched for her son from the very beginning saying that she was really just absolutely stunned when the FBI alleged that her 16-year-old son and her husband were involved in Brittany's disappearance.
She said that Tim was in a high school class in McClellanville the day that Brittany went missing and that Myrtle Beach just wouldn't be a place that her son would be going at the age of 16. Furthermore, by the time Tim was charged in federal court, this is years later, as we said in 2016, he had matured and he was taking care of his sick grandmother during the day and at night.
Joan said of her son, quote, Tim was a hardworking young man who has matured into a good, caring person. She says that she just does not understand why her son was singled out in this case. In April of 2019, Taquan Brown spoke with News 10 NBC and the story he told was slightly different than the one the FBI told.
He said he saw Brittany for the first time out of four total times that he claimed to have seen her on [00:28:00] April 27th, 2009. He said that Brittany was in the stash house with eight to 12 guys and that she had a black eye and was being sexually assaulted, but. He didn't know who she was at that time until he later saw her on the news.
A few days later, he went back and saw Brittany again, and that time he said she ran from the house, but four guys ran after her, hit her and forced her back inside. During this visit, Taquan said he heard gunshots and assumed Brittany had been shot. Remember before he said he saw Brittany being shot even more so when he got into his car and saw two of the men come out of the house with a rug, which they put in the back of a truck.
Taquan said he then drove off. Five days later, Taquan said he went to visit his cousin Herman, in the rural town of Jackson Borough, South Carolina, which is about 80 miles away from McClellanville, and that he saw Brittany there alive sitting in a recliner in Herman's trailer, but she still had a black eye when he saw her.
The last time Taquan alleges that he [00:29:00] saw Brittany was when he and a friend went to Herman's trailer. He said there was a group of men there with Brittany and that she was shot twice with a shotgun that day. Taquan said he and his friend left, but he knows that some of Brittany's remains were buried in a garden area and then later removed.
Interestingly enough, this friend Taquan said he was with, when he saw Brittany get murdered, was unable to be located and Herman had died of a heart attack by the time this information came out. So as he's saying this, the people he's saying could like corroborate this whole thing. Something's happened to of that and Right.
Yeah. One they can't find. So one of the other alleged witnesses was also murdered in 2016. So there's no one to back up to Quan's claims. So we don't know if Taquan changed his story or if the FBI just didn't share all of the details, but it's pretty obvious the story did change because the FB, I never visited Herman's place until News 10.
NBC published the interview [00:30:00] with Taquan in April of 2019, after which the FBI did briefly visit there, but they had not been back for a more thorough search of the property until August of 2019. And of course, they did not find anything of interest. We still have more to get into this story after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.
So now that Tim Taylor is no longer a viable suspect in the disappearance of Brittany Drexel, the investigators started to consider how advancements in technologies since her disappearance might be able to help them. So beginning in 2019, they started using some new technology to track Brittany's phone and compare the data to surveillance footage from Myrtle Beach in a much more in-depth way than they could before.
So if you'll remember, Brittany was supposedly walking from Blue Water Resort back to her own hotel, which was Bar Harbor, but she never made it back. Investigators determined that Brittany's phone had quickly gone from a slow walking speed all the way up to 55 miles an hour very quickly, which they believe meant that she had gotten into a car.[00:31:00]
So they looked at the last place that her phone pinged when she was still at walking speed, and they went to that area to look through the surveillance footage and found that there was only one car that passed through the same area as Brittany's phone that night. That vehicle was looked up and it was soon learned that it belonged to none other than Raymond Moody.
That was the registered sex offender who had been named a person of interest in Britney's disappearance all the way back in 2012, after a family member of his said, Hey, look into this guy. So in April of 2022, a confidential informant told the FBI about statements that were made by Raymond's girlfriend Angel regarding Britney's disappearance.
Now if you'll recall, angel actually talked with the investigators back in 2011 about Raymond. She's the one who told them that she wouldn't be surprised to learn if he was responsible for abducting a girl because he fantasized about exactly that. So Angel in 2022, once again was brought in for questioning.
It's now more than 10 years later, and she is still [00:32:00] in a relationship with Raymond. She agreed to help the FBI with their case and ended up wearing a wire for them while she spoke with Raymond. We don't know exactly what authorities overheard in that conversation, but whatever it was, was enough for them to get a warrant to search Raymond's House.
Unfortunately, they didn't find any evidence there. It's been over a decade, but they were still pretty sure. About what had happened based on Moody's criminal history and based on the surveillance and phone data that they had, Raymond Moody was finally arrested on May 4th, 2022 at the age of 64. He was charged with obstructing justice at that time.
So investigators knew he killed NEE at this point, but they didn't have all the evidence needed to prove it. So they arrested him for obstruction as a way to get Moody behind bars while they gathered evidence that he murdered Britney. Moody ultimately confessed that day, stating that on April 25th, 2009, he and Angel went to Myrtle Beach to party.
He was driving that day and [00:33:00] Angel was a passenger. He said he was smoking pot as he was driving, and when they pulled up next to Brittany, who was walking on the sidewalk, Brittany made a comment about it smelling like good weed. Raymond offered her some and told her to get in the car, which he said that she did.
He said Brittany hopped in the backseat without a problem and made small talk with them for a while before they invited her back to their campsite, which Raymond claimed. Brittany agreed to. The three of them drove south to a campsite in Georgetown where they smoked marijuana. Ray said he never planned on hurting Britney, but at some point he did get the idea in his head that she would have consensual sex with him that night he hoped.
So anyway, at some point Angel left to bring something to her son and once she was gone, moody tried to make a move on Britney, but she turned him down. In that moment, Raymond decided to rape her, and then he panicked thinking that Brittany would tell people what happened and that he would go back to prison.
So he then strangled her and wrapped her [00:34:00] body in a blanket and put her in the bushes nearby. When Angel returned, Raymond told her that Brittany called some friend to pick her up and that she left with them. Then he told Angel he didn't wanna stay at the campsite that night. So the two of them left. The next day, Raymond went back and moved Brittany's body to a wooded area in Georgetown County where he buried her.
Moody said that he got rid of the clothes he was wearing and he put Brittany's clothes and her purse in a Salvation Army donation box. He then threw her phone into the river and he later cut up or burned all of Britney's forms of id. He said he did keep her high school ID for a long time, but eventually threw it out.
So Raymond says that Angel never knew. Anything about what happened to Brittany After confessing, he took investigators to the campsite and to the burial location on May 11th, 2022. The FBI recovered remains from the burial location and they were positively identified as being Brittany's through dental records.
Later that same day, [00:35:00] investigators spoke with Angel again, who ended up signing what's called a proffer. So this isn't the same thing as an immunity agreement, but she basically did agree to give the investigators helpful information and in exchange her statements wouldn't be used against her.
Prosecutors actually had enough to charge Angel with being an accessory to murder, but they chose not to do that because they really wanted her help with the investigation and she gave that to them. Prosecutors don't believe that Angel was present when Brittany was killed. They do believe that she had left to go take something to her son, right, and that Raymond lied to her when she got back.
She ended up admitting that she was in the car when Raymond picked Brittany up that night. She confirmed that Brittany did get into the car on her own accord after Raymond offered to share marijuana with her. But she told a similar story, like I said, about going back to the campsite and then she left to go deal with something and when she got back, Raymond said Brittany was gone.
So finally on May 16th, the police [00:36:00] announced that they had charged Raymond with murder, kidnapping, and first degree criminal sexual misconduct. Brittany's mom, Dawn, said, this is truly a mother's worst nightmare. I am mourning my beautiful daughter today as I have for the last 13 years. We are much closer to the peace that I have been hoping for.
She thanked the police for their work investigating Brittany's case. Tim Taylor's mom. Joan spoke at a press conference a few days later and openly talked about how the false allegations against her family had ruined their lives. Moody's arrest and charges for Brittany's disappearance proved once and for all that Tim wasn't involved.
He had spent years maintaining his innocence in the face of relentless pursuit. By law enforcement and the media. Joan said that her family was enraged that it took so long to clear their name. She said the story written about Tim and all the times he was named in association with this case had traumatized the family and affected every aspect of their lives.
Joan wants law enforcement to stop the [00:37:00] practice of disclosing unfounded leads in names of potential suspects without credible evidence. Joan said, quote, doing this has real life consequences and a lasting, disparaging effect on so many, particularly US black families. We suffer the ramifications of being falsely accused far too long.
So Tim later spoke to a B, C News four about what it's like being named a suspect in Britney's disappearance. He said he and his mom lived in fear for six years, having to watch their backs constantly. They got death threats, insulting messages, and Jones said quote, they wanted so badly for this to be Timothy.
They didn't even look for the real killers End quote. The FBI has said they don't have any need to apologize to Tim or his family because they were basically just doing their jobs. Raymond Moody pleaded guilty on October 19th, 2022 to charges of kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct and murder.
Prosecutors detailed Moody's confession and acknowledged that parts of his story were [00:38:00] self-serving, but it offered enough evidence to convince the investigators that he had in fact committed the crime. One prosecutor said quote, I don't believe everything he said. After 13 years, you've gotta take what he said, corroborate what you can.
His confession was enough to get rape, murder, and kidnapping because we could corroborate a lot of his story. Raymond addressed the court and said, I served 20 years and I thought it was enough, but it wasn't. I was a monster then, and I was a monster. When I took Brittany Drexel's life, I don't have the words to express how horrible I feel.
I'm very sorry. End quote. Brittany's parents also addressed the court. Dawn talked about how she wears her daughter's ashes around her neck. She said that she didn't believe that Brittany went with Raymond and Angel willingly and that the scratches Raymond was seen with all over his face. A couple of days later were from Brittany fighting back.
Dawn said quote. Today, no one wins. The criminal justice system has failed my daughter as it continues to fail so many other [00:39:00] victims, and frankly, Mr. Moody, it failed you because you never should have been released from prison. You should have served the full 40 year sentence, but you walked after only serving 20 years and returned to your wicked ways, and my daughter paid for that with her own life.
Dawn also spoke about the way that Moody ruined the life of Tim Taylor. Many of whose family members were also in the courtroom that day. At the end of the hearing, moody was sentenced to 30 years each for kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct and life for murder, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Moody is currently housed in an undisclosed location, but this, as we said, kind of just all wrapped up last year, so they could still really just be deciding what prison he's gonna be permanently housed in. Right. So, as we kind of mentioned when we started talking about Tim Taylor and you know, what was happen, you know, what happened to him in this case, it, as we were saying, this case is such, such a great example of just how wrong like we can [00:40:00] be about people.
Yeah. Like you were saying, and how social media has made it. So easy to kind of make witch hunts like a real thing where like totally people come far and wide to kind of gang up on someone and form conspiracy theories and with, you know, platforms. Like, it's insane. Like when you even see platforms like Reddit, like everything has a Reddit page now, a subreddit where you can go and like just, there's people that are just dedicating all of their time to like talking about cases that like, haven't even been solved.
They just have theories and like you said, with that. That's how you get like that mob mentality where it's like you don't even have all the facts. You don't like the police don't even have all the facts and now somebody's life is ruined. Like it's absolutely terrible. Absolutely. And it's wild that Taquan had no connection to Tim.
He. Used his name, but they weren't friends. They didn't know each other. He just has his name. And the theory is maybe that he was trying to take the heat off himself since he [00:41:00] was starting this really long sentence and maybe he was looking for a deal from the prosecution. We don't know if he got one, but that's like one theory to why he named him.
And I can't remember. I feel like this could have been on making a murder like years and years ago. So don't quote me on this, but there was, um. There was a quote by an attorney that was something like, you can say that you will never kill someone, but you can't say that no one will ever say you killed someone.
So basically, once somebody does that, you are kind of backed into a wall. As soon as you accuse somebody of something, now you're having to fight to say, no, I didn't do that. Right? Even though, even if in the court of law, like you're technically innocent until proven guilty, but it doesn't matter because.
In the world. As soon as somebody has said that about you, now you have to prove you didn't do it. And that's absolutely not fair and, and it shouldn't be that way. So if nothing else in this, I hope we've all learned a lesson to maybe if you have your theories, maybe. Keep 'em to yourself. I, I, yeah. That's so, or [00:42:00] just put them on the internet.
Just talk. Don't them on the internet. Talk about it amongst friends. Yeah, there you go. Don't put it on the internet. But it's true because I can't imagine how hurtful that is. And even thinking to Dawn, like she's hearing all these stories from Taquan saying these terrible things happen to her daughter, and then these terrible things happened to her daughter.
So she's, their whole family's being revictimized all the time, just with these lies that this guy's coming up with. And, you know, thinking about what her daughter could have gone through, which she. Obviously went through horrific, terrible things, but to not know the real story because somebody just chooses to lie.
I don't know. There's just, right. It's infuriating. Yeah. It really is. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, as we were saying in the very beginning of this episode, there have been some major updates since we released this episode back in 2023, and we would like to share those updates with you all now. So we didn't cover this part in the episode because at the time it had just happened and there weren't very many details.
But in January of 2023, Brittany's mom Dawn filed a [00:43:00] civil lawsuit against Brittany's Killer, who was Raymond Moody. In February of 2025, that was just last month, that lawsuit actually went to trial. At one point during the court proceedings, moody expressed remorse for raping, kidnapping, and killing Brittany.
He said, quote, I'm at a loss for words. I mean, I just have so much regret I've realized it doesn't matter how sincere I am about how I feel about the things I've done, it's just not enough and quote, well, duh. Yeah, and also like I get it and like honestly, I. Of course, that's always what we want, right? We want right people who have committed a crime to feel remorseful and, but we want them to truly feel that in their heart.
Of course, that doesn't mean that you get to, you know. That doesn't mean that everyone has to forgive you. You know, that just means that like, we like to see that you're taking responsibility and having remorse for something that you've done of if it's true course, of course we want that for sure. Um, but it doesn't make me feel like bad for you in any type of way, you know?
Mm-hmm. Uh, but in the end, the jury awarded [00:44:00] Dawn $200 million in actual damages and 500 million in punitive damages, and the jurors were saying that Moody had intentionally caused Brittany's family this emotional distress. And so one thing we talked about in the show was the girlfriend of Raymond Moody.
Her name was Angel Voss. And so in May of 2024, so that's since our original recording, Raymond Moody's girlfriend Angel Voss was actually charged with three federal counts of lying to investigators in Britney's case. So according to the evidence that was presented in court, angel concealed the truth of what actually happened to Brittany and her involvement for more than 13 years.
That's a long time to hold onto a secret. So big and yeah. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine. So Angel told investigators that Brittany willingly joined her and Raymond Moody, and that she actually left Raymond and Britney at the pool yard, boat landing near Georgetown, and that she didn't [00:45:00] take. Britney's cell phone with her.
So that was the original story she told police when in reality though she actually participated in Britney's abduction and she was complicit in her rape and her murder. I feel like that just infuriates me so much more as a woman being complicit in like the brutal assault of another woman like that is, that's just.
Know, so about that specific thing, like just, I am at a loss for words, right? And I can see where I, it shouldn't be a gender thing, but I can see where if you hear her saying, well I wasn't gonna do this. Like, um, you know, why would I do this? I left them and all that, we. It is believable because I think females, by and large sure are not known for committing these kind of crimes.
But on the night of Britney's disappearance, back in April of 2009, angel actually assisted Raymond in luring, 17-year-old Britney into their vehicle, and they promised her a ride to her hotel. Angel actually left Britney alone with Raymond at the site of her rape [00:46:00] and murder taking her cell phone, which would've been of course her only real chance of survival if, if Britney had had that with her.
So the judge actually noted during the sentencing hearing for Angel that she was a key participant in this tragedy facilitating the kidnapping of a child. So in July of 2024, angel admitted to lying and said she'd enter a plea deal where she would plead guilty to two of the three charges and receive a 16 year sentence.
But then in August. She actually rejected this deal and said she wanted to go to trial. The FBI then said they might actually pursue a kidnapping charge against her. Then in September she actually changed her plea to guilty on all three counts and admitted in court. What she told the police originally was a lie.
She now faces up to 24 years. In February of 2025, angel was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to lying to federal investigators about her role in the 2009 kidnapping and murder of Brittany [00:47:00] Drexel. Victim impact statements were given at this hearing, including from Brittany's mom, Dawn, and she said, quote, you messed with the wrong mom.
A mother who will never stop in the fight to get justice for Britney. You are the angel of death. Angel's defense attorney claimed that Angel had been manipulated by Raymond and that she had a history of being involved in domestic violence relationships. Angel then spoke to the court and said, I'm not a monster or a horrible person.
I'm simply a person who became a victim early in life. My past is full of mistakes. I'm sorry for not speaking up sooner. Again, this is one of those things where I. Does it get any sympathy, like extra from me? I don't know. Right. Yeah. Like I don't, I don't ever think that your own personal trauma or things that you have been through ever justifies harming another person.
You know? I don't feel like that's ever a valid excuse to use to say like, I went through all this horrible stuff, so this is why it's okay. Or, you know, that I should [00:48:00] be given a lighter sentence or easily forgiven or something, which I feel like is. Kind of the attitude that sometimes people take it, it does offer an explanation for how things happened and why they happened the way they did.
Right. Not a reason. Doesn't make it okay. Yeah. Not an excuse for doing it, but yeah, some like mitigating factor basically. Right. On why they may have thought that that was okay or. That they went along with it, right? Ultimately, angel was sentenced to 216 months, which is 18 years in prison, and that would be followed by a three-year term of court ordered supervision.
There is actually no parole in the federal system, so this is how, I guess they do things. Following the hearing, us attorney Adair Ford Borrows for the District of South Carolina said quote, for more than a decade, Brittany's loved ones were left to imagine the worst possible scenario in Brittany's disappearance.
While Angel withheld the truth, we hope Brittany's loved ones can now have both the closure and a measure of justice that comes with this sentence. May she rest in peace knowing that her [00:49:00] mother Dawn, was relentless in her pursuit of justice. After the hearing, Dawn met with county prosecutors to ask about the possibility of charging angel at the state level with kidnapping, rape, and murder.
And if she was found guilty there, she would face up to another 30 years in prison and be considered a sex offender for life. The prosecutor said he would look into every possibility and every possible avenue that he could legally for this case. Wow. Yeah. The whole story, of course, is so sad and everything that Dawn went through just to get justice for her daughter, as well as going back to someone being brought into it that had nothing to do with it, and yeah, and his name going through the mud, and ultimately just looking for who would've done this to Britney.
I don't know. It's just extra sinister to know that. Raymond's girlfriend was involved in whatever degree she was involved. Right. She knew enough right. To have spoken up earlier. Even if she didn't do anything, she knew enough [00:50:00] that she should have shared more earlier and taking Brittany's cell phone and all that.
Like, yeah. It's one thing to feel like you're being, you're scared and that you're being bullied into participating into something that you don't wanna do. You know, like we were saying, that she could have also herself been intimidated into doing things at Raymond's hand. Sure. There's some things I feel, you know, like taking her cell phone, like some of those things I'm like, that was just Angel deciding to do that.
Right. To make the situation worse. So I don't know. Yeah. That, and also if you are thinking of a young girl, a teenager, and some guy's offering to give her a ride, she's probably not going to, right. But if it's a man and this woman, you might think like, oh, okay, well yeah, it's safe. Right? Yeah. It, that's something like your parent would even probably tell you, right?
You hear people say like to their kids. You know the theme parks and stuff, like look for a lady. Really? A mom. I always say, look for a mom. Yeah, look for a mom. I say, look for a lady with kids with her. Yeah. That's always your best bet. If you can find a parent or even a parent. I'll take, you know, if you can find somebody with kids with them.
Yeah. But look for a mom is what I Right. Have always really [00:51:00] thought. And so yeah, seeing that there is a woman, you, I think your guard would be down a little bit more, which for sure as a woman just makes me even angrier an angel. This story. I remember even when we covered it, you know, the ones that involve such young adults, you know?
Yeah. Britney was only 17. Like, those always really get to me because we have, you know, we have teenagers that are getting close to that age. So it's very easy to imagine how a teenager could get into a situation like this very innocently and not understand, you know, the danger that they are. Potentially putting themselves in.
So yeah, very, very sad story. I'm very thankful that, uh, Brittany's family is getting more answers and is getting the closure that they deserve. Totally. Thank you guys so much for listening to this update episode. We will be back next Thursday with another bonus episode for you to listen to. Have a great week.
[00:52:00] Bye.
