- 11 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00It's Saturday night in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
00:09and the town is hopping.
00:11It's party central.
00:12I mean, it's spring break.
00:14The strip is hot and happening, and everybody's
00:16ready to party.
00:22Ocean Boulevard is a stretch.
00:24It's beachfront road.
00:27Around spring break, on the weekends,
00:29it gets really packed.
00:3117-year-old Brittany Drexel is having the time of her life
00:36until she disappears without a trace.
00:40So with no clues or witnesses or even a crime scene,
00:44it's going to be very difficult for investigators
00:46to figure out what happened to Brittany.
00:48But it's really going to be difficult to figure out
00:50who in this group of spring break partiers
00:52is involved in this.
00:54One thing's for certain.
00:56There's no sign.
00:59It's a town with something for everyone.
01:12Bars, beaches, golf courses.
01:14It's got everything.
01:16Total spring break type of place.
01:21The boardwalk area is really known to be a bustling night spot.
01:26There are people who are enjoying strolling along the promenade,
01:39enjoying the lights, the music, having a few drinks.
01:42Myrtle Beach is such a big spring break spot for people in Rochester.
01:46So a lot of the college kids, even the high school kids,
01:48would go to Myrtle Beach for a spring break.
01:49It was a well-known spring break spot.
01:55Brittany was 17.
01:56Then spring break from high school, she was invited
01:58by people that she knew from Rochester,
02:01would go to Myrtle Beach for a spring break.
02:03But these girls were in college,
02:05and the girls' boyfriends were as well,
02:07so they were just a little bit older.
02:08She said, Mom, can I go to Myrtle Beach?
02:13And I said, Brittany, no, you're not going.
02:15I don't know the kid you're going with.
02:17There's no parental supervision.
02:19I just had a really bad feeling about it.
02:22So about an hour later, she calls me back,
02:25and she said, Mom, can I stay at a friend's house?
02:28You know, it's my spring break.
02:30That way I can hang out with my friends,
02:31and we can go to the beach.
02:33Well, the beach to them was Lake Ontario.
02:36So I told her it would be OK if I had spoken with a parent.
02:42Her friend's father calls, and he
02:44said it would be OK if she stayed.
03:04I mean, what 17-year-old hasn't
03:06lied to their parents.
03:07But this is a big lie because you are going out of state
03:11with people that you're not that familiar with.
03:13They're friends, but they're not close friends.
03:16That was Brittany, though.
03:17Brittany was super independent.
03:18So if she wanted to go, she was going to go.
03:22They were sort of paired up, boyfriend, girlfriend,
03:24boyfriend, girlfriend.
03:26And she was sort of the fifth wheel,
03:28but had stayed in constant communication with her boyfriend
03:32back in Rochester.
03:37Her and her boyfriend, John, were definitely texting back
03:39and forth the entire time.
03:41And she was always texting somebody,
03:44whether it was her best friends or whether it was her boyfriend.
03:47Constant communication.
03:58John had called me asking if I had heard from Brittany.
04:02I was like, no, I haven't heard from her.
04:03Like, Brittany's last text, she was mid-conversation with John.
04:06Saying, you know, I'm just going to go back to the hotel.
04:13I'm going to pack up my things.
04:15I'm just going to go to bed for the night.
04:18And he was like, why?
04:19Like, why, babe?
04:20Why, boo?
04:21Why, you know, are you going to do that?
04:23And she never responded as to why.
04:28John told me I'm going to call her mom and tell her.
04:30So her boyfriend, John, called me, and he said,
04:43you know, Brittany's in Myrtle Beach,
04:44and they can't find her.
04:45And I'm like, what do you mean they can't find her?
04:47I didn't believe it, because I told her, I said,
04:50she couldn't go down there to Myrtle Beach.
04:53Thanks to Brittany's boyfriend, Dawn knows the truth.
04:57Brittany went to Myrtle Beach,
04:59and now she's missing.
05:02John had texted her, and he said, Brittany,
05:06what is going on?
05:08John, he couldn't go down there with her,
05:11because he was working.
05:13So he had talked to her every day,
05:15and Brittany did a lot of texting on her phone.
05:18Brittany was an over-texter, texting everybody.
05:21Certainly by the plethora of text messages
05:24to her boyfriend, John, she was agitated.
05:27She was upset.
05:30For Brittany, when she was angry,
05:32it would take her a while to come down from it.
05:34She was not the type of person
05:36that would just blow something off.
05:39We called Brittany's phone over and over and over,
05:43in hopes that she would have answered it.
05:46And I knew something was wrong.
05:49So for her to stop texting, not just John, but everyone,
05:53everybody knew that something bad had happened
05:56to Brittany Trexler.
05:58And so John ended up leaving work to come to my house,
06:03and then we started calling all the kids and the friends.
06:10One of Brittany's friends was in the Marine Corps,
06:12and he was stationed in North Carolina in Camp Lejeune.
06:15I called him because it was the only person that I knew
06:18that was close enough to Myrtle Beach
06:20because I was so frantic.
06:22He ended up talking to his commanding officer,
06:25and he was able to leave.
06:28He waited all night.
06:42The girls finally showed up, and he said to them,
06:45where's Brittany?
06:46And they said, Brittany who?
06:48He shows them a picture.
06:49He goes, this girl.
06:50So instantly, everyone's suspicious of these girls.
06:54That Saturday night when she went missing,
06:56they wouldn't even answer my calls.
07:00Later that day,
07:01Don's family friend convinces authorities
07:04to take a missing persons report.
07:06He's really persistent.
07:07There's something wrong.
07:14You know, Brittany was from a good family.
07:17She was a normal child, very happy.
07:20She liked to dance.
07:22She liked to sing.
07:23She started playing soccer when she was five.
07:25So, um, soccer was her game.
07:28She was just a lovable, lovable, funny child.
07:33But there was some emotions, some sadness,
07:38some tension at that time.
07:40Well, Brittany was in her junior year of high school.
07:44I was going through a divorce with Chad.
07:46Um, that was her stepdad.
07:48He adopted her when she was very young,
07:50around three years old.
07:52She was just going through the divorce
07:54and having her own issues being a teenager.
07:57There'd been problems in the family,
07:59but she's not a runaway.
08:00She's not that kind of girl.
08:03But it is very common for kids to just be like,
08:06hey, I'm extending my vacation,
08:07or I'm mad at mom,
08:09or I know I'm in trouble,
08:10so let me enjoy my time for one more day.
08:12I'm not gonna get myself right back
08:14to where I'm gonna be grounded immediately.
08:16And that is very common in these vacation spots
08:19where kids go for spring break.
08:21So, unfortunately, they listed her as a runaway.
08:24Dawn was really, really upset about that
08:26because she knew her daughter didn't run away.
08:33Dawn is going through a divorce
08:34and trying to raise three kids,
08:36and now she has to go search for her missing daughter.
08:38She must be living a nightmare.
08:41Early in the morning, I had started packing,
08:44and my mom and dad
08:46and one of Brittany's really good friends, Tara,
08:49and her boyfriend and their friend
08:51also came with us.
08:53And I think it took us like 18 hours
08:55to get to Murrow Beach.
09:06Investigators contact Brittany's traveling companions.
09:09They say they last saw her
09:10at about 8 p.m. on April 25th.
09:14According to our friends,
09:15Brittany left them to go and see another friend
09:17who was staying at another resort.
09:18When Brittany left the Bar Harbor,
09:21she was going to Peter's Hotel
09:22to pick up her flip-flops
09:23because she had been with him
09:24at the beach earlier that day,
09:25left her flip-flops there.
09:27She was receiving text messages
09:28from one of the girls telling her,
09:29hey, do you have you seen my black shorts?
09:31Brittany says she's wearing them,
09:32and the girl's like,
09:33I want to wear them tonight.
09:34Can you bring them back?
09:35So, you know, Britt had just walked a mile there,
09:38and now she's got to turn around to walk back.
09:44The question is, does she turn around and head back right away,
09:46or does she continue on to see Peter?
09:47The girls don't seem to know.
09:48They swear they never see or hear from Brittany again.
09:49They call and text her, but she doesn't answer.
09:52The friends provided a description of what she was last seen wearing,
09:57a pair of black shorts, black and white tank top, and flip-flops.
10:17The friends provided a description of what she was last seen wearing.
10:20a pair of black shorts, black and white tank top, and flip-flops.
10:26It's important to figure out who the last individual was to see a missing person.
10:31It helps to sort of start the clock and figure out where or when they may have gone missing.
10:38It's definitely a priority for the Myrtle Beach Police to figure out who this Peter person is
10:44and what he may know about Brittany's disappearance.
10:46Given the police's designation that Brittany is a runaway, Dawn already doesn't trust them,
10:59though she does the next best thing.
11:01I get to Myrtle Beach, I go directly to the media, because I figure, you know what,
11:06if I get her name and face out there, maybe somebody will see her and I'll be able to find her.
11:11Brittany Drexel disappeared in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
11:14It had captured the media's eye, you know, a beautiful young girl comes down on spring break and goes missing.
11:22Certainly anybody around here would have known with the news coverage.
11:27Brittany's born with a congenital condition in her right eye.
11:31People who are born with persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous have one eye that looks slightly different than the other,
11:37and it may be off-center, slightly discolored, those kind of things.
11:40So by wearing contact lenses in both eyes, they can make it appear that the eyes are the same.
11:46And I think that's what she's chosen to have done in this case,
11:48and she would have had a very distinctive look about her eyes because of that.
11:55The next day, I met with law enforcement.
11:58I said, something is seriously wrong.
12:01My daughter just didn't disappear off the face of the earth.
12:04I asked law enforcement about the cameras in Myrtle Beach because I knew there was cameras on the boulevard.
12:10I could see them.
12:12And they had told me that they don't work.
12:14And I'm like, what do you mean they don't work?
12:17I mean, you have tons of people come through here.
12:19You have crime in Myrtle Beach.
12:21I don't understand.
12:23But for London, England, I don't know of a place that's got more cameras than Myrtle Beach.
12:28It's one on every corner, but it wasn't that way in 2009.
12:34There were cameras, but it was a patchwork of cameras and a lot of holes in it.
12:43But at least one place down there did have working cameras.
12:47We were looking at just still photos of Brittany from the surveillance footage from the blue water.
12:53And looking at those photos, you know, we couldn't tell.
12:58It could have been any other short little blonde girl.
13:00We suggested, can you take us to go see the surveillance?
13:03Can we go view the footage in action?
13:07And we did.
13:08And it was that, it was the confirmation that we needed because of the way Brittany's eyesight is.
13:13When she needs to see, she turns her head at a full, you know, a full angle.
13:17And at the blue water, she does just that.
13:20And I was like, the way her movement was, the way that she walked, and the way she tilted her head, we knew that that was Brittany at that point.
13:27Because of the security cam footage, investigators now know that Brittany was, in fact, in that hotel between 8.33 and 8.45 p.m. on April 25th.
13:37She was there to meet a guy named Peter.
13:40But who's Peter?
13:42Peter Brozowitz.
13:44She was friends with him and was a club promoter from Rochester.
13:47Brittany's family and friends tell investigators everything they know about Peter.
13:52I didn't really know Peter that much.
13:55I heard Brittany talking about him.
13:57And I think she met Peter probably, I'd say, three to four years prior.
14:03They had dance club nights where they'd have, like, underage with some of the nightclubs downtown Rochester.
14:12Alcohol wasn't served on those nights, so minors were allowed in.
14:15She had started going with her friends to go out dancing, and I knew Peter.
14:20He worked at one of those clubs where she had went to.
14:27Brittany's friends tell police that she ran into Peter at Myrtle Beach nightclub on April 24th, then again at the beach at 11 a.m. the next morning.
14:34The question is, did Brittany and Peter plan these meetings in Rochester, or were they just coincidental?
14:43I'm not sure what Peter and his friends were doing or when they had arrived in Myrtle Beach.
14:49I believe that Brittany saw him along the boulevard or was on the beach.
14:54And like I said, a lot of people in Rochester do go down there for spring break.
14:57So it was another familiar face and someone that she felt comfortable with because she was no longer hanging out with the group that she had originally gone down with.
15:05There was a lot of tension between the girls, and because they weren't really good friends, they ended up by kind of going off and doing their own thing, which left Brittany sort of alone a lot of the time.
15:16She didn't know that Peter was down there doing some party promoting and stuff, so he had gotten her into a couple of the clubs.
15:25So Peter Broswitz is the last person to see Brittany before she disappeared.
15:30That makes him what we would consider a person of interest.
15:33He might be a witness, he might be a suspect.
15:36Don't know until we find him and speak with him.
15:38What does he know about Brittany's disappearance?
15:40The surprising problem for investigators is that Peter's now gone.
15:46He had left town almost immediately after Brittany had become missing, and the police were really on that, thinking he must have something to do with her disappearance.
16:10They immediately land on Peter and develop him as a suspect.
16:16They're at first on the phone.
16:21They even went up to New York to talk with him in person, and they did a lot to try to track that down through him and getting his story.
16:29And he was sort of aggravated to be answering these questions.
16:35To their mind, that's even more that you are a suspect.
16:40They thought they had their guy, especially with his attitude back to them.
16:47They thought that he was being defensive.
16:49It wasn't.
16:49He just didn't want to be bothered with it.
16:51He and Brittany were not that close.
16:53He had already planned on leaving on that day.
16:56He had people with him the entire time.
16:59He had alibis that were built into it.
17:02And once they tracked down all of that stuff, they almost hesitantly said it couldn't be Peter.
17:14Police search Brittany's hotel room.
17:16They find all of her clothes still there, but not her purse or cell phone, which is not surprising considering her purse is visible in the last known video footage from Peter's hotel, the Blue Water.
17:26And she's constantly using her phone.
17:29Yeah, that phone's important for investigators.
17:32It could certainly show a location of where she may have been at the point where she stopped texting.
17:37It could help narrow down the location of where she might be right now.
17:42It could also help investigators track her movements over a certain period of time.
17:47It was a lot of triangulation and a lot of guesswork between towers.
17:51And what a lot of people don't understand is as you're driving, your phone is reaching out to other towers, even though you may not be using the phone.
18:02With us calling her that evening of the 25th, they were able to see the cell phone towers that her phone was pinging on and able to see where it began and where it stopped.
18:16Now, what they did at the time is what's called a tower dump.
18:22And that means you go to several towers and just get every phone that has done a handshake with that tower.
18:30In Myrtle Beach, it's thousands.
18:32Her cell phone was traveling in the direction to the Bar Harbor, where her destination was.
18:41And then it immediately took a turn.
18:44It turned around and started heading south towards Georgetown.
18:46And with the pings, they were able to see that her cell phone made it there within like a half hour and straight to the polyard landing.
19:04And polyard landing is a desolate boat launch in the middle of a swampy forest that no 17-year-old from Rochester, New York, would have any idea about or have any reason to be there.
19:17This is very serious at this point.
19:20And they see her last phone usage with the tower somewhere around South Santee River, which is the border of Georgetown and Charleston.
19:30Brittany's friends and family are determined to find her.
19:36We all left Myrtle Beach.
19:37We went to Georgetown.
19:38And we stayed in Georgetown.
19:40And that's where we were able to conduct the searches.
19:42And a lot of people came in and they did a cone from the last cell phone tower ping.
19:47And that was where they focused their searches on as well.
19:51For 11 days straight from April 26th to May 7th, from sunrise to sunset, investigators search for Brittany.
19:59But they find no trace.
20:01When the extensive search turns up empty, local law enforcement is forced to reach out to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, otherwise known as SLED.
20:11Georgetown's working on it.
20:13Myrtle Beach is working on it.
20:15Horry County, SLED.
20:16There's a number of agencies.
20:18A lot of people are working, but the case ultimately gets fairly cold with no one else to look to.
20:27The fact that there is no body does give people hope that she is still alive.
20:31But with no crime scene, no clues, and no suspects, friends and family begin to wonder if they will ever know what happened to Brittany.
20:38Two years go by with no developments in the disappearance of Brittany Drexel.
20:48But the investigation never stops.
20:50I stayed there for about two months looking for Brittany, talked to anybody I could.
20:57After I left there, because, you know, I had to go home.
21:00I had two other children that I had to take care of, and I called law enforcement.
21:05When I got back, it was like every day, then every other day, then every week, and then it just grew from there.
21:12But I felt like if I didn't do it, who else is going to fight for my daughter?
21:18And what you really had was Myrtle Beach doing the lion's share of the work early on.
21:23Then you had Georgetown, a different department, that was involved once they really figured out where the pings of the phone went.
21:33The pier where Brittany's phone last pinged was in the jurisdiction of Georgetown, and detectives there have a hunch.
21:42Georgetown had their monster that was Raymond Moody.
21:49And they couldn't connect it to Raymond Moody, but, you know, it's one of those things that you say,
21:54if there's a bad person in this area, round up the usual suspects, it's Raymond Moody.
22:01And they all knew in Georgetown that Moody had served 20 years of a 40-year sentence for hurting young girls in California.
22:10So he was always sort of the boogeyman in Georgetown.
22:15Law enforcement agencies have access to vast databases of known offenders.
22:21So we know what types of offenses they've committed, you know, where they've committed them.
22:26Often this information would be sort of correlated to see if somebody sticks out,
22:31especially somebody that may have been in that area.
22:33So if we have somebody who has a history of this type of offense,
22:37and they are in the area at the time a crime is committed,
22:41they are certainly a person of interest for law enforcement.
22:45Investigators have good reason to suspect Raymond Moody based on his past.
22:49Raymond Moody, he was a level three sex offender.
22:56He had five charges on him prior.
23:00The last charge was two weeks prior.
23:04This was his M.O.
23:06He brutally raped girls from the ages of eight up until the age of 17.
23:16He was in prison in California for 40 years.
23:21He got out in 20.
23:23He was supervised for one year.
23:27Raymond Moody is a person of interest in 2011,
23:30and they do a full search on his motel room at the Sunset Lodge in Georgetown.
23:35And they went in and took pieces of the walls, of the carpet, of the mattress.
23:40They're taking all this, they're hoping to find DNA, and it's all going to get sent in.
23:45It's going to be analyzed, and hopefully something comes of this.
23:49At the time of the search, Myrtle Beach Police Captain David Knipes
23:52tells reporters that they will not be providing any further information,
23:56including the name of the subject and why they think he may be involved.
24:00He also says that no arrests are expected at this time.
24:02And it was like this big thing, and then nothing happened.
24:06There was nothing to charge him with, to try to hold him on, absolutely nothing,
24:11besides his background.
24:13So given his background and his criminal history,
24:16I believe that they kept eyes on him,
24:18but there was nothing connecting him and Brittany at that time,
24:21and it was another dead end.
24:23Around the same time that they searched Moody's home,
24:29police interview his girlfriend, 43-year-old Angel Voss.
24:33I'm Angel.
24:35Generally, police will speak with anybody that they believe
24:38may be able to provide information
24:40related to the case they're investigating.
24:43Nobody's obligated to speak.
24:45So just speaking to somebody's partner in and of itself
24:48is not going to necessarily reveal any information.
24:53But it certainly may shake things loose a little bit
24:55if the suspect isn't speaking to the police.
25:05Angel Voss admits to being afraid of Moody,
25:07but claims she doesn't know anything about Brittany's disappearance.
25:10She said that Ray's fantasy was to abduct a girl,
25:27rape her, and then kill her.
25:28She told me, as far as you mentioned, it's in California,
25:34and he said that they didn't catch it.
25:39He said there was at least 12 more.
25:43She didn't tell me anything about you.
25:45While Angel's comments to investigators are certainly interesting to them,
25:51they don't provide any actual proof of Moody's involvement
25:55in Brittany's disappearance or anybody else's.
25:58The stories being told about him were pretty deep,
26:02but it was a lot of speculation, very little evidence.
26:07There's no evidence at this point that Brittany is deceased.
26:11We don't know where she is,
26:13but there's nothing to say that she's no longer with us.
26:16On the fifth anniversary of her disappearance,
26:24a group of South Carolina newspapers revive interest.
26:28Brittany's mother tells reporters
26:30that she thinks her daughter has been trafficked.
26:35Brittany is a very beautiful young woman,
26:37and she has aspirations to be a model.
26:39Her mother thinks that maybe someone could have lured her
26:41with the promise of a modeling job.
26:42There was a lot of rumors fueling the human trafficking story.
26:49You know, it's not far-fetched
26:50because Myrtle Beach, as beautiful as it was,
26:53has a dark side, and it's a hunting ground for young girls.
26:56I mean, if you're a pedophile
26:58or if you're attracted to younger girls
27:00or girls who could be victims,
27:03they're drunk and on spring break,
27:05Myrtle Beach is the place to go.
27:06So when the story was fueled
27:09that she may have been trafficked
27:10or crossed state lines,
27:12as the FBI became involved.
27:14A woman named Betty Ubion,
27:16who helped create a law establishing a task force
27:19to investigate human trafficking in South Carolina,
27:21thinks that Brittany's case sounds exactly
27:23like one involving human trafficking.
27:26It's very important for the family to keep up hope.
27:30Hope is not something for the investigators.
27:32Hope is something that the family clings to
27:34to make them feel better
27:35while the investigation is ongoing.
27:37Brittany Drexel did leave the Myrtle Beach area.
27:49We believe she traveled to this area
27:52around McClellanville
27:54and the North Charleston, South Georgetown area,
27:58and we believe she was killed after that.
28:00The working theory at this point
28:04is that shortly after Brittany's disappearance,
28:06she was taken somewhere in the vicinity of Georgetown,
28:09which is where her cell phone stopped pinging,
28:12and she was murdered.
28:14The reason they are so convinced
28:16is because a South Carolina inmate
28:18named Taquan Brown,
28:19who was serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter,
28:21has a very interesting story to tell.
28:23An inmate at the South Carolina Department of Corrections
28:28says, do you want to know about
28:31the little white girl that went missing?
28:34Brown says a man by the name of
28:35Timothy Deshawn Taylor killed Brittany.
28:38Brown knows this because he says
28:40he saw Taylor commit this crime.
28:43Timothy Deshawn Taylor is a convicted criminal
28:45who is facing further charges
28:47stemming from his role as a getaway driver
28:49in a 2011 robbery of a restaurant.
28:51So he goes through a story
28:54saying that I was at a house
28:57in and around McClellanville,
28:59and Brittany was there.
29:01She was being held hostage.
29:04She actually got away and ran for a while.
29:07Timothy Taylor was there.
29:09He chased her down, brought her back in.
29:14McClellanville is in South Carolina,
29:16about 60 miles from coastal Myrtle Beach.
29:18Brown describes going to the stash house
29:21to see Taylor's father.
29:23And on April 27th, 2009,
29:25just two days after Brittany went missing,
29:28Brown says he saw Taylor and others
29:30doing terrible things to Brittany.
29:32He says he saw Brittany Drexel gang raped,
29:35and she tried to escape,
29:37and they shot her,
29:38wrapped her up in a carpet,
29:40and fed her to the alligators.
29:41They brought Dawn in and told her
29:57that it was their understanding
29:59that this has happened.
30:02All I could do was sob
30:03because I was like,
30:05oh, my God.
30:06Like, how could they have done this to my daughter?
30:09And it was very difficult for me
30:11to even picture that in my mind.
30:16The FBI offers a $25,000 reward
30:19for information leading to the arrest
30:22of the people responsible
30:24for Brittany's disappearance.
30:25They believe Brown's story,
30:27but they need to corroborate the information.
30:30They can't just take his word for it.
30:32They know there are other people there,
30:33and they're hoping the offer of the reward
30:35will spur them to come forward
30:37and corroborate his information.
30:40Taylor's name got released.
30:43There had been rumors
30:44that he might have been involved,
30:46and everybody was looking for a suspect.
30:48They were looking for information from the public.
30:51They were hoping more people would come forward
30:53to back up the story of this jailhouse informant.
30:57Brown's story is backed up by a second inmate,
30:59and he goes on to add
31:01that Deshawn Taylor himself
31:03brought Brittany to McClellanville
31:05to show her off for the purpose of trafficking her.
31:08He then goes on to claim
31:09that when Brittany's disappearance
31:11starts getting too much media attention,
31:14Taylor kills her
31:15and decides to feed her to the alligators.
31:18The reason why they thought that this was information
31:20that could potentially be the truth,
31:22it was two jailhouse informants
31:24that kind of had the same story.
31:26They did a search of all the gator pits
31:29that were known in the area
31:30based off of this story.
31:33But Brown's story was never able
31:35to be corroborated by any physical evidence.
31:38Police believe he'd likely have made
31:40the entire story up
31:41for the purpose of maybe getting an early release,
31:44even if it meant lying about somebody else to get it.
31:47And I think for that small amount of time,
31:50the FBI thought that they had found their person.
31:53Much like early on,
31:56Myrtle Beach thought that it might be Peter.
31:59But in addition to those two,
32:01there may have been a thousand calls coming in.
32:05I saw her here, I saw her there.
32:08People trying to help,
32:09but it had flooded the public's conscience so much
32:13that all of these calls coming through
32:15certainly didn't help.
32:17Again, we think we have the people responsible for it
32:21and then another dead end,
32:23another wall that we've hit in this case.
32:26And being involved as I was,
32:28I mean, it was devastating for myself,
32:32but being her mother, her father,
32:36I mean, I can't even imagine
32:37just to hear her name and her story constantly come up
32:41and then there's still nothing,
32:42nothing at the end of the day.
32:43Law enforcement prosecutors,
33:03everybody started back in
33:05and said, we're going to go through everything
33:06from the beginning
33:07and start looking at all of the data.
33:10We're going to put a fresh set of eyes on it.
33:12And what they found
33:15was that they had a call-in
33:18by a woman that was associated with Angel Voss.
33:22And that lady had been at a party with Angel.
33:38Sometime after 2016,
33:39more than seven years after Brittany's disappearance,
33:41this woman had claimed that Angel Voss
33:44said that Moody was responsible for killing Brittany.
33:47That lady was just mortified.
33:49She got up minutes later and left the party.
33:52She went and told her story to the police.
33:54So the police did ask her
33:57to wear a wire and go talk with Angel Voss again.
34:00And then Angel repeated the story to her and Angel said, it wasn't Ray.
34:11I killed Brittany Drexel.
34:14When the FBI got a hold to that information,
34:17then they started trying to work back to Angel Voss.
34:22The FBI conducted a review of the interview with Angel.
34:26They're considering whether or not she had some involvement
34:29in assisting her boyfriend, Raymond Moody, commit this crime.
34:37Raymond Moody had raped several people in California
34:40and went to prison on a 40-year stint.
34:45But while he was there,
34:47his roommate and boyfriend became Ernie Merchant.
34:53Ray, he sort of protected Ernie,
34:55and they became lovers in prison.
34:58So he felt like he would protect Ray when they got out.
35:03So they moved together to Georgetown
35:06and lived together for a while
35:09until Ray met Angel and started dating her.
35:13But he was back and forth between Angel and Ernie.
35:19So Ernie Merchant tells the story of one night
35:22when he and Ray were back together.
35:25Angel calling Ray's phone.
35:30Ernie picks up the phone,
35:32and she says,
35:34Ray, what you've done,
35:35you're going to get us all locked up
35:37for the rest of our lives.
35:38I can't believe you've done this.
35:40You're sorry so-and-so.
35:42And Ernie takes that information
35:45and calls Ray Moody's children
35:49and says,
35:53you're not going to believe this,
35:54but I had this conversation with Angel Voss.
35:59So Ray's children actually call in
36:02and give the police the information.
36:05The person that you're looking for
36:06in Brittany Drexel's case
36:08is my dad, Raymond Moody.
36:12Local investigators wanted to believe it back in 2011,
36:16but they looked into Raymond Moody thoroughly
36:18and came up empty.
36:19Now the FBI wants to do a deeper dive.
36:24They go back to Angel Voss.
36:27Once she sees the gig is up,
36:29she agrees to work with the FBI.
36:33And the FBI turns her loose
36:35and says,
36:37if you'll come back tomorrow and we're a wire,
36:39we need you to go talk with your boyfriend Ray.
36:42She agrees,
36:44but she goes immediately
36:47and tells Ray what is taking place.
36:50Ray is...
36:51They're packing up.
36:52They're basically leaving.
36:55The FBI sees it all going to pot.
36:58They stop Ray,
37:00and Ray's very defiant out of the window.
37:03I'm never going to tell you anything.
37:05If you've got a warrant or whatever, get it.
37:08And one of the FBI agents says,
37:10Ray, you got it all wrong.
37:12Now we're going after Angel Voss.
37:15So Ray says, well, hold on.
37:18He settles down.
37:21Ray then goes and meets with his attorney.
37:25Scott Bellamy is the defense attorney.
37:27He calls and says,
37:28can you come over here to his office right downtown?
37:32And I walk over.
37:33He's got Ray with him.
37:34And Scott says,
37:37Ray will give this information,
37:40but he wants to give it to you.
37:42He's not talking to the police.
37:44So I sit down with Ray,
37:46and he tells me pretty quickly
37:48that he and Angel were on Ocean Boulevard.
37:58They see this little girl.
38:01Ray says that she comes up to the car
38:03and says, that smells like good weed.
38:05And he asks her, do you want some?
38:09She says, sure.
38:10She gets in the car.
38:14They smoke for a while,
38:16and Ray says that he asks her,
38:19does she want some cocaine?
38:22She said, yeah.
38:23He says, well, that's in Georgetown.
38:26So that's his excuse of them going to Georgetown.
38:31They get to Georgetown.
38:33They've got a campsite down at the Poliards,
38:36South Santee River.
38:39And he said that Angel leaves to go meet with her brother.
38:51Ray says that it is there that he rapes her
38:54and that she fights and screams out.
38:58And he says, look, I've already got one strike.
39:02If I get another one.
39:03So he ends up killing Brittany Drexel.
39:08He says that she fought back against him,
39:11and he strangled her to death.
39:13Puts her over a fence at the Poliards
39:16in the wooded area.
39:17And he says that when Angel comes back,
39:24she says, where's the girl?
39:27And he says, she's not here.
39:29Her friends came and picked her up.
39:30We're not going to talk about her anymore.
39:32He tells me that the next morning,
39:36early in the morning, say 3 o'clock,
39:38he goes to where he's dumped the body,
39:40he picks her up, and he takes her, and he buries her.
39:43And I said, can you take us to the body?
39:46He said, sure.
39:48He knew the evidence against him was piling up,
39:51so he thought he would jump out in front
39:54and confess to the crime.
39:56This crime was terrible,
39:58and his story doesn't make him look any less guilty.
40:02Is all of it true?
40:05Obviously not.
40:06Ray Moody's a monster.
40:08I would not buy a car from Ray Moody.
40:17I would bet $1,000 to a donut
40:24that she did not approach his car.
40:28She didn't ask about weed.
40:29She didn't ask about cocaine.
40:31I think he probably hollered out to her,
40:35and I think she accepted the ride
40:38because there was two people in the car
40:40and because she really didn't want to walk 30 blocks
40:44after having just walked 30 blocks.
40:47I think it was an opportunity for her
40:50to be able to get that article of clothing back,
40:53and nothing more than that.
40:55And I think that the evidence also shows
40:58when she got into that vehicle
41:01that she was separated from her phone.
41:03Now, how that happened, I don't know,
41:05but I know that it would not have been voluntary.
41:11Raymond Moody comes forward and admits,
41:14I did it, and I'll make a deal with you.
41:17If you protect Angel, I'll take you to the body.
41:19And they made a deal with the devil.
41:21On May 11, 2022,
41:30Raymond Moody takes police to human remains
41:32buried in a shallow grave
41:33in a wooded area in Georgetown County, South Carolina.
41:42Police are able to confirm Brittany's identity
41:44through dental records and DNA testing.
41:47Because only skeletal remains were found,
41:50the cause of death is very difficult to determine,
41:53almost impossible.
41:55It was kind of like a little weight
41:57that you didn't know you'd been carrying for 13 years
41:59is now off your shoulders,
42:01and it's like we finally have her.
42:03And it was just sadness but happiness at the same time.
42:06And to finally be able to kind of know
42:08that we can bring her home
42:10or have her be in a sense of peace now
42:14was everything.
42:16And that was the happiness portion of it.
42:20So we go to the sentencing with Ray.
42:23I did my victim impact statement.
42:25I hope you suffer in prison
42:27for the rest of your useless life.
42:30I have no regard for you
42:31just like you had no regard for my daughter's life.
42:34And Ray ended up getting 30 years for the abduction,
42:3930 years for the rape,
42:41and life without parole for her murder.
42:47So now he'll be in prison for the rest of his life.
42:51I think that's why I felt so beautiful.
42:56God wants toテm conjugal stab cocaine,
42:59because he'll ret immersing him
43:00through the war.
43:01So you know,
43:01oh God,
43:02he can't lie to you
43:02and your husband顧 Answer Line
43:04me.
43:05I think we don't have any questions.
43:06Every time I can talk to you
43:07or lose aknow,
43:08as long as he can see us,
43:09we 2019,
Comments