Brittannee Drexel revisited

[Donovan]

Not sure if anyone followed this here at Mock.

Here is a link to a collected archive of a missing person/ probable murder from my town.

Short version: Brittannee Drexel, teen wildchild from Rochester, defied her parents and snuck off to Myrtle Beach with some acquaintance friends for spring break way back in 2009, vanished without a trace and was never seen again. She was 17 at the time. There were a number of suspicious circumstances surrounding the case: her so-called friends claimed she had gotten into a fight with one of them and left the motel room at night, which hotel cameras confirmed. But rather than look for her, all the people involved immediately packed up their shit in the middle of the night and hightailed it home to New York, and several immediately lawyered up. Drexel's cellphone pinged in a town thirty or forty miles from Myrtle Beach, then nothing.

Recently Myrtle Beach revealed a break and possible suspects in the case, but won't release info. The rumors are that human trafficking was involved, some are saying her friends set her up to sell her to these other guys down there, that she was held captive in at least three separate locations and may have escaped her kidnappers briefly before they caught and killed her. More details are no doubt imminent. My ex's kids went to scholl with the girl, they took the case very personally.

Cases like this always reaffirm my worst fears about humanity. The kind of depraved fuck who can sustain holding and abusing another human over a length of time...that is pure garbage.

newest update.

[HairOfTheDog]

Shit, I'd hoped that if Brittannee was dead that she hadn't suffered. I've been following the case for years too.



It's very sad to read that the FBI believes she was kidnapped and trafficked. Gotta be devastating for her family to imagine she lived through hell before being killed.

LE contends that they need only one piece of information to make an arrest. I hope they get it soon.

The FBI says they have evidence Drexel was held against her will in three places - Georgetown, McClellanville and North Charleston. It was in McClellanville where investigators say her cell phone pinged on a cell tower. http://www.whec.com/news/suspects-identi...e/4199990/

(Queen Bee started a thread about an ID Discovery episode on Brittannee back in 2010 -- throwback ref: http://mockforums.net/showthread.php?tid=4276 )

[Love Child]

What a sad story.

[Donovan]

Thanks, HotD, I knew there had to be a thread I just couldn't locate it.

As horrifying as it already is for a young girl to spend her final moments in that kind of situation, I think it's even more horrifying if the rumors turn out true that her so called friends were the ones who set her up. How depraved must a person be to knowingly invite a person who coniders you a friend into a spot where you know they will suffer a terrible fate? I hope if it turns out those friends played a part they are prosecuted as accesories to murder.

[HairOfTheDog]

LE recently made a statement that the group of older 'friends' that Brittannee was hanging with in Myrtle Beach are not suspects.

I understand why people suspect them of being accomplices though, and maybe they're right. But, I lean more towards them just being apathetic party acquaintances who were more concerned with their own interests than what happened to Brittannee.

A lot of people suspected Morgan Harrington's friends of being involved in her disappearance because they didn't leave the Metallica concert with her or go in search of her when she didn't return. They were actually very close friends of hers and weren't involved in any way. Morgan was intoxicated and snatched up by a predatory rapist/murderer while walking alone outside the stadium.

I think predatory traffickers probably saw a beautiful young woman walking alone on an isolated street and grabbed Brittannee; a terrible crime of opportunity. But, if any of her acquaintances in Myrtle Beach were involved in any way or held back information, I too hope they face serious charges and get convicted.

[Donovan]

part of my info is completely unsubstantiated rumor from the group of kids who went to school with her, there were a few interesting conversations around the dinner table. Stuff I can't possibly prove or I'd post it. But the story was that the friends she went down there with weren't really her close circle, they kind of set up the trip and offered to take her along, and that it wasn't exactly in character for them to do so. The initial report from Myrtle Beach stated she'd been fighting with her friends that brought her and left the one place because of a fight with the female Jen Oberer. Something about borrowed shorts IIRC.

The kid who saw her last was Peter Brozowitz. He was the friend she'd gone to visit while down there, and he and his four male buddies were the ones who checked out of their hotel at 1am, couple hours after she suddenly disappeared and after they'd gone to a party earlier that same evening, drove straight back to NY and he lawyered up. Suspicious as hell. That stuff is all public record, but the shit that got talked around the table was more damning of the kid and that whole group of kids in general.

[HairOfTheDog]

The wording of this article and statements by Lt. Crosby do seem to leave the door open to Brozowitz being a suspect, Donovan. I don't know if that's intentional or not or if it means anything, it just stuck out to me.

Snip:
According to police, the last person to see Drexel before she disappeared was another friend of hers from Rochester, Peter Brozowitz.

Cops say Brozowitz and four of his friends stayed at the Bluewater Hotel on Ocean Boulevard. The four friends told police that they met Brittanee briefly at a nightclub, but didn't know her.

Police say the next day Drexel met all five on the beach near the Bluewater. She then came back to their room that night for about ten minutes.

Police say the teen then left to go back to her motel to return some clothing to a friend. That's the last time anyone saw her.

Police interviewed Brozowitz and his friends after Brittanee went missing. Lt. Joey Crosby said at this point, none of the friends are suspects.

"Forensic evidence from text messages, from cellphones, all kinds of information that we've evaluated," Crosby said. "The information that we have, that we've obtained through the course of this investigation, we do feel like she is deceased."

Crosby said investigators need one key piece of information to make an arrest. It's something police don't want to talk about yet.

"If I release that one piece of information that could be that only we and the suspect know, that's a vital piece of information that could be utilized in court for a conviction and to release that at this point could be detrimental to this entire investigation," Crosby said.

Full piece: http://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/local...appearance

[HairOfTheDog]

Brittannee's mom Dawn and dad Chad appeared on Dr. Phil two weeks after Brittannee disappeared.

The Drexels believed that Peter Brozowitz was holding back info; they didn't trust him. Brozowitz, with his attorney present, answered their questions on the show (part 3).

[HairOfTheDog]

In 2012, LE named convicted child rapist Raymond Moody a Person of Interest in Brittannee's case. It's possible that investigators have collected enough information to upgrade him to "Suspect" status.

Moody is a level 3 registered sex offender who spent 21 years in California prison for raping six small children in the 80s.



Moody has long been a focus of LE's investigation.

The last signal from Drexel’s cellphone came that same night about 50 miles south of Myrtle Beach and 8 miles from where Moody was living at the time.

A traffic ticket also put him in the Myrtle Beach area the same weekend the teen disappeared. Yet most alarming to police was Moody’s refusal to speak with them.

Police suspect Drexel was kidnapped as she walked along Ocean Boulevard and driven to Georgetown County, some 50 miles away. Her cell phone signal was last detected in a remote boat landing area near the South Santee River and roughly 8 miles from the Sunset Lodge apartments in Georgetown County, where Moody had been living at the time, according to Investigator Phillip Hanna of the Georgetown County Sheriff's Office.

Ref: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/25/thr...erest.html

[Donovan]

I get the feeling the cops have a very good sense of what happened to her and lack witnesses or key testimony, so they are rattling cages. To me it would seem to indicate the teens rather than the line sex offender are the targets, because going public with half-assed updates that reveal very little only has one purpose: to make people who may be hiding something very paranoid.

[HairOfTheDog]

That could be; it makes sense.

I wonder if there's any connection between Moody and Brozowitz or any of the teens?

[Donovan]

I don't know. Could be entirely coincidental that the dude was in the area, or it could be him that did it. Like I said, I was told some pretty unflattering but unprovable stuff about the group's of kids involved including the Brozowitz kid so I'm a little biased.

[HairOfTheDog]

Yeah, but if Brozowitz and/or any of the teens were involved in Brittanee's disappearance and the FBI is right about her being trafficked and held in three different locations before she was killed, there has to be a suspect or suspects outside the group who actually moved/trafficked Brittanee around. We know that Brozowitz and the teens were not in the areas where LE puts Brittanee after she went missing.

So, I expect the FBI has looked for links between the people with whom she was hanging out in Myrtle Beach and Raymond Moody. As a promoter for a club where underage drinking was either ignored or encouraged, and being that he's such an upstanding guy and all, Brozowitz presumably knew all kinds of shady characters (in my opinion).

In revisiting the case with the new information released by LE, I'm also wondering (again) if Timothy Shaun Taylor is suspected to have played a role in whatever happened to Brittanee and whether he had any connection to Brozowitz or Britt's other acquaintances.

A year after Britt went missing, a 20-year-old Tennessee woman claimed that Taylor and two other men tried to force her into a van while she was walking alone down Ocean Blvd in Myrtle Beach, just near where Brittanee was last seen. It turned out that 37-year-old Taylor's alibi checked out and he was not in the area when the alleged attempted abduction occurred, so charges were dropped. He was questioned about Brittanee Drexel while in police custody.

Timothy Shaun Taylor is from McClellanville, where authorities say Britanee's cell phone last pinged. In February 2001, his brother, Randall Keith Taylor, was one of five men arrested and charged in connection to the death of a missing 19-year-old from St. Stephen, SC. One of his co-defendants reportedly told police that RK Taylor had raped and shot Shannon McConaughey.

According to The Post and Courier in Charleston, SC, Shannon McConaughey was last seen walking from the Cracker Barrel in North Charleston on Jan. 29, 1998. Her car was found burned in some woods near Awendaw two weeks later, and her body was found in March of that year in some woods near McClellanville. Eventually, the charges were dismissed against Taylor and the other men because of what defense attorneys described as a lack of evidence.

Ref: http://wpde.com/news/crime/arrest-made-i...-abduction

[HairOfTheDog]

Is this What Happened to Brittanee?

FBI Agent Gerrick Munoz testified in Federal Court that Da’Shaun Taylor of McCllelanville, 16-years-old at the time, abducted Brittanee in Myrtle Beach and then raped and trafficked her. Brittanee reportedly made a run for it at sometime shortly thereafter and was quickly caught. She was pistol whipped, shot to death, and dumped in an alligator swamp. :(

Munoz's testimony is based on the account of a jailhouse inmate named Taquan Brown who claims to have been at the stash house when Brittanee was shot to death.

Brown says he saw Talyor and several other men “sexually abusing Brittanee Drexel.” Brown then said he walked to the backyard of the house to give money to Taylor’s father, Shaun Taylor. But as Brown and Shaun Taylor talked, Drexel tried to make a break for it. Her escape attempt was in vain, however, and one of the captors “pistol-whipped” Drexel and carried her back inside the house. Brown said he then heard two gunshots. The next time Brown said he saw Drexel, her body was being wrapped up and removed from the house.

Drexel’s body has never been found, but Munoz said “several witnesses” have told investigators she was dumped in an unspecified McClellanville pond teeming with alligators.

A different inmate serving time at Georgetown County Jail as reportedly told officials he was informed Da’Shaun Taylor picked Drexel up in Myrtle Beach and transported her to McClellanville back in 2009.

Munoz’s testimony was part of a bond hearing for a federal charge against Da’Shaun Taylor, now 25, stemming from a 2011 robbery of a McDonald’s. Taylor had previously confessed to being the getaway driver for the holdup, cooperated with South Carolina authorities and completed probation. But prosecutors are now trying to bring federal charges and, if convicted of the new charges, Taylor could face a life sentence.

Taylor’s attorney contended the federal charges are a naked attempt to “squeeze” Taylor for information on the Drexel case. Asked by Magistrate Judge Mary Gordon Baker about “the real reason” for the charges and if they had to do with Drexel’s disappearance, Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday said “that would be one” reason.

Taylor was released after posting $10,000 bail.

Full story: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/28/bri...-says.html

[HairOfTheDog]

New Search Conducted

--The FBI concluded a three-day search of South Carolina woods and swamp on Sunday

--Police believe Brittanee was held for three days near McClellanville, an hour away from where she was abducted in Myrtle Beach

--A jailhouse snitch claims Brittanee was gang-raped, shot, and thrown into an alligator pit

--Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor and his father are implicated in Brittanee's disappearance

--The latest search of the woods ended quietly, but 'advances' investigation, says FBI

Full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...s-FBI.html
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Man I hope LE is close to having enough evidence to make an arrest.

[Duchess]

Jesus God that's awful. I'm horrified all over again.