A person of interest in the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel was jailed last week on obstruction of justice charges.
62 year old Raymond Moody has been in the Georgetown County Detention Center since May 4.
According to a criminal background check, the date listed on his obstruction charge is April 25, 2009, the same day Brittanee disappeared.
On May 11 investigators found human remains in a wooded area of Georgetown, South Carolina that could potentially be connected to her disappearance.
Authorities have not shared any further details regarding Moody’s obstruction charge or the remains found in Georgetown, including whether or not they’re related to Brittanee’s case.
More information from investigators is expected Monday.
Moody was named as a person if interest in Brittanee’s case back in 2012, but authorities said they didn’t have enough evidence to name him an official suspect.
17 year old Brittannee Drexel disappeared from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on April 25, 2009.
In 2016 the FBI announced they believed she was held captive in McClellanville for four days before being murdered.
No one has been officially charged in her disappearance or murder, though numerous persons of interests have been named.
Update: On May 16, 2022, the remains found on May 11 were confirmed to be those of Brittanee Drexel.
Moody has been charged with rape, kidnapping, and murder in her disappearance. He remains in custody.
Brittanee Drexel’s Disappearance
17 year old Brittanee Drexel was last seen in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on April 25, 2009. She disappeared after sneaking away for spring break.
In April of 2009, Brittanee told her mother she was planning to travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for spring break with her friends and boyfriend. Her mother refused and they argued about it for days.
On April 22, 2009, Brittanee eventually got permission to go to a friend’s home for a couple of days to calm down. Instead, she left Rochester that night for a trip to Myrtle Beach with three friends, against her mother’s wishes.
On April 23, 2009, she called her mother upon her arrival at the Bar Harbor Hotel at 1010 North Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She said that she was at the beach with friends, which her mother assumed was at nearby Charlotte Beach in New York State.
On April 24, 2009, Brittanee spent the night out with friends at Club Kryptonite, a local nightclub between US 17 Bypass and 29th Avenue North.
On April 25, 2009, Brittanee spent time with friends around noon on the beach near the Bluewater Resort, another hotel on Ocean Boulevard, before returning to her room.
That evening, she headed out alone from the Bar Harbor Hotel around 8:00 pm to meet a friend who was staying at Blue Water Resort, about one and a half miles south of the boulevard.
Around 8:45 pm, Brittanee was captured by surveillance cameras leaving the Blue Water Resort. She texted her boyfriend, who stayed in Rochester, saying she was walking back to her room at the Bar Harbor Hotel.
Between 9:00 and 9:15 pm, she suddenly stopped responding to his calls and texts. Brittanee never returned to her hotel room that night and has never been heard from again.
Her boyfriend started calling friends in Myrtle Beach to see if they knew where she was or what happened. Unable to find answers he called Brittanee’s mother to let her know, who wasn’t aware she had been in Myrtle Beach until that point.
Later in the evening, Brittanee’s mother contacted the Rochester police when all calls and texts to Brittanee’s phone went unanswered.
Investigation
Myrtle Beach police started looking for Brittanee the morning after she disappeared, and located the surveillance camera footage from the Blue Harbor Hotel.
Brittanee left all her personal belongings in her hotel room, except her beige purse and pink cellular phone.
Police tracked her phone’s last signal to an area along U.S. Route 17 near the Georgetown County and Charleston County line. The signal stopped abruptly on the morning of April 26, 2009.
Police identified the friend Brittanee went out to meet at the Blue Water Resort as Peter Brozowitz, a 20 year old nightclub promoter at a club from the Rochester area. He denied any knowledge of Brittanee’s whereabouts.
On June 8, 2016, the FBI confirmed that Brittanee Drexel’s case is considered a homicide. They revealed their belief that she was held captive in McClellanville for four days before being murdered.
Taquan Brown
In 2016, Taquan Brown, a recent prison inmate serving a 25-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, claimed that he witnessed Brittanee Drexel’s murder
On April 27, 2009, two days after Brittanee Drexel’s disappearance, Brown went to a “stash house” about sixty miles south of Myrtle Beach in McClellanville, South Carolina, to make a payment to a local drug dealer, Shaun Taylor.
Brown allegedly witnessed a woman matching Brittanee Drexel’s description being sexually assaulted in the house by several men, including 16 year old Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, the drug dealer’s son.
A few days later, Brown said the men shot and killed Brittanee Drexel when she tried to escape. They wrapped her body and dumped her into an alligator-infested swamp near McClellanville.
Despite Brown’s confession, investigators have not been able to generate any evidence or cooperation from others who reportedly saw Brittanee Drexel. Searches into McClellanville’s alligator ponds and the house where she was supposedly held turned up nothing.
Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor
In 2016, 25 year old Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor was charged with interference of interstate commerce by threat or violence in a 2011 attempted armed robbery of a Mcdonald’s restaurant in Mount Pleasant, where he was the getaway driver.
Taylor was sentenced by a state court to eighteen months of probation, which he completed. However, federal authorities later pursued charges against Taylor for the same armed robbery citing dual sovereignty doctrine, hoping he would talk about Brittanee Drexel’s disappearance.
Taylor maintained his innocence in Drexel’s presumed murder. He denied ever meeting Brittanee Drexel, and also claimed he had never seen Taquan Brown. In March 2018, he took a lie detector test, which he failed.
On December 9, 2019, Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor was sentenced to three years of probation and received no additional prison time. He pleaded guilty to one of the federal charges in exchange for probation.
Taylor has not been charged in connection with Brittanee Drexel’s disappearance.
Raymond Moody
In 2016 authorities announced Raymond Moody as a person of interest in Brittanee’s case.
Moody, a registered sex offender, was stopped by police for a traffic violation near Myrtle Beach the day after Brittanee disappeared.
He spent 21 years in prison for the abduction and rape of a 9 year old girl back in 1983, and has been considered a suspect in similar cases but has never been charged.
On May 4, 2022, Moody was charged with obstruction of justice and taken to the Georgetown County Detention Center.
Authorities have not announced further details on his obstruction charge, and whether or not it’s related to Brittanee’s case.
Investigating Agency
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel please contact the Myrtle Beach Police Department at (843) 918-1000, or call the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Leave a Reply