What happened to Britanee Marie Drexel? Updated 05/18/2022 Remains found!

05/18/2022 Update: Britanee's remains were uncovered in a wooded area May 11 and positively identified through DNA and dental records.

Raymond Moody confessed to Britanee's rape and murder and led authorities to the location of Britanee’s body. Moody is a convicted sex offender and had previously spent 21 years in prison for the 1983 abduction and rape of a 9-year-old California girl. He was considered a suspect in other, similar rape cases but never charged.

Prosecutors allege that Britanee left a friend’s hotel in Myrtle Beach on April 25, 2009, and voluntarily got into Moody's car somewhere nearby. She was then driven 35 miles south to Georgetown County, S.C., where she was held against her will. Britanee was then assaulted and strangled to death at a boat ramp on the Santee River, and then buried in a wooded area 30 miles away the next day.

Moody has been charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing Brittanee but a court date has not been announced. The investigation remains ongoing.

Brittanee was fun loving and full of life. She relished being the center of attention. She was born on October 7th, 1991. She lived in Rochester, New York and was a junior at Gates-Chili High School.
Brittanee was a star player on the soccer team. She was studying cosmetology in high school and was very interested in fashion and wearing stylish outfits. She moved frequently during her childhood because her father was in the military. Her parents were legally separated, and Brittanee lived with her mother, but saw her father frequently. She was upset over her parents' pending divorce. Her family and boyfriend don't believe she ran away, and they don't think she would have left her clothes behind.

April 2009, Brittanee was 17 years old when she asked for her mother's permission to travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for spring break with her friends and longtime boyfriend. Her mother said no, so Brittanee got permission to go to a friend's home, however she went to Myrtle Beach anyway. Brittanee's mother thought she was staying with a friend locally. They spoke several times on the telephone after Brittanee arrived in South Carolina. Her mother didn't find out where her daughter really was until she was notified that Brittanee had disappeared.

Brittanee was last seen by her friends at 8:00 p.m. on April 25, 2009.
She was at the Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach. Brittanee walked more than a mile to the Blue Water Resort on Ocean Boulevard, where other friends were staying. Surveillance cameras there show her going into the resort, then leaving after 8:30 p.m. 9:15 p.m., she sent a text message to one of her friends saying she was going to see a friend who was staying at another hotel. She has never been heard from again.

She left all her clothes behind at her hotel room. Her beige purse and pink cellular phone were nowhere to be found. The phone's last signal was near U.S. 17 and the Charleston County line the night Brittanee went missing.

2016, investigators announced they believe they know what happened to Brittanee and named a suspect in her case.
They believe she was held against her will for four days then murdered and fed to alligators. 

Taquan Brown, testified he'd seen Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor and several other people sexually assaulting Brittanee at a drug dealer's "stash house" in McClellanville, South Carolina. Which is about sixty miles south of Myrtle Beach. Timothy's father, Shaun Taylor, was also present. Police believe Timothy planned to force Brittanee into prostitution, but after her disappearance received widespread publicity, he decided to kill her. Brittanee tried to escape and ran from the house, but she was caught, pistol-whipped and taken back inside. Brown says he later heard two gunshots and later saw Brittanee's cloth-wrapped body carried out of the house. It was supposedly dumped in one of the many local alligator pits.

Timothy would have been sixteen years old at the time of Brittanee's disappearance and is currently awaiting trial in a 2011 robbery case where he was the getaway driver in the robbery of a restaurant. Timothy maintains his innocence in Brittanee's case and, due to lack of evidence, he has not faced charges in connection with her disappearance. He claims he doesn't even know Brown, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

Brown's his account of Brittanee's murder has not been substantiated by other eyewitnesses, although a second police informant says he heard about what happened from another eyewitness. A search of the house where she supposedly died turned up nothing. There are dozens of alligator pits in the McClellanville area. Her remains have never been found. Her family still holds out hope she is alive.

HER FRIENDS PLEAD FOR WITNESSES TO COME FORWARD