The Search for Brittanee Drexel: How a 13-year hunt for hope turned into a quest for justice
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: For over a decade, Brittanee Drexel’s family had lived in fear as well as in hope for the safe return of their daughter, who went missing in April 2009 after going to South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach to have some fun. But a teenager’s will to have a free, joyful life ended up in such a tragedy that no one has ever thought of.
As per reports, Brittanee’s mother was against her going to Myrtle Beach. Dawn Drexel had told PEOPLE in 2009, “I didn’t know she was going. The day she left she was angry with me because she asked me if she could go and I told her no. I said, ‘There’s no adults going and I have no idea who these kids are and I don’t feel comfortable with it. I told her I just felt something was going to happen to her. I just felt it.”
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The fight between the mother-daughter duo kept happening almost everyday before the girl asked for permission from her mother to have a sleepover at a friend’s house. “I didn’t have any reason not to trust her. She called me that night and apologized for the whole day,” Dawn recalled.
But without telling her divorced parents, Dawn and Chad, Brittanee left for Myrtle Beach with her friends on the night of April 22 and reached her destination on April 23. The mother recalled, “She called me. I didn’t know she was there. Saturday, [September 25] the night she went missing, I talked to her during the day. She said she was at the beach. I didn’t think anything of it because it was 80 degrees in Rochester that day and they call the lake the beach here.”
However, things began to change for the worse when the high school soccer player’s mother received a call from her boyfriend, John Grieco, who told her that he was not able to contact her and her friends had also not seen her. “I said, ‘What do you mean, they can’t find her? He said he was texting her and all of a sudden, nothing,” Dawn revealed to PEOPLE.
Reportedly, Brittanee had gone to meet some of her friends at the Blue Water Resort on Ocean Boulevard on the night of April 25, 2009. She apparently left the place at around 8:45 pm and sent a message to Grieco telling him that she was going to the Bar Harbor Motel, where her friends were staying. But suddenly her messages stopped coming to her 19-year-old boyfriend.
After talking with Grieco, Dawn informed Chad and then the Rochester police was called “because I didn’t know who to get ahold of at the Myrtle Beach department. We tried to call Brittanee’s cell. We were texting her.” Then on April 26, Brittanee was reported missing. At the time, Myrtle Beach Police Capt David Knipes told ABCNews.com said: “We can't really get a handle on it. It could go either way. We have no evidence of foul play. Could there be? Sure.”
However, Brittanee’s mother Dawn had said, “I think something has happened to her. I just have a funny feeling. It's not like her to not call her family.” But years later, after all searches, speculations, and probes, Drexel family’s worst nightmare came alive when in 2016 the FBI declared: “Brittanee Drexel did leave the Myrtle Beach area. We believe she traveled to this area, around McClellanville and the North Charleston, South Georgetown area, and we believe she was killed after that.”
Chad also spoke at the time as he noted, “After seven long years of waiting and praying for the return of my daughter, we know she isn't coming home alive. Brittanee's life was stolen from her in a brutal and senseless fashion.”
Then in May of this year, it was announced by the officials that Brittanee’s body had been found. The authorities also charged Raymond Douglas Moody of Georgetown, SC for the murder of the teenager. He also faces criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping charges. The 62-year-old allegedly strangulated the teen. He has been called a person with “extensive sex offender criminal history” by Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver.
Georgetown County Solicitor Jimmy Richardson explained, “In the coming months, we will move to seek justice for Brittanee and we'll be talking about arraignments and indictments and hearings. We're going to do our very best to see that Raymond Moody pays for what he's done, but that is not going to replace Brittanee.”
“Already the skeleton of the trial is in my mind. And I've lived it for awhile, but Mr. Bellamy hasn't, so it'll take him a lot longer to catch up than it would me, but we could prepare our witness list for the most part today,” he added.
Dawn also expressed her feeling as she shared, “This is truly a mother's worst nightmare. I am mourning my beautiful daughter today, as I have been for 13 years, but today it's bittersweet. We are much closer to the closure and the peace that we have been desperately hoping for. I am slowly processing everything that has come to light. I have not hidden from commenting or discussing Brittanee's case publicly. Today marks the beginning of a new chapter. The search for Brittanee is now a pursuit of Brittanee's justice.”