SOMETHING'S OF INTEREST WE MAY HAVE MISSED ...
IN THE BRITTANEE DREXEL CASE
FBI Agent Woods confirmed for the first time that a team of investigators was “acting on leads” in connection with the 2009 disappearance of Brittanee Drexel.
“The leads led us to McClellanville last summer and the same work and perseverance led us to Georgetown this spring,” Woods said.
“I am confident in telling you," Woods said, "that the investigation was advanced. … We’ve made strides in bringing those responsible for Brittanee’s death and disappearance to justice, and we feel good about that.”
BRITTANEE DREXEL
When asked why he continues to refer to Drexel's "death" when authorities have never announced the recovery of a body, Agent Woods said that the FBI believes Drexel is dead. The agency announced in August of 2016 - how they believe the teen was murdered, he said, and he was not going to elaborate on the evidence that brought the agency to its decision.
"Last summer we came out and said she was shot and killed," Woods said. "We do believe she is dead, but I'm not going to speak to how we arrived at that point."
Drexel’s family has said the young Rochester, New York, teen came to Myrtle Beach without their knowledge on a spring break trip with friends. She was last seen leaving the Blue Water Resort located at 2001 S. Ocean Blvd. on April 25, 2009, and has been missing ever since.
Monica Caison, the founder of the Cue Center for Missing Persons, said she is hopeful that the FBI and team of investigators were able to uncover something during their search in Georgetown.
”Everybody has to be patient,” Caison said. “Obviously thousands of people are praying for discovery, and we support any search effort for a missing person.”
In August 2016, the FBI held a press conference about the Drexel case in McClellanvile. Agent Gerrick Munoz, citing a statement from a prison inmate, said Drexel was Abducted, Gang-Raped, Shot to Death and Thrown into an Alligator-infested swamp.
It was the first detailed account of what investigators think happened to the then-17-year-old after she disappeared. Munoz's account, contained in a federal court transcript obtained by The Post and Courier of Charleston, is based on a statement from a prison inmate who claims he was present when she was killed.
In the transcript, Munoz testifies that the inmate, Taquan Brown of Walterboro, told investigators he went to a “stash house” in the McClellanville area in the days after Drexel was abducted. As he entered the house with a couple of other men, he saw Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, then 16, “sexually abusing Brittanee Drexel,” the agent said.
DA'SHAUN TAYLOR
Munoz said Brown said he saw others also in the room with the girl and Da’Shaun Taylor, and he kept walking through the house to the backyard to give some money to Da’Shaun Taylor’s father, Shaun Taylor. As the 2 talked, Drexel made an attempt to escape and ran. She was “pistol-whipped” and taken back inside the stash house.
According to Brown’s account, two shots rang out and the inmate assumed Shaun Taylor shot the girl. Then the girl’s body was wrapped up and taken away.
SHAUN TAYLOR
Asked what happened to the girl’s body, Munoz testified that it has not been found but that “several witnesses have told us Miss Drexel’s body was placed in a pit, or gator pit, to have her body disposed of. Eaten by the gators.”
Munoz told the court that investigators have searched several alligator ponds to no avail. He said investigators have been told that the area has as many as 40 such ponds. Investigators also have searched the stash house, the agent testified.
The FBI agent’s testimony came out during a bond hearing on an unusual charge against Da’Shaun Taylor that his attorney, David Aylor, characterized in the transcript as “clearly nothing but a squeeze-job” designed to pressure him into confessing and helping the government.
During the August 2016 press conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge David Thomas said he was authorized to offer a $25,000 reward leading to the Arrest and Conviction of Those Responsible for Killing Drexel.
With the three-day Georgetown search over, Wood said FBI agents are confident the investigation is getting closer to resolving the matter and bringing those accountable to justice.
“There is still more work to do based upon the leads we have uncovered these last three days,” he said. “I think the family knows that all of us here involved with this investigation at this site are working together to reunite Brittanee with her family in whatever way we can.”
On Thursday, March 23, a resident who lives next to the search site on Mercer Avenue said he saw two South Carolina Law Enforcement trucks, followed by a K-9 unit drive down Foxfire Court.
“I saw two SLED trucks go down that road and a dog unit was right behind them, but I didn’t see anyone else go down that road,” Frankie Faile said. “I just thought they were looking for somebody stashing or selling drugs back in there. …
“The next morning I drove by on my bicycle and they had that tape strung across the trees down at the bend in the road. I stay down the street here and to tell you the truth, I’ve never really seen anybody go down that road – I’m not really sure what is down there. This is a pretty quiet street, and we don’t have a lot of trouble around here.”
By early Friday afternoon, March 24, a group of unmarked vehicles were parked on Foxfire Court at the bend in the road behind the yellow crime scene tape. When media arrived, agents told them to move further back from the tape near Mercer Avenue.
Unmarked cars continued to enter and exit the road into the night Friday, but officials refused to answer questions from the media. Only one officer acknowledged to The Georgetown Times that he was with the GCSO.
At one point Friday afternoon, a white sedan driven by Foxfire Court resident Willie Hemingway exited the investigation scene and returned later. Hemingway told Times staff that he was the only person who lived on that road, and he had no idea what was going on in the wooded area around his house.
“(Law enforcement) hasn’t said nothing to me,” Hemingway said. “I want to know just as much as everybody else, but I got nothing to tell because I don’t know nothing.”
Hemingway said he thought agents arrived on the scene sometime Friday, March 24, “but he couldn’t be for sure.”
“I haven’t really been paying them too much attention," he said. "They are leaving me alone, and I am leaving them alone."
Friday evening around dusk, a large utility truck along with several unmarked vehicles exited the area for the evening. The next day, when the truck returned, an off-duty police officer who did not want to be identified, said the truck is commonly known in law enforcement as an “incident command vehicle.”
“The vehicle is used for many things, and I can’t really speculate on how they are using it at this scene, but normally, it is used to base operations out of,” the officer said. “They might be using it to process evidence, or they could be using it for communications or even to do on the scene paperwork. There is really no way of knowing, and I doubt they are going to tell you.”
The officer told Times staff that he was not actively involved in the investigation, and he had no knowledge of it. But, he said, he saw the cars on his way home from work, so he walked over to see what was going on.
Areas along Mercer Avenue near Firefox Court were filled with satellite trucks from various media outlets including TV stations in Rochester, New York; Myrtle Beach; and Charleston. Local residents gathered on golf carts and bicycles eager to find out what was going on in their neighborhood. Many people drove their cars to the intersection where they sat for hours eager to, as one woman said, “find out what is going on behind that crime tape.”
“This is a shock for us to see this many people along Mercer Road,” Lahoma Johnson said. “My husband Rayford and I used to live in a house that backs up to where they have that tape at, and we want to know what is going on. …
“We moved away from here last year, but our daughter still lives here and she called us and told us what was going on. So we are going to sit here until we learn something. This is such a quiet little neighborhood and for all this to be going on has us concerned."
On Saturday morning, March 25, agents with the GCSO and FBI moved the crime tape about 100 yards to the intersection of Foxfire Court and Mercer Avenue. Not long after that, a large excavator arrived on the scene.
Through breaks in the heavily forested area around the scene, the excavator could be seen digging up and depositing dirt. At dusk on Saturday, March 25, agents in unmarked cars left the scene, but Times staff was told “the active crime scene still stands.”
On Sunday, March 26, agents returned to the scene and stayed beyond the tape, at the end of the road, barely visible until Woods and other agents walked down Foxfire Court to meet the media, once and for all, officially connecting the search to the Drexel case.
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