Brittanee Drexel - Missing or Murdered?

We all remember being in high school and thinking that we knew what was in our best interest, fighting with our parents (most of us anyway), and doing anything to get our way. Seventeen-year-old Brittanee Drexel of Chili, NY was no different.

When it came close to spring break in spring of 2009, Brittanee was beside herself begging her mom, Dawn to let her go to Myrtle Beach, SC with friends of hers who were a little older, and who her mother did not know well - if at all. Of course, as any mother would, Dawn wouldn’t let her go, and neither would her father, Chad. Her parents (Chad was actually her step-father, but had adopted her and had been around her since she was very young) were separated and in the process of divorce, which was a struggle that Brittanee was not coping well with at all. Her grades were slipping, her attitude wasn’t great, and she was suffering from bouts of depression. In fact, she had even attempted suicide. All of this being said, her father, Chad, was on Dawn’s side (no mom & poppin’ as we children like to do with divorced parents). According to his interview on Investigation Discovery’s “Disappeared,” he didn’t feel like this was a good idea at this time in her life. And it wasn’t, I mean come on. As a mother - I get it, and as someone who was a teenage girl, I also see why a parent shouldn’t let their kid do this!

So Brittanee decided to go anyway. She had convinced her mom that she was just staying at a friend’s house for the rest of spring break and she made the fourteen-hour drive with these friends (who were more like acquaintances it seems), The first few days that she was there, she had a great time and checked in with her mom a couple of times talking about how they were “just hanging out watching movies,” and “stuff like that.” One day it was even like 85 degrees in Rochester, NY, which is a huge deal, because being a New York State native, and having just been up there for a visit in early April, it literally snowed while I was there, and Brittanee’s spring break was in April. The state is insane. She told her mom that she was at the beach on the lake that day. I can’t even fathom as a mother the fury I would feel over my child - whom I clearly trusted - was 14 hours and six states away! I would be livid even under the best of circumstances - because you never know what can happen.

And that’s exactly what happened - the unthinkable.

Brittanee’s mom, Dawn, found out that her daughter was in Myrtle Beach at the same time that she found out that she had gone missing. Brittanee’s then-boyfriend, John Greico, still in the Rochester, NY area when she went to SC, alerted her mother that Brittanee had stopped messaging him and that he was worried something had happened. Idk about you, but when I was her age in 2007, I was glued to my flip phone texting my high school boyfriend non-stop! Like non-fucking-stop! According to his interview on the same episode of “Disappeared”, he says that when she had stopped messaging him after a few minutes he was worried and by the time it reached 10, 20, 30 minutes, he called her mom and told her where Brittanee was and how he was worried something happened because of her lack of response to him. How terrifying. After Dawn heard those words and allowed herself to switch from anger (because hello, Brittanee did exactly what she was not supposed to do and lied for days about it) to panic, she called a friend of hers in North Carolina who was in the military and stationed at Camp Lejeune, 3-4 hours away from Myrtle Beach. Dawn asked him to go look for Brittanee and file a missing person’s report with the Myrtle Beach police. The next morning, Dawn left for South Carolina with John in the morning with a few other family members.

Brittanee was last seen at the Bar Harbor Motel on April 25, 2009 - returning a pair of shorts she had borrowed from a girl she had gone down therewith. She had created some distance between herself and those she came on the trip with because according to the conversations she had with her bf, John, they were getting into hard drugs and partying in a way that Brittanee wasn’t into. She had just left Bar Harbor Motel minutes earlier and was walking just over a mile to Blue Ocean Resort. While she was walking, she was texting her boyfriend that she was just going to go pack and get ready to leave in the morning, until outbound messages just stopped.

So many teens are looked at as runaways and nothing is done, but this was different and it was treated differently from the very beginning. All of Brittanee’s possessions were still in her room at the hotel. Nothing except for the clothes she was wearing, her purse, and her cell phone were missing. Dawn went straight to the news station and told them what was going on and it didn’t take long before Brittanee Drexel’s face and story were all over the local news in Myrtle Beach. In an article with “Myrtle Beach Online,” Dawn is quoted saying, “To be honest with you, every single day from sun up to sundown, we were out passing out fliers talking to people, walking the boulevard. Walking from the Hotel Bar Harbor, from where she was staying to the Blue Water just to see how far it was. We walked it at night to see what was lurking around there. We did so much within the two-and-a-half months I was here looking for her.”

Before Brittanee had split off from her friends, they had met a group of guys that they hung out with. Brittanee was hanging out with them earlier in the day Saturday before she went missing. I believe one of these guys, she knew from Rochester. His name was Peter and he was a club promoter in Rochester, NY. Brittanee and her friends did not know any of the guys Peter was with.

As far as the facts go, that’s what we know. As far as what I see - it’s more vivid than most of the cases I’ve reviewed so far in this podcast.

Upon feeling into this case, I was able to see Brittanee sitting as if she’s on the edge of a table kicking her feet and chatting with friends at soccer practice or in a park. This is how she presented herself to talk with me. I don’t always see spirits like this, sometimes it’s more of a hearing or sense of what to say, but she was very clearly present in my mind’s eye. The first thing I heard was her saying, “I thought I could trust him. He was my friend or I thought he was my friend.” I’m still not entirely sure what this means, because I also don’t believe that she knew the people who took her. I believe she had seen them around the areas she was hanging out in but didn’t even know that they were keeping an eye on her. She vaguely recognized the man who took her as someone who had been seen selling drugs to one of her friends or was with the guys who were selling to them while they were in Myrtle Beach. 

I wholeheartedly get the feeling that she was supposed to be trafficked and either sold or used locally for prostitution. She was an easy target and it almost feels as if someone had said in reference to her that she was off doing her own thing or that she was on her way to the hotel - something that indicated that she would be walking alone - thus giving these assholes the perfect opportunity. The way I’m seeing it is as if the others in her original group were in communication with those who took Brittanee and in conversation more or less mentioned that Brittanee was off on her own now and wasn’t really hanging out with them anymore.

To me, it feels as though there was one mutually known person mixed up in all of this. If you look into this case at all, this would be someone from the group of guys that Peter the club promoter from Rochester was with or someone he was in association with in some way. I feel that this person would have been someone who knew the drug scene there and was able to get what everyone needed because of this, and the connections he had there in SC were the ones who grabbed Brittanee. I don’t believe this is some big-time drug lord type thing - just a local dealer. Peter himself had nothing to do with it, nor did his Rochester friends. However, I believe that he as well as the people who had gone with Brittanee may have had their suspicions and also fears. I think that they were scared that if they spoke up, they could disappear as well.

I want to walk you through what I see. Brittanee is walking down the strip and she is spotted by one of the offenders who is driving a darker sedan - a crappy little car, but I can’t tell what it is. I’m not good with the make/model of anything. They then alert someone else driving a van (I’m seeing one with the doors that open in the back rather than a trunk lifting up). There are three people in that car - person number one - the driver, then person number two - jumps down from the van after opening that back door and grabs her by the waist with his hand over her mouth and turns around all very quick to toss her into the van where person number three grabs her and duct tapes her mouth then ties her down. I believe that she is then driven out to a rural location. The thing is that if you have seen the Disappeared episode featuring her story, they talk about her cell phone pinging off of towers in McClellanville, SC. This is the middle of nowhere with swamps and alligators and straight-up country. I believe that police were absolutely in the right place when they went there. I also believe that the two people who you read about being a part of this, but never charged - Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor being one of them. Taquan testifies that he had seen Timothy Da’Shaun Brown as well as his father, Shaun Brown, and several others - sexually assaulting her at a “stash house,” in McClellanville. The issue I take with this - is that I believe Taquan Brown did more than just witness this - I believe that he was also a part of either her capture or of the assaults she endured while she was there.

I feel several others were involved but haven’t been named. I see 5 males involved from the very beginning and then various others who would not be charged with kidnapping but could possibly be for assault. Taquan testifies that he sees her try to escape - I see this as a true statement, however, I see that he helped to catch her and possibly helped to “teach her a lesson.”

Lastly, I feel the intention was - like I said earlier - to use her for their own pleasure and it became too risky on the third day when news media outlets had taken and run with her story. I feel that this is when it was decided that she wasn’t worth having around and she was in fact shot and disposed of. Taquan testifies that he heard two shots and that she had been shot and killed. I don’t think that’s how it happened. I think that he was trying to paint a picture of his involvement being less than what it truly was. It is my belief that he was one of the original five, either driving the sedan or in the larger van. I would venture to say that he was in the larger van though. In addition to this, I don’t know whose property it is, but one of the five has some association with ownership of it. It feels like a property that people didn’t necessarily visit very often. Where I’m from, people have hunting cabins they only visit during hunting season and it’s far enough from their regularly lived-in home that they don’t have the ability to pay as much attention to it.

Those who had anything to do with it will likely not be charged. Police need more physical evidence. I see her being put into a larger gym bag and then tossed into an alligator pit. It’s possible that the police have found the bag, but I can’t be sure. If something isn’t perfectly clear to me, I want to be sure to tell you that it’s not something I can be sure of. All in all, I do not see that this case is ever solved. There’s so much evidence lost and so little evidence to go on, as not much was seen.

If any information is made available to you, please contact the Myrtle Beach Police Department or the FBI.