Brittanee Drexel: FBI Expands Search For Teen Allegedly Raped, Fed To Alligators


FBI agents have expanded their search in the case of missing teenager, Brittanee Drexel. She disappeared at age 17 in 2009. Law enforcement officials believe the New York girl was gang-raped, killed, and then her murderers fed her body to the alligators while she was on spring break in Myrtle Beach.

No arrests have ever been made in connection to the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel. FBI agents were searching and investigating an area near Foxfire Court in Georgetown County, South Carolina, earlier today, the Post and Courier reports. According to FBI Supervisory Agent Don Wood’s comments to WDPE, the federal officers are digging on a piece of private property in the noted area.

Brittanee Drexel went to Myrtle Beach from Rochester, New York, with some friends, without telling her parents where she was going. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, her parents thought she was staying nearby at a friend’s home. The teenager vanished without a trace after being spotted at a hotel where a friend was staying late April of 2009. By June, police investigators stated they believed Drexel had been killed and offered a $25,000 reward for information about her disappearance and likely murder.

“Of course we have every confidence in the FBI and the law enforcement working this case, but without knowing more information, Dawn Drexel [Brittanee’s mother] is on pins and needles, waiting to find out what they found, if anything, and how this will affect hopefully the eventual prosecution of the people responsible for what was done to her daughter,” attorney Brad Conway told WYFF4 news when discussing the FBI search now underway in Georgetown County.

Last August, the FBI offered the first official accounting of what law enforcement investigators feel happened to Brittanee Drexel. Their report, based on a story from an inmate charged with an unrelated felony, Taquan Brown, stated he saw the teenager at a “stash house” about an hour away from Myrtle Beach in McClellanville.

Taquan Brown also told law enforcement investigators he saw Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, 16 at the time, “sexually abusing” Brittanee Drexel. Brown also said he saw the missing girl run from the house only to get recaptured and “pistol-whipped” when he was outside giving De’Shaun’s dad, Shaun Taylor, some money.

According to the inmate, Drexel was dragged back inside the house and a short time later he heard two gun shots ring out. While he was still at the alleged drug stash house in rural South Carolina, Brown said he saw Brittanee’s body, wrapped up in a covering, and toted away from the house.

According to the FBI, multiple other witnesses claimed Drexel’s body was tossed into an “alligator pit” and eaten by the reptiles. Even after scouring 14 different alligator ponds, the FBI still has not been able to locate any of the missing teenager’s remains. There are approximately 40 known alligator ponds in the McClellanville area.

Additional comments and “second hand information” by another Georgetown County jail inmate, appear to back up Brown’s account of what happened to Brittanee Drexel, according to FBI agents involved in the case.

The second inmate claims Da’Shaun Taylor coaxed Drexel to meet him while she was in Myrtle Beach and then took her back to his hometown and “showed her off” to some friends. According to the inmate, Taylor and his friends were planning on using the teenage girl in some type of human trafficking scheme after “tricking her out.”

After Drexel’s disappearance garnered national attention, Taylor allegedly got nervous about getting caught and decided to kill Brittanee and get rid of her body. Da’Shaun Taylor was recently arrested on charges related to a robbery of an area McDonald’s in 2011.

David Aylor, Taylor’s lawyer, claims law enforcement officials are trying to “squeeze” his client to get a confession in the Brittanee Drexel case. The attorney said Taylor served time for the robbery after confessing to his role in the case, but was being detained on parallel charges in conjunction with the same crime. Taylor posted a $10,000 bail and was release from the South Carolina jail.

Da’Shaun Taylor’s mother, Joan Taylor, claims her son and husband are innocent. She told local reporters her son works as a mechanic even though he lost an arm in an accident when he was just a child and financially supports a daughter, son, and his grandmother.

[Featured Image by AP Photo/Janet Blackmon Morgan – Sun News]

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