Brittanee Drexel was born on October 7, 1991, in Rochester, New York (USA). Her mother's name was Dawn and her father was a Turkish man. His identity is not publicly known. Shortly after the girl's birth, Dawn married Chad Drexel, who adopted Brittanee. After the man ended his military service, the family settled in the town of Chili in the suburbs of Rochester.
Brittanee liked to play football as a child. According to the memories of friends and family, she did very well on the pitch despite her short stature. Over time, other passions appeared in Drexel's life. The teenager was considering starting a career in nursing, cosmetology or modeling.
It is worth adding that Brittanee was slightly different in appearance. The girl was born with a rare disease. For this reason, she underwent several operations, which unfortunately did not bring any result - Drexel could not see with her right eye. To hide his tendency to squint, the teenager wore contact lenses.
The girl's parents split up in 2008, which was not easy for her and negatively affected Brittanee's academic performance. It also worsened the depression she had suffered from for a long time, according to Chad. The teenager remained in the care of her mother with whom she lived but continued to maintain close contact with her father.
In April 2009, Brittanee asked Dawn for permission to travel to Myrtle Beach during spring break with her boyfriend and some girlfriends. It should be added that this place is one of the greatest attractions of South Carolina, but also of the entire United States. Millions of tourists choose Myrtle Beach every year for its warm climate, beautiful beaches, hundreds of restaurants, hotels, and more. It is also worth noting that just three years older Heather Elvis disappeared in this area.
The mother did not agree, however, because she did not know her daughter's friends with whom she planned to go. She also didn't like the fact that teenagers would not be accompanied by an adult. Dawn also had a strange feeling that something bad might happen during this trip.
This led to an argument that lasted for several days. Everything changed on April 22, when Brittanee asked if she could even go to her friend's house for a day or two, to which her mother agreed. That day, however, the 17-year-old went with friends to South Carolina, not to mention the family.
Brittanee called her mother three days after the entire group had arrived at the Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach. The teenager told Dawn she was at the beach. Mom wasn't concerned, as she assumed Brittanee was referring to the beach along the shoreline of Lake Ontario.
On the same day, at around 8 p.m., Drexel left her friends and left the hotel. She walked about 1.5 miles south along South Ocean Boulevard to visit a longtime friend who stayed at the Blue Water Resort. Monitoring at this point registered her arrival. The 17-year-old was then wearing a black and white T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a beige handbag. Cameras caught her as she left around 8:45 pm.
Brittanee wrote that evening with her boyfriend, John Grieco, who stayed in Rochester for work. They exchanged text messages for a while, but around 9:15 pm Drexel stopped replying. Grieco became concerned and began calling her friends in Myrtle Beach. He wanted to see if they knew where his girlfriend was or what happened to her.
When these efforts failed, he called the girl's mother, who only then found out that her daughter was in Myrtle Beach. Dawn called Chad and then called the Rochester Police Department. She hoped the local detectives could get in touch with their South Carolina colleagues. Multiple calls and texts to Brittanee's phone went unanswered.
Myrtle Beach Police started looking for Drexel the next morning. Investigators found the security camera footage of the Blue Water Resort. The policemen also found friends who were visited by the 17-year-old. The last person to see Drexel before she left was Peter Brozowitz, a 20-year-old nightclub promoter. Brittanee knew him from the Rochester area, and it turns out he was on vacation in Myrtle Beach as well. They said they met the previous night at a local nightclub.
Police questioned Brozowitz and the men he shared hotel rooms with. Investigators later found that they had not excluded any of them from the suspects. At the same time, they did not bring charges against anyone.
The police also searched the hotel room of the missing teenager. All the clothes she had taken with her were found in it. However, a purse and a mobile phone were missing. Signals from the girl's cell pointed to a route about 90 km south of Myrtle Beach. This was an area along US Route 17, near the Georgetown-Charleston County border. The signal was suddenly interrupted in the early morning of April 26.
The disposal of the body was searched for eleven days in the area around Myrtle Beach. In 2011, the police also checked a flat in Georgetown, but all these actions were unsuccessful.
Dawn, who went to Myrtle Beach the day after her daughter disappeared, eventually moved there permanently. She wanted to be close to the place of Brittanee's disappearance and better monitor the progress of the investigation. In a 2014 press article on the fifth anniversary of the events, the girl's mother outlined her theory. According to her, her daughter was so anxious to go to Myrtle Beach because the teenagers were promised something interesting. For example, it could have been a modeling job that Drexel dreamed of. Dawn also claimed that her daughter was in the hands of human smugglers.
Myrtle Beach Police have denied this, saying little or no human trafficking takes place there. Interestingly, the 2019 report by the South Carolina human trafficking task force in Horry County (where Myrtle Beach is located) reported the most victims of trafficking in the entire state.
In June 2016, the FBI held a press conference during which the hypothesis was presented. According to her, Drexel was murdered shortly after her disappearance. The 17-year-old was about to be abducted from Myrtle Beach. Then she was probably taken somewhere outside Georgetown where her cell phone signal was cut off, then killed. The Federal Bureau of Investigation awarded a prize of $ 25,000 for information leading to the resolution of the case.
Two months later, the Charleston Post and Courier reported the interrogation of a man named Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor. The man was serving his sentence in state prison. FBI agent Gerrick Munoz testified that earlier that year, Taquan Brown, another South Carolina inmate who had begun serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter, told them that in 2009, shortly after Drexel's disappearance, he traveled to the town of McClellanville. . He was supposed to donate the money to Shaun Taylor, Timothy's father.
When Taquan arrived at Taylor's house, he was supposed to see Timothy sexually abusing Drexel in the presence of other men. Brown continued on to the yard where he found Shaun and paid. While they talked, Brittanee ran away from home but was soon captured again. Taquan said he saw Timothy hit the teen with the handle of the gun and then took her back inside. Then Brown heard two shots he supposed were fired at a young woman. The man added that he had seen the wrapped body taken out of the house and then thrown into one of the alligator ponds in the area.
Brown's testimony was partially confirmed by another informant. His identity was not revealed, but it is known that he was also in a prison in Georgetown County. According to a second inmate, Timothy picked up Drexel in Myrtle Beach and took her to McClellanville. Then he showed it to friends to whom he tried to sell it. Brown said that when the case caught media attention, Taylor decided to kill the girl to avoid arrest.
In February 2019, Brown gave a telephone interview to Rochester WHEC-TV from the McCormick Correctional Institution where he was imprisoned. The man said Drexel saw her four times after she disappeared.
Taquan saw Drexel sexually harassed by a group of eight to twelve young men. This happened at the McClellandville hideout on April 27, two days after her disappearance. Brown did not recognize her then but did realize it a month later when the case became public.
Brown's second meeting with Brittanee came a few days later. It was this situation that the man described to the FBI, mentioning the shots in the building and the removal of the body. Brown claimed he saw Drexel for the third time five days later on a dirt road near his cousin's Jacksonboro mansion, 130 kilometers south of McClellanville.
Taquan last saw Brittanee at the end of May, once again at his cousin, whom he was visiting with his friend. In the wooded area to the rear of the property, Brown claimed to witness the murder of Drexel by a man whom he only knew as "Nate." He shot her twice with a shotgun. Brown and his friend left the place immediately, fearing that they would be considered accomplices if they stayed there longer.
WHEC-TV was able to corroborate some of Brown's testimony. His description of the McClellanville hideout matched the station's account of the 2016 visit. The reported situation, which took place during the second meeting with Brittanee (when the teenager was about to be shot), is in line with his original story as presented by the FBI.
The station has failed to identify the friend who would accompany Brown on his last visit. The cousin, who owned the property in which the teenager allegedly died, is no longer alive. It is also unknown who the man called "Nate" was.
Unfortunately, the issue has not been officially resolved to this day. Considering all these circumstances, however, it must be assumed that Brittanee is probably dead.
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