Brittanee Drexel

On April 25, 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Marie Drexel disappeared while on an unauthorized spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with friends. She had told her parents in Rochester, New York that she was staying with a friend locally. Security cameras at the Blue Water Resort captured her leaving the hotel at approximately 8:45 p.m. She was walking to a friend's hotel nearby. She never arrived.

Her cell phone signal was tracked over the next few days, moving south of Myrtle Beach toward Georgetown County before going silent. The FBI joined the investigation, and the case was featured on national media. Despite extensive searches of the coastal areas south of Myrtle Beach, no trace of Brittanee was found for over a decade.

In May 2022, 62-year-old Raymond Douglas Moody, a registered sex offender with prior convictions for sexual assault, was arrested and charged with Brittanee's murder. He led investigators to her remains, which were found buried in a wooded area in Georgetown County. Moody confessed to kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and strangling Brittanee on the night she disappeared.

Moody pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, and first-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The resolution came 13 years after Brittanee's disappearance and brought closure to her family, who had never stopped searching. The case highlighted the dangers of spring break travel and the persistence of investigators in pursuing cold cases.