Brittanee Drexel (L) and Raymond Moody (R)
A sex offender has admitted to sexually assaulting and killing a teenage girl in a 2009 cold case. Raymond Douglas Moody, 62, was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison for murdering Brittanee Drexel, 17, while she was on spring break in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, according to The Democrat and Chronicle. He also received consecutive terms of 30 years for kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct.
Brittanee’s adoptive father Chad Drexel called Moody a “perverted sick monster” in court.
Moody, who pleaded guilty to charges, also used the word “monster” in his statement before the court.
“I served 20 years and I thought it was enough, but it wasn’t,” Moody said, referencing having gone to prison for abducting and raping a 9-year-old girl. “I was a monster then, and I was a monster when I took Brittanee Drexel’s life.”
He reportedly kidnapped and raped multiple children in California in the 1980s. His South Carolina sex offender registry shows a Dec. 9, 1983 conviction in California for rape by force or fear, kidnapping, and lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years as well as a Nov. 2, 1983 conviction for sodomy with a person under 14 years or with force.
Moody reportedly claimed he and his girlfriend Angel Vause picked up Brittanee Drexel when she was walking alone. She accepted their invitation to party and smoked marijuana with them at a campsite in Georgtown County, he said. Moody said he hoped he might have consensual sex with Drexel. When Vause left, however, he made advances toward the girl. She resisted and he sexually assaulted and threatened her. Finally, he strangled her to death upon realizing he could go back to prison. By the time Vause returned, he had wrapped the teen in a blanket and hid her body in bushes. He claimed Drexel’s friends picked her up, but he returned to the campsite later and moved the body to where he buried those remains.
Though recognizing that the confession gave enough evidence to confirm Moody’s guilt, prosecutors called his account self-serving.
Brittanee’s family voiced doubt that she would have joined him willingly.
“I am so glad my daughter was feisty and fought back,” her mother Dawn Pleckan said. “She fought for her life. We know now she scratched the hell out of your face head and neck. You will forever carry the scars of what my daughter did to you and I hope you are haunted by her.”
She also referenced Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, a man openly suspected in her daughter’s death due to accounts from FBI informants. Prosecutors now say those informants made it all up.
Authorities say Moody is, in fact, the killer. They convinced Vause to wear a wire during a conversation with him. From there, they obtained a search warrant for his residence, and though they did not turn up evidence at the home, he confessed and later led them to Brittanee Drexel’s body.
Now Pleckan wears her daughter’s ashes and photo around her neck.
“That’s all I have left,” she reportedly told Moody. “That’s all we have left after what you did to her.”
[Images via Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office]
