Myrtle Beach Mystery: The Search for Brittanee Drexel

Brittanee Drexel: A Bright Teen With Big Dreams and a Bigger Heart

Spring Break has always been a strange mix. Part beach parties and freedom, part bad decisions and worse outcomes. And sometimes, when everything goes sideways, it stops being fun and turns into something darker.

For the Drexel family, Spring Break in 2009 marked the moment everything fell apart. Their 17-year-old daughter, Brittanee, had asked if she could go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with some friends. She wanted a taste of independence, that rush of almost-adulthood. But that trip would end in a way no one was ready for.

Brittanee was magnetic. The kind of person others just naturally wanted to be around. She was full of life, always smiling, and happiest when she was with the people she loved. Soccer, shopping, laughing with friends—those were her favorite things. She had big dreams too. She wanted to be a nurse. She wanted a family. She also wanted to be a model while she figured the rest of it out.

Brittanee had a striking look, especially her eyes. She was born with a condition that left her completely blind in her right eye. After several surgeries, the eye still wandered at times. A lot of people might have felt self-conscious about it. Brittanee didn’t. She chose bright blue contacts that made her eyes even more noticeable. What could’ve been seen as a flaw, she turned into something bold.

She started wearing bright blue contact lenses to help stabilize it. Not the kind you grab off a drugstore shelf—hers were bold, dramatic, and unforgettable. That one detail gave her an edge. It set her apart, which was exactly what she wanted.

But like most teenagers, Brittanee wanted to grow up a little faster than she should have.

A Mother’s Instinct: Brittanee’s Secret Trip to Myrtle Beach

Back in the spring of 2009, Brittanee asked her mom, Dawn, for permission to go to Myrtle Beach for Spring Break with her friends. The Drexels were living in Rochester, New York, near Lake Ontario. And Myrtle Beach wasn’t just far—it was a full-day drive, deep into party territory.

Brittanee was only seventeen. The thought of her daughter being that far away, surrounded by strangers and beach crowds and alcohol-fueled chaos, made Dawn uneasy. Actually, it made her stomach twist. She told Brittanee as much. She had a bad feeling, and she couldn’t shake it.

Brittanee didn’t take the no very well. In true teenage fashion, the conversation blew up. Yelling, slammed doors, silence. But eventually, things cooled off. They weren’t totally back to normal, but they were speaking again.

A few days later, Brittanee told her mom she was still feeling upset from the fight and asked if she could spend a couple nights at a friend’s house to cool off. Dawn agreed. The two of them kept in touch by phone over the next few days, and everything seemed fine.

But Brittanee wasn’t cooling off at a friend’s house in Rochester. She had packed a bag and gone to South Carolina. The friend she said she was staying with lived hundreds of miles away, and Brittanee hadn’t just left town—she’d crossed state lines.

And she hadn’t told anyone.

The Last Messages: When Brittanee Went Silent

Brittanee and her friends checked into the Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach ready to jump into Spring Break. She called her mom and said she’d spent the day at the beach. Nothing about it raised any alarms. The weather back in Rochester had been unusually warm too, and people were out by the lake. Dawn assumed her daughter was somewhere close to home.

That night, around 8 p.m., Brittanee left the hotel alone and headed toward the Blue Water Resort, just a few blocks away. While she walked, she texted back and forth with her boyfriend, John Grieco. It was a normal, casual conversation—until she suddenly stopped replying.

John noticed the silence right away. He called her. No answer. He tried again. Still nothing. So he started calling her friends. When none of them knew where she was, John made the call that no one ever wants to make. He called Dawn.

That’s when everything unraveled.

Dawn had no idea Brittanee was in South Carolina. She thought her daughter was still in Rochester, cooling off at a friend’s house. Now she knew the truth—Brittanee had lied and gone to Myrtle Beach anyway. Dawn called the police immediately.

By the next morning, the search had begun. Police pulled security footage that showed Brittanee leaving the Blue Water Resort. They also identified the last person known to have seen her: a 20-year-old named Peter Brozowitz.

Peter and Brittanee had known each other for years, but he hadn’t come to Myrtle Beach with her. He admitted he saw her the night she went missing, but claimed he had no idea where she went after leaving the resort.

Dawn didn’t buy it.

She traveled to Myrtle Beach herself to help search and told her sister in an email that Peter showed no concern, no empathy, nothing that resembled someone worried about a missing friend. “My daughter made mistakes,” she wrote, “and one of the largest ones she ever made was when she trusted this group of people with her life.”

Peter and the people he was with that night were all named persons of interest. The search pushed on.

Back at the hotel, investigators found Brittanee’s clothes still in her room. But her purse and phone were missing, which suggested she hadn’t planned on being gone for long. Her phone pinged about 50 miles south of Myrtle Beach before the signal cut out in the early morning hours.

Whatever happened to Brittanee, she hadn’t gone there on her own.

A Lead, a Theory, and a Confession Thirteen Years Later

As the search dragged on, Dawn Drexel went public with her suspicions. She believed Peter Borozwitz, or someone connected to him, had lured Brittanee to Myrtle Beach with the intention of trafficking her. Peter denied everything. Not long after, photos surfaced showing him and his friends partying miles away from the area where Brittanee’s phone had last pinged that night.

Eventually, police cleared him. They announced that Peter was no longer a person of interest. Their working theory shifted. They now believed Brittanee had likely been abducted and killed shortly after she disappeared.

They offered a twenty-five thousand dollar reward for any tip that could bring Brittanee home. And one man claimed he knew what happened.

His name was Taquan Brown. He was already serving twenty-five years for manslaughter in a South Carolina prison. Taquan said he saw Brittanee not long after she went missing, but what he described was nothing short of horrific.

According to him, he had been making a delivery to what he called a “stash house.” While he was there, he said he saw a man, already known to law enforcement, sexually assaulting Brittanee. Taquan claimed that Brittanee tried to escape, but was pistol-whipped and dragged back inside. Then he heard two gunshots and believed she had been killed.

It was a disturbing tip, and it sent investigators down a new path. But it led nowhere. Every lead dried up. Every possible suspect hit a wall.

Then, in 2022, thirteen years after Brittanee disappeared, something finally broke open.

A man named Raymond Moody walked into a police station and confessed.

He was sixty-two years old at the time and already on the sex offender registry. Back in 2012, he had been listed as a person of interest in Brittanee’s case, but the evidence just wasn’t there. Nothing stuck. So the case stalled again.

But now, a decade later, Raymond decided he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

A Confession Too Late

Raymond Moody told investigators that during Spring Break of 2009, he and his girlfriend, Angel Cooper Vause, were cruising the streets of Myrtle Beach. His exact words were, “We were hunting.” And the person they found was Brittanee Drexel.

According to Raymond, they pulled up to her pretending to be lost. Once she got close enough, he grabbed her, forced her into the back seat, and held her down while Angel drove them to a remote spot. They had already set up a tent there.

Raymond said he told Brittanee not to worry. That he did this kind of thing often. That he kidnapped girls, then ransomed them for five thousand dollars from the City Chamber of Commerce.

None of that was true.

Instead, he took her into the tent and raped her. Angel, according to him, stood by and watched. Afterward, he used a yellow nylon rope to strangle Brittanee, then stabbed her in the chest with an ice pick. He buried her body himself. When he finally confessed thirteen years later, he led investigators to that exact spot. Her remains were recovered.

Raymond was charged with murder, kidnapping, and first-degree criminal sexual misconduct. He pleaded guilty to everything. The court sentenced him to life in prison, along with two additional thirty-year terms to be served one after the other.

Angel Vause was charged with lying to the FBI about her role in Brittanee’s abduction, assault, and murder. She also pleaded guilty. In February of 2025, she was sentenced to eighteen years in federal prison.

Closing 

You know, when I read about Brittanee, I kept thinking about how easy it is to see parts of ourselves in her. She was seventeen, strong-willed, full of big dreams and bigger plans. She was navigating the space between teenager and adult, just like so many of us did, or so many of our kids are doing right now. She didn’t do anything wrong. She trusted the wrong people.

Her story isn’t about bad choices. It’s about predators. And how far some people will go to take advantage of vulnerability.

Dawn Drexel never gave up. Not once. And after thirteen long years, she got her answer. But it should never have taken that long. And it should never have happened at all.

Brittanee deserved a full life. And the fact that someone took that away from her doesn’t get to define who she was. What defines her is how many people never stopped fighting to bring her home.

Thanks for listening.