'20/20' takes a look at the long investigation, arrest and plea deal into the disappearance of Rochester teen Brittanee Drexel.
Jayson Haedrich, Denise Martinez-Ramundo, Jeca Taudte and Ivan PereiraIn April 2009, Brittanee Drexel told her mother she would be spending a few days at a friend's house in Rochester, New York. But what Dawn Drexel didn't know was that her 17-year-old daughter was really more than 800 miles away on a spring break trip in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, without permission.
John did not travel with Brittanee to Myrtle Beach, but kept in constant contact with her, text messaging his girlfriend during her trip until their text message exchanges abruptly stopped on April 25, according to police records. Moody had returned to his hometown of Georgetown, South Carolina, after being convicted and serving approximately half of his 40-year sentence in California for multiple sexual assaults.
Investigators found documentation that a woman named Angel Vause, Raymond Moody's girlfriend, had had access to that same vehicle. "I just wanted everybody to leave him alone, so I put the blame on me instead of him," she told investigators, admitting that her claim to be responsible wasn't true. Soon after, Moody's lawyer contacted the local prosecutor, Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, and asked to meet. In May 2022, Raymond Moody confessed to picking up Drexel in the Ford Explorer, then raping and strangling her.
After three days of excavating, investigators found human remains on May 11. Forty-eight hours later, Brittanee Drexel's remains were positively identified through her dental records.Dawn Drexel told "20/20" she was shocked when she learned that Moody was in custody.
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