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'SICK CRIMES'
Child rape victim of Brittanee Drexel’s murderer wants his ex jailed for life & shares fears the duo killed more
Brittanee Drexel's murder investigation was cold for 13 years before a remarkable breakthrough was made
THE longtime girlfriend of Brittanee Drexel's killer should rot in prison for life with him after she admitted to lying to the FBI, a woman raped as a child by the teen's murderer says.
Angel Vause, the girlfriend of convicted murderer Raymond Moody, pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements to federal agents in a South Carolina courtroom on Monday.
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Moody, now 64, was convicted in October 2022 of kidnapping, raping, and murdering Brittanee Drexel while she was on spring break in Myrtle Beach in 2009.
He confessed to police that he and Vause picked 17-year-old Brittanee up on April 25, 2009, after encountering her walking alone along a dark street.
Moody lured Brittanee into the vehicle by asking her if she wanted to go to a party and smoke marijuana.
He and Vause then took the teen to a campsite in Georgetown County where he raped and killed her.
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The serial sex offender – who had been a person of interest in the case for more than a decade – denied Vause played any role in the murder and insisted he attacked, killed, and disposed of Brittanee while Vause was elsewhere.
During a separate interview with police, Vause first told detectives she was driving home to get keys at the time Moody was assaulting and killing Drexel.
She also told officers that Brittanee remained in possession of her cell phone and that Brittanee had joined her and Moody voluntarily to consume marijuana and cocaine.
However, investigators didn't buy Vause's story, contesting instead that she hadn't returned home, that she'd taken Brittanee's phone and disposed of it between Georgetown and Charleston, and that Brittanee had not voluntarily joined them but instead been "abducted under false pretenses," records show.
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Vause, 56, was initially set to plead guilty last month as part of a plea but changed her mind in the closing moments of a hearing and stated her desire to stand trial.
She later changed her mind again, leading to Monday’s final hearing – but her previously agreed plea deal was taken off the table.
Murdered teen Brittanee Drexel’s chilling last texts revealed before she disappeared on spring break
Vause is now facing a maximum of 24 years behind bars, eight years for each count of lying to federal authorities.
Kerri Harding, who was eight years old when she was abducted and sexually abused by Moody, told The U.S. Sun she hopes Vause is held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear this news," said Kerri of Vause's guilty plea.
"The thought that she could somehow come out of this situation with no charges for her participation in Brittanee's murder has always deeply disturbed me.
"She was his accomplice and deserves the same punishment as he was given. She aided and abetted him for years."
Referencing her own horrific encounter with Moody, Kerri said she fears Moody may have other alleged victims that Vause could be aware of.
"There is no telling how many other victims the two of them had over the many years they were together," alleged Kerri.
"She is just as sick as he is. I hope they throw the book at her.
"She deserves the death penalty for her role in Brittanee's murder."
A HORRIFYING ENCOUNTER
Kerri, now 50, was just eight years old when she was kidnapped by Moody from a playground in Vallejo, California, in the winter of 1983.
Across a period of several hours, she was repeatedly assaulted and abused by Moody inside his car, leaving her bruised, bloodied, and certain she would never live to see her family again.
"I for sure thought he was going to kill me," Kerri told The U.S. Sun after Moody's arrest in 2022.
"I feel like had I not managed to persuade him to let me out of his car to go to the bathroom, I never would've made it out alive."
Earlier that morning, Kerri had spoken to one of her friends on the phone.
The two girls arranged to meet at their school, just a few yards down the road, to play together on the playground.
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As she started walking across the parking lot of the school, a man - who she would later identify to be Raymond Moody - approached her and warned, "You can't go back there because they're working on the fence".
Having been instructed to never speak to a stranger, Kerri dutifully ignored the man and continued to walk past him as he bounced a basketball next to his car.
The man's warning about the fence turned out to be true, so she turned around and went to walk back towards the street when he suddenly unlocked the passenger's side of his car and bundled her inside.
"Everything happened in the blink of an eye," Kerri said. "He had me in his car and had driven away within seconds."
Moody forced Kerri into the well of the passenger seat, holding her head down with one hand as he kept the other on the steering wheel.
The young girl desperately pleaded with Moody, demanding to know where he was taking her.
"You're too little to be out here by yourself," Moody allegedly barked back. "I'm taking you to the police station."
Moody, Kerri would soon realize, was not taking her to the police station but rather an undeveloped housing site around three miles away from her home.
Kerri said Moody parked the car, turned to her, and said, "Has anyone told you, you have a beautiful body?"
The words, which continue to haunt Kerri to this day, were followed by, "Let's get into the back, we're going to screw," she said.
"I was eight, I didn't even know what he meant," Kerri said.
"So at that point I didn't realize what was going to happen until it happened.
"And it was horrific."
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Kerri was brutally and repeatedly raped by Moody in the back of his car over a period of several hours.
Believing she was certain to die, Kerri continually told Moody she needed to go the bathroom, hoping that if he'd agree to let her out of the car she may be able to make a break for it.
"Eventually he agreed to let me go to the bathroom," she recounted. "And so he opened the back door and told me to squat right next to the car while he gripped onto my hair.
"When I squatted down a pool of blood came pouring out of me and just got bigger and bigger.
"When he saw it he briefly let go of my hair and I just took off running."
In the distance, Kerri could see a couple touring the housing site with a realtor. She headed towards them screaming and crying "I was kidnapped" as Moody sped away in his car.
"I just fell and collapsed into the woman's arms," Kerri said through tears. "They drove me to a construction trailer where they called police and my family."
LASTING TRAUMA
It wouldn't be until she got to the hospital that Kerri's family realized that not only had she been kidnapped but she had also been raped.
The horror of Kerri's ordeal devastated her relatives.
More than 40 years on, the image of her grandparents, parents, and uncles breaking down in tears when they were told what had happened still brings Kerri's emotions racing back to the surface.
"I come from a family of very strong people," Kerri said, her voice quivering with emotion.
"My uncles were very strong men, and to see them devastated like that and feeling so helpless – that’s something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
"Your family is your strength. I feel like the men in my family were never afraid of anything. And then all of a sudden this happens and they just couldn’t deal with it."
For a few months, Kerri's family took her out driving around Vallejo every single day in search of Moody's car.
Each time they'd ask her to recite exactly what had happened in excruciating depth, hoping the unearth a new detail she'd either previously forgotten or neglected to mention.
What Happened to Brittanee Drexel?: A Timeline
April 22, 2009: Brittanee Drexel travels to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, without telling her mother or getting her permission.
April 25, 2009: Brittanee is last seen alive in Myrtle Beach. She stops responding to calls and texts. Her worried friends and family try to reach her with no luck. Late that night, Brittanee's phone signal pings for the last time near the Charleston and Georgetown County line.
April 26, 2009: Police begin an urgent search effort that lasts for months. That same day, Raymond Moody is pulled over for a traffic violation in Surfside Beach but there's no sign of Brittanee.
August 2011: After years without new leads, authorities announce Raymond Moody as a person of interest in the investigation and search a motel room where he'd been living in Georgetown, but no evidence is yielded.
June 2016: The FBI holds a press conference announcing the first major developments in years. Agents say they now believe Brittanee was a victim of sex trafficking who was kidnapped, held at a stash house in McClellanville, and then murdered with her body fed to alligators.
August 2016: The FBI shares the source of the claims and a suspect is named publicly in the case for the first time. Two jailhouse informants pointed the finger of blame at a father and son, Shaun and Timothy Taylor, who emphatically denied any involvement.
March 2017: Authorities search a wooded area along a dirt road in Georgetown called Foxfire Court. No indication is given about what they found.
May 4, 2022: Raymond Moody is arrested on obstruction of justice charges and issued a $100,000 bond.
May 12, 2022: Human remains are found in a wooded area 2.5 miles from where Moody was living when Brittanee vanished. They later confirmed to belong to Brittanee.
May 16, 2022: Brittanee's body is returned to her family. A cause of death could not be determined.
October 2022: Raymond Moody is sentenced to life behind bars for murdering Brittanee. He receives two 30-year sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault ordered to be served consecutively.
A breakthrough came around three months after the attack when Kerri suddenly remembered something she'd seen on the rear bumper of the man's car when he had sped away from the building site: a green sticker.
"That green sticker was required on any car that needed to get onto the naval base in the town," Kerri explained.
"The minute I remembered that sticker, the police found him and arrested him the next day."
Kerri was one of seven girls under the age of 14 that Moody was convicted of kidnapping and raping.
He was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 1983 but released after just 21 in 2004, five years before he allegedly abducted and killed Brittanee Drexel.
Brittanee was just 17 years old when she vanished in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, during an impromptu and ill-fated spring break trip in April 2009.
Brittanee's fate remained a total mystery until May 2022 when Moody confessed to killing the girl and led investigators to the wooded area where he'd disposed of her remains.
For Kerri, seeing Moody's name and face all over the news after so many years was incredibly triggering.
Worse still, she says, is the thought that Drexel may still be alive today had Moody not been released early from his 42-year sentence.
"It's been really hard seeing his name again," Kerri said in 2022. "It definitely digs up a lot of old demons.
"I guess I just really can't wrap my brain around how he ever was released early. He had a 42-year sentence and he did 21 years - 21 years for raping seven girls," she exclaimed.
"He should've never been given the chance to hurt another child.
"He's a serial rapist who is clearly not going to stop doing it.
"That's what hurts me so deeply because Brittanee would still be with us today if he was kept behind bars."
SENTENCING AWAITS
Moody was sentenced in October 2022 to life behind bars for murdering Brittanee and an additional 60 years for kidnapping and first-degree sexual conduct.
“I was a monster, and I took Brittanee Drexel’s life,” Moody told the courtroom.
“And I don’t have the words to express how horrible I feel and how I’ve felt ever since that day, and I’m very sorry.”
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, while Kerri had hoped for the death penalty.
For Vause, meanwhile, a sentencing date has not yet been set but prosecutors hope to sort the matter by the end of the year.
Speaking outside of the courtroom, Brittanee's mother Dawn Pleckan Conley told reporters she feels her family is one step closer to achieving justice.
“I don’t think you ever get closure with losing a child," said Conley.
"I think it’s a resolution to what happened and she will pay dearly for what she did to my daughter."
Conley added of Vause's conduct, "I have no words. She’s a mom, you know. And a grandmother. Like, how could you do this to a human being?"
Meanwhile, Brittanee's father, John Kahyaoglu, said being at the hearing was emotional for him.
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“I’m still soaking it in but I got some happiness out of it. I got a lot of happiness out of it, that she’s not just going to walk out of here,” Kahyaoglu said.
“A lot of people have been working on this and been waiting for this day. I can’t wait until sentencing of course, but it’s been a long journey.”
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