Depraved text messages reveal how innocent spring breaker Brittanee Drexel was ‘hunted’

The man who raped and murdered a 17-year-old spring breaker in South Carolina has given chilling details about how he and his girlfriend hunted her down after fantasizing about it in text messages. 

Raymond Moody, now 64, was sentenced to life behind bars after leading authorities to Brittanee Drexel’s body in May 2022, ending the decades-long cold case.

He recently gave a jailhouse interview about the night he lured the teenager into his car with the help of his lover, Angel Cooper Vause, 57, before the horrors unfolded. 

Speaking with FBI agents at the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville where he is being held, Moody also described the role of his girlfriend, ahead of her sentencing next month. 

Moody recalled driving up and down Myrtle Beach’s main drag on the night of April 25, 2009, when they spotted Drexel, who was on spring break, walking alone. 

Before the trip, he texted Vause: ‘So you want to go hunting with me, huh?’, to which she replied: ‘Yeah.’ 

Police said Drexel and her group of friends, from upstate New York, had been staying in different hotels nearly two miles apart and she was walking between them when Vause and Moody pounced. 

She had borrowed clothing from a friend and was on her way from The Blue Water Resort to return the garments at the Bar Harbor when Moody’s car rolled past. 

‘We were hunting,’ Moody explained in a synopsis of the interview as part of Vause’s sentencing memorandum seen by Law & Crime. 

‘I had my eye on her and thought she was the one.’ 

Moody also revealed to FBI agents that Vause was attracted to him because of his criminal past. He was previously convicted of kidnapping and raping a nine-year-old girl in California. 

Vause said she wanted to join him on a twisted quest. Authorities saw text messages between the two demonstrating how they planned their attack.  

Moody recalled how Vause got out of the car to speak with Drexel. He said they believed that since Vause was a woman, Drexel would ‘trust us’. 

They pretended to be tourists like Drexel and offered her a lift to her hotel. Drexel accepted, and once inside the car Moody pretended to get lost and Vause took over the driving. 

It was at this point that Moody launched his sordid attack. He handcuffed Drexel, telling her he was a kidnapper while demanding $5,000 in ransom fees. 

Vause drove them to a tent beside the Santee River, and got out of the car with Drexel. Moody left them momentarily to drive to his apartment where he retrieved a briefcase full of ‘sex toys’. 

He then raped and sodomized Drexel before strangling her to death with a rope, he said. He then stabbed her with an ice pick to ensure she had died. 

Vause was not involved in the rape or murder, but she sat inside the tent watching, before Moody buried the teenager’s body in a shallow grave at a construction site. 

They first attempted the abduction on April 24, 2009, the night before Drexel was taken, but Moody said they had ‘some phone activity’ and Moody was concerned about leaving an electronic footprint. 

Moody was arrested for murder, kidnap and rape in May 2022, and he previously served two decades behind bars for the California child rape. 

‘I served 20 years and I thought it was enough, but it wasn’t,’ Moody said during his sentencing for Drexel’s death. 

‘I was a monster then, and I was a monster when I took Brittanee Drexel’s life.’ 

Vause was arrested in 2023 on charges in connection to the rape and murder of Drexel, and pleaded guilty to all three counts of making false statements to the FBI in 2024. 

Investigators said Vause initially gave a fake alibi to police – telling them she was traveling home to get keys while Moody killed Drexel. 

Vause also said Drexel joined them to use marijuana and cocaine, when she was really abducted after they tricked her.  

She had been allowed to walk free on bail until September 9, 2024, when she entered the plea, and has been held in custody ever since, the South Carolina Attorney’s Office said. 

Drexel’s mother, Dawn Pleckan, said Vause’s plea brought her one step closer to justice for her daughter. 

‘I don’t think you ever get closure with losing a child,’ Pleckan said at the time, per ABC13. ‘I think it’s a resolution to what happened, and she will pay dearly for what she did to my daughter.’ 

Moody’s interview came after he agreed to provide the ‘complete and truthful information about the abduction, rape, and murder of Brittanee’ in exchange for the Drexel family’s allowance of a portion of Moody’s property to remain in a trust for Vause’s grandchildren. 

In November 2022, chilling texts Drexel had sent to her boyfriend the night she vanished were revealed.

She had texted her friends throughout the day, court documents revealed at the time, reaching out to her boyfriend in her hometown of Rochester, New York, to complain about something less than one hour before she was reported missing.

‘I’ll tell you later when you call me,’ Drexel told her boyfriend, adding: ‘I’m so heated.’

Drexel later told him she was planning to just stay in that night and pack before going to sleep.

Throughout the day, the teen sent text messages to her boyfriend, the friends she traveled to Myrtle Beach with, as well as people she met while on vacation there.

In one text, Drexel told a friend she had borrowed a pair of shorts and made plans to meet at their hotel later in the day to return them.

And in another, she tells a friend she ‘went for [a] walk’ and asked ‘what’s going on tonite?’

Drexel also spoke about her outfit, describing the teal and black shirt she was later seen wearing in surveillance footage at the Blue Water Resort.

By 8:58 pm, Drexel sent her boyfriend one last text message reading: ‘I’m staying in packing and going to sleep probably.’

Although the phone records show no other messages from the teen, her boyfriend and her friends grew increasingly worried about her lack of a response.

One texted, ‘Send me something, we think ur missing.’ Another told Drexel to ‘stop playing games,’ while her boyfriend simply wrote: ‘Babe im concerned.’

Throughout the night, the court documents say, Drexel’s phone continued to ping off different locations in the Myrtle Beach area before it died at 11:57 pm.

Her body was found buried in a shallow grave on the property of Moody’s Georgetown home.

Her remains were positively identified using dental records and DNA. A coroner later determined that Drexel died from strangulation.