But it was several years before any true progress was made. They offered a $25,000 reward for information. In June 2016, the police admitted at a press conference that they believed Brittanee had been abducted and murdered, probably near Georgetown. But Dawn refused to give up hope of finding her daughter and relocated to Myrtle Beach to keep searching for her. Some believed Brittanee had been abducted by sex traffickers. Months turned into years and there were still no answers. But while the case was firmly in the media spotlight, it remained unsolved. It struck fear into parents across the US. She was a young girl who had been on a secret vacation in a popular party spot. But the day after she’d gone missing the signal was lost.īrittanee’s disappearance made the national news. The data from her mobile phone showed that it had travelled around 50 miles south along Route 17, towards Georgetown. Despite Myrtle Beach being full of tourists, there were no witnesses to explain how she’d vanished. Then he called Dawn and admitted where Brittanee was.ĭawn reported her daughter missing and rushed straight to Myrtle Beach to search for her.īrittanee didn’t reply to the endless desperate calls from her friends and family. John called Brittanee’s friends, but they said she’d never returned. “I’m staying in packing and going to sleep probably,” she messaged. She told him she was heading back to her hotel. Due to work commitments, he’d been unable to come on the trip. Cameras also recorded her leaving shortly before 9pm.īrittanee sent a few texts to her boyfriend John. She was wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a patterned top. CCTV at the Blue Water Resort captured her arriving. They checked into the seafront Bar Harbor Hotel and enjoyed the party hotspot like hundreds of other youngsters who’d flockedto the area.īrittanee phoned her mum and told her she was spending the day at the beach – Dawn assumed it was a local shoreline in Rochester, not a 12-hour drive away.Īt around 8pm on the night of 25 April, Brittanee left her hotel and her friends to walk 1.5 miles down the buzzing South Ocean Boulevard to another hotel to see a friend staying there. She said she’d go and stay with her friend in nearby Rochester for a few days instead.ĭawn agreed but, unknown to her, Brittanee packed her suitcase and joined her friends on the trip to Myrtle Beach. Their blue tint gave Brittanee a striking look.ĭawn and Brittanee clashed over the trip for a couple of days but on 22 April 2009, Brittanee seemed to back down. It left her blind in her right eye which was prone to “wandering”, so she wore special contact lenses to correct this. She had been born with a condition called hyperplastic primary vitreous. She also had two younger siblings.Īn outgoing student, she loved playing football, wanted to become a nurse and also hoped to try modelling. It was a decision Brittanee refused to accept.īrittanee lived in the suburb of Chili in Rochester, New York, with her mum and her stepdad, Chad, who had adopted her. With sunny weather, miles of sandy beaches and lively nightlife, it’s a popular destination for high school and university students during the spring half-term holidays.īut Brittanee’s mum Dawn had a bad feeling about the trip and told her she couldn’t go. She wanted to head for the famous Myrtle Beach in South Carolina with her friends, 800 miles from her home. Like so many other American teenagers, Brittanee Drexel, 17, had big plans for Spring Break 2009.
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