Person of interest in Brittanee Drexel disappearance back in jail

Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor — a person of interest in the Brittanee Drexel disappearance — who pleaded guilty to federal charges on an unrelated six-year-old crime, is back in jail after a probation officer said Taylor violated his home detention orders.

Probation Officer George A. Anderson Jr., told the U.S. District Court in Charleston that Taylor “failed to comply with the conditions of home detention” on Oct. 21.

In December Taylor was placed on location monitoring for his home detention.

At 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 21, “the duty officer for location monitoring received an alert” Taylor was not where he should be and the officer attempted to contact Taylor “with no success,” according to an order filed for an arrest warrant.

Taylor left voice messages for the officer and her supervisor, saying that he was going to be late, the order stated.

An officer reviewing Taylor’s GPS points three days later found that the reason Taylor was late was because “he had gone to the Dorchester Dragway at 6:12 p.m. and left at 9:06 p.m.,” the order stated. “The defendant had no permission to be at this location.”

Probation officers say Taylor confirmed that he was at the Dragway working on one of his vehicles that night. Officers said it wasn’t his first location monitoring violation.

An order for Taylor’s arrest was signed by a judge a few days later.

Taylor pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit a robbery defined under the federal Hobbs Act in July for a 2011 armed robbery of a Mount Pleasant McDonald’s.

Taylor had already served a sentence for that crime under the state criminal justice system, but the case was resurrected in federal court after investigators looking into Drexel’s disappearance heard Taylor’s name in their search for a suspect.

Drexel was 17 when police say she was abducted from Myrtle Beach a day after she came for a spring break trip without her parents’ permission in April 2009. FBI agents say they suspect the Rochester, N.Y., teen was held against her will for several days before she was killed in the McClellanville area.

A federal agent testified in court last year that jailhouse informants told investigators she was held at a stash house where she was sexually abused by multiple people and was shot when she tried to escape.

Informants told police Taylor was at the house and knows more than he is saying about Drexel, but Taylor’s attorney says his client was in school on the days and times when informants put Taylor at the house.

Taylor’s lawyers say their client doesn’t know what happened to Drexel or where her remains might be located.

Federal prosecutors told The Sun News earlier this year that there were two plea deals on the table for Taylor in the federal robbery case and that he was offered the worst of the two when he failed a polygraph.

Most of the questions Taylor failed to tell the truth on were related to the Drexel case, prosecutors said in July.

Taylor was booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston on Halloween. A federal judge has ordered Taylor to stay in detention until he is sentenced in the robbery case.

The date of Taylor’s sentencing hearing has not yet been set.

This story was originally published November 1, 2017 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Person of interest in Brittanee Drexel disappearance back in jail."