Accomplice in Brittanee Drexel’s murder hears fate more than decade after teen’s death
The girlfriend of Brittanee Drexel’s killer will spend nearly two decades in prison after more than 13 years of denying her role in the kidnapping and murder of the teenager while she was on vacation in Myrtle Beach.
Angel Cooper Vause, 57, of Georgetown, was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in federal prison for lying to federal investigators about the night Drexel was murdered, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Vause pleaded guilty in July 2024 to two counts of making false statements to the FBI, court records show.
The New York teenager disappeared in 2009 while on a trip to Myrtle Beach. The case went unsolved until 2022 when Raymond Moody admitted to the crime. Her case gained national attention and became the subject of TV documentaries and numerous stories.
Vause told investigators that the 17-year-old willingly joined her and Moody, that she left Moody and Drexel at a boat landing near Georgetown and that she did not take Drexel’s cell phone, the relese said. In reality, Vause participated in the teen’s abduction and was complicit in her rape and murder, the release said.
Moody said he and Vause kidnapped the 17-year-old off the Myrtle Beach strip, brought her to a campground in Georgetown where he raped and strangled her. Moody is serving a life sentence for the crime.
Vause told FBI agents during the 2022 investigation of Moody that she was going to her house to get her keys while Moody was raping and murdering Drexel. Vause was actually driving a different direction with Drexel’s phone. She also told agents that Drexel willingly got into Moody’s car and ingested marijuana when the teen was abducted.
However, evidence shows that Vause helped Moody lure Drexel into their vehicle, promising her a ride to her hotel.
“For more than a decade, Brittanee’s loved ones were left to imagine the worst possible scenario in Brittanee’s disappearance while Vause withheld the truth,” U.S. Attorney Adair Ford Boroughs for the District of South Carolina said in the release. “We hope Brittanee’s loved ones can now have both the closure and a measure of justice that comes with this sentence. May she rest in peace knowing that her mother Dawn was relentless in her pursuit of justice.”
