Suspect in Brittanee Drexel's death says he didn't do it
A suspect in the likely death of a 17-year-old abducted on spring break contends that he is the victim of a jailhouse snitch trying to cut a deal.
Brittanee Drexel, 17, of Chili, N.Y., was last seen on surveillance video April 25, 2009, when she left the Blue Water Resort in Myrtle Beach, S.C., during a trip with friends that she had taken without her parents' permission.
Her body has not been found. But in June, the FBI announced that agents suspect she had been killed.
In a bail hearing last month in a federal court in Charleston, S.C., an FBI agent testified that Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor, now 25, of McClellanville, S.C., is suspected of kidnapping Brittanee and sexually trafficking her. Authorities believe that Brittanee was fatally shot and her body dumped in an alligator-filled swamp in the McClellanville area.
"I had no involvement with anything to do with Brittanee Drexel," Taylor said in a statement released through his lawyer, David Aylor.
No one has been charged with any crimes connected to her disappearance. In an odd twist, Taylor now is being prosecuted in federal court for a 2011 robbery he admitted to and has been sentenced for in state court.
Taylor, the getaway driver in the robbery, received probation for the crime. He cooperated against his co-defendants, who shot a McDonald's employee in the leg during the robbery.
But months ago, federal authorities brought charges against Taylor connected to the same robbery — an unusual move since federal authorities rarely prosecute a case already adjudicated in another court. Federal authorities acknowledged that they charged Taylor for the crime partly because of his suspected role in Brittanee's disappearance and also because they thought he had gotten off lightly in the robbery.
Taquan Brown, a South Carolina man imprisoned for manslaughter, allegedly told the FBI that he was in the "stash house" about 60 miles southwest of Myrtle Beach when Brittanee was killed in 2009. He implicated Taylor in Brittanee's kidnapping and homicide, according to the FBI.
Taylor's father, Timothy Shaun Taylor, 43, was supposedly the triggerman, according to Brown's information.
"I don’t know Taquan Brown, and I don’t know why he would call my name," the younger Taylor said in his statement. "I am being prosecuted again for a crime I already helped them solve and already did my time for, all because some guy in prison is trying to cut a deal.
"It’s not fair to be charged for the same crime twice, and that’s not how our system is supposed to work," according to Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor's statement.
The federal Justice Department has policies dictating when it can opt to prosecute an individual for a crime already resolved in another court. Aylor claims that prosecutors are circumventing their standard procedures with his client's prosecution.
"This subsequent prosecution is nothing more than an attempt to squeeze Mr. Taylor for information of which he has no knowledge," Aylor said in a statement.
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