Missing teenager 'shot, raped and thrown into alligator pit'

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A teenage girl who disappeared from Myrtle Beach seven years ago was abducted, raped, shot and thrown into an alligator pit in the forests of McClellanville, South Carolina, FBI officials revealed this week.

Seventeen-year-old Brittanee Drexel first disappeared in 2009 after going to the beach from Rochester, New York against her parent's permission. Investigators spent years chasing leads but had not been able to make progress in the case.

The Post and Courier reports that authorities recently caught a break after a man serving a prison sentence of 25 years for voluntary manslaughter recently confessed that he witnessed what happened to the victim.

According to a federal court transcript obtained by the South Carolina newspaper, Taquan Brown told investigators that he entered a stash house where Drexel was being kept. He claims she was being sexually abused by Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, who was 16 years old at the time.

He said that he also witnessed the girl being pistol-whipped, and later heard two gunshots, leading him to assume that Da’Shaun Taylor’s father killed Drexel. FBI agent Gerrick Munoz gave a detailed account in the transcript saying that although the girl’s body had not been found, several witnesses said Drexel’s body was placed in an alligator pit—to have her body eaten by the animals. Investigators searched as many as 40 ponds without discovery.

After authorities held a news conference in July informing the public that the teen may have been held captive in McClellanville for several days, police received multiple tips corroborating the jailhouse confession.

The FBI testimony was made during a bond hearing for Mr Taylor, 25, whose attorney characterised the allegations as "nothing but a squeeze-job" to bring closure to the case. He's currently being held on charges relating to the robbery of a McDonald's in 2011.

His mother told The Post and Courier that she plans on speaking out on the allegations, calling them unjust and an attempt to "pin something else on him."

He was later released on a $10,000 bail.