The parents of a teenage girl believed to have been gang-raped, shot and fed to alligators have spoken of their heartache at learning of their daughter's final moments and revealed they unwittingly handed a 'missing' flyer to the prime suspect in the case.
Brittanee Drexel was 17 when she vanished during Spring Break in South Carolina sparking a major investigation in 2009 - now the FBI has revealed she suffered a horrifyingly violent death.
The agency revealed that they had established Brittanee was held against her will for several days before she was killed.
Appearing on the Dr. Phil show on Friday, Dawn Drexel told of her mental torture at knowing of the abuse her daughter suffered at the hands of the "monsters" who killed her.
Mrs Drexel said: "The jailhouse informant said he walked into this house in McLelinville – it's called a stash house.
"It's somewhere where they can put drugs and illegal things.
"He was walking through the house and he had said that Deshaun and other men were raping my daughter.
"He had walked through… Brittanee tried to escape and they ran out and got her and brought her back into the house and pistol whipped her and beat her and shot her."
She added: "My heart just broke because Brittanee didn't deserve this.
"Brittanee didn't even know these people. And for them to do that to my daughter is just, I mean, for nothing.
"I just feel like, you know, they're monsters. I mean, they have no regard for anybody's life."
Brittanee's father, Chad Drexel, told Dr. Phil he went to McClellanville to dish out fliers about the disappearance.
While he was there, he handed one to Timothy Da'Shaun Taylor, who is said to be the prime suspect in the case, but has never been charged.
Mr Drexel explained how he was standing in the middle of the road when a car drove by, which stopped.
He said: "I handed the flyer to the driver and the two people in the back were whispering.
"I stick my head in and say do you know anything about this girl, I’m her dad? They laugh and I just give the flyer to the driver and he crumples it up and tosses it out the window and drives off as they are all laughing."
He later visited the office of a private investigator he had hired to help find his daughter, who told him the man in the car was Mr Taylor, Mr Drexel added.
Dr. Phil also interviewed Mr Taylor, and asked him to respond to the claims he had picked Brittanee up from Myrtle Beach and back down to McLellanVille.
He replied: "My reaction to it was like, you know, it’s not true. I never saw her, I’d never seen her besides the TV and the internet. Through a computer screen. So when they read it out it was unbelievable."
In a transcript obtained by the Post and Courier of Charleston, Agent Gerrick Munoz testified about a "jailhouse confession" which detailed how the grim crime unravelled.
Taquan Brown, who is serving 25 years for an unrelated manslaughter case, said he saw Brittannee when he visited a "stash house" in the area she was last seen.
He said she was being sexually abused by several men.
As he went to give another man at the property some money, Brittanee apparently made an attempt to flee.
She was "pistol-whipped" and taken back inside before Brown said he heard two gunshots.
He says he saw the body wrapped up and taken away.
Agent Munoz testified in a federal court that "several witnesses have told us Miss Drexel’s body was placed in a pit, or gator pit, to have her body disposed of. Eaten by the gators."
Authorities have searched the property and the alligator pits but have found no trace of Brittanee.
Brown's tale has been corroborated by other tip-offs, a court heard.
Brittanee was on holiday with friends in Myrtle Beach when she was reported missing in April 2009.
Police offered a $25,000 reward and issued CCTV images of Brittanee leaving a hotel, the last confirmed sighting of the teen.
Mrs Drexel said earlier this year: "After seven long years of waiting and praying for the return of my daughter we know that she isn’t coming home alive."