The girlfriend of a child rapist who murdered a 17-year-old girl during a vacation in South Carolina has admitted to lying to the FBI.
Angel Vause, 56, pleaded guilty Monday to three charges of making false statements to federal authorities, according to court papers. As previously reported by Law&Crime, Vause’s boyfriend, Raymond Moody, was convicted in October 2022 of kidnapping, raping, and murdering Brittanee Drexel in April 2009 when she was on spring vacation in Myrtle Beach. The case had been cold for years, but Moody turned himself into authorities in 2022, shortly after Drexel’s bones were discovered.
Moody told authorities that he and Vause picked up Drexel, who is originally from upstate New York, while she was strolling alone. According to the indictment, Vause told FBI officials in a May 2022 interview that she went to someone’s residence “to get keys from a truck ring” while Drexel “was being assaulted and killed” by Moody.
She also allegedly told FBI officials that Drexel had her smartphone with her during the encounter, although the older lady seized the girl’s phone and abandoned it somewhere between Georgetown and Charleston, according to the indictment.
Vause also reportedly told investigators that Drexel “voluntarily joined” her and Moody on the night in question to “consume marijuana and cocaine” — but the girl was actually “abducted under pretenses.”
Her guilty plea was submitted on Monday without a plea deal, according to the record. She was brought into federal custody.
Vause was accused of federal charges in March, and the guilty plea follows months of apparent back and forth regarding how the case should proceed. According to local NBC station WMBF, Vause appeared prepared to plead guilty in August but withdrew in the final minutes of the plea hearing due to a misunderstanding over the potential sentence and expressed an intent to go to trial. However, according to the federal docket, Monday’s change of plea hearing was added on September 3, indicating that Vause had changed his mind yet again.
The plea marks another chapter in the case, which has taken over a decade to resolve.
On the night of April 25, 2009, Moody kidnapped Drexel, raped her, strangled her to death along the Santee River, and buried her body four feet deep on Old Town Avenue in Harmony Township, a Georgetown HOA subdivision. The girl was only identified by her dental records. The case went cold for years until law police determined, based on witness testimony, that Drexel had been sexually raped and fed to alligators.
Following Moody’s confession, that theory was abandoned.
Moody had already served more than 20 years in prison after being convicted of raping and kidnapping a minor under the age of 14.
“I served 20 years and thought it would be enough, but it wasn’t,” Moody stated during his sentence for Drexel’s death. “I was a monster then, and I was a monster when I took Brittanee Drexel’s life.”
Vause faces up to 24 years in prison. The federal docket did not provide a sentencing date.