Brittanee Marie Drexel Missing April 25, 2009

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Age - progression to age 20




Clothes she was wearing


Brittanee Marie Drexel, missing from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA on April 25, 2009
Date of birth: October 7, 1991
Age: 17 years old
Height and Weight: 5'0, 103 pounds
Caucasian female. Brown hair with blonde highlights, blue-green eyes

Brittanee was staying at Bar Harbor Hotel in Myrtle Beach, she went to visit friends at Blue Water Resort on Ocean Boulevard, cameras show her walk into that hotel and then leaving shortly after 8,30 p.m. Brittanee could be a victim of human trafficking, being hold hostage but it´s unknown what has happened to her.

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Case Handled By:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

BRITTANEE MARIE DREXEL




Case Type: Endangered Missing
DOB: Oct 7, 1991 Sex: Female
Missing Date: Apr 25, 2009 Race: White
Age Now: 17 Height: 5'0" (152 cm)
Missing City: MYRTLE BEACH Weight: 103 lbs (47 kg)
Missing State : SC Hair Color: Brown
Missing Country: United States Eye Color: Blue
Case Number: NCMC1121354
Circumstances: The photos on the left and the photo in the center are of Brittanee. Her ears and nose are pierced. Brittanee has blonde highlights in her hair. She was last seen wearing a white, black, teal, and gray top, along with black shorts, similar to the outfit pictured above. Brittanee was also wearing white flip flops.


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Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009
Missing Brittanee Drexel's family still hunting for answers
By Kurt Knapek - [e-mail]







Donna Yuliano (from left) of Parsippany, NJ takes missing person posters and gives a donation to the grandparents of missing NY teenager Brittanee Drexel, Carol Wagner and Alan Wagner, of

In the hours following her daughter's disappearance, Dawn Drexel said she wanted answers to several questions, most importantly "Where is Brittanee?" and "Who is searching for her?"

When 17-year-old Brittanee Marie Drexel disappeared April 25, many of her family members and friends made the 800-mile trip from Rochester, N.Y., to Myrtle Beach to learn those answers from police.

"They were working on tips and leads," Dawn Drexel said. "They were doing what their protocol follows."

While the search for Brittanee Drexel was widely publicized, even drawing national media attention, her disappearance is just one of the 141 cases of missing persons between the ages of 15 and 25 reported so far this year in Horry County. Thirty-nine cases have been reported this year in Georgetown County and 55 in Brunswick County N.C., according to the FBI National Crime Information Center.

None of the disappearances is considered suspicious, and many of the cases are now considered closed because the people were located, officials said. The numbers demonstrate the fine line investigators must tread when called on to find older teens and young adults. Those cases can be the most challenging because it can be time consuming to determine if the missing person has simply run away from home, investigators said.

For law enforcement officials, each case is unique but their response must follow specific guidelines.

"Each case deserves its own special treatment," said Capt. David Knipes, spokesman for the Myrtle Beach Police Department. "Every situation is different because you are dealing with different circumstances and different individuals."

The first 24 to 48 hours are crucial in a search for a missing person, Knipes said.

Officers try to interview witnesses who last spoke to the missing person while the memories are fresh in their minds. Authorities gather a photo of the person and obtain any security videos of where he or she was last seen.

Officers must quickly determine the person's mental status, health issues, and recent relationships with friends and family members to determine what route to take.

"It's not like the old days when you had to wait for 24 hours before police would go looking," Knipes said. "Those first 48 hours are a crucial time to get out there before the case goes cold."

When a case is considered suspicious, the subject's name immediately is placed into an FBI missing persons database.

Family members or police officials can also notify the CUE Center for Missing Persons in Wilmington, N.C., which has 1,852 open cases across the country as of June 17.

"With Brittanee, we hit the ground running because there was hope, and there still is, that she could be alive," said Monica Caison, founder of CUE. "Finding her was vital immediately."

Police and CUE officials said it can be difficult to deal with friends and family members of a missing person in the hours following a disappearance.

"You just try to tell family members that there are people out there looking for them," Caison said. "They need to know that they are not alone, that there are people looking for them."

Myrtle Beach police detective Vincent Dorio said the hours following Brittanee Drexel's disappearance were "overwhelming" because officers were trying to interview people at the scene, and others who had left Myrtle Beach to return to New York.

In Drexel's case, police were able to quickly determine that the teen was not a runaway, Dorio said.

Plus, officers learned that Drexel was dealing with depression, which added to the urgency of locating her.

"It only took a few hours to change from 'This is a missing persons case and we have to hunt her down pretty quick' to 'This is serious,'" Dorio said. "This is not a kid hiding at the beach to stay away from mom. She just stopped all communication immediately, which wasn't the norm for her."

Police often receive calls about missing children who turn up at a friend's or neighbor's house the next day, said Sgt. Robert Kegler, spokesman for Horry County police.

"A lot of times parents will come out and tell you the child has left without permission," Kegler said. "If that happens, they are a runaway. But you are likely to get as much [police] response to a recovery of a 5-year-old who went missing from a backyard as you would a 16-year-old who snuck out to see his girlfriend. No two incidents are the same."

Law enforcement officials also said they must balance the priority of finding a missing person with giving up patrols in other areas, Knipes said.

"It can also depend on the time of year," Knipes said. "If it's December and nothing is going on, you can devote more resources to handle one case."

Dawn Drexel said local police made her feel like Brittanee's case was important and that officials were "very supportive" in the hours after her daughter's disappearance.

"They had police looking on Ocean Boulevard right away," Dawn Drexel said. "In Brittanee's case, they had quite a few people working on it."

Three officers in Myrtle Beach are continuing to monitor the case and follow up any potential leads they receive.

"We talk to the police every day, or every other day," Dawn Drexel said.

The family is also still searching and placing signs in the area. They held a fundraiser in Mount Pleasant last weekend. The money collected will go toward helping to print fliers and paying for hotel, gas and meal expenses for the team of people searching for Drexel.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Myrtle Beach Police Department at 918-1382 or 918-1952.

Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward for anyone with information leading to finding Drexel. Call 888-274-6372.

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News - Crime & Courts
Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009

The mother of a missing teen from Rochester, N.Y., spent the weekend raising money to continue searching for her daughter.





Dawn Drexel spent Saturday and Sunday outside Wal-Mart in Surfside Beach collecting donations and giving bracelets to people who gave $5 or more. The bracelets say “We love you Brittanee.” It has been about eight weeks since Brittanee Drexel, 17, disappeared.

The teen was last seen leaving the Blue Water Hotel on Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach on April 25. A family friend reported Drexel missing about 5 a.m. April 26.

The money collected will go toward helping to print flyers and paying for hotel, gas and meal expenses for the team of people searching for Drexel.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Myrtle Beach Police Department at [phone] or [phone]. Crime Stoppers is also offering a reward for anyone with information leading to finding Drexel. Call [phone].Contributing: The Associated Press; The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News

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Questions outnumber answers in search for missing teen
By Graeme Moore
Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 7:04 p.m.






Sunday marked the eighth day since a New York teenager vanished while on spring break in Myrtle Beach, and the questions into her disappearance are mounting.

On Sunday, Myrtle Beach detectives again scoured an area in Georgetown County near the North Santee River after learning the missing teen's cell phone gave off a signal there the night she went missing.

But as has been the case since searching began there early last week, investigators did not find anything helpful.

Brittanee Drexel, 17, of Rochester, N.Y., was last seen leaving the Blue Water Resort around 8:45 p.m. on April 25, but no one has heard from her since.

The teen was leaving the hotel room of a Rochester friend and was heading back to her hotel, the Bar Harbor Hotel, according to police.

Investigators learned Brittanee's cell phone was beaming a signal to a cell tower in southern Georgetown County the night she went missing and into early Sunday morning. However, there has been no activity from it since then.

Myrtle Beach police say they continue to follow other leads and are reiterating their needs for the help of the public.

In a release Sunday morning, police urged anyone to come forward who may have seen Brittanee talking to anyone on Ocean Boulevard or getting into a car Saturday night.

Brittanee is described as a 4'11" white female with blonde hair.

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Taken From

a11news.com/1766/brittanee-drexel/

Brittanee Drexel

Brittanee Drexel - High school junior Brittanee Drexel, pictured below, disappeared in Myrtle Beach Saturday night while on spring break with a group of older friends from Rochester, New York.




Her friends say that Brittanee Drexel texted them at 9:15 p.m. Saturday night, saying that she was going to visit another friend staying at a different hotel in Myrtle Beach. Brittanee and her friends were staying at the Bar Harbor Hotel at 1010 North Ocean Boulevard in downtown Myrtle.

She last spoke with her mother, Dawn Drexel, at 2:00 p.m. Saturday and also telephoned her boyfriend at 8:00 p.m. that night.

Brittanee was reportedly depressed that her parents were getting a divorce and their home was in foreclosure.

Her boyfriend, a Marine stationed at Camp LeJeune, NC, contacted police on the family’s behalf to report her missing.

Drexel is described as 5-feet tall, weighing approximately 103 pounds. She has brown, shoulder-length, straight hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a multi-colored striped shirt, black shorts, and flip-flop sandals.

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Brittanee Photo Released; Brozowitz "All but Cleared"
Reported by: Sean Carroll
Email: [e-mail]
Last Update: 5/01 8:48 am


(Myrtle Beach, S.C./Rochester, N.Y.) - Pictures of Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach were released to the public Thursday.









The surveillance video shows Brittanee's last known whereabouts, entering the Blue Water Resort around 8 p.m. Saturday and leaving around 8:45 p.m.

Her friends expected to see her shortly after she walked more than 20 blocks north on the resort town’s Ocean Boulevard to the Bar Harbor Hotel where she was staying.

Brozowitz Questioned
Myrtle Beach Police have all but cleared a Peter Brozowitz, of Webster, of any possible involvement in Drexel's disappearance.

He was questioned in Rochester Wednesday in the presence of his attorney, John Parrinello.

Parrinello said his client is also willing to submit a DNA sample should investigators need it to further clear this man of any involvement.

Drexel, 17, of Chili, went missing five days ago in Myrtle Beach while visiting there during Spring Break.


Girl on Bus not Drexel

Myrtle Beach, S.C.) -- Myrtle Beach Police confirmed Thursday morning that the girl spotted exiting a bus who matched the description of a missing teen from Chili was not Brittanee Drexel.

Around 8:35 a.m. Wednesday, maids on a county transit bus in Myrtle Beach reported seeing a girl fitting Drexel’s description getting off a bus on North Ocean Boulevard. This is the same area where she was last seen.

Myrtle Beach Police showed the women a picture of Drexel and they identified her as the girl on the bus. The police then conducted an intensive search of the area. They located the young woman and comfirmed she was not the missing girl.


Captain David Knipes, Myrtle Beach Police, said, "This is a transient crowd down here. It's very easy to blend in and certainly there's other people that will take her in and you don't know what's going to happen to her. So, you got to take it seriously."

13WHAM Reporter Sean Carroll is in Myrtle Beach to bring the latest information in the case.

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Brittanee Drexel's family returns to Grand Strand
Posted: Jun 13, 2009 6:57 PM
Updated: Jun 15, 2009 5:49 PM




MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - The mother and grandparents of missing 17-year-old teen Brittanee Drexel are back in the Grand Strand this weekend pursuing a glimpse of hope of finding her.

Drexel was visiting Myrtle Beach back in April for spring break when she went missing and there have been very few clues to her disappearance since then.

Drexel's family was outside a Wal-Mart in Surfside Beach in the heat Saturday collecting donations and selling bracelets to raise money.

"I have to keep Brittanee's name out there, keep her face out there," Brittanee's mother, Dawn, said. "Somebody needs to talk."

The family says they are running out of time and money, and they are really hoping for anything to give them hope.

©2009 WMBF News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Brittanee Drexel's Boyfriend Refuses to Give Up Hope or Stop Searching
Nearly Two Weeks of Searching Have Yielded Few Clues
By SARAH NETTER
May 7, 2009





The boyfriend of a New York teenager who disappeared during a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., said his belief that she's still alive keeps him motivated to keep searching "until we find her."

John Grieco, 19, said he's taken a hiatus from school and work to help Brittanee Drexel's family search for the Rochester, N.Y., teenager who vanished in the popular South Carolina beach town April 25 while on a spring break trip her mother had forbidden.

"My whole life in Rochester had Brittanee involved with it," Grieco said. "It's kind of hard to be in Rochester without Brittanee."

Brittanee Drexel, 17, was last seen leaving the Bluewater Resort, captured on surveillance video, where she had been visiting a group of Rochester-area men after having a falling out with the friends she'd drove down with.

Her family has expressed suspicion about the five young men, including one man who was friends with Drexel before the trip, but police said none of them are suspects at this time.

"Nobody's been cleared," Myrtle Beach Police Capt. David Knipes told ABCNews.com. "You don't clear anybody until the case is closed."

The five men have all since returned home to Rochester, but Grieco said he believes Drexel is still in the Myrtle Beach area, being held against her will.

"I think there was foul play," he said. I do not believe at all that she is a runaway ... or that she committed suicide."

Grieco described Drexel, whom he's dated on an off for the past 2½ years, as a "really strong-headed person" who would do what she could to escape if she were held captive.

It's that hope, he said, that keeps him motivated.

Brittanee Drexel's mother, Dawn Drexel, also in Myrtle Beach, told a Rochester-area news station that her daughter "may not be alive."

While the first week was spent handing out fliers and going door-to-door, Grieco said the team would likely be more organized this week, getting help from trained searchers who have joined the family, including Team Adam from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Texas-based Laura Recovery Center.

As attention on Drexel's disappearance intensified, some have been trying to take advantage of the public's concern. Grieco said people on more than one occasion had been going door-to-door asking for donations for the search and then pocketing the cash.

Police, he said, have been made of aware of the scammers.

The family is trying to raise money for search costs through its new Web site dedicated to finding Drexel.

Crime Stoppers of the Lowcountry, based in South Carolina, has offered a reward of up to $1,000 for information about Drexel's disapperance.

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Brittanee Drexel's Boyfriend Refuses to Give Up Hope or Stop Searching
Nearly Two Weeks of Searching Have Yielded Few Clues





Police Searches Produce Few Leads
Police spent most of last weekend in Georgetown County, S.C., where Drexel's cell phone sent out a ping around midnight on the night she disappeared, but found no physical evidence that tied her to the area.

They have also been following up on leads from people who reported seeing a woman matching Drexel's description, "but nothing that has come to be valid," Knipes said.

And without any solid evidence, save for the Bluewater surveillance video and another brief sighting of her walking down the street before she got to the hotel that night, police are stumped.

There has been no activity on her cell phone or her ATM account since. Her friends, all interviewed by police, have since returned home.

"It could range the whole gamut from 'I'm a runaway' to 'I've been abducted and killed,'" Knipes said.

But Dawn Drexel is adamant that her daughter did not run away.

"I think something has happened to her," Dawn Drexel told ABCNews.com earlier this month. "I just have a funny feeling. It's not like her to not call her family."

Drexel had been battling depression, her mother said, and had been recently put on medication. She had also been upset about family troubles, including the house that was in foreclosure and her mother's divorce from her stepfather who had raised Drexel since she was a small child.

Drexel had asked to go on the trip during her spring break from school with a group of older teenagers and young adults, but Dawn Drexel said no, sparking a fight between the mother and daughter.

"I just told her, 'No, I don't like the idea,'" Drexel's mother said. "I didn't know the people she was going with."

And, Dawn Drexel said, she didn't like the idea of her teenage daughter driving down to Myrtle Beach without a parent in tow.

Brittanee, she said, stormed off to a friend's house, saying she needed to cool down. She apparently defied her mother and went with her friends anyway.

Dawn Drexel said she didn't even know her daughter was in Myrtle Beach until her boyfriend called to say that her friends couldn't find her.

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Brittanee Drexel's Boyfriend Refuses to Give Up Hope or Stop Searching
Nearly Two Weeks of Searching Have Yielded Few Clues






Did MySpace Friend Kill Disabled Teen?


The Last People to See Brittanee?
One of the last people to see Brittanee was her friend Peter Broswick, one of the Rochester men who Brittanee visited at the Bluewater Resort Saturday night. According to the police report, two of the men told police she stayed only for about 10 minutes and left to return some clothing to another friend.


Knipes told ABCNews.com that the men, including Broswick, checked out of their hotel between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. that night and drove back to Rochester.

Broswick told ABCNews.com that he didn't have anything to do with Drexel's disappearance and that they'd been friends for about two years.


Broswick's lawyer, John Parrinello, told ABCNews.com that Drexel began hanging out with the men after having several disagreements with the friends she was traveling with.

After Drexel left the hotel, Parrinello said, the men went to a nearby college party but left shortly after. Since they had to check out of the hotel the next morning anyway, they decided to just leave then and get a head start on their trip.

"All of these innuendos and inferences are to no avail," Parrinello said.

Parrinello said the car the men had been traveling in haf been searched and Broswick was scheduled to give a DNA sample at the request of the Myrtle Beach police.

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Posted at: 05/11/2009 12:27 PM | WHEC.com

Updated at: 05/12/2009 2:05 AM





Brittanee Drexel makes national headlines on Dr. Phil

It's been 15 days and there is still no sign of Brittanee Drexel. After more than two weeks of searching, police in Myrtle Beach say they will not send out any more search crews to look for the 17-year-old.

Drexel, a junior at Gates-Chili, disappeared on April 25 and hasn't been seen or heard from since. Police say they are still investigating this case, but won't send out any boats, helicopters or search teams unless they get a promising lead.

This story has made national headlines and was the focus of The Dr. Phil Show on Monday.

Last week, a 20-year-old named Peter Brozowitz from Webster and his lawyer John Parrinello came to our studio to tape an interview with Dr. Phil. Brozowitz was one of the last people to be with Brittanee in Myrtle Beach at his hotel before she went missing. Brittanee's adoptive father and mother also appeared on the show.

Now that the search has been called off, Brittanee's mother Dawn Drexel plans to leave Myrtle Beach to come home for her other daughter's birthday. She plans on holding a candlelight vigil for Brittanee.

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McClellanville, SC - The search for 17 year old Brittanee Drexel was called off Saturday night at 7 p.m. Officials have been looking for the missing New York teen since she disappeared from her Myrtle Beach apartment on April 25. So far their search has turned up nothing.




It has been another day of searching and waiting.

“It is horrible because you don’t know where she is or what is going on or if she’s hurt,” Dawn Drexel, Brittanee’s mother said.

Police on horseback, ATV’s and in the air searched the woods outside McClellanville, but there is still no sign of Brittanee.

“My personal opinion is that she’s not in this area,” Brittanee’s boyfriend John Grieco said. “I believe they are searching for clues to where her stuff was last located.”

Grieco and Brittanee have dated for the past three years. He was the last person to speak with her.

“We were mid conversation about what she was going to do that night,” Grieco added. “I knew once I didn’t receive a response from the text message I sent her, I knew something was up.”

Brittanee was last seen walking back to her Myrtle Beach hotel by herself.

“I know she didn’t run away,” Drexel added. “Foul play, I don’t know, but I hope not.”

There are more questions than answers tonight for Drexel’s family, but for now they continue to search for answers.

Investigators say even though the search is over, they will continue to work more than 200 new leads they have received.

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Taken From

www.helpfindbrittanee.com/




Brittanee Drexel, a junior at Gates Chili High School in Rochester, NY, has gone missing on spring break in Myrtle Beach. Brittanee was last seen on April 25, 2009. When she was last seen, she had blonde highlights in her hair. Brittanee left for Myrtle Beach on Wednesday, April, 22nd, and the teen has been missing since Saturday, April, 25 2009. Brittanee and her friends were staying at the Bar Harbor Hotel at 1010 North Ocean Boulevard in downtown Myrtle. She last spoke with her mother, Dawn Drexel, at 2:00 p.m. Saturday and also telephoned her boyfriend at 8:00 p.m. that night. Drexel is described as 5 foot, weighing approximately 103 pounds. Drexel reportedly suffers from depression.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Myrtle Beach Police Department at 1-843-918-1300, or Please contact 1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678) with any information.

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Help us find Brittanee Marie Drexel
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Case Number: NCMC1121354






Please contact the Myrtle Beach Police Department with any information at:

1-843-918-1300


You may also contact National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at:

1-800-THE-LOST® (1-800-843-5678)


You may also E-mail any tips to [e-mail]