¶ Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
Y'all. Tonight, we are joined by Steph Watts, the true
¶ Sheryl introduces guest, Steph Watts to the show
crime O g Honey. Steph launched his career at Court TV, producing live and tape national trial coverage. Steph and I now we first met on Nancy Gracie's show when she was on hl N in about twenty ten. And I'm telling you he was out of the gate, just a bronco every night. And you know when he left there, he went over and was a field producer with Fox News The On the Record with Greta Vancestram. Y'all know, he's worked as an investigative journalist and he's been on
Investigation Discovery, CNN, Fox News, CBS, and Ox Jim. He has done things like a special correspondent for the syndicated crime TV show Crime Watch Daily. He has been an executive producer. He's developed multi hour specials for ABC twenty twenty and Oxygen. Y'all know his work on Scott Peterson, Drew Peterson, Ted Bundy. He even produced Dead Again with executive producer Dick Woolf for A and E. He is all over the place. He's been all over the place. That's why we call him the OG. He is also
a fierce advocate for murdered and missing victims. I have worked with him personally on this case and I cannot tell you how just honored I am he is with us. Steph Watts, welcome to his own seven.
Thank you very much, show. That was a hell of an introduction. I'm going to get you to pick up my funeral. That was a wonderful thanks. Thanks for that introduction. Yeah, you and I go go way back. And actually I just got a nice call from Nancy last week. We just spoke, so it's uh uh, we're getting old, Cheryl, but's getting old.
He Let me tell you something. I much prefer that, don't you?
Old and wise? That's why I'm the og. Thank you
¶ Background of Brittany Drexel's case
for having me on tonight. You know, we're talking about the Britney Drexel case, and it's a case that's near and dear to my heart. You know, I've worked on this case since twenty eleven when I first met Don Drexel. You know, I was, I don't know, can I jump right in on this, Cheryl, or honey, you can jump right in right well? I mean twenty eleven, I was speaking at a missing person's conference actually in South South Carolina. It was for q Missing Person's Uh Foundation.
That's where we first met.
Yeah, right, and John was there and my was I
¶ Specifics on the initial investigation
was sort of talking to the family members about navigating the antiquated justice system and how to get you know, your story to producers and television reporters like myself and you know, managing the media. And Don came up and said, you know, and I'll be honest show. I had heard the story, but I hadn't really followed it that much, just because I'd been on other things. And Don said, you know, can you can you help me with my story? No one's helping me. The police aren't helping me. And
that night we always choke about this. We went to Hooters because it was the only place to eat wings and I just, you know, I just fell in love
with Don. And you've met her. You know, she's just you know, this kind you know, sort of naive mom from from you know, upstate New York that's been thrust into this horrific situation, and she's just you know, we we've plowed through twists and turns and you know, Cheryl, really, when I jumped in, it's never imagining in a million years that I would be sitting here today when the place that we're at that you know, Raymond Moody came forward and you know, we got the news that there
was a confession and you know, he was taking us to the body and there was going to wave his right to a trial. And you're just like, oh my god, I cannot believe this is happening, and you want to be joyous, but it was so overwhelmed. Anyways, I jumped ahead, but yeah, here we are. It's and there's still so much more going on in this case. I think everybody thought it ended right twenty twenty two when Raymond Moody you know, confessed and took them to the body and
waved his right to a trial and was sentenced. But the interesting part in all that, Cheryl was there. There was a little something that happened that all of us were like, wait, and that was he asked for immunity in a sense we'll use the term community. It was he asked for immunity for his girl, then girlfriend, Angel Ross, right, And we always said the story was that you know, Raymond, you know, picked her up and took her out there, kidnapped her, and it was never an Angel was never
really involved. Well we've learned now, Cheryl, that that is not the case.
And you know, step I want to go back just a little bit. For people that aren't familiar with the Brittany Drexel case, let me tell y'all something. Brittany did what thousands of students do. She went on spring break. She was gonna head down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with her friends from New York. They were having a ball. They went all that eight hundred miles just playing music, having the time of their life. But there was a twist, and the twist was her mama didn't know where she
was us. She lied and said she was going to be staying with a friend. She called home and checked in a couple of times, you know how you do. Her mom just thought she was down the road with her buddies until she got a call. So April twenty fifth, two thousand and nine, is the last time she's seen alive on Myrtle Beach. So when all this went down, it was fast. Brittany and her girlfriends were staying at
one hotel. There were a group of boys from the high school that were another hotel, So they walked back and forth again. Kids do it all the time every spring break. But Britney was hanging out with some of the guys. She decided, I'm going to go back to my hotel and she walked alone. Even though somebody said, hey, I'll walk with you one of the guys, she said, no, I'll be fine, it's just right there. Good Lord Nobidal.
She never made it back to her hotel. The guys never saw her again, her girlfriend never saw her again, her mom never heard from her again. As she's walking from the boys hotel back to her hotel, she calls her boyfriend. That's the last person that ever heard from her. So Steph take us from when down got the call that Brittany was missing and then the realization that she's missing in South Carolina.
You know, Don and family and friends immediately pack up and head down, you know, to Myrtle Beach area, and you know, you can imagine what it must have been like for them. Where do we start looking? You know, they questioned Britney's friends, and Dawn was smart, you know,
Daun did everything great. She went immediately, Cheryl to the media, and you know, the local media knew that this was going to be a big story, there was a girl that was missing, and again, but instantly Cheryl Don was fighting, you know, the battles of oh she's a runaway, you know. And the problem with Myrtle Beach is they do get a lot of missing persons reports, and I've had conversations with the police officers and FBI down there, and they
turn up within twenty four hours. Sometimes they take off with a group of people, or you know, they just go off and they come back. So you know, there is you know, it must it's frustrating for pre parentes. But Don was adamant that that that was not the case with Brittany, and to exasperate her point, she had to be somewhere. Brittany was to meet her friends to return some clothing, you know what I mean, cherylle. So it wasn't like, hey, Brittany went to the beach and
whenever saw again. She was at one hotel going back to another hotel. She needed to be back there to return clothes, and Brittany was a responsible young girls. So the fact that she had a place to be within a time period was something that Dawn knew that something terrible was happening. I think in retrospect, Cheryl. Now we look back at the footage and we see the family searching and the police you know, searching and horseback and you know, you and I were involved in We see
every agency available was searching. To know that all that time that Brittany was already dead, it's just heartbreaking when you put it back into perspective. And you know, for years, Cheryl, this went on. You know, we knew nothing about what happened to Brittany Drexel nothing, you know. Then you know,
¶ Breakthrough in the case
there were stories of you know, she was seen taking a bus and that turned out to be a false lead. And then Cheryl a huge break in the case in twenty sixteen when the FBI hold a press conference and name a young man, Deshaun Taylor, as a suspects last person of interest. That's when I sat down with the FBI for the first time, and I sat down with Deshan Taylor for my show Crime Watch Daily, and I just felt like the story wasn't right. You know, first
of all, the kid had had one arm. I mean, he had lost an arm in an accident, Okay, but it was you know, all of this information was coming off of a jailhouse snitch who claimed that Brittany was taken to mcclellanville and you know, gang raped in a crackhouse or whatever you want to call it. Cheryl, that wasn't the exact and then you know, rolled up in
a carpet, shot and fed to the alligators. Can you imagine that this is the story that John Jackson not only has to process and began to think that these are the last moments of her daughter's life, she also has to get out in front of the media. And they really positioned her to kind of put her out there and like almost like they were fishing for more questions. And that's when Cheryl I knew that there was a problem with the story.
Well I knew it, and I called on and I said, Don, there's zero evidence that your child was gang rape. There's zero evidence she was fed to an alligator. There's zero evidence that she was holed up in a stash house. They provided zero evidence. But here they are publicly saying all these things. And I said, don are they trying to pull somebody out? Are they trying to make somebody where they're just crazy and they are going to contact the FBI? Is that what they think is happening. You know,
is this a ploy? Because there's no way they should believe this is true. I mean, these are fact based people. So the only thing that I told Don at the time that I could fathom is going on is somebody from the BAU has told them do this, say this and it'll draw somebody out.
Well that's one theory. That's and it's plausible. But I truly believe, and I've said this several times and I've said it to the FBI, it's good old fashioned systemic racism pinted on the black guys. These guys had. This family was not clean, okay, Cheryl. You know they had a history of objections in the family of another girl. One of the uncles, you know, Dashaun, had a record armed robbery of a restaurant. So to me, it's like, we're in a high profile case. Let's it's sloppy police work.
Let's pin it on these guys. And you know what, that's that my theory is a good theory because we now know that they're suing the FBI for I think ten million dollars because of this this situation. Now, let me be clear that they're not suing I call them my FBI guys, my team, my new team of guys that I've been working closely with.
Conley and Kevanaugh and Anderson absolutely know what they're doing. And I'm saying, you know, day one, when I was listening live to the you know, press conference, that's what I thought that it's got to be. I could not even make myself go to what you're saying. They just said, Hey, let's blame it on the black guy and move on and everybody will just accept it.
Well, and you know, I've had you know, I've worked closely with Mike, and I'll get to that. That's why that I have that close relationship. You heard me on the phone with them prior to this recording. I was getting an update from Mike. We really created a circle of trust over the years. But you know, Mike and a new team, they were handed a mess. I mean, you know, and I've said this to Donn and Everybody's where this Britney Drexel's case was a perfect example of
a failure of multi jurisdictional investigations. Okay, we had all these different departments. We had the SLED, we had the Georgetown Police Department, we had the Myrtle Beach Police Department, we had the FBI. There was five jurisdictions, right, so Mike and the team and they, you know, everybody wants to get across the finish line, but they weren't cooperating. And it's interesting, Cheryl, because when I did my Ted Bundy special I had investigators and the Ted Bundy on
and Ted Bundy case was in a perfect example. And the police admitted that this was a epic failure of multi jurisdictional investigation. And we want everybody to use this as an example of what to not do and hope this never happens again. And Cheryl, here we are again in two thousand and nine to twenty twenty twenty two. I'll use that date because that's when things change with
the same problem. Every one of those those jurisdictions had little pieces of evidence, and everyone always says to me, Steph, what was the new evidence that brought this cheryld. There was no new evidence. There was new information and there was no new evidence, and people get confused on that. What I mean by that is they had all the pieces of the puzzle. Those guys took the new team took all those and started to look ats up. The
new information was the truck that Raymond Moody was driving. Okay, so now they could go back and look at those tapes of Brittany walking down this and detail them and see Okay, then they saw Raymond's truck. Now they put Raymond Moody and Angel Voss at the same location as Brittany Drexel and then they matched it up with the side.
So they did incredible, incredible police work. But Cheryl the elephant in the room on this and the biggest problem with this story is they had Raymond Moody on the radar. The day after Britney Drexel disappeared, Raymond Moody was pulled over. Okay, this is what this is the most frustrating part of the store. He was pulled over on his motorcycle for speeding. Okay.
He was wearing one of those smaller motorcycle caps, the old style, Like it's more like a cat, like it sits on top of your head, right, like it just
¶ Raymond Moody pulled over - police miststeps
covers your brain. It doesn't. And he's covered in scratches. Okay, So I'm gonna play Devil's advocate on this. The guy pulls him over. Raymond Moody is a registered sex offender. There's a missing girl in the neighborhood. He's covered in scratches,
he's pulled over for speeding, and nobody connects the dots. Nowadays, Cheryl, you know that that information is all inside those officers' cars at that time, they would have to phone that back in to the station, right be Like I pulled over this particular individual, the person that received the call wouldn't have physically seen the scratches on his face. So again, it was sort of a failure of the system. But nobody's Cheryl, and we're all in the same line of work.
I'm an investigative journalist, you're an investigator. Those are braces we need to be more tuned in, Like, Cheryl, that guy's got scratches on his face. Hey, he's a registered sex offender, Sir, where were you last night? Like they didn't connect the dots. And I've got Moody on tape, Cheryl, And one of the most shocking statements that says, he says, I wish those black kids had gone down for this crime. He was watching all of this happen all these years and never say a word.
When I teach at the Academy. One thing I tell young investigators when they have a murder or a missing person, pull traffic tickets. Chances are that name may be in there. Because you want to talk historical. You covered Ted Bundy, he got a traffic ticket. So did Dennis Raider BTK, so did David Burker with son of Sam. It's common because when they're in that zone, they're concentrating on their hunting, they're looking for a victim, they're concentrating on what they did,
what they're gonna do. They're concentrating on anything but driving. So it's not uncommon that they're going to speed or go through a stop sign or on a traffic light. You pull those tickets. Absolutely, you're one hundred percent right, step.
Brian, don't forget.
I was just gonna say, got.
Stopped, you know.
And it tells you the time of day they hunt, and it tells you the area that's where they are.
Right and exactly. And it's interesting that you use the word hunt because if we can jump ahead to this recent FBI document that was released, it's Mike's statement that they're using at angels sentencing. Raymond Moody says in there and I quote you that that night they were hunting a girl. They were hunting h for a victim, and unfortunately that victim was vic Brittany Jrexel. I think you heard me say to Mike on the phone, you know, and I hate to use this term, Cheryl, but you've
heard it over and over again. Britney Drexel was the perfect victim. She was alone, she was beautiful, she was petite, she was vulnerable, you know. And I think what's really important, and I hope I'm not jumping too far ahead, is there was a lot of mystery about how Raymond Moody got her into the car. And when I went out to the Polliard with the FBI, with investigators in the family cho the place was horrific. I was like, how did they get her down this path, over this fence
into this bush? And it was bugs bugs. We were like we dawn. In fact, we couldn't even stand to be there. Well, he had a tent set up, he had a whole camp, he had it all pre arranged, and you know, Angel Voss was the one who had gotten out of the car approached Britney Drexel and said, oh, hi, you know, do you how you doing. Do you know we're tourists too, do She single handedly lured Britney Drexel into that car under the guys that they were tourists and that they were going to drive her back to
the hotel. Now what's always bothered a show, and we talked about this before, is how did they restrain her? How did Britney stay calm? What she dead in the car? The answer to those questions is now we now know they told so what happened is Ray was in the front, Angel was driving. They pretended to get I'm sorry. Ray was driving. Angel got in the passenger seat. Brittany got in the backseat. Ray pretended to get lost, pulled over Angel, They switched drivers. Raymond tried to get into the back
of the car okay, but the car was locked. He then got into the drivers to the front seat. Passenger jumped into the backseat, restrained Britney Drexel and said, I need you to calm down. We're just going to kidnap you. We're going to call they forgot whoever it was. We're going to get five thousand dollars for you. We've done this before. So the entire time Britney is very calm because she's like, Okay, they're just going to take me to this place, they're going to get the money, and
they're gonna let me go. They've done this before. So it's as crazy as that sounds, we can at least understand now, Cheryl, why she was calm, cool and collective during that time. Isn't that a crazy story?
That is so frightening on every level? And you know, you think you know, Brittany was a soccer star, she was a popular kid. She was smart, she was beautiful, she was fatigue. I guarantee you on some level, she's thinking, if I just go along, it's gonna be fine. They're telling me it's gonna be fine. They're not hurting me right right.
And Cheryl, if I can read a little bit of this document, this is an FBI document that will be presented. Actually these are Raymond Moody's words. Angel Voss exited the explorer to talk to Brittany to kind of soften her up a little bit, maybe trust us. Voss succeeded and led Brittany back to the car. They used a ruse that they were tourists from out of town and learned
¶ Document from Raymond Moody - detailed confession
that Brittany was also a tourist. Brittany told him the name of a hotel and they offered to drop her off. However, as they drove north on the boulevard her hotel towards her hotel, talking casually, Moody turned off the boulevard, acting like he was lost. Brittany did not say anything. At that point, Moody drove across King's Highway and then stopped, claiming he was lost and needed to change drivers. This was part of the abduction plan, and Moody quickly initiated
the next step. When they walked around the car to get outside, Moody into the back seat to restrain Brittany. The back door was locked from the outside. Moody insisted entering the passenger side front door, and before Voss put the vehicle into reverse, Moody dove through the seat and immediately physically restrained Brittany with his arms and hands. He told her not to panic because he kidnapped girls, demanded a five thousand dollars ransom from the city Chamber of Comments,
then returned the girls safely. Moody told Brittany that the city usually bade the ransom without question because they didn't want negative media attention. Moody recalls handcuffing Brittany at that point either in the car at the Polyard landing and stayed with her in the backseat. Brittany did not say much during her trans transport. I mean, this document, Cheryl, is shocking. It's the details in here are horrific. And one thing I wanted to point out, this is an
FBI document of Moody's detailed confession to Mike Conley. This is the first of fifteen interviews. Okay, Cheryl, So there's still a lot of holes in this. But what Mike's spanning on doing is on February thirteenth, at two thirty pm, at Angel Voss's sentencing, and the reason that this document came out, in these details came out, we were sort of trying to keep them quiet. And that's why I texted us, said, Cheryl, look, let's get ahead of this.
It's coming out. Let's let's talk about this. Is they can't change the charges, Okay. Angel Voss is only charged with lying to fat It's line the federal investigators. Okay,
¶ The participation of Angel Vause
But what this document can be can show the judge and Mike can prove as her lives were very, very extraordinary. Right, she was the one who convinced Brittany to get in the car.
Didn't he leave? And she had the ability to let her go and did not.
Yeah, Raymond has a mister Moody has a ritual before he performs his hideous sexual acts, and one of them is that he needs to take a shower. So he returned to his hotel, which was seven miles away, to get as graphic as his drugs and sex toys, shower and return. So there's Angel Voss, okay, picture of this Cheryl sitting in a campsite, and then like I've been out there. I mean it's I mean I wouldn't stay there in a tent with Brittany Drexel, Okay, And I said to Mike, what I want to know is what
they do talked about during that time. She had all that time to let her go, to release her, and she didn't. This act, this hideous act committed against Brittany Drexel, was Angel Voss's fantasy. Let me elaborate a little bit on that. Angel Voss knew that Raymond Moody had a fantasy of abducting and raping young girls. Angel, in her desperate attempt to maintain her presence with Moody, texted him one day and said, I also want to abduct and rape a young girl. I want to do it with you,
And Raymond said, that's all you need to say. So it's you know, how does one monster meet another monster, Cheryl. I'll never understand that. But you know, this is the beginning of what happened. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, this document that and you'll hear Mike testify at the sentencing is the first
of fifteen recordings with Raymond Moody. But there's a much more interesting story that I have told you that I'd like to talk to you, but I'm sure you've got some questions.
I do have some questions, but first I've got a statement. The thing that is the most disturbing to me is that in nineteen eighty three, Steph they had him. They had him in prison. He was sentenced to forty freaking years after being convicted of violent sex crimes, kidnapping and sexual assault of young girls. So this wasn't just a fantasy he had. He had already flip and done.
It right, Cherylyn he served. He only served twenty years of that forty year sentence and was released on probation and returned back to South Carolina. And now remember that was in He was released in two thousand four. Okay, he was admitted in nineteen ninety. So let's TikTok okay. Shell towards the abduction of murder Britney Drexel. Now we're what, we're five six and five years away, two thousand and seven, raised pro, raised pro, that gets his paros over. That's
when everything's changed. That's when he met Angel Voss. Now we're only two years before the rape and abduction of Britney Druxel. One thing I want to ask you, and it's a hypothetical question, and you know I know the answer to this question, but I want your viewers to think about this because we know he committed crimes prior to Britney Drexel. You can't tell me that Raymond Moody did not commit any crimes after Britney Druxel after two thousand and one.
Look, his parole ends in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, he's charged with indecent exposure. YEP, I mean there's no way this guy is not going to reoffend at the age that he was, at the level that he was. There's no telling how many victims are in his past, but I can guarantee after Brittany, it only heightened what he wanted to do over and over and over.
Well, I can tell you this, Cheryl, and I mean, this is going to come out, so you might as well hear it here. First, Mike and the FBI team are looking at other crimes in one particular police department where Raymond Moody has admitted to other crimes. I don't want to say murdered because we don't know it or believe it to be murdered, but he has committed other crimes.
He's confessed to them, and the FBI is currently looking at a singular particular police department, any singular particular jurisdiction where all these alleged crimes happen. So yeah, we do have that. Now. I want to tell you how all this came to be. So I think that this is an addressing store. I don't know if you know the story because we haven't had she had to catch up with each other. I think the audience is getting a real like earful tonight. But you know, in while he
was in prison, Raymond Moody met a guy named Ernie Merchant. Okay, Ernie Merchant and Raymond Moody began a relationship. They were jail house husbands or whatever you want to call it. Raymond Moody took very good care of Ernie Merchant. Ernie was in for drug charges at the time. Ernie was an addict in and got caught dealing, and it was Ernie was I think he was released in two thousand.
He had turned his life around and returned to South Carolina, built to life and became a very very successful hairdresser, which he is to this day. While you know, back then show and this is where people struggled with the story. You didn't talk about what you were in for, and prisoners didn't have, you know, cell phones and tablets and internet and all that stuff like they do now. So Earnie knew what ray was in for. But when Ernie left,
¶ The relationship between Ernie Merchant and Raymond Moody
Raymond told him about the crimes he committed. Obviously, Ernie was Petrick was horrified, but Ernie had turned his life around. This is what I want people to understand completely. So Ernie said to Raymond, when you get out, you know, come to me and we'll figure this out. Ernie had a sense of Raymond took care of me and protected me when I was in prison. I turned my life around.
He's telling me he's changed. Why can't I extend that same courtesy to another individual, because I think people really struggled with the story. Raymond got out, Ernie and ray lived together in South Carolina. Ernie was a successful hairdresser.
Ray was a cabinet maker, and then things changed, well, you know the incident that you talked about, and then in two thousand and seven, when ray was paroled, that's when Raymond met Angel Voss and there was sort of this Jerry Springer love triangle came out and Ernie warned Raymond. He's like, I'm leaving you, but that woman is going to be the death of you. And Ernie was certainly right. Let's jump ahead to last year. Cheryl I was conducting an interview with Erne Emergent in his home for a
Crime Nation, which is out now. I was one of the only people to get with Ernie other than the twenty twenty interview, which I facilitated. When the interview ended, Ernie's phone rings and he on the other end of the phone. Here's trick or treat. It was Halloween, Cheryl, Halloween, it was Raymond Moody. Ernie was visibly shaken. They didn't have a lot of time to talk. And that's when I sat Ernie down and I said, Ernie, listen, you need to establish a re establish a relationship with him.
I'm going to show you how to set up a camera. I'm going to show you how to record him, and you need to get out of him what he did to Angel Voss. Ernie was incredibly lucked in at first, but I got him going and Cheryl, he took off like a dream. Ernie's excellent at what he does. Things started to go get really interesting, that's Cheryl. That's when I called Mike Connolly and said, Mike, you need to be listening to these calls. I said. He said, Steph,
what's going on? I said, Ernie is going to get a confession from ray as to what Angel did to Angel's involvement in the Britney Druxel case, and he's also going to tell you about other crimes. So now myself an Ernie Merchant and the FBI are all working together to get these statements. So what you're seeing, Cheryl, is a tiny portion this sentencing statement which came out. And I was a little bit panicked because obviously I'm working on a documentary on this, and I'm like, the information
is getting out. But this is one little piece of the puzzle. This is a tiny, like ten percent of the ninety percent of these conversations. So Raymond Ernie convinced Raymond to talk to Mike. So Ernie facilitated that. Now Ernie's burnt out and he's got PTSD and after Angel sentencing, with Mike's wish, I'm going to begin talking to Raymond Moody myself to continue the conversations and to continue to talk to him about additional crimes. So there's your breaking news.
I am gobsmacked. I mean I am. That is incredible work on your part. And the fact that you can bring in Conley, who you also trust, Ernie, who trust you Ray who trusts Ernie. That, Sir, is how you get this dagone thing done. And to have that confession not just Angel's involvement, which everybody believed, but now you have been able to prove thanks to Ernie, but the
¶ The confession and FBI involvement
other crimes, which again none of us would have ever believed he was, you know, in a can until Britney Drexel. Not possible. But this is tremendous and I applaud what you have done.
Thank you. I mean, you know, it's it's it was a very fine line that we needed to walk, I would, like I said, I informed Mike. Ernie and Mike have had conversations that I'm not privy to. Mike's very forthcoming with me, but we've never and I need to make this very very clear, we have never broken protocol. You know, Mike has never told Ernie what to say or what to do. I have absolutely. I'm a journalist and I was guiding him on what to say, what questions to ask.
But you know, we had a very unprecedented circle of trust. I met Mike, like I said back, and it's interesting. We we're laughing tonight our phone call. If you look back on my Crime Watch Daily interview back into I think it was twenty fifteen or sixteen, I sat with Mike and he says to me in the interview, and we always joke about it because he was Steph. I almost canceled that interview with you. He said, we have information on people who know what happened to Britney Drexel.
Of course, everybody thought they were talking about you know, the you know the tailors. Well it wasn't the tailors. It was Raymond Moody and Angel Oss.
You know it's crazy, Steph. I always tell young detectives you better find a media expert that you can trust, because you never know when you're going to need them to put your story out or give information that they can put out there to draw people to come to you, whether it's witnesses or other victims. One of the questions I literally have on my list to ask you was how did the FBI get detailed information at array to get him to essentially turn on angel And it was you.
Well, listen, you know what, listen. I was a piece of the puzzle, okay, I you know, I was the one that convinced Ernie to talk. I was the one when once Ernie was going and I you know, look, I have I have all the tapes, so I'm not gonna lie. The FBI knows, you know, Ernie. I set him up with an iPad and we recorded all the
calls and we I have them all. And as things got to the point where I thought that there was information that the FBI did, I did what, you know, I think what I would hope any good journalists would do who had an established relationship with law enforcement, which is, you know, Mike, you go get these tapes. Listen. I would start on this date. And that's exactly what happened, you know, I mean, you know, I had what else
was I to do? Cheryl? I mean, what am I going to air the tapes and make a sensationalistic story? And I have my friends at the FBI like, dude, what the f you know, why didn't you tell us I'm not doing that. I've been in this business for twenty twenty five years.
But you're ethical, you're smart, and you did this for Dawn. You did this for Britney. You know this is the right thing. And Honey, let me just say, you're more than a piece of the puzzle. You were the whole border, you were the middle, you were the final piece. Because again, without you, Ernie wouldn't have done this. He wouldn't have had an iPad, he wouldn't have known how to set up a camera, he wouldn't know how to weave this confession
and what to ask and what not to say. This was a beautifully orchestrated, expert way to get this information, and again by you handing it off to the person that you knew, you could trust the FBI to do the right thing with it.
Here we are, and Cheryl, let me tell you something. You're the first person that I've told the story to.
¶ Steph discusses the horrific details about Britanee's murder
So when I texted you and said I got something for you, I felt comfortable talking to you. You know, we're going to obviously do things with this. I think that this is a good platform because I think your viewers really understand it. Now, I want to tell you a couple other things. The information and the details of
what they did to Britney drugs are horrific. Unfortunately, they came out and I talked to Mike, and Mike was aware that I knew, and I was struggling Cheryl because I always told Don I'll always be honest with you, I'll never lie to you. But I didn't tell her about this, Cheryl. I couldn't. It was just too graphic, and it wasn't It wasn't my place. You can tell I get upset about this. It wasn't my place to
tell her, and Mike said, step, I'll tell her. And we needed to tell her before it came out because it was going to come out as sentencing. So that was my only you know, thing that I struggled with was I didn't tell Dawn. You know, the details, the horrific details, and as you know, you know Britney Draft Brexel was raped, strangled, stabbed in the heart with an ice pick, and drowned in the river, you know, and those are the general that's the general overview of what
those two monsters did to her. Angel says, she didn't participate. You mean to tell you mean to I'm supposed to believe that she stood there and watched. I have a hard time grasping that. Now, Cheryl, where this is going to get complicated and people need to understand they can't change the charges, okay right now, but don Drexel has a nub fight in her. She needs to go to Jimmy Richardson and say I want Angel additionally charged for the abduction, the kidnapping, rape and murder of my daughter.
Now whether or not that's gonna Cheryl, I don't know.
¶ Breaking down the charges
That's a stay tuned dot dot dot. We don't know what are your thoughts, you know, because they're going to try to give her twenty four years. Jimmy may say that's enough. I'm not going to do it, but John's going to raise bloody ol and she needs to fight for additional charges to be brought against Angel, so there could potentially be another trial.
Well, I'm going to tell you my thoughts. She's in a van that she chose to get out of to walk up to Brittany. At that point, she could have told her run. She didn't. She convinced that child to get into the van because she thought she could trust her. Then she changed places. She drove. She drove while Brittany was attacked. She could have taken that day into the police department. She could have run it into a tree. She could have pulled over and got out and started
screaming for help herself. She didn't. She drove that child to that undisclosed location with a and I can tell you right now, hadn't seen the photographs, don't know the inside of that tent, and I can tell you right now what it looked like, just like the inside of that van. It was gross. It was disgusting. It had drugs and probably beer and liquor and god knows what
sexual toys and leftover was all over the place. And I'm going to tell you when he left and drove fifteen miles back to his hotel, took a shower, and drove fifteen miles back. You're talking about forty five minutes conservatively. For forty five minutes, she watched that child, she talked to that child, and she held her captive by herself. She should spend the rest of her days in prison
for just that. When you add what she stood by and what happened, there's not a punishment that's good enough for her.
And now another twist to the story is in an undercover sting operation, and people are going to be a little bit upset about this. They got Angel. We have the recordings admitting to in a sting operation to someone from the Murtle Beach Police Department. That's exact story, minus some of the graphic details. Now everyone's going to say, why didn't they go in and arrest her, because at that time they were still looking at the tailors, and the original FBI team just didn't think that the story
was credible. It wasn't until Raymond Moody detailed the story to Ernie Merchant. And to remember, he's told the story twice. He's told it to Ernie on the tapes. Okay, then Ernie set him up with Mike and he's told the story to Mike. So now we got the story twice and it aligns with what Angel said back in twenty fourteen. Now what the judge is going to do is say to Mike, well, how do we know Raymond Moody's not lying?
And Cheryl, the answer to that is, Mike said, Steph, it lines up with the science, the science being cell phone triangulation, you know, locations of cars, time frames. Mike's got the science, Cheryl, to back up his testimony on July I'm sorry, on February thirteenth, at two thirty pm of this year. So you know they're still again, Cheryl,
this story isn't over. You know, poor Dawn, she's got to go through, you know, more more details and what happened to her daughter, and she's got to continue to fight because she told me, she said, Steph, I will pick it outside Jimmy Richardson's office too, and she will, right, So it's interesting because no one knows, even Mike, you know, Mike Collin, I said, Mike, you know she needs to
Mike's like Steff because they can't change the charges. People need to understand that the charges are lying to federal investigators. Now they released this portion of the recordings. So Mike, take the stand and show the judge the severity of that. With the maximum sentence being twenty four years, I believe and we can revisit this Cheryl after sentencing that he's going to give her the maximum sentence and that's and then Jimmy's going to say, well, Chary got the maximum sentence.
But I think with the media pressure, I think Jimmy's gonna have to be because Don's going to force his hand. He's going to have to bring additional charges against her. So stay tuned, Cheryl. I don't know how this is going to play out.
We will stay tuned. But she deserves to face every single charge for every single crome she allegedly participated in period. And I'll tell you something else. Every single place that Raymond Moody lived, they need to search in a thirty mile radius he drove while he hunted. So that gives you extra areas that you need to check. But listen, before we hang up, I got to say something. This is not video, but I did get a chance to see you in person today and I got to tell
you something. You look good, honey, you look fabulous, And I just want to say to you. Cancer did not stand a chance with you, baby. Yeah, right, yeah, you have just done amazing and through all of it, even when you were so sick, you were still looking out for other people. And I just found that extraordinary.
Thank you that means the world to me. I didn't have time for cancer. I was in the middle of all this. That's three and you know, I never told anybody it was in the middle of this, and I was shooting I'm Nation season one, in season two and doing twenty twenty, you know, and I'm just like, you know what, I've fought worse battles, and you know, not to go down the rabbit hole of this, but there's people that have way worse cancer than I do, you know.
You know, I'm happy to tell you I've had stage four po I said, cancer that moved to my bones. I did radiation. I'm currently on hormone and steroid daily treatments. Of tablets. So I'm a miserable bitch movie. I get Holt flashes everyone. It's like going through menopositive Hell does
that mean? But the one thing, that one statement I wanted to share with you that I thought was really interesting share before we go is Raymond Moody and these tapes and we're gonna, you know, we're It's no surprise that I'm currently working on a documentary. We're still trying to find a home with these tapes through Ernie's lens and Ernie's fight for justice. But one thing Raymond Moody
said was I wished I had a killed Angel. I'm just like this fuckings because she she it was her big mouth that you know.
That's right, you know her, you know, so we call that justice. Yeah, that's what you deserve, Raymond is for Angel to run her.
My health, Raymond confessed to you know, Ernie used his relationship with ray his Raymond's love for Ernie. I mean, it's it's a really interesting story to trust him. And Raymond Moody is dying by the way, he's got a uh you know, he's in a wheelchair. He's currently wearing diapers. I mean, if there's any justice. The guy is not in good health, and Ernie convinced him to tell this story and tell the truth and do this for Don Drexel. Uh, he owed it to her. I think he spared a
lot of graphic details. I think there's stuff we still don't know. I think he even said on the tapes, why to Don need to know all of this stuff? It's doesn't matter, but Don Stun wants to know, you know, I mean she wants to know everything is the good, the bad, and the ugly. So anyway, Cheryl, again, the story's not over. Sentencing is coming up, and let's pick this up when we find out what happens with Angel Voss.
Oh honey, you're coming back and listen, we're gonna have Don as well. I've talked to her. She's gonna join us, but we are gonna reconvene when we've got some things we can bring back up. And yeah, I'm glad.
You wait, I know she's traumatized, and she is. And I said, don just don't do anything till after sentencing. Like she's you know, sheil she's just not understandably, she's not in a good headspace.
Understandably, I talk to her every day.
I'm glad you reached out to her.
Yeah, and that's what I told her. We'll just wait because I adore her too.
Let's get through sentencing, and I think she'll have a you know, give you her perspective of being in court.
¶ Closing thoughts
And I've already reviewed her victim impacts, David, which is so powerful. Unfortunately, so that you're viewing audience or your listening audiences where this is federal court. So unlike Raymond Moody's case, where we did have cameras in the courtroom, there is no cameras in the courtroom. There will be no audio of that, so you will be relying on play by play from people like myself and things like you know that who and Dawn Who and others who
were in the in the courtroom. So that's why I said, let's wait, because you know you won't be getting you know, the live feed out as the sentencing.
No understood, And that's another reason I wanted her to know you and I were going to be together, we were going to be talking, and you know, she of course was thrilled with that and that we would be with her whenever she was good and ready I'm going to.
Call her right as soon as we're hanging out from here and check out.
All right, Well, just tell her I love her and I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on Zone seven, but more importantly being a part of my Zone seven step.
Thank you, I feel, Cheryl. I can't believe we haven't done this before. What the hell's wrong with us?
Well, we're gonna be doing it more often, so y'all
¶ "I was a monster." - Raymond Moody
just get ready. But y'all, I'm gonna end Zone seven the way that I always do with a quote I was a monster Raymond Moody. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven.