Brittanee Drexel’s ‘killer’ Raymond Moody has countless more victims and deserves the death penalty, victim says
THE accused killer of Brittanee Drexel likely has countless other victims and should be sentenced to death if he's convicted of her murder, a woman raped by the suspect as a child has claimed.
Raymond Moody, 62, was charged earlier this month with the murder of Brittanee, 17, who vanished without a trace while on spring break in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 2009.
Investigators recovered the missing teenager's remains in a wooded area in Harmony Township on May 11 close to where Moody had been living at the time of her disappearance.
Moody allegedly confessed to the crime, telling police he had kidnapped, raped, and strangled the girl to death on April 25, 2009 - the same day she was last seen alive. The convicted pedophile also reportedly led police to the burial site.
As Moody remains in custody on charges of murder, kidnapping, and first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a woman who was brutally raped by the suspect as a child has called for the "monster" to be executed should he be convicted in the killing as anticipated.
Kerri Harding, who was just eight years old when she was abducted and assaulted by Moody, told The US Sun: "I want him not to breathe anymore. He needs to be put to death; he needs to die.
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"The only thing that would make the world a safer place right now would be for him to not be in it," the 48-year-old added.
"We need to put this monster where he belongs ... in a grave."
'CERTAIN THERE ARE MORE VICTIMS'
Kerri was kidnapped by Moody from a playground in Vallejo, California in the winter of 1983.
Across a period of several hours, she was repeatedly assaulted and abused by Moody inside his car, leaving her bruised, bloodied, and certain she would never live to see her family again.
However, Kerri lived to tell the horrifying tale; she escaped her captor's clutches after telling him she needed to go the bathroom, before running off in the direction of a family she could see in the distance, screaming and crying "I've been kidnapped."
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Moody would be arrested just over three months later. As it would turn out, Kerri was among seven girls under the age of 14 that had been kidnapped and raped by Moody.
He was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 1983 but released after just 21 in 2004, five years before he allegedly abducted and killed Brittannee Drexel.
Kerri told The US Sun that Moody should've never been released early and afforded the opportunity to "hurt another child."
"He's the kind of guy that's not going to stop hurting people [because] he's a serial rapist," Kerri said.
"That's what hurts me so deeply about this because Brittanee would still be here if he was kept behind bars.
"I'm certain there are more victims, that much I can guarantee," Kerri further alleged.
"That's a big reason why I decided to speak out because maybe someone watching, hearing, or reading my story will feel brave enough to come forward as well because this time we have to put him away forever.
"He has to be put away forever; he’s a monster and monsters belong in cages."
CAUSE OF DEATH A MYSTERY
Despite Moody's alleged confession, investigators were unable to confirm Brittanee Drexel's cause of death after an autopsy on her remains came back as "inconclusive" on Tuesday.
Prosecutors previously stated that Brittanee died by manual strangulation. However, because her remains were so severely decomposed, investigators lacked sufficient evidence to confirm the claim.
In a statement, Georgetown County Coroner Chase Ridgeway said: "It was during this examination that the remains were confirmed to be that of Brittanee Drexel, which was collaborated by a DNA analysis performed by SLED.
"Due to the condition of the remains, manual strangulation could not be confirmed."
Brittanee was just 17-years-old when she vanished in Mrytle Beach, South Carolina, during an impromptu and ill-fated spring break trip in April 2009.
The teen, originally from Rochester, New York, was last seen alive leaving her hotel on Ocean Boulevard to meet up with her friends at a nearby resort.
Police were unable to uncover any concrete leads in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance and Brittanee's trail soon went cold.
An update finally came in the case in 2012 when Ramond Moody was named as a person of interest, though his arrest wouldn't come for another decade.
Kerri said it was only when Moody was linked to Brittanee's disappearance that she realized he'd been released from prison early, having served only half of his sentence.
The discovery was incredibly traumatic, she said, sending her emotions spiraling at the realization her attacker had been roaming free without her knowledge for the last eight years.
But Kerri was also determined to get Moody placed back behind bars once again.
Immediately believing he was responsible for Brittannee's death, she contacted investigators in South Carolina and urged them to check her records and see what Moody had done to her and compare that with any evidence they had in the case.
"It just had his name all over it," Kerri said of the circumstances in which Brittanee vanished.
"[Investigators] did check my records and the police told me it was uncanny how closely the stories and circumstances matched."
A HORRIFYING ORDEAL
On the morning of her attack, Kerri had arranged to meet one of her friends at their school, just a few yards down the road, to play together on the playground.
As she started walking across the parking lot of the school, a man - who she would later identify to be Raymond Moody - approached her and warned "you can't go back there because they're working on the fence".
Having been instructed to never speak to a stranger, Kerri dutifully ignored the man and continued to walk past him as he bounced a basketball next to his car.
The man's warning about the fence turned out to be true, so she turned around and went to walk back towards the street when he suddenly unlocked the passenger's side of his car and bundled her inside.
"Everything happened in the blink of an eye," Kerri said. "He had me in his car and had driven away within seconds."
Moody forced Kerri into the well of the passenger seat, holding her head down with one hand as he kept the other on the steering wheel.
The young girl desperately pleaded with Moody, asking him where he was taking her.
"You're too little to be out here by yourself," Moody allegedly barked back. "I'm taking you to the police station."
Moody, Kerri would soon realize, was not taking her to the police station but rather to an undeveloped housing site around three miles away from her home.
Kerri said Moody parked the car, turned to her, and said: "Has anyone told you, you have a beautiful body?"
The words, which continue to haunt Kerri to this day, were followed by: "Let's get into the back, we're going to screw," she said.
"I was eight, I didn't even know what he meant," Kerri said. "So at that point, I didn't realize what was going to happen until it happened.
"And it was horrific."
Kerri was brutally and repeatedly raped by Moody in the back of his car over a period of several hours.
Believing she was certain to die, Kerri continually told Moody she needed to go the bathroom, hoping that if he'd agree to let her out of the car she may be able to make a break for it.
"Eventually he agreed to let me go to the bathroom," she recounted. "And so he opened the back door and told me to squat right next to the car while he gripped onto my hair.
"When I squatted down a pool of blood came pouring out of me and just got bigger and bigger.
"When he saw it he briefly let go of my here and I just took off running."
In the distance, Kerri could see a couple touring the housing site with a realtor. She headed towards them screaming and crying "I was kidnapped" as Moody sped away in his car.
"I just fell and collapsed into the woman's arms," Kerri said through tears. "They drove me to a construction trailer where they called the police and my family."
A REMARKABLE BREAKTHROUGH
It wouldn't be until she got to the hospital that Kerri's family realized that not only had she been kidnapped but she had also been raped.
The horror of Kerri's ordeal devastated her relatives. Almost 40 years on, the image of her grandparents, parents and uncles breaking down in tears when they were told what had happened still brings Kerri's emotions racing back to the surface.
"I come from a family of very strong people," Kerri said, her voice quivering with emotion. "My uncles were very strong men, and to see them devastated like that and feeling so helpless that’s something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
"Your family is your strength. I feel like the men in my family were never afraid of anything. And then all of a sudden this happens and they just couldn’t deal with it."
For a few months, Kerri's family took her out driving around Vallejo every single day in search of Moody's car.
Each time they'd ask her to recite exactly what had happened in excruciating depth, hoping the unearth a new detail she'd either previously forgotten or neglected to mention.
A breakthrough came around three months after the attack when Kerri suddenly remembered something she'd seen on the rear bumper of the man's car when he had sped away from the building site: a green sticker.
"That green sticker was required on any car that needed to get onto the naval base in the town," Kerri explained.
"The minute I remembered that sticker, the police found him and arrested him the next day."
NO MORE CHANCES
For Kerri, seeing Moody's name and face all over the news in recent weeks has been incredibly triggering.
"It's been really hard seeing his name again," Kerri admitted, "it definitely digs up a lot of old demons.
"I guess I just really can't wrap my brain around how he ever was released early. He had a 42-year sentence and he did 21 years - 21 years for raping seven girls," she exclaimed.
"He should've never been given the chance to hurt another child."
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Kerri added: "I wish that they would just finally give him the death penalty.
"Just how many chances is he going to get?"
