I had a hard time believing it was Angel Vause walking into the federal courthouse in Charleston on Monday. She was nonchalant, unassuming. If not for the judge’s decision to override recommendations from the defense attorney and prosecutor, she would have walked out the same way even after admitting to her role in one of the most heinous crimes in recent South Carolina history.
She wore a white, brown and blue patterned print dress, just the perfect length and style for the changing of seasons. I can imagine seeing it in a glossy Target ad. There were no handcuffs, no shackles. There was no prison shuffle or escort by U.S. Marshals. The marshals in the courtroom had little to do before Vause pleaded guilty to lying about her role in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Brittanee Drexel.
Vause and her live-in boyfriend Raymond Moody abducted the 17-year-old New Yorker from Ocean Boulevard while she was on spring break 15 years ago. Moody is in prison for life. Vause is facing up to 24 years. Truth be told, though, we still aren’t certain what precisely happened the night of April 25, 2009, Vause and Moody have told so many different stories.
We know Moody raped and murdered Drexel. He led authorities to her decomposed body. The DNA matched. That we know. But he confessed in a way to protect Vause. Drexel allegedly jumped into an SUV while walking along Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach to “party” and smoke weed with a middle-aged couple who were strangers to her. That part of Moody’s confession never made sense, still doesn’t.
During Monday’s hearing, federal officials noted several of Drexel’s friends said she did not drink or do drugs during that spring break trip. Even if they hadn’t said that, it always seemed far-fetched that a 17-year-old would willingly go anywhere with a strange couple more than 800 miles from home. Vause’s guilty plea has forever uprooted that absurd portion of Moody’s confession.
In messages from prison, Moody told Vause she didn’t have to worry about being prosecuted. Fortunately, he was wrong. Vause admitted to lying to federal agents during a 2011 interrogation — lies that made it possible for Moody to remain free for more than a decade, and for an innocent family from McClellanville to be falsely accused of the ugly crimes Vause and Moody committed. They also said Vause left Drexel alone with Moody — long enough for him to rape her and bury her body — and took her phone south of the Georgetown line. That’s why her cellphone pinged off a tower in the area where the Taylor family just happened to live.
That simple connection, along with previous unfounded suspicions, was enough to begin a nightmare for the Taylors that’s still unfolding. Timothy Shaun Taylor and his son Timothy Dashaun Taylor were implicated and falsely accused of gangraping Drexel and trying to sell her into sex trafficking before they murdered and fed her body to alligators. That happened despite a member of a Drexel task force made up of local law enforcement and FBI agents saying the Taylors had a strong alibi.
What was most telling was how Vause was treated. Prosecutors never treated the Taylors that way. Despite a lack of evidence, they were handcuffed and shackled and thrown into jail many times before Moody’s confession. On Monday, prosecutors told the judge to let Vause go free until sentencing — even though she had just confessed to her portion of an ungodly crime.
That disparate treatment didn’t go unnoticed by the Taylors, who along with Drexel’s family were there to watch Vause finally confess. It’s the latest evidence of the two-tiered justice system, one for a convicted Level 3 sexual predator and his accomplice girlfriend, one for a family whose lives were ruined by Moody and Vause and law enforcement who refuse to offer as much as an apology.
Vause having to trade her print dress for a prison jumpsuit is a bit more justice. But that journey for the Taylors and Drexels is not yet complete.
Issac Bailey is a Davidson College professor and McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.
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