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It was late 2016. The FBI was about to get its man – an innocent man.
Timothy Shaun Taylor, 49, of McClellanville, S.C., was going to confess to raping and murdering Brittanee Drexel of Chile, N.Y., even though he had never met Drexel. A cascade of tragedies and travesties had led Taylor to his lawyer’s office that day to discuss the process of confessing to a crime he had not committed but for which his family was being severely punished.
About seven years earlier, 17-year-old Drexel had defied her parents, like teenagers around the globe are wont to do, and snuck away with friends to spend spring break in Myrtle Beach. It spiraled into travesty for her family when Drexel, who had felt alienated from her friend group during the trip, walked alone along Ocean Boulevard early one night and ended up in the SUV of a strange man.
She wouldn’t be heard from again.
Shaun Taylor felt compelled to falsely confess because of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation had done just weeks before, accused Taylor and his son Dashaun Taylor of having fed Drexel’s body to alligators. The FBI claimed to have eyewitnesses to crimes it would take the public six years to learn the Taylors had not committed.
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