Found Deceased SC - Brittanee Drexel, 17, Myrtle Beach, 25 April 2009 - #15

[CanManEh]

Ya theres a bit of a after show it all depends on what channel he was watching for instance im in canada so when i watch the jays game its allways on the sportsnet channel so right after the game they will go to the nights highlights all over the league any sports guy is gonna watch it i would think its prolly carried on ESPN but they cover every sport basketball golf hockey its all on right after the game the majority of the time .Baseball is also like no other sport when it comes to keeping stats anything u could think of there will be a stat on it .What iam getting at by that is you could easilly go back and find out everything about that game u could re watch it just like it was live again and it would also have just what followed the game..Alot of times after a ball game exspecially in boston and new york right after one game say the boston game ..ESPN will go straight to the yankeys game and it may be in the 7th inning and u just watch from that point boston and the yankeys are allways chasing one another in the standings so once u watch one game they put on the next of the opposing team so the boston fans can see if they the yankeys win or loose...hope that helps

 

[Farmhand]

So, going back to Christinas post about the baseball game, if the game, did finish around 8.30pm that night and it was on the standard cable that the hotel shows, would those channels have an aftershow programme or would it be likely that the broadcast had finished by 8.48 when BD left the hotel?
What I am trying to say is after all that time watching the game, would there still be anything to stop PB taking BD back to her hotel?

I had read or maybe it was on the Investigation Discovery show that BD's boyfriend wasn't real happy with the fact that BD was hanging out with a bunch of guys that day. I wonder if Peter B did offer her a ride she declined it because it would of upset her boyfriend so to keep him happy she walked instead. Just a thought.

 

[fabgod]

I had read or maybe it was on the Investigation Discovery show that BD's boyfriend wasn't real happy with the fact that BD was hanging out with a bunch of guys that day. I wonder if Peter B did offer her a ride she declined it because it would of upset her boyfriend so to keep him happy she walked instead. Just a thought.

Very possible Farmhand,
I think its fair to say that BDs boyfriend has handled himself very well
from the reports and interviews I have seen, it must have been hard for him with how things panned out and imo he has shown himself to be a credit to himself which some others in this case havent done.

 

[Farmhand]

I guess too that someone could have called a cab? I don't ride in cabs much so I wouldn't know the cost maybe $10 to $20? If BD didn't have the money for a cab I'm sure the other boys or Peter B could have paid for it. Give the driver $40 and tell him to keep the change. Something like that.

 

[Farmhand]

I was thinking back on when I first heard about Brittanee and what you said about hindsight. I wonder if the issue of depression and medications were not in the first stories if it would've made a difference in gathering tips. At first, it sounded as if Brittanee ran away from home and was depressed. The focus was on the fact that she didn't tell her Mom that she was even coming here. I think it gave people the idea that she was some kind of "wild child". I think Brittanee is a normal, beautiful , young girl who loved soccer. She made a bad choice (like most teens do at one time or another), but she certainly is not a bad girl. Perception is reality in MB and I feel like time was lost by focusing on her mental status and the fact that she came here without permission. She was taken-and whoever took her is still out there and sadly, so is Brittanee.

Yeah exactly. I couldn't agree with you more and I'm sure everyone else does too. I've seen the missing persons report and on that it states she is on anti-depressant medication so that fact was out there for LE right away.

 

[Farmhand]

A few weeks back there was much discussion on BD's cell phone, cell phone pings, and it being tracked to the Georgetown, SC area the night she went missing. I had a few questions about cell phone pings so I called my local cell phone provider. They couldn't answer my questions or didn't want to so I started googling some things and a name kept coming up in my searches. I checked out his website and found that he is considered a top expert in cell phones and cell phone communications has written books, magazine articles, worked on missing person cases in the US and abroad, has been a expert witness in civil and criminal cases and so on. He had his email address listed so I figured I would ask him some questions and if he didn't answer so be it. He replied in 2 days. I tried to keep the questions as simple as possible. I didn't want to ask to many things as I know he gets paid to do this and he was replying to me for free. His answers many times were very technical but I got the gist of what he was saying. My main question was on cell phone pings. He told me cell phone pings can only occur if the phone is on. A cell phone cannot communicate or ping a cell tower if the phone is off. I had to explain to him what off meant to me which is totally powered down. He told me cell phones will ping even in sleep mode or airplane mode but not when they are totally off. He told me that pinging is your cell phone communicating with a cell tower and not vice versa and added that cell phones will search for a new cell tower signal every 6 to 12 seconds. In the BD case we know her cell phone last pinged cell tower #332 which is located along Highway 17 north of McClellanville, SC. Fabgod has told me where the tower is located and where the other cell towers are located and I have mapped them on Google earth. I can see from the mapping that the towers are about 4 to 6 maybe 7 miles apart. BD's cell phone pinged only 1 tower at 11:58 pm that night it was cell tower #332 which means she was only within 1 cell tower zone. It also means her phone at this point in time had to be on or in sleep mode I see no other option. If her phone was pinging 2 cell towers that would mean at that location 2 cell tower zones would need to be overlapping and her phone would have to be in the dark blue area. I found a couple of pictures to illustrate this. The dark blue areas would be areas where 2 cell phone zones would overlap. The light blue area is 1 cell phone zone. If BD's cell phone was pinging 2 cell phone zones the search area would be much smaller. If BD's cell phone was pinging in 3 cell phone zones the search area would be even smaller (red area), sadly that is not the case.

 

[Steely Dan]

A few weeks back there was much discussion on BD's cell phone, cell phone pings, and it being tracked to the Georgetown, SC area the night she went missing. I had a few questions about cell phone pings so I called my local cell phone provider. They couldn't answer my questions or didn't want to so I started googling some things and a name kept coming up in my searches. I checked out his website and found that he is considered a top expert in cell phones and cell phone communications has written books, magazine articles, worked on missing person cases in the US and abroad, has been a expert witness in civil and criminal cases and so on. He had his email address listed so I figured I would ask him some questions and if he didn't answer so be it. He replied in 2 days. I tried to keep the questions as simple as possible. I didn't want to ask to many things as I know he gets paid to do this and he was replying to me for free. His answers many times were very technical but I got the gist of what he was saying. My main question was on cell phone pings. He told me cell phone pings can only occur if the phone is on. A cell phone cannot communicate or ping a cell tower if the phone is off. I had to explain to him what off meant to me which is totally powered down. He told me cell phones will ping even in sleep mode or airplane mode but not when they are totally off. He told me that pinging is your cell phone communicating with a cell tower and not vice versa and added that cell phones will search for a new cell tower signal every 6 to 12 seconds. In the BD case we know her cell phone last pinged cell tower #332 which is located along Highway 17 north of McClellanville, SC. Fabgod has told me where the tower is located and where the other cell towers are located and I have mapped them on Google earth. I can see from the mapping that the towers are about 4 to 6 maybe 7 miles apart. BD's cell phone pinged only 1 tower at 11:58 pm that night it was cell tower #332 which means she was only within 1 cell tower zone. It also means her phone at this point in time had to be on or in sleep mode I see no other option. If her phone was pinging 2 cell towers that would mean at that location 2 cell tower zones would need to be overlapping and her phone would have to be in the dark blue area. I found a couple of pictures to illustrate this. The dark blue areas would be areas where 2 cell phone zones would overlap. The light blue area is 1 cell phone zone. If BD's cell phone was pinging 2 cell phone zones the search area would be much smaller. If BD's cell phone was pinging in 3 cell phone zones the search area would be even smaller (red area), sadly that is not the case.

Thanks for taking the time to do that. :thumb:

 

[fabgod]

A few weeks back there was much discussion on BD's cell phone, cell phone pings, and it being tracked to the Georgetown, SC area the night she went missing. I had a few questions about cell phone pings so I called my local cell phone provider. They couldn't answer my questions or didn't want to so I started googling some things and a name kept coming up in my searches. I checked out his website and found that he is considered a top expert in cell phones and cell phone communications has written books, magazine articles, worked on missing person cases in the US and abroad, has been a expert witness in civil and criminal cases and so on. He had his email address listed so I figured I would ask him some questions and if he didn't answer so be it. He replied in 2 days. I tried to keep the questions as simple as possible. I didn't want to ask to many things as I know he gets paid to do this and he was replying to me for free. His answers many times were very technical but I got the gist of what he was saying. My main question was on cell phone pings. He told me cell phone pings can only occur if the phone is on. A cell phone cannot communicate or ping a cell tower if the phone is off. I had to explain to him what off meant to me which is totally powered down. He told me cell phones will ping even in sleep mode or airplane mode but not when they are totally off. He told me that pinging is your cell phone communicating with a cell tower and not vice versa and added that cell phones will search for a new cell tower signal every 6 to 12 seconds. In the BD case we know her cell phone last pinged cell tower #332 which is located along Highway 17 north of McClellanville, SC. Fabgod has told me where the tower is located and where the other cell towers are located and I have mapped them on Google earth. I can see from the mapping that the towers are about 4 to 6 maybe 7 miles apart. BD's cell phone pinged only 1 tower at 11:58 pm that night it was cell tower #332 which means she was only within 1 cell tower zone. It also means her phone at this point in time had to be on or in sleep mode I see no other option. If her phone was pinging 2 cell towers that would mean at that location 2 cell tower zones would need to be overlapping and her phone would have to be in the dark blue area. I found a couple of pictures to illustrate this. The dark blue areas would be areas where 2 cell phone zones would overlap. The light blue area is 1 cell phone zone. If BD's cell phone was pinging 2 cell phone zones the search area would be much smaller. If BD's cell phone was pinging in 3 cell phone zones the search area would be even smaller (red area), sadly that is not the case.

Great work Farmhand
There are a few points there that come to mind
1. First off if we take the Investigation Discovery programme as being factual, they say that BDs phone went to answer machine.
The only ways I know that that will happen is if it is turned off or out of range, but from the way I am taking the experts comments, he is saying the phone cannot have been turned off, so why was it going to answer machine?

2. While we know BDs phone pinged at tower 332, we have no idea if BD was with it at that time, so while it is a point of reference for the search, there is no guarantee that BD was actually in that location

3. How do LE know that Pole Yard is a location, do we know that distances can be mapped from a ping if it is not triangulated?
It seems odd that they pinpoint that area when as you have demonstrated, the area is quite a large one.


Just to add, I have been looking at the cell phones and from what I can find (and I am no expert)
Cell phones can still be tracked when turned off, the only time they cannot be tracked is when the battery is completely dead or when the battery is removed, I am not saying I am correct, I am saying this is from information that I can find on the internet, plus, even when a phone is switched off, the time and date and information is still updated, so in effect it is not off if you see what I mean , otherwise the time would reset each time it was switched off

 

[anbeaudre]

Out can cause a phone to go to voicemail if more then one person was calling it at the same time

 

[fabgod]

Out can cause a phone to go to voicemail if more then one person was calling it at the same time

Yes that is a point but I'm sure the programme stated it just kept going to answer machine, I may be wrong.
In addition, there were no outgoing calls apparently and the call and text inbound were never answered

 

[Landonsmom02]

Hello all! I haven't posted here in a while but I think about BD often. I think I have said before I use to go to MB during SB since I live about 3 hours away in NC and thinking back to some of the things my friends and I did, we were very stupid, but lucky we never got into any trouble. I still feel as though those so called friends know more. Why were they never questioned? If they were I don't remember hearing about it? They traveled with her and didn't really think twice about her not coming back to the room? I smell BS. I can also believe the shorts story. It seems they were jealous of her. Maybe the boys payed BD more attention and this caused tension between them. Maybe BD wasn't into the same things as these girls and that is where tension comes in? So many possibilities. My family and I were in MB on August 14,15,16 and left on the 17th and I was looking for billboards but didn't see any. Britt was on my mind alot while I was down there. We stayed at the Sea Mist resort and we walked from there to the amusement park and walked right by Bar Harbor and I got goosebumps. BD walked such a long distance it's crazy noone saw anything? given the fact that BW hotel is at the end of Ocean blvd where there isn't alot of activity, still I would think if anything suspicious happened, someone could have saw something.

Which leads me to think about this possible scenero. When the so called friend called brittanee about the shorts and BD told them where she was this pissed them off even more. Is it possible they jumped in there car and rode down and picked her up? Maybe they were gonna scare her and things got out of hand? I know this is kinda far fetched but it has happened before and that's why they really aren't talking? I too think it is strange that DD dismissed the idea of RM being involoved. Why can't the PD rattle these girls cages? Make them talk????


Praying for Britt and her family!

 

[Farmhand]

I think fabgod we might have to agree to disagree on cell phone pings. That's what this forum is all about. People giving their thoughts and ideas on this case. It's all good. If you watch episode 2 of the Investigation Discovery show on BD at 2:20 Dawn Drexel states that when they first tried calling BD the night she went missing the phone 'kept ringing, ringing, and ringing' and then she says later it went directly to voice mail. The specific time the phone was going directly to voice mail I do not know. Dawn Drexel would have been attempting to call her daughter after she had found out she was missing. This would have been after BD's boyfriend would have called Dawn Drexel to tell her this. I don't know this time but it was maybe 9:30 pm to 9:45 pm or a little later. I do not know. The phone had to be on for it to ring. The boyfriend also states in this episode he tried to call her and got no response which to me it means the phone rang and no one answered. I also have a link to a story on how they used cell phone information in the BD case.


http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=295450#.UE50EVHAG7t


It states in one sentence.


By calculating the amount of time in milliseconds that it takes for the signal to get from the cell phone to the tower, the phone company can calculate how close the cell phone is to the tower.


It also states in another sentence of the article.

Whether or not you're using it to make a call, whenever your cell phone is turned on, it's constantly sending a signal to towers near its location.


They might have calculated the distance from the tower using this method and found the distance was close to the distance the Poleyard Landing was from the cell tower and that is why it was an area of interest. They knew what direction her phone was traveling versus calculating this distance and looking east or west. They knew her phone was traveling south along Highway 17. The triangulation method I have posted in #786 is just a more accurate way to pinpoint a location of a cell phone signal.

 

[trigger]

There was a family that was missing in a snow storm in 2006. James Kim left his wife and children in the car while he went for help. Two guys pleaded with their boss to let them use their equipment to help find the missing family.

Under article look at contents #4- Search

Although the Kims had a cellular phone with them, their remote location in the mountains was out of range of the cellular network, rendering the phone unusable for voice calls. Despite being unusable for voice calls, their cell phone would play a key role in their rescue. Cell phone text messages may go through even when there appears to be no signal, in part because text messaging is a store-and-forward service. Two Edge Wireless engineers, Eric Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, contacted search and rescue authorities offering their help in the search. On Saturday, December 2, they began searching through the data logs of cell sites, trying to find records of repeaters to which the Kims' cellphone may have connected. They discovered that on November 26, 2006 at around 1:30 a.m., the Kims' cellphone made a brief automatic connection to a cell site near Glendale, Oregon, and retrieved two text messages. Temporary atmospheric conditions, such as tropospheric ducting, can briefly allow radio communications over larger distances than normal. Through the data logs, the engineers determined that the cell phone was in a specific area west of the cellular tower. They then used a computer program to determine which areas in the mountains were within a line-of-sight to the cellular tower. This narrowed the search area tremendously, and finally focused rescue efforts on Bear Camp Road.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim#Search

 

[fabgod]

I think fabgod we might have to agree to disagree on cell phone pings. That's what this forum is all about. People giving their thoughts and ideas on this case. It's all good. If you watch episode 2 of the Investigation Discovery show on BD at 2:20 Dawn Drexel states that when they first tried calling BD the night she went missing the phone 'kept ringing, ringing, and ringing' and then she says later it went directly to voice mail. The specific time the phone was going directly to voice mail I do not know. Dawn Drexel would have been attempting to call her daughter after she had found out she was missing. This would have been after BD's boyfriend would have called Dawn Drexel to tell her this. I don't know this time but it was maybe 9:30 pm to 9:45 pm or a little later. I do not know. The phone had to be on for it to ring. The boyfriend also states in this episode he tried to call her and got no response which to me it means the phone rang and no one answered. I also have a link to a story on how they used cell phone information in the BD case.


http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=295450#.UE50EVHAG7t


It states in one sentence.


By calculating the amount of time in milliseconds that it takes for the signal to get from the cell phone to the tower, the phone company can calculate how close the cell phone is to the tower.


It also states in another sentence of the article.

Whether or not you're using it to make a call, whenever your cell phone is turned on, it's constantly sending a signal to towers near its location.


They might have calculated the distance from the tower using this method and found the distance was close to the distance the Poleyard Landing was from the cell tower and that is why it was an area of interest. They knew what direction her phone was traveling versus calculating this distance and looking east or west. They knew her phone was traveling south along Highway 17. The triangulation method I have posted in #786 is just a more accurate way to pinpoint a location of a cell phone signal.

Farmhand
No problems on that, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, I think your work is excellent and it doesn't matter to me if I am wrong or right to be honest, as long as we can keep trying to find "something" that will move this case forward.

For me personally I would love to know all the cell tower pings and times, I am sure LE will already have done this and this may be why they have concentrated on the Pole Yard area, but, I would like to know what time the phone stopped moving south.
That would then give a good idea of where to search and depending on times would also possibly give a time frame an location area of where anything happened.

 

[riolove]

I know this is contrary to what so many people think, but from all the research I've done on this case (BD's case is part of my graduate thesis), I truly don't think the friends had anything to do with it. I think they are nothing more than a group of snobby excuses for "friends" but that's it. I think it's scarier to think that it was random, but it probably was. These upstate NY kids would have had to truly have planned something out in order to place BD and her phone (assuming the two were together) near the Santee River two hours after she was last heard from. That is south of MB, in the opposite direction they came from. To me, it appears it was someone more local, someone who knew exactly where they were going, and unfortunately, that the Santee is a prime spot for body disposal. I remember Dawn saying authorities had told her that if BD was in the river, she would have been eaten w/in six hours, thus leaving zero evidence of her ever being there. The phone pinging there at its last point of life indicates to me that that is at least where she ended up, if not further south. Someone saw a pretty, small, young girl walking down a busy road with no one around her, and, if you watch the tape of her on her way TO the guys' hotel, pretty engrossed in her phone...if she was just as distracted on her way back, it would have made her an easy target. Super busy street, just stop and grab her, or pleasantly offer her a ride...she was young and described as naive by those around her. I think she realized the danger as soon as she was in the car, b/c for someone who was on their phone with their BF every ten seconds, she immediately stopped writing him back. It's possible the abductor took the phone from her, but didn't turn it off. Maybe it kept ringing and ringing and annoyed him so he finally did turn it off, take out the battery, or it died, or he tossed it from the car somewhere around tower 332, hence the last ping before it was destroyed....so many ifs it is terrible. Any way you look at it, someone's been getting away with this for over three years now and that needs to change!!!

 

[Farmhand]

You hate to think the critters got to her but yeah that is very possible. Alligators primarily feed at night. When I was younger and on the farm one of my chores was to discard livestock when it died. I would take a 1,000 lb. cow into the pasture and it would be totally gone within 24 hours from the coyotes.

 

[Steely Dan]

I know this is contrary to what so many people think, but from all the research I've done on this case (BD's case is part of my graduate thesis), I truly don't think the friends had anything to do with it. I think they are nothing more than a group of snobby excuses for "friends" but that's it. I think it's scarier to think that it was random, but it probably was. These upstate NY kids would have had to truly have planned something out in order to place BD and her phone (assuming the two were together) near the Santee River two hours after she was last heard from. That is south of MB, in the opposite direction they came from. To me, it appears it was someone more local, someone who knew exactly where they were going, and unfortunately, that the Santee is a prime spot for body disposal. I remember Dawn saying authorities had told her that if BD was in the river, she would have been eaten w/in six hours, thus leaving zero evidence of her ever being there. The phone pinging there at its last point of life indicates to me that that is at least where she ended up, if not further south. Someone saw a pretty, small, young girl walking down a busy road with no one around her, and, if you watch the tape of her on her way TO the guys' hotel, pretty engrossed in her phone...if she was just as distracted on her way back, it would have made her an easy target. Super busy street, just stop and grab her, or pleasantly offer her a ride...she was young and described as naive by those around her. I think she realized the danger as soon as she was in the car, b/c for someone who was on their phone with their BF every ten seconds, she immediately stopped writing him back. It's possible the abductor took the phone from her, but didn't turn it off. Maybe it kept ringing and ringing and annoyed him so he finally did turn it off, take out the battery, or it died, or he tossed it from the car somewhere around tower 332, hence the last ping before it was destroyed....so many ifs it is terrible. Any way you look at it, someone's been getting away with this for over three years now and that needs to change!!!

I respectfully disagree. Their actions are more than spoiled kids. I can't see all of them keeping quiet or ignoring DD unless they were threatened. JMO

 

[anbeaudre]

So you guys don't think there would be any evidence of bones or clothing, purse, etc?

 

[anbeaudre]

I respectfully disagree. Their actions are more than spoiled kids. I can't see all of them keeping quiet or ignoring DD unless they were threatened. JMO

Thats true, I don't believe they planned it but my gut feeling us that they net someone I mb, maybe an older male who provided alcohol our something along those lines, and that they want no involvement. Kids like them eat up drama. I kind of feel if they knew nothing, they would at least pretend to care for attention and sympathy, but at least online I haven't seen that. I know when anything would happen I my town, everyone would know, especially by a certain crowd.

I do also think it could have easily been random and maybe they are just brats that don't care??

 

[Steely Dan]

Thats true, I don't believe they planned it but my gut feeling us that they net someone I mb, maybe an older male who provided alcohol our something along those lines, and that they want no involvement. Kids like them eat up drama. I kind of feel if they knew nothing, they would at least pretend to care for attention and sympathy, but at least online I haven't seen that. I know when anything would happen I my town, everyone would know, especially by a certain crowd.

I do also think it could have easily been random and maybe they are just brats that don't care??

The fact that they aren't talking about it is what makes me think there's involvement. I don't believe all of them are responsible for her disappearance, but I believe all of them know A LOT more than they're saying. I also think that one of the only things that would keep them all shut up is fear. I think someone in Rochester who was on that trip is holding them in fear of saying anything. JMO