Sunday, Dec 6, 2009
Posted on Sun, Dec. 06, 2009
Lost, but never found in South Carolina
By Glenn Smith
The (Charleston) Post and Courier
Dawn Drexel gingerly stepped over mounds of pine needles, gnarled roots and empty beer cans as she ventured into a scrubby patch of woods where searchers looked for her teenage daughter's body.
The team had come up empty, just as they had in similar dark corners tucked away from the bright lights and crowds of this bustling resort city. Still, Drexel needed to see the spot last week, to get a sense of the land and the efforts to find Brittanee.
It's been a daily struggle for Drexel since her 17-year-old daughter disappeared on a trip here in April. The Rochester, N.Y., woman has left her family, work and home for weeks at a time to look for Brittanee. She's unsure what to say when her younger children ask when their sister is coming home. On every trip down U.S. 17, her gaze drifts to the ditches and hollows on the side of the road, looking for a sign.
"It consumes your life, and there are a lot more bad days than good days," Drexel said. "It's always so close to your heart. You just never think your kid will go missing until ithappens to you."
Hundreds of people are reported missing each year in South Carolina, some of the more than 800,000 folks who disappear across the nation. Most are found sooner rather than later, the majority unharmed. Of the 80 people reported missing in Myrtle Beach this year, for example, all but Brittanee have been accounted for, police said. But it is cases such as hers that can haunt family members, investigators and searchers for years.
"It can be very frustrating," Charleston County Sheriff's Maj. John Clark said. "When you sit down and look into the face of a family member who is devastated because someone they love is missing, you can't help but put yourself in their place. It makes you want to work even harder to bring some resolution to them."
Charleston County sheriff's deputies have located all but 12 of the 62 people reported missing to their office since January. But each year, some cases remain stubbornly difficult to solve.
One such case is the disappearance of Theodore Watson, a 46-year-old man whose car was found abandoned near the bridge to Edisto Island in August 2007. The keys were in the ignition, the trunk was open and Washington's wallet was left behind, along with some blood. He hasn't been heard from since.
"We've had no leads to go on," Clark said.
Watson's case joins other perplexing and enduring Lowcountry mysteries, such as the disappearance of 12-year-old Annette Deanne Sagers, who vanished in October 1988 while walking from Mount Holly Plantation to a school bus stop. Or the case of Kevin McClam, a 14-year-old boy who disappeared from the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in 1997.
Such mysteries can be torture for the families of the missing. Just ask Donna Parent, whose daughter, Brandy Hanna, vanished from her apartment in North Charleston on May 2005, leaving her money, her clothes, her entire life, behind.
Each year, Parent holds vigils and birthday celebrations for Brandy, but she is no closer to learning her daughter's fate than she was four years ago.
"One word says it all: Hell," Parent said. "When your child dies, you at least have some type of closure or somewhere you can go to visit them. But when you don't know what happened, it's a never-ending nightmare."
Every so often, a story comes along that brings new hope to families of the missing. Such was the case in 2003 when Elizabeth Smart returned home to her family nine months after her abduction in Salt Lake City. Or Jaycee Dugard, who resurfaced in August in California after being abducted in 1991 at the age of 11.But for every story of hope, there are other tales that end badly, such as the case of 34-year-old Edwina Sims, a Virginia mother of two who disappeared on a trip to Charleston in April 2001. It was three years before she was found slain in a wooded swamp in Berkeley County.
Brittanee Drexel's family hangs on to the hope that she will be found alive, even if that hope is fading with time. Her mother is determined to find her -- one way or another -- and bring her home.
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