Solicitor sets new timeline for court date of man charged in Brittanee Drexel case

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WMBF) - The first court date for Raymond Moody, the man charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder of Brittanee Drexel, will now be in the fall instead of later this month, according to 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson.

Since the recovery of Drexel’s body and Moody’s charges were announced in May, Richardson has been working through hundreds of boxes of information related to the case.

COMPLETE COVERAGE | The Brittanee Drexel Case

While Richardson has dozens of other cases he’s working on simultaneously, Moody’s is at the top. Just last week he said he got a terabyte of data from the FBI on Drexel’s case.

“Say that real quickly and it don’t sound like a lot but for the viewers, a terabyte is basically a whole computer, nothing but, dedicated to this,” he said.

That data goes as far back as 2009 when Brittanee Drexel first disappeared from Myrtle Beach. It contains hundreds of tips that over the years that led to dead ends.

“Most of it, the state would never use, 99% of it the defense would never use, but it still has to be made available,” said Richardson.

The process of combing through it all though is time-consuming.

“It would be easier to try the case than for us to go through the discovery,” said Richardson.

WMBF News spoke with Richardson right after a news conference in May, where he talked about seeing Moody in court for the first time in late July.

While he can’t give a specific date he now expects the earliest first court appearance for Moody to be in late September or early October.

Efforts to reach out to Moody’s attorney, Scott Bellamy, went unreturned.

Stay with WMBF News for updates.

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