The case of Jock and Jane Doe was featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” on January 20, 1995. The couple was discovered in August of 1976 in Sumter, South Carolina on a rural road by a trucker passing through. They had both been shot multiple times. They both appeared to be in their 20s, with the man measuring six feet tall and the woman about five feet five inches. The man had extensive dental work and was wearing an expensive watch and a ring inscribed with the initials JPF. He was estimated to be between 18 and 30 years of age. The woman had brown hair and blue or green eyes, with two distinct moles on the left side of her face. She was wearing two rings that were either Mexican handmade or Native American. The couple both had skin that had olive undertones so investigators initially believed they might be siblings. That was later ruled out after DNA testing. When they were found, they had no money on them, only their jewelry and clothing.
When investigators started questioning people in the area, they discovered a man living in the area where the bodies were found had heard gunshots on the night of August 9, followed by the sound of a car speeding away down a road connecting Interstate 95 to South Carolina 341.
An autopsy revealed they had eaten either fruit or ice cream in the hours before their deaths. One witness thought they had seen the couple at a fruit stand located off the Florence Highway. But this witness couldn’t recall whether they had been with anyone at the time or if they had arrived in a car. A few months after they were found, another witness came forward and said he remembered the couple from when they had stayed at a KOA Campground in Santee, South Carolina.
Witnesses Come Forward
This witness recalled the man had said his name was “Jock,” which was likely more like “Jacque.” He told the employee at the campground that he was the son of a prominent Canadian doctor who had disowned him for not following through with his medical studies. He was on an extended vacation with his girlfriend. They left after a few days to head to Florida, then stopped back by the campground on their way back through South Carolina. He had tried to pawn an expensive ring to the employee, and it matched the description of the ring Jock was found wearing with the initials.
According to the details found on their pages on The Doe Network site, investigators fingerprinted the man and woman. They looked at the serial number on the watch to try and determine where it was purchased. They shared the details of the couple with Interpol, immigration officials and made contact with authorities in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and in the Mediterranean. They strongly believed the couple had possibly been hitchhiking across the country when they were murdered, or were carjacked somewhere along the way. When he was found, Jock Doe had a pack of matches in the pocket of his blue jeans that were only sold at a truck stop chain located in the states of Idaho, New Mexico and Nebraska.
DNA Testing Results
In 2007, the bodies were exhumed by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office and samples were retrieved that have been submitted to into the state, national and international DNA databases. As for who killed Jane and Jock Doe, one suspect has been reported on. A South Carolina man Lonnie Henry was arrested in 1977 for driving while intoxicated. A gun located in his possession was later determined to be the murder weapon that killed Jane and Jock Doe through ballistics testing. Henry said his brother had given him the gun as a Christmas present several years earlier, and it may have been stolen before coming into his possession. He said that on the day of the murders, he was in Wadesboro, North Carolina, visiting his wife. Due to a lack of any other corroborating evidence, Lonnie Henry was never charged with the crime.
Identities Finally Revealed
According to an article published on the WIS News site, in late 2007, the Sumter County Coroner exhumed both bodies where they were buried in a church cemetery for a DNA sample.
A citizen sleuth named Matt McDaniel had followed this case for many years, and he suggested the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office contact the DNA Doe Project. So, in June 2019, the DNA was sent to The DNA Doe Project. After uploading these files to GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA, DNA Doe Project’s volunteers identified relatives of interest to the victims. The woman was identified as 25-year-old Pamela Buckley of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the man was James Freund of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Based on an article that ran in The State newspaper, Pamela Buckley was last seen in and reported missing from Colorado Springs in December 1975. Freund was last seen in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area in December 1975. The relationship between the two remains unknown, but some have theorized they met while hitchhiking and decided to travel together.
Brittanee Drexel
I featured the disappearance of Britanee Drexel was featured in Episode 24, South Carolina Cases Featured on the tv show “Disappeared” and Episode 49, “An Update on Britanee Drexel and Zebb Quinn.” Britanee was on a spring break trip in April of 2009 with a group of friends from New York. This is a case that has been featured heavily in both national news media outlets and other true crime podcasts so I’m just going to try and hit the highlights here.
Britanee was a 17-year-old who grew up in the Rochester, New York area with her mother and a step-father Chad, who had adopted her when she was a young child. Her parents separated the year before Britanee went missing, which hit her particularly hard. In April 2009, she asked her mother Dawn if she could travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with her boyfriend and some other friends for spring break. Dawn said no because she didn’t know anything about the group of friends Britanee was wanting to travel with.
Her mother’s intuition was in high gear, and she also had a feeling something bad would happen to Brittanee if she went. It caused a huge fight between the two and Brittanee left to go cool off at a friend’s house for a few days. That day, Brittanee instead left for Myrtle Beach without telling her mother. She called home a few days later and when her mom asked where she was, she said, “The beach.” Dawn assumed it was a local beach near the Lake Ontario shoreline and didn’t press for details.
Disappearance from Ocean Boulevard
Brittanee had been staying with friends at the Bar Harbor Hotel. Her boyfriend John ended up not going on the trip and staying behind to work. On the night of April 25, Brittanee left Bar Harbor to go visit another friend who was staying at the Blue Water Resort about a mile and a half away. According to surveillance footage at the Blue Water Resort, Brittanee only stayed there a few minutes. She left on foot and at around 9:15 p.m., walking down Ocean Boulevard alone while texting with her boyfriend. A traffic camera along the boulevard captured Brittanee walking alone, focused on her phone. John grew alarmed when the texts suddenly stopped, and he was unable to reach Brittanee. He called her friends in Myrtle Beach to see if they knew what had happened to her, and they reported she had never returned to the hotel room. He finally grew so concerned he phoned Brittanee’s mother, Dawn, to let her know Brittanee had taken the trip without their permission.
Dawn alerted The Myrtle Beach Police Department, and they began a search the next morning. In Brittanee’s hotel room they found her clothing and all items except for her cell phone and purse. They talked to the people she had visited at the Blue Water Resort, a 20-year-old nightclub promoter from New York and some of his friends.
When I first heard about Brittanee’s disappearance, I thought back to my own memories of visiting Myrtle Beach while in high school. Ocean Boulevard is a very congested main road that leads into the main part of what is called the “Grand Strand.” The highrise hotels all along that main strip house thousands of visitors each year, and not only that, there are plenty of area residents that drive in for the day. When I saw Brittanee’s surveillance footage and how petite she was (weighing right around 100 pounds and standing about five feet tall) I knew she would be a prime target for anyone looking to commit a crime of opportunity, especially if she came across a stretch of Ocean Boulevard that wasn’t brightly lit and where there weren’t a lot of people around.
Investigators were able to determine that Brittanee’s cell phone pinged on U.S. 17, near Georgetown, South Carolina, about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach. The pings stopped abruptly the morning of April 26, so an intensive search was performed in that area by law enforcement. After that, the case went cold for a couple of years, but in 2016, investigators held a news conference stating they had new information about what may have happened to Brittanee.
The Case Goes Cold
Over the years, there were periodic updates on Brittany’s case, and each one was more terrifying than the last. In June 2016, a jailhouse informant named Taquan Brown told investigators that he’d seen Brittanee at a stash house in McClellanville, South Carolina, which was near the area where her cell phone last pinged before it died. He was there to visit a man named Timothy D’Shaun Taylor and the mobile home was owned by Taylor’s father. A search of the property where the alleged stash house was turned up no leads. And in a strange coincidence, the Myrtle Beach Sun News reported it burned down in May of 2019.
Suspect Arrested in 2022
Brittanee Drexel’s story reached its final conclusion in 2022, and it left many who had been following it quite surprised.On May 16, 2022, the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office held a press conference where they announced they had uncovered the remains of Brittanee Drexel in a wooded area on the outskirts of Georgetown County. Dental records confirmed her identity. They announced that a man named Raymond Moody had been charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal sexual conduct. Her cause of death appeared to be strangulation. Raymond Moody is a known sex offender with a disturbing criminal background—he had served about half of a 40-year-sentence beginning in 1983 on convictions for criminal sexual conduct with minors in California.
Back in August of 2011, the authorities had spent nearly four hours searching a room at the Sunset Lodge in Georgetown County. They had served the lodge with a search warrant so they could look for evidence in Brittanee’s case. At the time, the police did not share any additional details as to why they had decided to search that particular location. We now know the room had belonged to Raymond Moody.
At this past summer’s press conference, Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver had this to say:
“Where did it happen? How did it happen? And why did it happen? The ‘why’ may never be known or understood. But today, this task force can confidently and without hesitation answer the rest of those questions, along with the who is responsible.”
According to WCIV, the Georgetown County sheriff said they had received a major tip in 2011 from a family member, suggesting they look into Moody because of his criminal history serving time for raping underage girls. This was why they were searching the motel he had been staying at, and they also interviewed his girlfriend at the time, a woman named Angel Vause, but they couldn’t find any concrete evidence linking him to Brittanee’s disappearance.
The FBI eventually realized their lead about Timothy Taylor wasn’t viable, so they started from square one. They looked at cell phone data, and determined that Brittanee had gone from walking to moving at 55 miles per hour around 9:06 p.m. on April 25, 2009. She arrived in Georgetown by 10 p.m. Looking at video surveillance, they noticed that Moody’s Ford Explorer was the only vehicle that passed where Brittanee was walking at that time. When they questioned Moody, he said he and Angel had been in the car and they asked Brittanee if she wanted to smoke marijuana with them at their camp.
After Raymond Moody Kidnapped Brittanee
After arriving in Georgetown, he said Angel Vause had left, and this is when Moody sexually assaulted Brittanee and strangled her, because he knew he would go back to prison if she reported him. He said he lied to Vause about Brittanee leaving unharmed. He later went back to the location of where he had left Brittanee and buried her body. No one knows for sure if Raymond Moody was lying about any part of this story, but Brittanee’s mother says her daughter may have simply thought she was accepting a ride up the street to where her hotel was.
As if this conclusion to Brittanee’s case wasn’t disturbing enough, I found even more unsettling information when I did a search of Raymond Moody’s name in the Myrtle Beach newspaper archives. On June 21, 2004, the Myrtle Beach Sun-News published an article titled “Sex offender causes stir with move to Strand.” The article was about none other than Raymond Douglas Moody. Some of the residents from the Kensington neighborhood of Georgetown expressed concerns about Moody living with his parents in their home.
At the time, he had moved to the area after being released from prison in California. He had registered his name with the Sheriff’s Office and was being electronically monitored by the South Carolina Office of Probation and Parole. The residents were doubly concerned because the Moody home was located near a daycare, an elementary school, and several churches. Moody told the newspaper at the time, “They have a bracelet on my ankle and a monitor in the house. The only time that I leave the house is for counseling and to see my parole officer. I just want a chance to live my life.” The Georgetown County Assistant Sheriff Carter Weaver told the newspaper, “It is our understanding that Moody has met all of his requirements as prescribed by law.”
The president of the Kensington Community Association at the time said, “I can look out the window and look at his house. I know his mama and daddy real well. I’ve got children; if they did something wrong, I would still have my house open to them.” An article that ran a few months later, in September of 2004, said that Moody was no longer classified as a sexual predator, but remained under strict electronic monitoring as a high-risk sexual offender. The article mentioned he had moved from his parents’ home in the Kensington community of Georgetown. It explained that Moody could not be classified as a predator because his crimes were committed before 1986.
The Violent Sexual Predator Law wasn’t formed until the mid-1980s, a spokesman for the California Board of Prison Terms told the reporter. The article also noted that Moody was not allowed to live alone, and that his parents were required to remain with him if he left the house. It also mentioned he was living in an industrialized area, away from other houses, but I couldn’t clarify who he was supposed to have been living with at that time. His California prison record noted Moody was convicted of one count of sodomy on a child younger than 14, three counts of rape, two counts of lewd behavior on a child younger than 14, and one count of assault with intent to commit mayhem.
After coming across these articles, it was easy to see why the Sheriff’s Department had suspected Moody could be involved in Brittanee’s disappearance. She went missing in 2009, only five years after Moody had first arrived in the Myrtle Beach area, and his arrival had drawn the fear of area residents so much that newspaper articles were published. Unfortunately, it looks like those residents were right to be fearful of what Moody was capable of.
Judith Smith
Next, I’d like to talk about the mysterious case of 50-year-old Judith Smith, also known as Judy. This originally aired on Episode 45, “Across State Lines.” She disappeared from Philadelphia in April of 1997, and her remains were found in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest five months later. Her case begins during a springtime trip, where Judy and her husband Jeff Smith planned to mix business with pleasure while Jeff, an attorney, attended a business conference in Philadelphia. Judy was a divorced mother of two who had met Jeff when she served as a home health nurse for his ailing father. They had been married five months when they planned the trip to Philadelphia.
The morning they left for the business trip, Judy discovered at the airport that she’d forgotten to bring her driver’s license, preventing her from boarding the plane. She told Jeff she’d go back home to get her license and catch a later flight. She arrived in Philadelphia that night around 10 p.m. She brought Jeff flowers as an apology for delaying her part of the trip. Judy set out the next morning for some sightseeing, carrying a red backpack she always had with her. The two planned to meet up for dinner later that night.
Where Did Judy Go?
Jeff got back to the room around 5:30 p.m. and Judy wasn’t there. He contacted hospitals and the police, who told him it was too soon to report his wife missing. He got into a taxi drove and rode through the city, trying to trace the path of the tour bus she was supposed to have taken. He could find no trace of her. Her family speculated she had an accident and developed amnesia. But her friends weren’t so sure.
Jeff had to return to Boston without Judy. He created fliers to fax to law enforcement departments from Maine to Florida. He also hired three different private investigators.
A Body Found in North Carolina
Five months later, on September 7, 1997, a father and son hiking near Candler, a town just outside of Asheville, found a partially buried skeleton. The location was more than 600 miles away from where Judy had disappeared. It was also not in an area tourists normally visited, and was located a short walk from a main road. The medical examiner determined the remains as belonging to a white female, possibly in her late 40s to mid-50s. There were puncture wounds and cuts on the bra found with the remains that were consistent with stab wounds. A doctor in North Carolina had seen one of the fliers about Judy that Jeff had distributed throughout the Southeast, and he called law enforcement when he heard about the female remains discovered in the woods. Jeff Smith provided the dental records that confirmed the victim to be Judy Smith.
Here’s where the story takes a strange turn. Based on a few different eyewitness accounts, it seems Judy had traveled to Asheville on her own after leaving Philadelphia. A sales clerk said she saw Judy in a store, and the two chatted while Judy looked around. She told the salesclerk her name was Judy, her husband was an attorney, and that she was from Boston. She said she decided to visit North Carolina while her husband was in Philadelphia at a convention. An article that ran in The Asheville Citizen-Times on April 10, 1998 reported that employees at a local doctor’s office said a woman matching Judy’s description inquired about a job in April of 1997. Employees at a motel in Biltmore Village also believed Judy had been staying there. Jeff Smith told authorities they didn’t know in anyone in Asheville, and he had no idea why Judy would have traveled there alone.
A friend told the tv show “Unsolved Mysteries” that Jeff and Judy’s marriage had hit a rough patch and that Judy may have left on her own to put distance between her and Jeff. The same friend told the show that she didn’t believe Judy was involved with anyone else, but she was a friendly and outdoing woman who may have met someone while in Asheville who caused her harm. Investigators said they found a blue and black backpack with Judy’s remains, and they didn’t believe it belonged to Judy. There were also a pair of sunglasses manufactured by Bolle. They would have sold for more than $100, and Judy’s friends and family don’t believe she would have spent that kind of money on sunglasses. Robbery did not appear to be a motive. Judy still had her wedding ring on her and over $100 in cash. However, her driver’s license and credit cards were missing, which helped in delaying Judy’s identification.
Judy’s husband Jeff Smith died in 2005 without ever knowing who murdered his wife.
The Possible Serial Killer Connection
I have read articles speculating that serial killer Gary Hilton may have been responsible for Judy’s death. He is known to have had victims in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. He was convicted of murdering 46-year-old Cheryl Dunlap, a nurse from Tallahasse, Florida whose body was found in the Apalachicola National Forest in December of 2007. Hilton also murdered elderly couple John and Irene Bryant in 2007 as they hiked in the Pisgah National Forest near their home in North Carolina. Georgia resident Meredith Emerson, who was abducted and murdered after going for a hike with her dog on New Year’s Day in 2008, is also a known victim of Hilton’s. He was sentenced to death in Florida, and also received life in prison terms in Georgia and North Carolina. Judy disappeared in 1997, while Hilton’s other known crimes occurred in 2007 and beyond. But Hilton was in his 60s when he murdered Cheryl Dunlap, so I don’t think it’s too far fetched to hypothesize he began his life of crime much earlier, especially since he seemed to be a drifter who frequently traveled between Florida and North Carolina.
I also think the reason why Hilton is a suspect in Judy’s disappearance is because the modus operandi is very similar to the ones of his victims in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia. He would befriend people while out hiking in national forests. He usually had his dog with him. His motive appeared to be robbery—in all the convicted cases, he stole the victims bank cards and forced them to give up PIN numbers before murdering them. Judy’s credit cards and ID were missing when she was discovered. However, many of Hilton’s later victims were decapitated, including John Bryant, Cheryl Dunlap, and Meredith Emerson, and Judy was not. Maybe that was an extra step he took as he murdered more victims to prevent them from being identified. There has also been speculation that Hilton may have been responsible for the disappearance of Jason Knapp, a 20-year-old Clemson University student who went missing from Table Rock State Park in South Carolina. We featured Jason’s story on Episode 8 of this podcast, “Missing College Students in the Carolinas.”
To date, Hilton has denied any connection to Judy Smith and Jason Knapp’s cases.
Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey
Wesley and Bonnie’s Mahaffey’s story also appeared in Episode 45, along with Judy Smith’s. In 1986, a free vacation getaway turned into a nightmare for the Ohio couple visiting Asheville, North Carolina when they were found murdered at an overlook called Buzzard Rock. Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey, ages 33 and 29, respectively, had traveled to the area from Hanover Township, Ohio, after winning a three-day trip to Asheville through Wesley’s job. The couple had been staying at a nearby hotel, the Great Smokies Hilton, and a member of the maid service saw them come out of their room as they left for a day of sightseeing on May 18, 1986. Their bodies were found early the next morning by a group of teenage boys. They had both been shot multiple times with a .38-caliber handgun. Buzzard Rock is an area that’s located between Beaverdam Road and the Blue Ridge Parkway, and has always been known as a popular place to watch the sunset because of its beautiful views. But an article in The Asheville Citizen-Times that ran at the time of the murders quoted a nearby local resident as saying the area had developed a reputation as a meeting place for drug dealers. Wesley’s pockets were pulled inside out, and his wallet was missing. There were no signs Bonnie had been sexually assaulted.
A Black Mountain resident named Roy Lee Fox was eventually arrested and charged with the murders in 1987. Local law enforcement believed he had come across the couple at Buzzard Rock, robbed and murdered them. He had previously been convicted of murdering an acquaintance named Morris Sams in 1986, and an elderly woman named Ovella Jean Lunsford in the late 1960s during a home robbery. But the case was largely circumstantial, and the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. Fox died in 1992 while serving time in prison for other charges.
To date, the murder of Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffey remains unsolved.
Show Resources:
Jock and Jane Doe
https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Sumter_County_Does
UM Episode: Jan. 20, 1995
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/198umsc.html
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/189ufsc.html
https://www.wistv.com/story/6649431/bodies-of-unknowns-exhumed-in-sumter-county
Brittanee Drexel
https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-e08a4830341148ea92775f61bb08dcc1
Myrtle Beach Sun News
“Convicted sex offender seeks home”
July 14, 2004
https://www.newspapers.com/image/878868728
Myrtle Beach Sun News
September 15, 2004
“Rapist not classified as ‘sexual predator’”
https://www.newspapers.com/image/822704406
Judith Smith
Asheville Citizen-Times
April 10, 1998
“A Year Later, Woman’s Death Remains a Mystery”
https://newspapers.com/image/200088480
Wesley and Bonnie Mahaffe
Asheville Citizen-Times
May 22, 1986
“Couples vacation ends in murders”
https://newspapers.com/image/198188587
Asheville Citizen-Times
May 23, 1986
“Slayings Questions Abound”
