‘One More Day’

Like most South Carolinians, Roy T. Willey IV learned about Brittanee Drexel from the billboards her mom (Dawn Conley) plastered along the coastal highway after the 17-year-old disappeared from Myrtle Beach during spring break in 2009. “Everybody knew that Brittanee Drexel was missing,” says Willey. “Brittanee’s picture was everywhere.”

Over the years, few leads surfaced, but Conley refused to give up, even moving to Myrtle Beach and continuing to organize marches and vigils. Finally, she convinced an FBI agent—“he had young daughters,” Willey notes—to investigate. The effort paid off in 2022, when a local resident named Raymond Moody confessed and agreed to plead guilty to kidnapping, rape and murder to avoid the death penalty. 

“Eventually, Ray did lead them to the area where he said the body was buried,” Willey says. “They performed a full excavation, and found Brittanee’s nose ring and bones and her remains—what was left.”  

The story that unraveled was brutal. Drexel had been walking back from a friend’s hotel when Moody’s girlfriend lured her into the car where Moody was waiting, Willey recalls. “Basically, Ray raped Drexel through the night, eventually strangled her, drowned her in the swamp, stabbed her in the chest with an ice pick, and then … buried Brittanee in a shallow grave.”

In late 2022, Moody was sentenced to life in prison.

One day in 2023, Willey received an email from a lawyer who’d already filed a civil suit against Moody for intentional infliction of emotional distress on behalf of Conley. He was changing practices, and asked Willey if he’d take it on. Willey wanted to meet Conley first, and hear her story. 

During their initial conversation, he told her, “I don’t know if there’s a lot of money, and I don’t really know if the juice is worth the squeeze.” 

Her reply: “This is not about the money. This is about one more resolution for my daughter.”

A skinny, freckle-faced kid raised by a single mom, Willey had been bullied in school and chose law as a way to fight for the underdog. “I practice law, really, for no other reason than I refuse to allow people to be taken advantage of,” he says. “There is no greater equalizer in our system of government and laws than the civil courtroom.

“After I met Conley, I felt that she had not been afforded everything that she deserved under the law,” he adds. “So I wanted to work with her to try to make that more of a reality.”

The February 2025 civil trial in Georgetown—the blue-collar mill town where Drexel’s remains were found—posed challenges, despite the killer’s confession. 

“It deserved a significant verdict,” Willey says. “But at the same time, the person that we are trying the case against is spending life in prison.”

On the way to the courthouse, still mulling over how he would handle his closing argument, Willey kept circling back to Jeffrey Epstein’s highly publicized pedophilia case. “The billion-dollar amount just kept coming back to me,” Willey says. “My co-counsel and I prayed: What do we ask for that’s not too much, that’s not going to offend the jury?”

Stepping out of the car, he looked down and spotted a crucifix on the asphalt. “For me, if there ever was a sign,” he says, “that was it.” He decided to ask for $1 billion.

The jury deliberated for two hours before awarding Willey’s client $700 million in compensatory and punitive damages, the largest verdict for a single personal injury case in South Carolina history. Willey’s immediate reaction: “Relief. I carry their pain. I got to know my client very well. … When we get a verdict which speaks the truth, it’s relieving.” 

Proceedings are underway to sell the property Moody inherited after the murder to fulfill at least part of the judgment. Either way, a statement was made and the case still hits home for the father of four. “More than anything, it’s made me a better parent,” he says. “Dawn did not get that full childhood experience. I know what she would give for just one more week, one more day.”

Biggest Catches

On the wall in a small conference room adjoining Willey’s office hangs a taxidermied swordfish he caught during his bachelor-party fishing trip in Miami in 2014—sort of. “There’s a process now, where they pull up the fish, measure the fish, photograph the fish, and then release the fish, so they are able to get you a synthetic taxidermy version without having to actually kill the fish,” he says.

Other office treasures include mementos from Willey’s work on Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns: a marked-up copy of the former president’s prepublished manuscript, framed personal notes, and lots of photos. He also has 200 or so thank-you notes and cards. “I keep them just to remind me of the importance of gratitude,” Willey says. “I try to send out three handwritten notes every workday, to people that have impacted me, because of all the gratitude that I’ve received.”