In a new radio interview, Chad Drexel says he will stop at nothing to put his daughter's killer or killers in prison

Brittanee Drexel's Father Says He Once Came Face-to-Face with an Alleged Suspect in Her Abduction

Chad Drexel came face to face with the – and who laughed at him when handed Brittanee’s missing person flier, he claims in a new interview.

While talking earlier this week to Radio 95.1 in Rochester, New York, Chad revealed how he traveled to the area of McClellanville, South Carolina, in 2013, searching for clues into his daughter’s mysterious disappearance.

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There, Chad said, he unwittingly met the man the FBI alleges had something to do with her abduction and death.

“The local authorities wouldn’t go down to that area, saying, ‘We’ve already looked at them, Chad,’ ” he said in the interview. “My private investigator said, ‘If you really want to go, we’ll just park and you can walk around.’ ”

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During his travels in the small, rural town in South Carolina low country, where authorities say Brittanee’s cell phone last pinged, Chad passed out fliers to pedestrians and to a young man in a car who rubbed him the wrong way, he said.

“I gave him the flier,” Chad said. “He had a car full of brothers, friends. He handed the flier to one guy in the back seat. They all laughed and then drove away and threw the flier out the window.”

When Chad saw the man crumble the piece of paper and discard it, “I got mad,” he said. “I said, ‘There’s something about this guy…'”

That’s when his private investigator asked him, “Do you know who that was?” Chad said.

“I proceeded to find out that that’s who that was,” he says. “Da’Shaun Taylor.”

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Brittanee, who was 17 at the time, vanished on April 25, 2009, during She had gone without her parents’ permission and was last seen on surveillance video leaving a hotel on Ocean Boulevard, the busy main drag in the popular seaside resort town.

For years, as authorities investigated her disappearance, they said little about what they believe happened to the upbeat high school soccer player.

In June, they said Brittanee was likely held for several days against her will before being killed.

And then on Aug. 15, during a federal bond hearing on unrelated charges for Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor, 25, of McClellanville, South Carolina, an FBI agent alleged damning new details.

Agent Gerrick Munoz testified that a prison inmate had told authorities he’d seen Taylor in 2009 allegedly “sexually abusing” Brittanee with other men in a “stash house” in the McClellanville area.

Munoz also testified that investigators have received corroborating information about the case, including secondhand information from another jailhouse informant, who claims Taylor allegedly picked up Brittanee in 2009 in Myrtle Beach and brought her back to the McClellanville area

The inmate also said he believed Taylor’s father, Timothy Shaun Taylor, 43, of McClellanville, shot Brittanee to death, Munoz testified. The informant said her captors then allegedly threw her body into a “gator pit” in a nearby swamp, to dispose of any evidence, according to Munoz’s testimony.

(The FBI has not returned calls seeking comment, and the U.S. Attorney declined to comment on the case.)

The younger Taylor’s lawyer, David Aylor, dismissed the accusations in court, and his mother, Joan Taylor, testified to his character as a “great kid.” She later dismissed the accusations against her husband and son as “craziness,” and Aylor said in court that the government’s case is a way to “squeeze” his client into cooperation.

In a statement released Wednesday to PEOPLE, the younger Taylor said he had nothing to do with Brittanee’s disappearance or death.

Chad said he thinks otherwise. “I want the community to know that … they messed with the wrong person and family on this case,” he said in the radio interview.