A South Carolina woman connected to the 2009 killing of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel of Chili was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison on Thursday.

Angel Vause, 57, was the longtime girlfriend of Drexel's killer, Raymond Moody. Moody was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to murdering the teen, who disappeared while on vacation in South Carolina in 2009.

Last year, Vause pleaded guilty to three counts of giving a false statement to a federal agent.

Officials say she admitted to lying about Drexel's kidnapping, saying the 17-year-old voluntarily accompanied her and Moody to do drugs.

“For more than a decade, Brittanee’s loved ones were left to imagine the worst possible scenario in Brittanee’s disappearance while Vause withheld the truth,” U.S. Attorney Adair Ford Boroughs for the District of South Carolina said in a statement. “We hope Brittanee’s loved ones can now have both the closure and a measure of justice that comes with this sentence. May she rest in peace knowing that her mother Dawn was relentless in her pursuit of justice.”