The deepening mystery into what happened—or didn’t happen—to Carlee Russell took another twist on Thursday, with the once-missing Alabama woman’s boyfriend wiping his social media clean of Russell, deleting dozens of photos of her and comments about her disappearance.
Most notably, Thomar Latrell Simmons erased a lengthy post on Instagram and Facebook that said Russell was “fighting for her life for 48 hours” after she went missing in Hoover. Russell’s parents have insisted she was abducted, but police have indicated that Russell’s claims aren’t quite adding up.
Simmons appears to have quietly wiped every trace of Russell from his social media, which was filled with photos of him and Russell as recently as Wednesday. As of Thursday, his Instagram featured just nine pictures of himself with his comments turned off.
The move by Simmons came a day after police revealed Russell made some questionable Google searches before her disappearance. Cops say she searched the movie Taken, about a woman’s abduction, and whether she was too old to be the subject of an Amber Alert.
Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said Russell also searched for the price of a “one-way” bus ticket to Nashville, about 200 miles north of her hometown, as well as “how to take money from a register without being caught.”
Derzis added that investigators uncovered several other searches on Russell’s phone “that appeared to shed light on her mindset,” but they were being kept private “out of respect for her privacy.”
“As you can see, there are many questions left to be answered,” Derzis said Wednesday. “But only Carlee can provide those answers.”
Russell disappeared on July 13 on Interstate 459 around 9:30 p.m., minutes after calling 911 to say she spotted a young boy wearing a diaper alone on the side of the highway.
Russell’s parents said Tuesday that Russell was talking with a loved one on the phone around the same time. That loved one apparently heard Russell scream before the line went silent. Cops arrived shortly after and found Russell’s car abandoned with her belongings inside, but there was no trace of her or a child.
Earlier that night, she allegedly smuggled out a bathrobe, toilet paper, and “other items” that belonged to her workplace. Cops say she also made a stop at Target an hour before disappearing, loading up on granola bars and Cheez-Its—snacks that weren’t found in her abandoned car.
A frantic search ensued for Russell, captivating a national audience as cops pleaded for leads. Russell’s mother, Talitha Russell, said many tips were called into her and the police, but they were all fake. She described those callers as being “so evil” in a Today Show report on Tuesday.
In that same interview, Talitha insisted her daughter was abducted off the highway and that she returned home on foot after escaping.
“There were moments when she physically had to fight for her life, and there were moments when she had to mentally fight for her life,” Talitha said.
When pressed to reveal more details about what her daughter told her, Talitha said she couldn’t because it remained an active investigation.
Simmons had described what happened to Russell similarly but appears to have walked his comments back. He could not be reached for comment.
“She was literally fighting for her life for 48 hours, so until she’s physically & mentally stable again she is not able to give any updates or whereabouts on her kidnapper at this very moment,” Simmons wrote in the since-deleted post.
Police Chief Derzis said surveillance footage showed Russell walking alone on the sidewalk toward her family’s house on Saturday night. Her family phoned 911 and police arrived to find her “conscious and speaking,” despite a dispatch report indicating she was “unresponsive but breathing.”
Derzis said Russell was taken to a hospital but has since been released. She gave a statement to police but hasn’t cooperated with their requests for a second interview, police said. Russell has not made any public statements herself.
“She stated when she got out of her vehicle to check on the child, a man came out of the trees and mumbled that he was checking on the baby,” Derzis said. “She claimed that the man then picked her up and she screamed.”
Derzis added, “He then forced her into a car. The next thing she remembers is being in the trailer of an 18-wheeler.”
Russell, a 25-year-old nursing student, told police that her abductor was a white man with orange hair and a bald spot on the back of his head, according to Derzis. She claimed he was with a woman and child, but she never saw the two.
Russell told cops she tried to escape but failed initially. As punishment, she claimed her abductor forced her to undress as he took pictures of her, but they never had sex, Derzis said.
Derzis said Russell recalled being able to escape on Saturday night by darting through the woods and finding her way back to her family’s home. The chief said detectives have found no proof to support “most” of Russell’s claims to police.
When asked at a Wednesday press conference what else happened to Russell in the time she was missing, Derzis responded, “That’s the $100 question.”
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