Carlee Russell abduction and wandering child story beginning to fall apart as police now question her mental health amid new revelations and incriminating Google searches.
Is the jig finally up? A report has told of Alabama woman, Carlee Russell who has continued to maintain she was abducted having stolen items from her place of work along with making incriminating Google searches in the immediate hours before her calling 911 to report an alleged child wandering along the highway last week.
Carlee, 25, according to a press corps meeting on Wednesday is alleged to have told police that she was ‘abducted’ by a white man with ‘orange hair’ who appeared from the trees on the side of I-459 after she saw a ‘baby boy in a diaper’ walking along the road on Thursday at around 9.30pm.
Her disappearance sparked a frantic police and volunteer hunt which generated $62,000 in donations to Crime Stoppers, and nationwide fears for the nursing student.
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She reappeared at her parents’ house on Saturday night, 49 hours after vanishing, in what her parents described as a ‘bad state’.
During Wednesday’s press conference, Hoover Police went on to present new evidence that points to her disappearance being a hoax.
‘We have been unable to verify most of her initial statements, and we have no reason to believe there is a threat to public safety,’ Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said.
Detectives stopped short of accusing her of maliciously lying, instead questioning her mental state, but said they were now struggling to believe her story.
Carlee is now refusing to be interviewed for a second time, they said, after initially giving them her elaborate abduction story.
‘She said a man came out of the trees and mumbled that he was checking on the baby, then picked her up and took her over a fence and into a car.
‘She said the next thing she remembered was being in the trailer of an 18-wheeler, and that there was a female whose voice she heard but who she didn’t see.
‘She told detectives she could hear a baby crying, and that the male had orange hair,’ Chief Derzis said.
Carlee’s story included escaping from the pair then being recaptured.
‘She says they blindfolded her but didn’t tie her up because they didn’t want to leave compression marks,’ Chief Derzis said.
She also told the police that the pair made her strip and photographed her body, but said they did not physically or sexually abuse her.
But there’s more.
Story unraveling at the seams
Prior to going missing, Carlee was captured on surveillance cameras stealing a dark bathrobe and toilet paper from The Woodhouse Spa where she worked.
She also bought Cheez-Its and granola bars from Target, that detectives believe she took with her when she vanished.
Her phone, wig and Apple Watch were found in her car, along with take-out food she had ordered from a restaurant near her work.
She had also driven 600 yards – the length of six football fields -while on the phone to 911 claiming to be looking at a baby boy on the side of the road.
‘How to take money from a register without being caught?’
At the press conference, detectives played her calm 911 call reporting the child.
In the days leading up to her disappearance, she researched terms like: ‘Do you have to pay for an Amber alert?’
On the day of her disappearance, her Google searches included: ‘How to take money from a register without being caught?’
She also searched: ‘Birmingham bus station’ and ‘one-way ticket from Birmingham to Nashville.’
She also researched terms relating to kidnapping and disappearances, including on the day she vanished.
Carlee claims she managed to escape from them while they were moving her in a vehicle, and that she ran home.
Carlee’s parents, who had asked the media and police for help in finding her, and who had had continued to maintain that she been abducted and ‘fought for her life’, declined to address the new evidence released today.
It remains unclear whether or not she will be charged.
A GoFundme fundraiser for Russell has since been removed.
