Boyfriend of alleged kidnapping victim deletes her from social media

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A woman who claimed she was kidnapped after spotting a toddler on the side of an Alabama highway has vanished again – this time from her boyfriend’s social media accounts.

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A manhunt for Carlee Russell was called when the 25-year-old nursing student claimed she was taken after she pulled over on the side of the road to help a child.

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Russell returned home two days later under mysterious circumstances, though her family and boyfriend, Thomas Latrell Simmons, stood by the woman.

Now, photos of the couple on Simmons’ Facebook page are practically nonexistent after he did a clean sweep of her, including his declaration she had been “fighting for her life for 48 hours” the whole time she was missing, according to the Daily Mail.

“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.

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Russell had disappeared from Interstate 459 in Hoover, Ala., on July 13 and told a 911 dispatcher she saw a young boy wearing a diaper alone on the side of the road.

She then phoned a relative but the call went silent.

Russell emerged 49 hours later, with surveillance footage showing her walking alone on the sidewalk toward her family’s house.

They called 911 and police arrived to find her “conscious and speaking,” despite dispatch reports that she was “unresponsive but breathing.”

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Russell was treated in hospital and had one interview with police, detailing that she was taken by a man who came out of the trees when she stopped to check on the child, put in a car, then an 18-wheel truck, blindfolded and held at a home where a woman fed her cheese crackers.

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Russell has refused a second interview but according to Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis, detectives have so far been “unable to verify most of Carlee’s initial statement.”

Investigators soon began to put the pieces together and found Russell’s Internet searches before her disappearance included the Liam Neeson movie Taken, whether she was too old to be the subject of an Amber Alert, and the price of one-way bus tickets to Nashville.

In recent weeks, she also tweeted about her job and how it is “really starting to get on my dang nerves” on the same day she wrote, “Everyone wants to feel wanted.”

And on the day of her alleged kidnapping, she tweeted several times within 40 minutes of her call to 911.

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