FEARS continue to mount for a missing woman who vanished five months ago and was last seen barefoot and in distress - as new surveillance footage changes the timeline of her last-known whereabouts.
Layla Santanello, 21, has beenmissingfrom her hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee, since June 27.
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It was believed the young mom-of-one was last sighted leaving an ice cream shop on North Eastman Road and heading to a nearby Five Below to buy shoes - but she never made it to the store.
However, investigators with the Tennesee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) no longer deem the sighting credible, Layla's step-mom, Brittany Zeitler, told The U.S. Sun last week.
Zeitler has been conducting her own probe into Layla's disappearance with the help of a private investigator.
Last week, her PI uncovered new surveillance footage from outside a storage facility showing a shoeless Layla heading south towards the Kingsport Greenbelt some distance from the ice cream store.
READ MORE ABOUT LAYLA'S CASE
Where she headed next remains a total mystery.
TBI and Zeitler's PI are now combing back through surveillance footage from the area for June in search of new leads and to establish a more accurate timeline of her disappearance.
Layla was last seen wearing a white tank top, black leggings, and no shoes.
Both Zeitler and Layla's mom Jennifer Santanello have spent the last four-and-a-half months meticulously tracing Layla's last movements in search of answers for where she may be now.
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The troubling saga began on June 24 - three days before Layla was last seen - when Jennifer received a message from Layla's boyfriend via Layla'sFacebookaccount, asking if she was "in jail" or in thehospitalbecause he didn't know where she was, messages viewed by The U.S. Sun show.
Later the same night, Layla messaged her mom from the same account, telling her "I'm fine mom [...] I been with a friend [sic]. I don't have a phone to text or call. I'm using someone els's [sic]."
"Ok. I love you," replied Jennifer, to which Layla responded, in what would prove to be her final message, "I love you so much more."
Layla and her boyfriend, according to Jennifer, had a falling out days prior and Layla had been staying with friends for a few nights before checking into the Americourt Motel, along American Way, on June 25.
But by the time she made it to the hotel, she looked disheveled and appeared paranoid as if she was "trying to hide in the shadows", witnesses have told Jennifer.
Zeitler said she has since learned more details about the nature of Layla and her boyfriend's altercation.
Friends of Layla's have since informed her that she was secretly starting another relationship with a different man, Zeitler said.
She believes Layla's boyfriend found out about the affair and so Layla fled their home, without shoes or any of her personal belongings, and ran to one of her friend's houses.
Layla spent two nights sleeping at friends' homes - one of whom was her apparent new love interest - before going to the Americourt motel on June 25, Zeitler said, where another of her friends was staying.
On June 26, other guests at the motel reported seeing Jennifer going door to door.
Again, she appeared to be in a state of distress but declined help from numerous strangers who asked if she wanted to borrow a phone or needed a ride home.
At some stage in the late morning of the 26th, there was another altercation involving Layla and an unknown person.
Before that altercation, Layla, according to Zeitler, told her friend: "I have to take care of something."
Layla was threatened with eviction from the motel because of the commotion.
She then walked off into a nearby woods around midday.
"There's a warehouse [near the woods] and there were approximately five employees that were working that said they could see Layla sticking out from a mile away," said Zeitler.
"Based on her paranoia, her panicking and her being freaked out, it could be that she was running from whoever she spoke with at the motel."
CLINGING TO HOPE
The last known sighting of Layla came the following day outside of the storage facility.
Layla's trail goes completely cold therein.
It was Zeitler and her husband, Layla's father, who would report her missing in the early hours of June 27th.
Zeitler said Layla was struggling with fentanyl addiction at the time of her disappearance.
Despite the lack of leads in the case, Zeitler said she will continue clinging on to hope Layla is still out there and alive until she's told otherwise.
"All we can do is hope and pray that she is," said Zeitler.
"I've heard quite a few success stories of similar cases and that gives you a glimmer of hope, so I'm just going to continue thinking she's alive until we're told otherwise.
"Her family all hope she's out there somewhere - it's just a matter of where."
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Speaking directly to her step-daughter, Zeitler added: "Come home and we can start this over, together.
"You can be given a new day, a new chance, and a new beginning.
"God only knows what you're going through right now, but there's a lot of help and a lot of love to offer you.
"And with the right therapy and support, we'll be able to overcome anything you're facing right now."
DISTURBING CASH APP REQUESTS
TBI has not yet responded to a request for comment from The U.S. Sun seeking additional information in the case.
The family was provided with a glimmer of - what would later turn out to be false - hope that Layla was still alive roughly two weeks after she was last seen.
That hope came in the form of a series of strange Cash App requests from Layla's account, sent to Zeitler and Jennifer asking for money.
In the subject line of one request seeking $100, the letters "twlmg" appeared on the screen.
Several requests were made with the same subject line over a period of several minutes, and so Jennifer sent her daughter's account $1, with a message asking if she was okay.
As a back-and-forth of transactions ensued, Jennifer said she believed the acronym in the subject line of the first request meant "they won't let me go" and so she believed her daughter was being held hostage.
We fear our kids disappearing or losing them, but you just never believe that it's going to happen to you.
Jennifer SantanelloLayla's mom
She contacted thepoliceand began asking the requester of the funds more specific questions to verify it was Layla sending the messages.
"At some point, I started asking, 'What's your brother's name?', 'What's your baby brother's birthday?' and other specific questions like that, that only she would know, but this person was just ignoring them," recounted Jennifer.
"And I thought, 'No, something is wrong here.' But then, periodically throughout the next several weeks, they kept coming in [...] and then the requests got more and more threatening."
One such threatening request was made for $95, with the caption: "For 15 mins or you'll find her n peaces [sic]."
"They were very detailed about the things they were going to do if we didn't send the money," said Jennifer.
"But that's the sad thing, over all those conversations, because you had to send $1 to send a sentence, we probably did send the money they were asking for."
Authorities were eventually able to access the account and determine who was sending the messages.
According to Jennifer, the Cash App messages had all been part of an elaborate hoax, concocted by one of Layla's so-called friends, who attempted to profit from the tragic situation by impersonating her.
"I can't say who it was, but it added torture and trauma on top of an already terrible situation," Jennifer confessed.
"As of right now, there's no reason to believe the person who did it had anything to do with her disappearance, it just seems like it was somebody who thought they could have a little come up at our expense."
Jennifer said the culprit's home was searched and there were no signs that Layla had been there recently. The individual was not one of the friends she'd been staying with in the days before she vanished.
She called it a crime of opportunity and said the person responsible had allowed Layla to log into her account weeks earlier but never logged back out.
Insisting she's now living every parent's worst nightmare, Jennifer has admitted that her optimism of finding Layla alive is waning with each passing day.
"We fear our kids disappearing or losing them, but you just never believe that it's going to happen to you," she said.
"You see it happen on the news and you empathize, and you can try to think about how that might feel, but unless it's happened to you, you just can't.
"It's the not knowing, the daily trauma; it's like an open wound all the time.
"There's no closure, there's no answers, you have no idea if she's alive or not; you have no idea whether she's sick, or cold, or tired.
"It's the worst feeling in the world."
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NO ANSWERS, ONLY THEORIES
As she patiently waits by the phone for updates, Jennifer says she routinely tries to prevent her mind from going to the darker places and exploring less favorable outcomes as she otherwise clings to what she calls a "slither" of hope that Layla's still out there somewhere.
She described feeling as if she's living in a bubble, disconnected from the outside world as she remains consumed by the whys and what-ifs leading up to June 27.
The Cash App incident is an indication that her daughter perhaps wasn't keeping the best company in the months before she vanished, Jennifer said.
During those months, she also noticed a change in Layla's behavior, describing her as more withdrawn and isolated.
On the day of her disappearance, Jennifer fears that Layla may have been abducted by sex traffickers or suffered some kind of psychotic break - perhaps even both.
If she believed she was in any danger, Jennifer says she still can't understand why Layla didn't call home for help, suggesting she may not have been of sound mind at the time.
Zeitler, meanwhile, fears that Layla may have purchased a batch of bad drugs in the company of bad friends who either left her for dead or disposed of her body somewhere.
And, unlike Jennifer, Zeitler doesn't believe Layla's disappearance is connected to the vanishing of another young woman, 19-year-old Hollynn Snapp, who went missing just over a month ago, less than three miles from where Layla was last seen.
While Zeitler claims coincidence, Jennifer and Hollynn's mom believes they are linked.
Both of the women are under five feet tall, of a similar build, and appear "child-like" at first glance, said Jennifer.
Layla and Hollynn were also both seemingly vulnerable at the time of their disappearances.
Heather Snapp told local NBC affiliateWCYB-5that Hollynn is very sweet and trusting and is especially concerned because her daughter functions significantly lower than her actual age, like that of a "9 or 10-year-old."
Further investigation found that Layla and Hollynn swam in the same social circles and knew many of the same people.
Heather and Jennifer have both said they believe the two girls may have been trafficked.
Jennifer also wonders whether there could be an even more sinister link between the two cases.
She told The U.S. Sun: "A lot of things pop into my head. I wonder about trafficking, but also aren't serial killers the type to pick a specific height and weight and that kind of thing?
"These are thoughts that hadn't fully occurred to me until we had another girl going missing.
"There could be a serious problem going on around here. There are a lot of theories that roll through my head over and over, every day.
"It's a scary world we live in these days [...] anything is possible."
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Anyone with information that may help locate the two women is asked to contact the Kingsport Police Department at (423) 343-9780 or private investigator Steve Fischer at (877)-619-9890.
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