A local attorney has said he can’t believe that Carlee Russell, who claims she was kidnapped from the side of a highway, hasn’t been arrested yet.
Russell, 25, claims she was abducted in Alabama and held captive for two days, but local police have said they cannot corroborate any of her claims.
Now Alabama lawyer Eric Guster has said the police are using every means possible to avoid saying she lied, but he believes it is clear Russell wasted police’s time and money.
‘She says she was kidnaped, and a kidnapping didn’t happen. [They say] our citizens are safe. There’s not a kidnapper out there. So, they use every other synonym for lie except saying she lied, he told WVTM.
Nursing student Russell has now stopped cooperating with police, but initially told authorities she was taken 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 last Thursday at around 9.30pm.
Carlee returned home 49 hours after going missing, with her parents saying she was in a ‘bad state’. Carlee is now refusing to be interviewed by police for a second time after initially claiming she was abducted
Alabama lawyer Eric Guster has said the police are using every means possible to avoid saying Carlee Russell lied about being kidnapped
Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said Carlee’s story could not be proven
Guster says Police Chief Nick Derzis has outlined three crimes they believe Carlee committed: theft, lying to authorities and filing a false police report.
He says in light of that, he’s shocked she hasn’t already been arrested.
Guster also told the outlet he is worried this case could affect future missing persons cases, for African American women in particular.
‘It’s going to be much more difficult for African American women to be believed, and it may actually decrease the number of actual reports of things because people are already afraid that they won’t be believed’ he said.
Guster said he expects Carlee will be charged with filing a false police report, but says police are likely waiting to complete their investigation first.
‘They cannot force her to give a statement or give a statement. What I think will happen is Hoover is going to continue investigating this case.
‘I expect Carlee to be charged at some point, at minimum for making a false statement. But they have to make sure they finish the full investigation,’ he said yesterday.
It comes after the mother of kidnapped and murdered Alabama teenager Aniah Blanchard has hit back at Russell.
Angela Harris, who campaigns to help raise awareness of abductions after her own daughter was kidnapped and murdered in 2019, helped search for Carlee Russell. She said on Tuesday that the truth will emerge eventually about the baffling Russell case
Carlee reappeared on Saturday night at her parents’ home. It remains a mystery what happened to her
Carlethia ‘Carlee’ Nichole Russell, 25, is seen moving into the shoulder lane in her red Mercedes with the flashers on. Police say she drove 600 yards before pulling over – the distance of six football fields – and claimed the whole time to be looking at a toddler
Carlee Russell’s mysterious disappearance and reappearance in Alabama last week
Angela Harris, whose 19-year-old daughter was kidnapped and brutally murdered in 2309, spearheaded the desperate search to find Carlee Russell before she turned up alive – and has now warned the family: ‘Things will come out.’
Harris appeared emotional as she issued a 10-minute TikTok statement after Russell’s reappearance at the weekend.
‘Things will come out,’ she stated in the video.
‘But I would do it all over again, in a heartbeat – I would get right up and go.’
Exhausted after the weekend search, Harris, who suffers from an autoimmune disease, said she was just overjoyed that Russell was now home.
Emotional, tearful, and at times visibly irate, Harris told her social media followers that they should always be on their guard, irrespective of this case, and warned repeatedly that there were ‘predators everywhere’.
‘I’m not going to address what did happen, what didn’t happen,’ said Harris, whose daughter was brutally killed by Ibraheem Yazeed, 32, after last being seen at a gas station in October 2019.
‘But put yourself in a mother’s shoes. It is a miracle that, two days your child is missing, and then you have your child back.
Angela Harris’ daughter Aniah Blanchard was last seen on October 23, 2019, at a gas station in Auburn, Alabama, before she was kidnapped and murdered by Ibraheem Yazeed, 32
‘That is so overwhelming I can’t even tell you how I broke down.’
Harris said that, whatever emerged from Russell’s story, the essential lesson was vigilance.
‘Yes, we are in danger,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter about this one situation. It matters that you are aware.’
Harris said she will speak further about the case on Thursday as she thanked supporters on Facebook.
Aniah’s father, Elijah also said his wounds had been reopened, and it wasn’t OK to bring his family into the search.
Writing on Facebook the bereaved father wrote: ‘Please understand this is not okay to put my family through this by bringing Aniah Blanchard up during this. My daughter was kidnapped and she was really fighting for her life. People don’t want this type of hurt.’
Police said they have traced Russel’s every move and corroborate her story up until the 911 call where Carlee reported seeing a toddler along the interstate. Police have not found evidence to support that sighting.
‘We pretty much know exactly what took place from the time she left work until she got on the 911 call,’ said Derzis, the Hoover chief of police.
Carlee’s parents say she ‘banged on the door’ on Saturday at 10.45pm and was in a ‘bad state’
‘Carlee has given detectives her statement so that they can continue to pursue her abductor,’ said her mother Talitha Russell (left) in an interview on Tuesday
Carlee Russell, seen with her boyfriend, reappeared at her parents’ home in Hoover on Saturday night, 48 hours after she disappeared from the side of an interstate
‘We can see getting out of the car on the interstate from that footage.
‘After that, I think she only knows. We don’t.’
He added: ‘We’ve asked to interview Carlee a second time but have not been granted that request.
‘As you can see there are many questions left to be answered but only Carlee can provide those answers.
‘What we can say is we have been unable to verify most of Carlee’s initial statement made to investigators and we have no reason to believe there is a threat to public safety related to this particular case.’
Detectives stopped short of accusing her of maliciously lying, but instead questioned her mental state, and said they were now struggling to believe her story.
Carlee’s parents, Talitha and Carlos Russell, are said to be shielding her from further interrogation.
Carlee’s parents swallowed her story whole and repeated it on the TODAY show on Monday after Carlee reappeared at their house with a busted lip and in a ‘bad state’.
‘She fought for her life,’ her father Carlos, a VP of underwriting for BBVA bank, said.
Now, they have gone to ground.
Questions linger over whether the 25-year-old nursing student and spa worker may be on the hook criminally while friends and neighbors who rallied around the family are demanding answers.
Filing a false police report in Alabama is a Class A misdemeanor with a penalty of up to one year in prison and a fine of $6,000.
The owner of the spa where she worked also now wants to know whether the $102 cash found in her sock came from his register.
He told Good Morning America today that Carlee was a pleasant employee who got along with other staff.
It also emerged that Russell researched the Liam Neeson movie ‘Taken’ and whether she was too old for an Amber Alert, plus searched for a one-way bus ticket to Nashville.
