A VULNERABLE young woman who has now been missing for five months had secretly started a new relationship shortly before she vanished, according to her step-mom.
Layla Santanello, 21, hasn't been seen since June 27. The mom-of-one was last seen near a motel in Kingsport, Tennessee, shoeless and in distress before disappearing into thin air.
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Layla's family is urgently seeking answers about the circ*mstances surrounding her sudden disappearance, with each passing day growing more desperate than the last.
Her mom, Jennifer Santanello, and step-mom, Brittany Zeitler, have each hired private detectives in an attempt to retrace her final steps.
The two family members are working with slightly different timelines of where Layla was last seen, but they both agree that she was at the Americourt Motel, along American Way, on June 27.
From their understanding, Layla and her live-in boyfriend had a falling out days before her disappearance and she had been staying with friends for a few nights before checking into the Americourt on June 25.
Read More On Layla's Case
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.
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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."
The last-known sighting of Layla, according to Zeitler, occurred outside of a storage facility a short distance from the Americourt.
Surveillance footage obtained by her PI showed a shoeless Layla heading south towards the Kingsport Greenbelt.
Where she went next currently remains a mystery.
Jennifer, meanwhile, believes her daughter was last seen at an ice cream store less than a mile away along North Eastman Road.
According to a witness she spoke with, Layla asked to borrow a worker's phone and then left, telling them she was going across the street to a nearby Five Below to buy some shoes.
Layla never made it to the Five Below and no surveillance footage was captured of her at the ice cream shop.
Zeitler and her PI don't believe that sighting of Layla is credible.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has been contacted for comment to provide clarity on the matter.
INTO THIN AIR
As an investigation continues, TBI and Zeitler's PI are now combing back through surveillance footage from the area for June to determine where Layla may have headed after the storage facility.
The troubling saga began on June 24 - three days before Layla was last seen alive - 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's boyfriend - who The U.S. Sun is declining to name at this time - appealed for information about Layla's whereabouts on social media but didn't report her missing to police.
It was Zeitler and her husband, Layla's father, who would report her missing in the early hours of June 27th.
I love you so much more.
Layla's final message
The reason Layla's boyfriend didn't call the cops, Zeitler claimed, is because he it out on bond and was worried about getting into trouble.
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."
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."
A TRAGIC TURN
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 ofstrange Cash App requestsfrom 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 several minutes, and so Jennifer sent her daughter's account $1, with a message asking if she was okay.
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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.
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, cold, or tired.
"It's the worst feeling in the world."
'SWEET GIRL, WE MISS YOU'
As she patiently waits for updates, Jennifer says she routinely has to prevent her mind from going to the darker places and picturing the worst-case scenarios to explain Layla's prolonged absence.
She is determined to cling to what she calls a "slither" of hope that her daughter is still out there somewhere.
But 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.
Issuing her own tearful appeal to Layla, Jennifer heartbreakingly said: "Oh sweet girl, we miss you terribly.
"Life is not the same without you here, and if you don't ever come home life will never be the same again.
"There's a giant void in our family without you. And we all hope you know how much we love and miss you."
Publicly, no suspects or persons of interest have been named and Layla's disappearance is still being investigated as a missing persons case.
Anyone with information that may help locate Layla 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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