The search for Layla Santanello, missing since June 2023, has been a series of false leads, shocking revelations, and one arrest made for an unlikely reason. The investigation, meanwhile, has also revealed striking similarities in Santanello’s case to that of another missing person from the area. Still, Santanello’s whereabouts remain a mystery.
Santanello, blonde and relatively small in stature, was last seen at around 6 a.m. on June 27, 2023 at the Americourt Hotel in Kingsport, Tennessee, where she lived. According to the New York Post, the 20-year-old mom had substance use issues — heroin and fentanyl, specifically — and had lost custody of her two-year-old daughter just a few weeks before she disappeared.
Others at the Americourt Hotel recalled Santanello wandering the establishment, going from door to door, seemingly in distress. She returned to her room, where she fought with an unidentified person inside, witnesses said. Santanello then disappeared into a wooded area, and was later spotted at a nearby storage facility. She was never seen again. Her last words to a friend: “I have to take care of something.”
Santanello’s relationships
Before she went missing, Santanello had been living with her boyfriend, Michael Thompson. Santanello and Thompson were in the process of breaking up, however. In the meantime, she had been staying at the home of another man, who, to date, has not been named in the press, but with whom Santanello had reportedly started a new relationship. Santanello and Thompson may have argued over the other new man before she disappeared.
Just days before she vanished, her mom, Jennifer Santanello, messaged her daughter on Facebook because she hadn’t heard from her since she left Thompson’s home. “I’m fine, Mom,” Santanello responded in a text. “I been with a friend. I don’t have a phone to text or call,” she said, adding she was using someone else’s.
Since then, Santanello’s mother, father, and stepmother have developed competing theories about what happened to her. Satanello’s mother — Jennifer, who now has custody of Santanello’s daughter — believes Layla may have been the victim of a serial killer, or abducted into sex trafficking. Her father and stepmother think her disappearance could be drug-related.
Stantanello’s stepmom, Brittany Zeitler, told The U.S. Sun, “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 Cash App requests, and a sighting
Deepening the mystery, Cash App requests, appearing to be from Santanello, showed up on her mother’s phone about two weeks after she was last seen. “TWLMG” was in the subject line of one of the requests, asking for $100, which Santanello’s mom, Jennifer, thought might mean “they won’t let me go,” The U.S. Sun reported.
Jennifer sent $1 and tried to ask questions to get more information, but there was no response. The requests went on for weeks, and the content escalated, threatening violence against Layla if they were ignored.
Around that same time, Santanello’s family hoped there was a break in the case when a sighting of Santanello was reported at a creamery in the area. That lead was proven false, police said, and the search continued, WJHL.com reported.
An arrest in the case
Nearly a year after Layla Santanello was last seen, Tennessee police made an arrest related to her disappearance, but Santanello had not been located. Law enforcement had determined that the Cash App requests were coming from Santanello’s estranged boyfriend, Michael Thompson, in an attempt to extort money from her family. Thompson is now accused of extortion and identity theft, among other charges. There is no evidence that Thompson knows anything about Santanello’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile, some have theorized that the Santanello case is similar to another disappearance — that of Hollynn Snapp, also from Kingsport, who vanished just a few months after Santanello. Could a predator be targeting women in the area?
Despite their similar appearance and the fact that Santanello and Snapp may have known each other, Tennessee police have said there’s no known connection between the two cases.
Police reportedly know what happened to Santanello
Meanwhile, the same month Thompson was arrested for the fraudulent Cash App requests, Santanello’s stepmother, Brittany Zeitler, told The U.S. Sun the police told her they knew what happened to her stepdaughter.
Zeitler told the outlet, “I received a call in December, basically saying, ‘Merry Christmas, we know what happened, we know who did it … but we can’t tell you anything yet.’ It’s just really hard when you’re not getting all the information … We need to get the closure that we need not just for ourselves but for her daughter,” Zeitler added.
