Two weeks after actress Chanel Maya Banks went missing, police notified the family she’d been found. Only, when it came time to identify Banks, the family insisted it wasn’t her.
The “Gossip Girl” and “Blue Bloods” actress was reported missing on Oct. 30, KABC-TV reported.
“Five days without hearing from my cousin is red flags and alarm bells,” Banks’ cousin Danielle-Tori Singh said. “She doesn’t go more than 48 hours without speaking to me or her mom. … That girl is more like a big sister to me.”
The search ended Monday, after police found the actress unharmed in Texas with no foul play suspected.
But when the Los Angeles Police Department showed Banks’ mother and cousin a still photo of Banks, the family immediately noticed a problem.
“They did show us a still, and within half a second, we said, ‘That’s not her,’” Singh said at a news conference Tuesday.
Banks’ mother also said the photo was not of her daughter.
“We were there for over an hour trying to convince them that ‘This is not my daughter. This is not my daughter. This is my daughter. I have one child,’” Judy Kumar said.
Video and audio of Banks only fueled the family’s skepticism.
“We were able to listen to what this woman was saying, and she did not sound like my cousin,” Singh said. “My cousin has a New York accent. It’s something you don’t really ever get rid of, no matter where you live in the world.”
Singh added that Banks, 36, who was from New York, had been living in California for 10 years. But the woman believed to be Banks had shown police an expired New York license, Singh said.
Banks appeared in the footage to have lost 40 to 50 lbs. in the two weeks she had been missing, something that seemed unlikely, Singh added.
“This is wrong on many, many levels,” Banks said, referring to how the police reportedly handled the case.
The plot took a major twist, however, when Banks subsequently posted to her social media accounts that she wasn’t missing, that she was fine, and that she had gone to Texas to be baptized and escape her allegedly abusive family.
“I AM NOT MISSING. I just want to be free of a toxic woman and her family. INTERVIEW INCOMING,” Banks wrote in a story on her Instagram page.
“I have met with Police and verified that not only am I okay, but I’m finally free from my mother Judy Kumar and her family,” Banks wrote in a statement on Instagram.
“They say, once you’re free in Christ Jesus, you’re free indeed, so I told my husband six days ago I was going to get baptized by one of my favorite pastors Pastor Robert Clancy. He drove me to the airport and then I was off for a week…but I also saw it as an opportunity to escape my cage.”
LATEST: Chanel Maya Banks clarifies she isn’t missing; her trip to Texas was for spiritual renewal.https://t.co/JqPifYeXdE pic.twitter.com/q1PQJYT1Vh
— Los Angeles Magazine (@LAmag) November 14, 2024
Banks also alleged that she experienced sexual abuse from her step father Joseph Kumar since “before she could recall” and as recent as 2014.
She also claimed that any time she would try to leave, her family would “falsify official government documents relaying lies concerning my mental health.”
“There will be no more lies. Everything in the darkness must come to light. Thus says the Lord,” Banks wrote.
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