THE OF CURIOUS CASE SHERRI PAPINI
INSIDE THE MUM’S FASCINATING ‘FAKE ABDUCTION’
Sherri Papini was once known around her small town as a sort of “supermum”. The beautiful mother of two, 39, lived in Redding, California with her husband, Keith, and their kids, Tyler and Violet. She would often be seen jogging around the idyllic suburbs.
The Papinis were the classic ‘picket fence’ nuclear family. But everything changed one late afternoon six years ago. On November 2, 2016, Papini went for her usual jog around a wooded area close to her home. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and carried her iphone with a pair of earbuds. It was nothing out of the ordinary for her to take a long run, but Keith grew suspicious when he returned home at 5.30pm to find their house empty. There was no sign of Papini and the couple’s young children hadn’t been picked up from daycare. A panicked Keith used an app to trace his wife’s phone 1.5km away from the family home.
From there, he alerted the authorities and police
combed the town for any trace of the missing mum.
Papini’s smartphone was quickly found sitting, undamaged and face up, on a nearby road alongside her earbuds, which had strands of her hair tangled in them. This scene sparked fears of an abduction, triggering a multi-state search involving canine units and helicopters.
“Everybody who knows my wife knows that there’s no reason for her to leave,” a tormented Keith told reporters. “She was definitely taken against her will.”
Despite land and air searches for weeks, Papini still hadn’t been found. A $134,000 reward was offered for her safe return, however it yielded nothing.
Finally, 22 days after she went missing, Papini reappeared on the side of a rural road at 4.30am, two hours away from her home.
The distressed housewife had flagged down a passing car, her hands bound and face covered with bruises.
It was a chilling sight. Papini was unrecognisable with her long blonde locks chopped off, multi-coloured bruising, chains around her waist and a strange branding on her shoulder. Keith told Good Morning America it was a “mixture of horror and elation” to finally see his wife. Papini claimed to authorities she had been abducted by two armed Hispanic women.
According to her statement, she spent three weeks captive, being repeatedly beaten and tortured, and was only fed “tortillas and rice”.
In October 2017, nearly a year after Papini vanished, police asked the public for help in identifying the suspects with sketches of two Hispanic women, based on her account.
At the same time, forensic investigators found male DNA on Papini’s clothing, which wasn’t from her husband. As authorities scrambled to apprehend her “abductors”, Papini’s story appeared to unravel. Police questioned if the mum had faked the entire ordeal. It was straight out of the plot of Gone Girl.
Then, six years after Papini’s disappearance, there was finally a break in the case. In March 2022, Papini was arrested for allegedly faking her own kidnapping and lying to federal agents.
Authorities believe she was with an ex-boyfriend, over 900km away, the entire time she was missing. Prosecutors allege the mother plotted the hoax abduction with her former partner and “harmed herself to substantiate her claims”. They had used phone records to link Papini to the unnamed man, who claimed he had “no idea” about his ex-girlfriend’s plan until he saw the news coverage.
“When a young mother went missing in broad daylight, a community was filled with fear and concern,” US Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement. “Ultimately, the investigation revealed that there was no kidnapping, and that time and resources that could have been used to investigate actual crime, protect the community, [was] wasted.”
The ex-boyfriend has since confessed to the authorities. As of 2022, Papini has been charged with lying to a federal agent and for mail fraud, relating to the more than $40,000 she collected from the California Victim’s Compensation Board. Papini, who remains under house arrest, faces up to
25 years in prison if convicted on both charges.
The Papini family claimed law enforcement “ambushed” Papini when they made their latest arrest and have denied the allegations
“We are confused by several aspects of the charges and hope to get clarification in the coming days,” their statement read.
Papini will face court again on April 29 and is set to learn her fate in the coming months.