sherry papini, California mother sentenced for forgery of kidnapping To run away with a former love interest and then spend years collecting victims’ aid money, begging her husband and the police not to pursue charges against one of her fake kidnappers, before they finally hatch her plan. Face her with the truth: her kidnappers did not exist.
Papini meets with Shasta County Sheriff’s Office investigators on August 13, 2020 – three years after that claimed he was abducted by two Hispanic women When she was running in Redding, California. she was involved Her husband, Keith Papini, For a meeting with two investigators.
According to interview footage, investigators begin by asking Sherry if she wants Keith to be in the room as they discuss “this next step of things.” They then left the couple alone inside the room, at which point Sherry Papini turned and began to cry and whisper to her husband.
“I don’t want them to find him,” she can be heard saying in the video, in which Sherry said she was abducted by a woman. “I don’t want him to be arrested. I don’t want to accuse him. I don’t want them to find him.”
Keith Papini then asked her to tell him, to which he replied: “Because he saved my life.”
“Honey, there’s clearly something going on here. Obviously there’s something you’re not telling me. It’s going to be really bad if you don’t tell me,” Keith can be heard saying Is.
Sherri Papini later said that, “She saved my life, and that’s why I get to raise my kids every day.”
“No matter what happens do you think it just sits here?” Keith said later. “All that happened is over. And it doesn’t matter what you say. The girl is going to be in trouble.”
Then he said to Papini, “You don’t mean anything… to the point where I’m scared now.”
A few minutes later the investigators entered again. Keith Papini can be seen sitting in a chair next to Sherry as he slowly reiterates how he doesn’t want to bring charges against the woman or have her arrested.
“I don’t want him to get into trouble,” Papini told investigators.
Then a detective replied: “She’s not going to get into trouble. So, the DNA traces back to James Reyes.”
According to the video, the second investigator said, “The DNA you had on you is James Reyes.”
Reyes is Papini’s ex-boyfriend, whom she said she knew closely in the early 2000s when she was living in Southern California.
Keith Papini placed his hands on his lap, his foot on his knee, as the detectives continued to reveal their findings. Sherry looked directly at the detectives and occasionally at her husband.
“We talked to him. We’ve been on polygraphs. We’ve talked to everyone around him. We have rental agreements. Phone rentals, car rental agreements. We have everything that he says he said. Truth told,” the detective told Papini. “All in all, you have told us a lot of truths in this situation. The reason why you can describe the room is because you stayed in the room, in the dark, for hours, for days on end.”
He continued, “The reason you have lost so much weight is because you have stopped eating. The reason you got a rash on your hand was because you cleaned his house. The reason for the brand is that he went to the store, Got a branding tool and branded you. The reason you broke your nose is because of a hockey stick… I know all those things… because he passed a polygraph test that said, ‘It’s not kidnapping Yes, he told me to pick it up. I rented a car. I drove and picked it up.’ He passed the polygraph test, Sherry.
In the video, Papini can be seen covering her face with her hands as investigators tell her the evidence, and begins to cry and shout, “No,” the description continues.
“There’s no way it’s James,” Papini told investigators.
As she continued to deny and cry, the second investigator could be heard saying: “We also collected blonde hair from the room.”
Papini, holding her head in her hands, kept saying, “There’s no way,” and then, “We were friends. There’s no way.”
She told investigators that she last spoke to the man “when his brother died” after the alleged abduction.
She said she hadn’t seen him “always before, when I lived in Southern California.”
The interview tape went on for several more minutes.
“He told us what happened,” a detective can be heard saying to Papini, “and gave us details that no one else would have known.”
Papini, now 39, Convicted for two of the total 35 cases in April 2022 — for engaging in mail fraud and making false statements to a federal office, prosecutors said. He was sentenced on Monday to 18 months in prison for the expensive scheme.
The married mother of two from Redding, Calif., was first reported missing on November 2, 2016, when she left home for a jog. Family members became concerned after never taking their children from day care, and her husband discovered her cellphone and headphones on the side of the road.
He Re-emerged on Thanksgiving Day 2016Still tied up and with injuries, including a battered nose, ligature marks, burns, rashes and a branding on his right shoulder.
Papini claimed that he was abducted and held at gunpoint by two Hispanic women, which he told investigators – and an FBI sketch artist – and told a story of his time in captivity. However, during repeated interviews, she changed her story or was not able to provide key details, investigators alleged.
Prior to the plea deal, Papini was facing 34 counts of mail fraud and one count of making false statements.
According to the Sacramento Bee, before the judge announced the sentence on Monday, Papini read a statement to the court, in which she told the jurist she was “very sorry” for the people she had impacted and “humbly” was choosing to accept the responsibility”.
Reportedly, Papini said, “You have seen so much humiliation in front of you here in this room.” “Those who are unwilling to walk in shame to say that they are guilty. I am not among them, Your Honor.
She later said: “What was done can’t be undone. It can never be erased. I’m not choosing to stay frozen like in 2016. I’m committed to fixing those parts of myself.” I am the one who was very broken.”
Following news of his sentencing, Keith Papini released a statement to PEOPLE in which he said the recent events were “shocking and devastating”.
According to the report, he said, “My current focus is to move forward and do everything possible to provide my two children with as normal, healthy and happy life as possible.”
Prosecutors urge Shubh Papini jailed for eight monthsWhat he described as a “low-end guideline sentence” that “accounts completely and objectively for Papini’s conduct and the totality of relevant sentencing factors,” the document said.
He slammed Papini for planning and executing “a sophisticated kidnapping fraud” and then continuing to lie for years after returning.
“As a result, state and federal investigators devoted limited resources to Papini’s case for nearly four years before independently knowing the truth: that she was not kidnapped or tortured,” prosecutors said.
The sentencing memo said: “During this time, Papini made innocent individuals the target of criminal investigation. He left the public at large in fear of his alleged Hispanic occupiers, who allegedly remained at large.”
Prosecutors also slammed Papini for repeating his fake story to law enforcement in August 2020, when agents confronted him with evidence of what had actually happened. He allegedly lied to the California Victims Compensation Board and the Social Security Administration in order to obtain financial benefits.
In his own sentencing memo, Papini’s defense attorney William Portanova ordered Papini to spend one month in prison and the remaining seven under house arrest, in line with the recommendation of the United States Probationary Office.
Portanova described Papini as “outwardly sweet and loving, yet capable of intense deceit, whether for the purposes of situational control or emotional self-protection”.
“MS. Papini’s chameleon personality led him to simultaneously longing for family security and the independence of youth,” the filing said. “Although these are not unique feelings, they were pathological in them. Her life was painful until she married and started a family of her own. ,
Running away from her husband and family, she returns and spits out lie after lie, “fearing that she has really destroyed the one thing in her life that brought her true love and happiness, her family, desperately.” Praying that the day of discovery would never come, ”wrote Portanova.
“Her voluptuous masculinity was in full public display when she returned from her fake abduction carrying the scars and wounds of her own penance,” he wrote. He later added: “There seems to be little or no chance of Sherry going back now. The lie is out, the guilt is accepted, the shame is universally seen.”
Portanova said: “It is hard to imagine a more brutal public revelation of a person’s broken inner self. At this point, the punishment is already intense and feels like a life sentence.”
In addition to his sentence, Papini also agreed to reinstate payments of up to $300,000. Specifically, he was ordered to pay approximately $149,000 to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office; at least $127,568 to the Social Security Administration; According to court papers, $30,694 to the California Victims Compensation Board and more than $2,500 to the FBI.
Fox News Digital’s Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.