Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Hoax Crime Reports Hurt Real Victims

Episode Date: January 14, 2017

Kidnapping or missing person cases that turn out to be a hoax hurts victims of real crimes. Police, the media and the public can become suspicious when circumstances are similar. While hoax kidnappings have been around for decades, today’s social media give skeptics a bigger platform to speculate. Nancy Grace and Alan Duke discuss this. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. The 34-year-old was found on the side of the road near Sacramento, nearly 150 miles from where authorities believe she was taken while out jogging near her Northern California home. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Do you believe Mrs. Papini's story? Absolutely. She reported she had been abducted. She was discovered in restraints and had been assaulted. You know, after we first talked about Supermom Sherry Papini, headlines hit the news that I had compared her to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks,

and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I got into it with a veteran investigative reporter, Alan Duke, who is with me today for a rematch on this. Sherry Papini is nothing like Jennifer Wilbanks, as we know the facts right now. Jennifer Wilbanks, it was the night before her wedding. You know, I fell for it. I totally fell for it with Wilbanks. You know, I talked to her father. Her father was beside himself.

I wanted to help find her. I don't know why it didn't raise an alarm in my mind. Ding, ding, the night before your wedding. Of course, I wasn't nervous the night before my wedding because I had been dating my husband for so many years. But I guess, you know, some people get nervous and, you know, crap out. I missed that huge red flag. I don't know what was wrong with me, Alan Duke. 600 guests and 28 bridesmaids for a wedding would scare anybody.

Oh, dear Lord in heaven, you got me right in the middle of a gulp of tea. I forgot that little detail because you know what David and I did? One Tuesday we said, okay, we're getting married. We got married that Saturday. Yeah. Sure. I flew in my sister and her family, my brother and his family, my husband's family all came.

And we got a cake pronto. Bam! We rented a room, a ballroom, as they call it, at the Ritz. And lucky for us, the next one was empty, so they opened it up. We had a really big space. And I called in my pastor from my youth, and we kneeled down right there and got married. Now, I wasn't completely convinced that was for real. So I had a redo about a year later. With the same guy? Yes. Funny. Look, I don't want another one. No, I've already raised one. I don't need another one.

Had a redo at my little Methodist church in Macon, Georgia, Liberty Methodist Church, because I just wanted to make sure that I had a church laugh if you want. So yeah, I don't know anything about any 600 guests. And how many bridesmaids? Twenty-eight bridesmaids. Oh, dear Lord, no way. Okay, so she takes a powder, and police, the feds, everybody goes on a wild goose chase to find Jennifer Wilbanks. Now, I don't know what you said last time to suggest that she was like Jennifer Wilbanks, but Papini, to our knowledge, had no big event. She had nothing that would have made her leave her children.

There are some circumstantial things that would reflect on each other. However, the end result, of course, is much different. The husband for Jennifer, I'm sorry, the fiance for Jennifer Wilbanks called the police after she failed to return from her evening jog. That's one similarity in that scenario. And then another, yes. Okay, hold on, hold on. Evening jog. So, okay, you've managed to rope in a jog. Although Papini's was in the daytime while her children were at daycare. Okay, go ahead. The other similarity is that Wilbanks accused, once she was freed.

Oh, I thought you were going to say that Wilb Banks was a person and Papini is a person. Well, both females. Because I think you're stretching. Falsely claimed that she'd been kidnapped, assaulted by a Hispanic male and a white woman. The difference is there was the woman involved and one of the people were Hispanic. And, of course, with Papini, she says that she knew it to be two Hispanic women, which, you know, women is an unusual thing to carry out a kidnapping alone. The point that we were talking about in our podcast earlier. Don't throw me in the pot with you.

No, you didn't. The headline on that story was absolutely wrong. But that's a different issue we can take up. The problem, what you did, you asked me a question. You said, Alan, why do people think kidnappings like this are hoaxes? Why do we get that in our head? Basically, you asked me that, and I was recounting. And you said, and then I was saying, well, I've covered some sensational stories where it turned out to be hoaxes. And you immediately, because you and I both were at CNN. We were at the same company at the same time.

Jennifer Wilbanks was kidnapped. I covered that closely in Atlanta for CNN. Talked to the family and all of that. And we were so shocked when it turned out that it was a hoax. And that was what was in my mind. But we both on our podcast agreed that we had no reason to believe that Papini was a hoax. No. I think I wrestled you down and got you to agree.

That's the way I remember it. Well, that's one thing that we agree on, I believe, is that the headline was wrong. And I don't think it's fair to compare Papini to Wilbanks. You know, that brings to mind another woman. It was in Santa Ana, California. A Southern Cal woman has just been exonerated of claims that she responded to some kind of a rape fantasy ad on Craigslist in order to get men to attack her ex-boyfriend's new wife. Now they say it was the new wife who was trying to frame the husband's ex. Okay, you got to have a flow chart for this. Now, the woman's name was Michelle Susan Hadley, just 30 years old. Now, listen to this. First of

all, when I hear a woman responds to a rape fantasy ad, right there, I get suspicious because I don't believe this woman responded to a rape fantasy ad. Okay. It's the other way around. It's men who have to advertise for somebody to take part in a rape fantasy. Okay. Women, they don't have to advertise for men that are interested in sex. You basically just look around, okay? That's how that works. So right when I read, you wisely are not saying anything, Ellen. This woman responded to a rape fantasy ad on Craigslist, right there, I'm like, uh-uh. But as it turns out, this woman, Michelle Susan Hadley, was an innocent victim of this crazy scheme by the new wife. Now, you've got the man, you're married.

Why do you go to so much trouble to frame his ex? Now they've turned their attention on Angela Marie Diaz, and she's charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and perjury. Do you know about this story? Yes, it's right down the road from where I am here in Los Angeles. Well, so far, you've claimed every story we've brought up is in your backyard, but no, all I know is I'm not getting near you with a 10-foot pole. You should come here to Los Angeles. I'll show you all the crime. Forget it.

Everywhere you go, crime follows you. Remind me of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. I mean, stay away from her. You'll drop like a fly. Okay, so in this case, do you know what police are reporting what happened? Yes. Okay, hit me. this poor woman was charged did you please use michelle hadley yes she was charged with trying to have her ex-boyfriend's

new wife raped by responding to the craigslist ad insane angela. Angela Marie Diaz married Hadley's ex-boyfriend. There was a condo, a dispute over a condo between Hadley and Diaz. Hold on, let me get this straight. So you've got Angela Marie Diaz, the new wife. Right. Okay. So we've got the new wife, we've got the ex-girlfriend, and the husband. And a dispute over who owns a condo.

Okay, let's just go with that. Ex-girlfriend and the husband. And a dispute over who owns a condo. Okay, let's just go with that. Ex-girlfriend, husband, and new wife. Now, the dispute over the condo is between the ex-girlfriend and the husband. It's over the, yes, ex, and by the way, the husband, you know what he does for a living? No. He's an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service. Oh, dear Lord in heaven. I bet he did a backflip. Okay, the condo argument, the dispute was between the husband and the ex-girlfriend. Is that correct? Yes.

Okay. Then the new wife gets into the fray. Is that right? That's the alleged. So it all started to unfold in June when Diaz reports to police. Men arrive at her home to engage in a rape fantasy encounter. Now, Diaz is the new wife. Okay, so the new wife claims these guys show up for a rape fantasy.

Then prosecutors say the men were intercepted by police and told them they thought that the guys say, well, we thought this was on the up and up. It's just some kind of role play. Diaz, the new wife, also calls 911 and reports a man tried to attack her in her garage, ripped her shirt, and her neck was red. Okay. The new wife also tells police that the ex-girlfriend had been threatening to have her assaulted and sent threats, including graphic photos that she, the new wife, and her unborn child would be killed. Now we know the pregnancy was faked. I mean, this lady, A, needs to go to jail if this is all true, but B, needs a professional team of shrinks. Not just one.

She needs a whole team from Vienna working on her. So what else do you know about this? The girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, actually goes to jail. She was arrested, and then investigators started doing their work. You know that the new wife, according to prosecutors, also faked cancer, even forging doctor's notes, and posed as an attorney. That's just an aside.

But back to the ex-girlfriend actually gets arrested and put in jail. Police did their due diligence and they traced all of it back to Diaz, the wife. And so now she is the one that's charged. I mean, Michelle Hadley, the victim in this scenario, spoke out and she was just crying about the relief she felt when a judge clears her of charges. Do you know that

could have put her behind bars for life? For life? She was three months behind bars. Did you know that? Three months. Yes. This is such a tragedy on several levels because of the fact that when we hear of cases like this, it causes us to question real victims unfairly. And it causes the police to question real victims unfairly. I think you're right about that, Alan. And there are more cases like this. But another thing I wanted to talk to you about is the way that she did it, the way the alleged perp did it. She used what is called a virtual network, a VPN, a virtual private network online. Are you familiar with those?

I certainly am. You can go to certain websites and you can blindly send things. What are you doing on a VPN? Well, I'm not. I'm a journalist. I research these things. I've not personally done this. Okay.

Let me get your journalistic explanation of what is a virtual private network. It hides your internet protocol address. You can go anonymously. It makes it, for example, if you are in Russia and you want to look like you're in Maryland, you can go to a virtual private network address and it will hide your IP. A virtual private network is a method that uses encryption or code to provide a secure access to a remote computer over the internet. It hides your IP address, correct? Right. That's the ultimate thing that it does. It keeps you from being seen, found, located. That's how she did this. So that's how police originally didn't really connect her up to it,

because she used a VPN. And that takes a little bit of doing. I mean, I guess if you're used to using a VPN, it's not hard. But just sitting here, I would not know exactly how you would do it. I mean, for instance, there's IP vanish. I mean, when I hear the word vanish, I think, okay, who needs to vanish? Who needs their internet address to vanish? But that's an example of one of them. There are many of them and they're apparently very fast. So how would she have done it? Well, she would have found out how by going to Google and researching it.

And when you do that, you do leave a trail. Here is ExpressVPN, NordVPN, HideMyASSVPN, IPVanish. I'm just looking along. Well, now they don't need to Google it. They just need to listen to your podcast and know how to do it. Okay, that's funny. You're teaching these people how to be criminals.

I'm so proud of that. So long story short, this woman does three months in jail before she's exonerated. So long story short, police are saying that in the Papini case, long circle back, the Papini case, the husband passed a polygraph that he voluntarily took. And let's just think about this thing, common sense, before we start throwing around legal terms and investigative journalist terms. To believe she did it, let's just accept

that he passed a polygraph, although they can Let's just accept that he passed a polygraph, although they can be beat. So if he passes a polygraph, that means she did it all on her own or with an accomplice. Now, what would her motivation be? You got to come up with that. You don't have to prove it in a court of law, but I mean, we're just talking about, did she do it? Did she fake it? And she was badly beaten when the police found her. Would she have inflicted a beating on herself? Not only that, she had lost. She was emaciated.

She lost, according to some accounts, between 15 and 20 pounds in less than three weeks. So would she have inflicted all of that herself, shearing, I mean, cutting her hair off, beating herself, starving herself? For what? I don't buy it, really. Well, even if she didn't have that evidence on her, you couldn't say that it was a hoax. I mean, there are examples of people who are kidnapped, and when they are released, they don't have scars on them, and they don't have their hair cut.

True, true. So I guess we're all laying this, what, at the feet of Jennifer Wilbanks just because she crapped out on her wedding? I mean, you know. Oh, man. Well, there are historically. You're not going to dig up Sinatra again, are you? You are.

Okay, go ahead. Get it out of your system. Frank Sinatra Jr. was actually kidnapped. Yes, he was. This was in December of 1963. When I was a young man, the rumor at the time was... Well, according to me, I wasn't born. Okay, go ahead.

Of course you weren't. A rumor at the time was that his dad, whose career had kind of lagged a little bit, it was a big, highly publicized case. And the idea was that he was using this to try to boost his publicity and his singing career. But it turned out it really was a kidnapping and that Frank Sinatra Jr. was released and, of course, lived. Can we just agree that right now we believe Sherry Pepini was telling the truth and is telling the truth and was kidnapped? Can we agree on that? Yes, just like we said on our previous podcast.

Yeah, you know what? We did, didn't we? Another thing, having been a crime victim, on top of everything else, it hurts so much when you're treated like that by other people. I know that's just another layer of pain. I mean, given our determination that she is telling the truth, just imagine on top of that, people questioning her. You know what?

I have to go out of town tomorrow, and I am absolutely miserable because I'm going to be away from the twins. Now, granted, I'm going somewhere I love. I'm going to go be with my friends at Hallmark for the next Haley Dean movie. And I'm really looking forward to that. But I don't want to be away from the twins. Can you imagine being away from your children and not knowing if you would ever see them again?

Ever. I mean, yes, I love my husband. Of course I do. There's something about your children to thought. She lived through that. Awful. Much less having people drag her through the mud now. You know what I mean? Well, I'm a granddad and I know exactly what you're talking about. And in fact, as soon as we finish this podcast, I'm going to go and pick up my grandkids. You know what? I'm going to go get my children, too. I'm going to go interrupt their school day. They have recess.

Today, the recess is a different time every day. How do I know? Because, yes, that's me stalking them in the distance. Sometimes they see me and pretend they don't. But I'm going to go get them and get them out of school early and actually put on a formal document that they have an appointment. And they do have an appointment with me at the playground. So that's where I'm going.

But for right now, Papini's telling the truth until I hear different. I don't want to hear any more discussion that it's a hoax. I agree. Can we agree on that, Duke? I've always agreed. Yeah, right, right, right. That's your story now and you're sticking to it. All hoax. I agree. Can we agree on that, Duke? I've always agreed. Yeah, right, right, right. That's your story now and you're sticking to it. All right. Goodbye, friends. This is an iHeart Podcast.