Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Terror attack in New York & New clues in Sherri Papini mystery

Episode Date: November 1, 2017

An immigrant from Uzbekistan allegedly drove a rental truck down a crowed Manhattan bike path, killing 8 people and injuring at least a dozen. Nancy Grace assembles an expert panel to discuss the deadliest New York terror attack since September 11, 2001. The panel includes terrorism expert Bruce Alexander, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Bober, and investigative reporter Art Harris. Psychologist Chloe Carmichael joins Nancy, Art and co-host Alan Duke to look at new developments in the mysterious case of Sherri Papini. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. F-R-E-E. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. One more time to try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Nancy Grace. Thank you, ZipRecruiter. that driver was aiming right for them. All I heard was the impact of a crash, and I turned around to see where that came from, and I saw the white pickup truck.

Authorities revealing that suspect in a rented pickup truck made a deliberate turn onto that path. It is the deadliest attack since 9-11. I see two gentlemen laying there, and they have tire track marks across them. I saw a guy with two guns. He's just running in the middle of the street. At least eight dead tonight, many more injured.

The driver running people over his path about a mile long before he ended. This was an act of terror and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them. We know that this action was intended to break our spirit, but we also know New Yorkers are strong, New Yorkers are resilient, and our spirit will never be moved by an act of violence, an act meant to intimidate us. We have been tested before as a city very near the site of today's tragedy,

and New Yorkers do not give in in the face of these kinds of actions. We'll respond as we always do. We will be undeterred. We know we will get down to the bottom of what happened. I want to ask all New Yorkers, all Americans, to keep the families of those lost in your thoughts and prayers. They will need our support.

And I want to ask all New Yorkers to be vigilant. Americans mowed down dead in the so-called capital of the world, right here on American soil. As a man injures 15, kills 8, shouting Allahu Akbar in New York, leaves behind notes and a flag, pledging loyalty to a terror group and proud of it. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories and we want justice. How did it happen? Police insiders say the man is a terrorist who killed civilians on Tuesday. Eight dead, 15 injured after he drove a mile down a bike path. He's been here since 2010. How has he gone under the radar for that long only to unleash taking American lives? He's lived in Ohio and Florida, currently residing in New Jersey. Interesting. How did trucking companies registered

under his name, how did that happen? How is he an Uber driver? How did he go under the radar only to make himself known with murder? Joining me right now, Bruce Alexander, terror expert, whose career spans over 30 years in counterterrorism, intelligence, security, homeland security, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Bober, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, Art Harris, and death scene investigator, Joseph Scott Morgan,

professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University. First of all, let's get the facts. Art Harris, investigative reporter, what happened? Nancy, this Uzbek national rented a truck in New Jersey and yesterday drove it into a crowd in Manhattan, lower Manhattan, mowing down, killing 11, injuring 13 as he drove it along a bike path in the shadows of the World Trade Center memory. And it was chaos.

He then gets out of the truck with what looked like guns, but they are fake guns, one paintball gun and a BB gun, and starts yelling Allah Akbar, which you know is God is great. People have reported that. And he's taken down. He's shot once by a very vigilant New York City police officer, and he's now under arrest and actually I hear cooperating with law enforcement, which could give us an important window into his motives. They believe that he was radicalized and a lone wolf type, but with ISIS sympathies. This is someone very disturbing, but they have not linked him to any larger cells or larger plot as of now. To Dr. Daniel Bober, a forensic psychiatrist, and to Bruce Alexander, a terror expert,

I want to figure out how these guys, how this guy in particular, and we know that he has compatriots, stayed under the radar for this long. And I want to go into the mind of someone who is so brainwashed they would commit mass murder. To Bruce Alexander, first question to you, how did he stay under the radar for so long? Well, Nancy, therein lies the danger of individuals like this and the nature of this particular attack, the way he was able to stay under the radar for so long is that he was able to effectively disguise, if you will, or conceal or cover ordinary actions that may be indicators, pre-incident indicators of a terrorist plot or a larger scale attack under the guise of normal everyday type of activities.

You know, there's nothing innocuous about renting a truck unless you know their intent. But day in and day out, you know, the term that I use is, you know, he was a gray man. In other words, he just simply sits in. And the environment that he's in provides him with the coverage. Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You said he's the gray man. Is that what you just said? Right.

Yes, yes. And sort of what I mean by that is that, you know, it blends in. And in the innocuous is the camouflage, if you will, that allows acts like this to be effectively carried out. to carry out, you know, whether it's a case of a surveillance or, you know, a dry run type of thing, if you use that as a pretext or a cover, you can be quite effective. And therein lies the danger, you know. It's lone individuals using daily life, if you will, as a means to facilitate a terrorist attack. So you're saying the way that they blended in was by really assuming a role of normalcy within American culture and nobody seemed to notice. Dr. Daniel Bober, forensic psychiatrist, how does that work?

Nancy, these are very often people who are disillusioned, they're marginalized, they're living on the fringes of society, and very often they have an axe to grind. They don't really fit in, and they're really ripe to be radicalized. I mean, how much attention is someone going to draw if they're going home on the internet and they're going to these jihadi websites? They're being influenced. They're not necessarily being supported by a terrorist organization, but they're being inspired, and they want to make a name for themselves and you're gonna see this

more and more you've seen it all around the world and with the proliferation of the Internet and social media it's gonna keep happening again and again and there's very little way to prevent it we are talking about Safulo Habubilevich Seypov how did he blend in How did he blend in? How did he fly under the radar and then explode in an act of such extreme violence in the city of New York, a terrorist act that has taken more lives

than any other act since September 11? Eight dead, repeat, eight dead, many, many more wounded, many more, possibly more than a dozen trying to recover as our country wrestles with yet another terror attack. And it leads to the fear, Art Harris, of an attack at a mall while we're out shopping for Christmas. Or, you know, what do they call the day, the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday? Just these people, how did it go down exactly, Art Harris? There were innocent people out in the street. Tell me the mechanics of how this guy, Sefulo Habibulovic-Sapov, pulled it off.

Well, Nancy, first, he had been on the radar of the FBI in an unrelated investigation, but did not sound an alarm that was necessary to make an arrest. How can you be under the radar with the FBI? Wait, in the crosshairs of the FBI, but you don't raise suspicion, because if the FBI is looking at you, that's suspicious. They had his name. This happened before, Nancy. You know, if somebody is a peripheral character, you have to prioritize. It's like a triage in an emergency room. What suspect do you go after first or how dangerous do they think they are? You can't do everybody. So his name popped up. He'd been here since 2010, landed at Kennedy Airport from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, which has

a very large Muslim community. And so this is something that the Soviets have problems with as well. So he now is in this country, stays with a cousin, goes to Florida, lines up in New Jersey working for Uber, and he goes and rents this truck. He's a green card. He's got a license. There's no way to really, as Bruce put it, stop him from conducting legal, normal, quote, business of a resident alien. So he gets the truck, and he drives over. We don't know if he scouted it before or if he was cruising around and looking for an opportunity, but he finds his bike path and guns it, drives for a mile until he hits a school bus.

And a couple of injured there but he gets out starts running and that's when the circumstances take over and the cop intercedes but as bruce said it's very difficult to find these folks it would be uh terrific if somebody was cruising these these sites and could somehow pick up on language that indicated that a certain person was about to do something radical. I don't know of any kind of software or intelligence approach that is using that yet. Maybe they do. You're right, Art.

What I was trying to say is he was on many different ISIS-related websites. This is what we know. A 29-year-old man drives a rental truck down a path in Manhattan for quite some time there near the World Trade Center, plowing into people, eight dead, 14 others injured that we know of. This guy, Sefulo Habibulovic Seypov, he has been identified as living in New Jersey. And it's not that ISIS is claiming credit later. A note was found in his truck claiming the attack was for ISIS. Now, he's lived in Patterson, which is not far from New York.

This is also very, very disturbing to you, Bruce Alexander. We are now learning that he was radicalized domestically radicalized domestically does that mean he was radicalized here in the u.s i think um as the doctor pointed out before it's been a combination of things uh number one is clearly the influence of the internet and the social media is a primary source and a continuing source of radicalization. But to your point also, part of that radicalization also can be exposure to radical theology and or within a social setting of individuals of like-minded bent, if you will, or who sort of sit on the periphery, as was previously mentioned, who by virtue of exposure through conversations, perhaps start to legitimize what it is they're about to do.

So the radicalization, it's a two-step process. Again, one, exposure to social media the internet level and then secondly fueled uh either directly or indirectly but by like-minded exposure to like-minded individuals uh it's not one just sort one particular source and therein lies the danger in trying to stop this because well you know if in theory if you eliminated the internet there would still be some exposure somewhere else and so we could never isolate all of those variables. You know, he was cruising all of these websites, ISIS-related websites, to Joe Scott Morgan, forensic expert. I want to look for a moment at the victims and how they were killed.

The terror attack victims include students, school staff, tourists that were celebrating a reunion. In fact, five friends were there celebrating their high school reunion when they were killed. How did it happen from the point of view of a death scene investigator, Joe Scott Morgan? This fellow was in in is essentially meant to tow several thousand pounds of equipment this sort of thing and it can be easily accessed via Home Depot. I've actually rented one of these things before. This is a Ford F-250 cab and for people that don't understand how big that is it's it's one of the larger trucks that you can have, V8 engine. It's like a V8 sledgehammer going into this tiny, confined area. It's one of the most popular bike paths in all of Manhattan.

You've got people in a confined area. They're riding bikes. They're jogging. And this guy is riding down the middle of them. And there's not a lot of places that the victims could duck out of the way. So what's happening, if people are not being hit and pushed out of the way, you essentially have rollover injuries. And the reason a lot of these injuries are going to be so nasty

is the fact that some of these people were on bikes, so the bikes get caught beneath the wheels. You can look at some of the images and see how twisted these things are. And you've got people that if they weren't fatally injured, killed, they're going to suffer terrible injuries, lifelong injuries as a result of this. This guy, again, this goes back to this whole idea that we've talked about before. You've got the general public completely caught unaware. They're sitting ducks in a confined space where they have no place to go. My thought relative to this as an investigator is that this is a place that was specifically targeted, that he knew that people would be very, very vulnerable.

And he's driving down the middle of this thing. And he took out as many people as he possibly could. And, Nancy, this vehicle, it really enables an individual to fly under the radar, again, using that term, to go out and rent one of these things and then take it and facilitate this kind of, and essentially, you've got this large, like I said, F-250 sledgehammer that has been weaponized. And that's the real horror, isn't it? I mean, you know, we're talking about in these confined spaces, and it really makes you put your head on a swivel.

You're looking around, and you're thinking, my God, we're not looking for guns here. Any one of these vehicles out here can be used. So these people are going to suffer horribly that have survived, and the people that died, died very, very painfully. I just hate it. I hate it so much for them. Dr. Daniel Bober, explain to me, you're our forensic psychiatrist, and then I want to ask the same question of Bruce Alexander, our terror expert. Dr. Bober, I'm trying to figure out how the mind of a person that could get radicalized domestically, that could completely change their course of action by what they read online and to

get so, so extremely, so radically turned around because it's coming out, as a matter of fact, in the last minutes that he was radicalized here in the U.S. Well, Nancy, these are essentially weak individuals. These are people that have very poor self-concept. They have a very poor sense of who they are. And they're looking for some sort of meaning, something to fill the void within themselves, to give themselves motivation in life. And so it doesn't happen overnight. You know, they start reading this jihadi literature on the internet, and slowly but surely over time, they are essentially converted and radicalized into this belief system and want to please the people that they are serving.

To you, Bruce Alexander, terror expert whose career spans over 30 years in counterterrorism, intelligence security, and homeland security. How does it happen? How do you pull off the facade of normalcy in Patterson, New Jersey, only to be planning an ISIS terrorist attack? I think it speaks to conviction. Conviction in the belief of the cause in which the individual is willing to sacrifice himself for. And in such a case, it gives them a certain resolve.

And I think, you know, Dr. Bober can certainly talk to, you know, the mental characteristics of that transformation that goes through that. But it's really sort of a mission focus. And we see it in high-skilled good guys on our side, if you will, who have an intense mission focus and understand that something, thankfully on our side anyway, larger than themselves, but unfortunately the reverse side is in this particular case you have a strain of an extremist ideology that says, my cause is so righteous and great that giving my life in this is worth every bit of what I'm doing it.

So what that does is translate to a real sort of intense mission focus, both during the pre-operational phase. And by the way, I happen to believe too that this particular vehicle was ideally suited for that particular target, if you will, that pathway, which also suggests to me that there was probably, probably conducted some surveillance on that and figured out what's the best weapon to do this. But it goes back to an intense sort of mission focus that simply says, my cause is so great that the operational indicators or factors that might lead to my discovery would be controlled by my belief in the cause, if you will, my ability or the risk of detection so that's typically

where you see that at that that that belief in cause leads to a manifestation of that belief by the operation itself according to video from the scene the perp jumps out of the wrecked vehicle brandishing handguns, shouting Allahu Akbar, which means in Arabic, God is great. I want to pause and thank our sponsor, making today's program possible. It's LegalZoom. As a business owner, you know how important, how critical it is to keep moving forward. But as in everything, issues pop up that take your time and focus away from growing that business. When it comes to reviewing contracts, registering trademarks, staying current on fees, permits, LegalZoom.com simplifies your life. It was actually created 16 years ago by the brightest minds in law and

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Take care of your business before the year winds down. And for special savings, enter code Nancy, N-A-N-C-Y, at the referral box at checkout. Code Nancy for special savings only at LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom, thank you for what you do for business owners every single day. And thank you for being our partner today. I'm totally freaking out. Those were the words of Supermom Sherry Papini's terrified husband on the 911 call. As it has just been revealed, the mother of two, Sherry Papini, had been texting another man just before she was

kidnapped. You know, there's a lot of innuendo swirling around Sherry Papini that she was not really kidnapped. We don't know the truth of that. And for right now, the police are standing by her. So I suggest we do the same. Take a leap of faith until we know better. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. The Sherry Papini case developing very quickly. Let's start with the sound of her husband who comes home to find she's gone and the children are gone as well. Take a listen.

911, what is your emergency? CHP transferring. Peace is on the line. Hello, can I help you? take a listen yeah so I just got home from work and my wife wasn't there which is unusual and my kids should have been there by now from like daycare so I was like oh maybe she went on a walk I couldn't find her so I called the daycare to see what time she picked up the kids the kids were never picked up so I got freaked out, so I hit, like, the Find My iPhone app thing,

and it said that her, it showed her phone, like, at our end of our driveway. We don't have really good service. Okay. Not the end of our driveway, but the end of our street. So I just drove down there, and I saw her phone with her headphones because she started running again, and it, I found her phone, and it's got, like, hair ripped out of it, like, in the headphones. So I'm, like, totally freaking out, thinking, like, somebody headphones. So I'm like totally freaking out thinking like somebody like grabbed her.

Okay, what's your address? Redding. Okay, what's your last name? Yes. Papini, P-A-P-I-N-I. And your first name? Keith. K-E-I-T-H?

Yes. Okay. Did you go pick up your children? No, I'm going to call my mom and have her do it. Okay. What's your wife's name? I'm going to knock on every door. Sherry. S-H-E-R-R-I.

Same last name? Yes. Is she a white female? Yes. What's her date of birth? It is June 11, 1982. With me is Art Harris, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, psychologist, joining us,

and, of course, Alan Duke joining me from L.A. Let's go straight to Art Harris. He seems very, very calm, but I learned a lot just from the very beginning of his 911 call she had just started running quote again and he has found her iPhone with a big clump of hair in it near their driveway I thought it was on a jogging path it's what we had learned from before everybody just just joining us, the 35-year-old so-called supermom, Sherry Papini, was kidnapped and beaten last year. Police say male DNA was also

found on her clothes. That's a new development. But after nearly a month, it was Thanksgiving time, she was discovered wandering beaten and bloodied in a town called Yolo. As of right now, police still don't know who abducted her. She said it was two Hispanic females. They kept their faces covered. Now, this disturbing audio has been released of her husband, Keith, calling when he realized she had been kidnapped, saying, I'm like totally freaking out, thinking somebody grabbed her. This was just released after news that Sherry was texting another man just before her kidnapping. Now, Art, it's my understanding police tracked that guy down in Detroit, Michigan, just a week after she disappeared. But he was never arrested. For all I know, it was an old college friend. I don't know who it was.

They have not made any charges or any arrests of him, Nancy. And so we are left with this very bizarre mystery of a truck driver going north on Interstate 5, seeing her just before Thanksgiving a year ago. And she is in restraints and bruised and beaten up. And he, you know, he takes her into his truck and takes her to the hospital where evidence is collected, more photographs taken, swabs for DNA, and her hair was cut to shoulder length, and she had a brand on her right shoulder. So this is something that is still being investigated, and of course she says someone very specific, two women in fact, kidnapped her. Sherry Bepini had been out apparently running near her home. She was found

about a month later jumping out in front of cars, emaciated. She was starved, had lost about 20 pounds, beaten, branded, bruised, running, well dumped by the roadside where she was attempting to run out in front of traffic, trying to get someone to help her. Dr. Chloe, if this is a giant ruse to Dr. Chloe Carmichael, it's hard for me to believe she starved herself. No, Nancy, of course, that would be just about impossible. The idea that she would starve herself down to 87 pounds and brand herself. I mean, that's just the most honestly implausible thing I think I've ever heard.

Take a listen to more of the just released 911 call. Is her vehicle there? Does she not have a vehicle? She has a vehicle. Is that the house? Okay, the vehicle. Is that the house? She's running. How? Okay. Yes, I'm in it right now driving and I took a picture of her phone on the ground before I picked it up okay how tall is she five three five four how much does she weigh I don't I color like. Okay, hair color? Blonde.

Do you know what she was wearing? I have no idea. I'm assuming she went running, so probably wearing an athletic type clothes. Okay, there's not an outfit she always wears or anything like that. Did she run with a dog or by herself? By herself. Okay. What time were the kids?

We just started running again, and we live in a superman in a... When's the last time you heard from her? She sent me a text asking me if I was coming home for lunch. What time was that? I don't want to miss... Give me one second. She sent me a text at 1047 asking me if I was coming home from lunch from work. And I said, sorry, long day. And that was the last, I never spoke to her on the phone or any other contact. Okay, and what time are the kids supposed to be picked up? Way before 530, she usually goes at like 445.

Okay. 430, 445. Okay, are you headed back to the house or where are you at right now? I'm at the end of the driveway. I'm at the Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise where they meet because that's right where I found her phone on the ground. She's telling me that something happened to her is the way I'm looking at it. Then there was hair like in the headphones. Like it got ripped off.

Yeah, no, I understand. Okay, let's pause just a moment. I want to go back to Art Harris. What do you make of the husband's demeanor? And I'm hearing something that I had noticed at the beginning, but now it's been confirmed. It's not like Papini, when she was kidnapped, left her children alone in the car at the Walmart parking lot or abandoned somewhere. They were safe and sound in daycare, so she didn't have to be worried that any harm would befall them.

We know that. I still don't know about the man she was texting, but what do you make of the husband's demeanor, Art? Well, Nancy, he seems very composed and he's trying, he seems quietly panicked, but he's looking for information now through his, I guess, his phone to see when she texted him. But he has actually, of course, he's the first person that police look at, and he's actually passed a polygraph. So he apparently is off the table as a suspect at this point. Yeah, I never thought he was a suspect. I'm just wondering how he considered her behavior, what he thought of her missing.

I think he sounds shocked to me. He sounds like he's trying to figure this out in his head, like, you know, what's going on? I mean, he hasn't faced the actual gravity of what has happened. Can't imagine that his wife would be kidnapped or a victim. I mean, who does process that that quickly unless you knew what happened? You know, Alan, I would characterize his demeanor as being very calm, abnormally calm. But when you think about it, Alan, it could be also a mixture of trying to figure out where could she be? I can't believe she's really been kidnapped. There's got to be another answer to this. As opposed to when you come in, you find somebody dead and you go hysterical. Right. This is a whole different thing. Well, he didn't necessarily know

anything was wrong. And by the way, the phone was down the end of his street, not near his driveway, if you listen closely to the call. So it was on that jogging path. But yeah, he sounds like a very concerned husband. And as Art says, he passed the polygraph. But Joseph Scott Morgan always says something that I believe, and that is that you can't necessarily judge somebody's guilt, innocence, involvement by their demeanor at a certain time. That can be misleading. But he sounded very calm. To Dr. Chloe Carmichael, what do you think of Sherry Papini's description of the female attackers? Well, it's certainly unusual. I agree. It's pretty mystifying. Two attackers that were

women. It's usually not something that we see for women to go out and hold another woman or a man captive and to brutalize them this way. It's so unusual that I would really, I almost think that there would be a man behind it on some level. And that's nothing, you know, against men specifically, but it's just about the testosterone and the aggression and the patterns of brutality that we see, that's just not something that's normally, you know, created by women. So I certainly do find it curious and perhaps suggestive that there's a man behind it on some level. You know, Alan, I was taking a look, I had thought that her cell phone was off of a jogging track that I thought he said on the 911 call that was just released. It was at the foot of the driveway.

But you're right. We were right. It was about a mile away at the intersection of Sunrise and Old Oregon Highway. Quote, neatly placed on the ground with the headphones tidily wrapped around it. Again, some people may say she placed it there to be found, but very often when you jog and you carry your iPhone with you, if you're wearing headphones or an earpiece, you wrap it around the phone so it won't be dangling as you jog. So I also don't find that to be disturbing or indicative in any way that she planned this.

Yeah, I mean, Alan, let's get real. There was no sex attack. There was no robbery. There was no ransom note. There's no real motive, no clear motive as for the kidnapping. The fact that she claims women kidnapped her is highly improbable statistically. But other than those two things, we have no reason to disbelieve her. Why is everybody jumping on this?

I mean, and claiming she's lying. I think part of it is a California thing out here in California. We've had a number of disappearances of young women and it, they've involved female kidnappers. And also the area where she lives is known for some mysterious kidnappings. It's sort of like the Bermuda Triangle of missing women. And I think that creates a little bit of suspicion.

Oh, the Emerald Triangle? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There have been a lot of female kidnappings that were never solved in that so-called Emerald Triangle. You and I have talked about it many times, Alan. Hey, Art Harris, do we know whatever happened to all that money that was raised for the Bring Sherry Home Safe appeal? It raised almost $50,000. What happened to that money? Nancy, full accounting has not been produced that I know of.

Assume it went to the husband to help, but we haven't seen any accounts of that. We also know she was battered, bruised, her hair had been chopped off to her shoulder. She once had it all the way down her back. She said she had not been sexually assaulted. She was branded with a threatening message that has never been released. Why is that art that the brand has never been released? And who brands somebody? It sounds like it's out of a novel written by a fifth grader. Often, Nancy, that is a form of domination and bondage or some sort of deviance, but also a gang type thing. I mean, you're somebody's property if you brand them like a cow, a cattle that gets branded if he wanders off somebody's range and onto somebody else's property.

You know who that cow belongs to. So in this case, it sounds very, very demeaning and humiliating. But she was branded in some possible ritual. But I'm sure the police have some sort of, they're holding that back because obviously it's a piece of evidence and they can use it to match with the suspect, possibly if they ever arrest anybody. There's no doubt about it. She was branded and starved. You know, guys, I want to pause and thank our partners today, making our program possible. Everybody knows how much I love our family dog, Fat Boy, street name Nitro. And I'm always on the lookout for fun things to do

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pictures we posted. Keep your dog safe, happy, and healthy. It got easier with a special offer from Link AKC. Go to linkakc.com. Use code Nancy to save a full 30% on your order with free shipping. Code Nancy. 30% off your order. Free shipping at linkakc.com. Linkakc.com. Linkakc.com. Thank you. Guys, I want you to hear this dispatch from CHIP, California Highway Patrol. So Dr. Chloe Carmichael with me along with Art Harris. Chloe, she's actually bound. She is tied up or secured with chains and dumped out on the street, really jumping in front of oncoming traffic to get rescued. It's so bizarre why

they would take her in the first place, why they would brutalize her and why they would brand her, and then why it is that they would dump her out on the side of the road. I think that's partly what's so disturbing to the public about this is because it feels like a violence and a level of depravity that we really can't even put into any kind of a framework, which makes it just seem all the more haunting and deeply disturbing. I like what she just said, Art Harris, that we can't put it into a framework. I mean, I've tried, I don't even know how many cases, and you've covered the same amount of cases. When we can't find a clear motive, somehow it just doesn't fit, and I think that's what's troubling people with this case. I think you're right, Nancy.

In this case, you would think that, okay, somebody is held and bound, and gosh, it must be a kidnap for ransom, but nothing like that was ever raised, no calls for money were ever made. So this sounds like just pure depravity and somehow some kind of anger, resentment by whatever party took her. Or the other thing is, and you never want to put a victim on trial, but I'm sure police have looked and have, gosh, lots of search warrants, have not discovered or announced any sort of secret life that you would find with sometimes

with victims who make up excuses, as we've seen before, sometimes with disturbed victims. Ever since her rescue, Sherry Papini has been living as a recluse. Is that right, Art? We have heard nothing about her, really, state of mind, of her situation. So this is someone whose privacy is being protected and who does not want any attention. traumatized, and somehow emerging to try to find her psyche, her life, and her peace as a mother and a family. And we assume that she's being protected by people who love her. We know that she is living as a recluse. She was found with a chain around her waist, clamps around her wrists, her face beaten and bruised

weighing just 87 pounds that seems very difficult to have faked all that to me but without a motive her story is still under fire by many living as a recluse with her husband and children now i was recently asked, what do you make of the way she looks now? And I responded, well, she looks like every woman looks when they first wake up before they've had hair and makeup. It bothers me when people attack women that are not made up, so to speak, Dr. Chloe. I mean, it's like everyone expects her to look like she did

in her wedding photos after they were circul. I mean, it's like everyone expects her to look like she did in her wedding photos after they were circulated. Well, it is. It's really shocking that people would think that at this time, after what she's been through, that she would be thinking on any level about how to attract, you know, attention to herself or how to polish herself for the way that she would appear to others. What she really is, you know, I hope doing right now is trying to reestablish a relationship with her own body because her body was essentially taken away from her for all of this time. She wasn't the possessor of her own self. And so right now, I think her attention is probably just on trying to understand her own self. And so right now, I think her attention is probably just on trying to understand

her own relationship with her own body, rather than sending out signals for others. You know, Art Harris, there's been a real spate of fake kidnappings recently. There was the one where the mom Facebook herself a video with a gag in her mouth, and I guess she kidnapped her own self in the basement. There have been a real spate of them. Why would someone even bother to do that? You've been covering these cases. Nancy, I think guilt and shame play a big role,

especially if somebody has, not saying that she did, taken a walk on the wild side and is trying to cover up your escapade. You come up with maybe some elaborate ruses, as we've seen people make against folks who they say kidnapped or tortured them, and they turn out to be not true at all. So we don't know if that's the case in her case. It seems so extreme as you said, the injury she suffered, the branding. How do you brand yourself? I think that really begs credulity.

But you're right, there are the things that people will do to cover up what they have really done does boggle the mind. Guilt can play quite a role in the psyche, as the doctor, I'm sure, can tell us. Well, interesting. According to the L.A. Times, they are saying that the DNA found was an unknown man's. Now, when I believed at the beginning it was just on some of her clothing, after all she had been through, I didn't find that disturbing. But according to the LA Times, the DNA of two other people were found on Papini

when she was discovered partially clothed and shackled there on Interstate 5 on Thanksgiving morning. And this says, if you read it carefully, the samples belong to a woman and a man, and they were collected off Papini's body and clothing, respectively. Body and clothing clothing respectively. Now, if you read the sentence literally, that means the woman's DNA was from her body and the man's DNA was from her clothing is the way that I would read it. What do you make of it, Art Harris?

That suggests some sort of sexual, perhaps, either molestation or events took place, perhaps not of her choosing, but that certainly also contradicts her memory of two women kidnapping her. This is the first we have seen or heard of a man's involvement, at least the way I read it. Alan Duke, there has just been another development in the case. Explain. They finally have released FBI approved sketches of these two women that Papini described. It took them a year to do it because of her emotional condition and they took their time. It shows one woman described as a Hispanic female between 20 and 30, about 5'5", medium build, coarse, curly,

dark brown hair, thin eyebrows, pierced ears. The second woman described Hispanic female between 40 and 50, about 5'7", large build, long straight black hair with some gray in it, thick eyebrows and pierced ears. And they were reportedly driving a dark-colored SUV. And that is going to be on our website along with this show. That's right, at CrimeOnline.com. And there's a $10,000 reward. Maybe they can. And the police are asking for the public's help, Nancy, as they always do. Okay, guys, we're on it.

The latest in the Sherry Papini case. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.