Crime Weekly - S2 Ep73: Sherri Papini: Supermom or Storyteller? (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Laci Peterson, Suzanne Morphew, Gabby Petito, Jennifer Dulos these are all names that we unfortunately only know because they vanished mysteriously, and under very suspicious circumstances. In all of these cases, the world held its breath and watched, hungry for every breaking news story and piece of newly uncovered evidence, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The disappearance of 34 year old Sherri Papini was no different. Her name and face could be seen on every major newspaper and news network after she vanished on November 2nd, 2016. But unlike these other women, Sherri Papini made it home, worse for wear, but alive and able to return to the loving embrace of her husband and their two young children. Another difference between Sherri Papini and someone like Laci Peterson, or Gabby Petito, is that it now appears that she was never missing at all, and last month, in March of 2022, Sherri was arrested and charged with faking her own kidnapping. We can all acknowledge that if this is true, Sherri did a horrible thing. Not only did her plan cost the public hundreds and thousands of dollars, but it may cast a darker filter over any women who genuinely do go missing in the future. But what led up to her decision to do this, and why did she do this? Those are some of the questions we will be exploring during our breakdown of this case.  Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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These are all names that we unfortunately only know because they vanished mysteriously and under very suspicious circumstances. In all of these cases, the world held its breath and watched, hungry for every breaking news story and piece of newly uncovered evidence, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The disappearance of 34-year-old Sherry Papini was no different. Her name and face could be seen on every major newspaper and news network after she vanished on November 2, 2016. But unlike these other women, Sherry Papini made it home, worse for wear but alive and able to return to the loving embrace of her husband and their two young children. Another difference between Sherry Papini and

someone like Lacey Peterson or Gabby Petito is that it now appears that she was never missing at all. And last month, in March of 2022, Sherry was arrested and charged with faking her own kidnapping. We can all acknowledge that if this is true, Sherry did a horrible thing. Not only did her plan cost the public hundreds and thousands of dollars, but it may cast a darker filter over any women who genuinely do go missing in the future. But what led up to her decision to do this? And why did she do this? Those are some of the questions we will be exploring during our breakdown of this case. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're taking on a case that's been in the news a lot recently, even though I believe, I mean, this case is five years old at this point.

It happened in 2016. But just recently, they've made an arrest. And, you know, it's just very, very well known and very much talked about right now. And so I thought, you know, let me take a look at it. I kind of been following it, but I didn't have all the details. And, you know, I like to have all the details. And you don't know anything on a case. So I'm looking forward to covering it with you and kind of seeing how we handle it because, you know, it hasn't been adjudicated yet. And again, it's a little different. So I'm interested to hear more about it. It hasn't been, but I will say just simply in my opinion,

I think that it's going to be a pretty easy, if it goes to trial, I think it's going to be pretty easy because there's an overwhelming amount of evidence and it just gets silly at some point. Some of these things that she's claimed, it's silly and ridiculous. And even from the get-go, there was people saying, we don't know how much we believe this. So it hasn't really fooled a lot of people and I'm surprised it's been a lot to go on for this long. Yeah. I, you know, the name looked familiar when you sent over the script, but the more I heard you talk about it in the teaser, it's not ringing a bell. So that's a good thing. I'm really coming in here and maybe I'll feel the same way you just said, maybe I'll feel different. That's why it's fun to do these with you because

you truly don't know how I'm going to feel about it. And I don't know the direction that you're going with it. So we're all we're all experiencing this together. You're getting our live reactions to it. The name probably sounds familiar because we've been requested to do it a lot. So I've seen it in the comments section. People have requested us to cover it. year old Sherry Papini, she appeared to have the perfect life and a fairytale marriage that led to the creation of a beautiful little family that Sherry seemed to value more than anything in the world. Sherry and her husband Keith had first met in middle school and they shared their first kiss when he was in the seventh grade and she was in the eighth grade. But when Sherry moved away, she and Keith lost contact and they began to build their own lives. Sherry got married to a man named David Dreyfus in 2006 when he was a platoon sergeant in the United States Army. The two separated amicably in 2007, at which point Sherry returned

to her hometown of Redding, California, where she reconnected with the man she had shared her first kiss with, Keith Papini. In a blog post Sherry wrote about their love story, she said, quote, The first date was nerve-wracking. Lots of catching up and sharing stories. The following day, Keith called me, and I said that I wanted to take him out. I told him to meet me out at the docks at Whiskeytown Lake. I set up a candlelit dinner by the water. He showed up and had a gift for me. It was a box filled with notes I had written him in the eighth grade. I couldn't believe he kept them. It was a great night. By our third date, we were head over heels in love and have spent every day together since. I have never

been so happy. We always laugh and always smile. We enjoy each other's company and make a great team. We're best friends and a perfect couple." After becoming a couple, Sherry and Keith began living together in a townhome that she had been renting, and Sherry claims that there was some growing pains in their relationship at this point. Apparently, Keith had grown up with an older sister, so he was accustomed to living with women, but Sherry didn't have any brothers, so cohabitating with a man had been a bit of a transition for her. She wrote, quote, Of course we got on each other's nerves and got to know each other's habits. Thank goodness, before we decided to get married, aside from driving each other crazy, we became a lot closer as a couple and built a great foundation for our marriage. We shared everything. Bills, chores, toothpaste, food, laughs, and the occasional practical joke. Keith and I have so many funny stories and great memories from our little townhouse on Shiloh Court." It wasn't long before Keith proposed to Sherry in typical storybook fashion.

Keith had planned a big trip for Sherry's birthday, which included a trip to Las Vegas, where he surprised her with tickets to Cirque du Soleil and the Phantom of the Opera. They also had dinner with some of Sherry's family members who lived in Vegas so that they could meet Keith. When they flew back to California, Keith took Sherry to Half Moon Bay, a small city on the California coast south of San Francisco. According to Sherry, Half Moon had become their spot, and it was a place they had returned to every year during their relationship. On the day of her birthday, Keith took Sherry to a downtown bakery and got her a slice of cake, but he told her they needed to be back to their hotel room by 3 p.m. for another surprise. When they got back to the room, a knock

on the door brought in a male masseuse, who then proceeded to give Sherry an hour-long massage. After the massage, Sherry got dressed to the nines for a fancy dinner, which was happening at the Ritz-Carlton. As they waited for their table to be ready, Keith suggested to Sherry that they should take a walk outside to the courtyard near the Bluffs. In her blog, Sherry described this moment saying, quote, the view was amazing. You could hear the sound of the crashing waves. It was so romantic. He walked me over to a little gazebo and said that he wanted to read me my birthday card. The sun was setting on the ocean. The waves were crashing. He read me a two-page tearjerker. I was crying my eyes out. I went to wipe my tears and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, he was on one knee.

Sherry, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? I almost fainted. Then screamed, yes. I was shaking while he put on the ring. People were congratulating us. It was like a movie.

I could barely eat my dinner because I was so emotional. I think I cried, happy cried, for three days." Sherry and Keith got married in 2009, and by the time she went missing, they'd been happily married for nine years. They were living in Mountain Gate, California, outside of Redding, and they had two children together, four-year-old Tyler and two-year-old Violet. I was just head over heels for her, and I knew I wanted to marry this girl. The striking couple tie the knot in 2009. They look like a fairy tale couple.

She, like a princess. He, like a prince. Their photos together seem as if they're ripped from the pages of a glossy magazine. They do just very sweet things for one another and just kind of things that you read out of a novel or see on TV. The young couple put down roots in their hometown just outside of Redding, California. The Papinis move into this two-story house.

It's comfortable because it's the house Keith grew up in. So now that you've kind of heard me explain how Sherry and Keith met and how their relationship sort of progressed and everything seems very perfect and even the way she wrote it in her blog, it seemed like it was just meant to be. I mean, she even referred to them as the perfect couple, which I think is odd. I think it's odd when you refer to yourself and your partner as the perfect couple. I don't know why. It just strikes me a little bit, a little odd, you know, a little narcissistic, but it's just my opinion. But it seems to be perfect, right? That's, you have this woman who moves back home to California, reconnects with someone she had known growing up and they fall in love and they seem like, you know, two good looking people, you know, watching that clip, you know, obviously he's doing this interview for different reasons, but it seemed like they had a very good relationship. He was head over heels for her. They had two children together. Did you see their ages by

any chance? Two and four. So the little girl, Violet, she's two, Tyler's four. Okay. So they have two small children. Seems like kind of your traditional setting. So yeah, at this point, no red flags. I didn't expect it.

Obviously, you're setting us up here. So there's a lot to come. But yeah, at this point, nothing that stands out to me. You know, everything seems like it's OK. So a little bit stands out to me just because I know how this goes. And I get that advantage. I'm flying blind here. It's a little bit of an advantage. Just a little. Yeah. But the fact that she said, you know, perfect proposal, the perfect marriage, the perfect everything. She was very, I think, not obsessed, but fixated on everything being perfect and everything going perfect to the point where she would say something like it was almost like a movie. And when we talk about her later and what she would say to law

enforcement, she constantly brings up things like movies and TV shows. So it's not really been clearly stated by anybody, but I get the impression that Sherry Papini was somebody who watched a lot of TV and a lot of movies and almost sort of separated herself or saw herself, depersonalized herself to see herself as somebody who was living in a movie, like somebody who had a script to follow, something that she kind of had a plot to go by. What was the theme behind this blog? Obviously, anybody can write a blog for whatever reason, but what was kind of usually people have a theme, whether it's food or travel. What was her theme for this blog? It was on her wedding website.

So it was just that. OK, is that a normal thing? I don't want to judge too harshly. There might be someone in the you know, who's watching or listening that has done that. But it seems like more about like I mean, I guess this is also about their marriage, you know, leading up to it. Did she continue this blog after they got married? No. So, you know, are you asking if it's normal to have a wedding website or is it normal to have like a blog post on the wedding website? So the wedding website, like the knot and

stuff like that, I mean, I don't think it's too odd for a bride to be, you know, to document the, you know, how they got engaged and some of the things that go on as you're preparing for a wedding. That doesn't seem as odd to me anymore. But I didn't know if this was an ongoing blog where she was basically narrating her own life even before marriage and then after marriage. But you're saying it was isolated to, you know, the engagement and then the lead up of the marriage. Is that what I'm understanding?

So that's an interesting question. It doesn't appear that she blogged any more about their relationship or their marriage on this website. But later on, some web sleuths would uncover blog posts that she had allegedly written years before that she claimed she did not write. But people think she did. Some people say she didn't. But a lot of people believe she did write these blog posts. So maybe Sherry was just somebody who liked to write about herself, her feelings, sort of used blog history, this electronic journal, as an investigator, when you're going back to these cases, this type of information is invaluable, especially if you can prove that it came from the source that you're thinking it did. Now, like you just said, she's saying it didn't. So I'll be interested to see if law enforcement looked into that at all because-

Oh, they did. Yeah. It wouldn't be the hardest thing in interested to see if law enforcement looked into that at all because. Oh, they did. Yeah. It wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to prove or disprove. So I'm looking forward to that. I agree. I think it would be incredibly easy to prove. And law enforcement did look into it because it's involved in the affidavit and they talk about it in the affidavit. So clearly it's something that they took seriously. This isn't just some online thing. And I think that law enforcement, because the FBI is even involved at this point, I think they know whether

she did or did not write it and whether she did or did not write it will come out in the trial. Yeah, exactly. And not to keep going back to it, but Blaze's case as well, like because it's still going to trial, there is information that we're not privy to and law enforcement and the prosecution is building their case and they will eventually expose those things to the defense, obviously in discovery, and then ultimately it will be available to the public. So we will have that information down the road, but you're right. They probably know one way or another if they can prove it at this point, if she wrote those previous blogs. It's always interesting when we're covering these cases before it goes to court, because you're kind of working with one hand behind your back because, you know, law enforcement and

obviously the prosecution are going to keep anything they do have close to the chest, rightfully so. So it is an interesting take from us to come in and talk about it and dissect it before court, because we don't really know what their plan is and how they're going to approach this case and how they're going to paint a picture for the jury. Yeah. But we're talking about the blog post that the inflammatory blog post that we're going to talk about later. We're talking, we don't know for sure if she wrote those or not. This one about their wedding and their marriage. We definitely know. Those were definitely her. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. So by all accounts,

Sherry Papini was the perfect wife and mother. They even called her super mom. People who knew her, her friends, her family, they said she was a super mom. Sherry's been called super mom. Where does the super mom name come from? She wakes up in the morning, has her kids dressed, their meals planned out for them, and their activities for the day, and not just that. She's just a super wife. Like, when she makes a pie, she doesn't just make a pie. She makes it look gorgeous.

So when I make a pie, it definitely doesn't look beautiful. And I call, you know, women like Sherry, like Pinterest moms, because yeah, they do a lot, man. And I never got that whole thing with making like food look so beautiful because you're just going to eat it. And then the more beautiful like cupcakes, some of these moms at school, we bring it in these cupcakes. They have full like mountain scenes on them. And I'm like, are you kidding me, man? Like, I just put chocolate frosting on mine. This is bananas.

You went so hard. And now I feel terrible about myself. But I don't want to eat their cupcakes. There's too much frosting on it. You know what I mean? Well, listen, I can't say anything because I recently got a pizza oven and I've been putting my pizzas on this board and making sure it's in the right light and making sure I have the right amount of basil on all sides. And then I've been posting it online. So I'm just going to shut up and not say anything because I'm the person you're describing right now. So not really. I'm not going to be a hypocrite because I know there's

people in the comments going, dude, you literally posted a pepperoni pizza the other day. Don't you say a word? Yeah. Well, no, it's a little different. That's like food. But baking, like I feel like less is more, you know, Sherry, so basically we get the impression from Sherry that her family is her life, right? Everything she does on the day-to-day is for them. And in my experience, people who live for their families in that way, it's amazing, but there is something pent up sometimes. You know, there is a resentment that builds that they don't want to show because everyone around them is like, how does she do it? She's perfect.

She's super mom. And now you have this sort of reputation. You've been exalted. You've been put on a pedestal. And anything less than that at this point, if you do anything less, if you fall short in any way, then people are, you know, talking behind their hands like, what's going on with Sherry? You know, she looks tired today or her cupcakes are less fluffy. Her pie isn't as beautiful as it used to be. So you set yourself up almost to either constantly

be on all the time or to, you know, constantly fail. And I also say this is just from personal experience and people that I've dealt with in my own life. Not saying it's like across the board, but sometimes when you have someone who's somewhat of an overachiever, I don't know if that's the right word to choose, but they're trying to always paint this perfect picture. Sometimes it's to overcompensate for something they might be feeling internally. You know, in some cases, the people who look the best on social media are the ones suffering the most at home. They may be unhappy and therefore trying even harder to paint this picture. Not always the case. Some people just enjoy it. Some people just like that lifestyle and they don't care that they're annoying in doing it. That's just what they do. But in this particular case, knowing that this obviously isn't a good ending,

it might be true in a situation where things weren't as perfect as Sherry wanted everyone to believe. And there was some underlying issue going on. And to try to combat that, she was trying to paint this perfect life to those around her. Yeah, I think it's very possible. And I mean, obviously, this all came to a head at some point, because on the morning of Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016, Keith Papini left the house around 6.50 a.m. to start his shift at Best Buy, where he worked as an audio video specialist. At around 11 a.m., he received a text from his wife

asking him if he was going to come home during his lunch break, but he responded that his day was too busy, so he couldn't make it back. Now, when Keith got home after work around 5 p.m., he saw that Sherry's car was in the driveway, but when he went inside, he was surprised to find himself in a silent house because normally at this time, his home would be filled with a bustle of activity, as Sherry normally picked their children up from daycare around 4.30 in the evening. Now, initially,

Keith thought that maybe Sherry and the kids were just outside somewhere. And he said, quote, my wife is a very involved mother. She's always doing stuff. They go on these nature hikes and pick up pine cones and acorns, and she makes scrapbooks with the kids, end quote. I pulled up. I saw our car there, and I opened the door expecting my son comes 100 miles an hour right at me. And then usually Violet right behind him. We do what we call our family snuggles. I looked in a few different rooms and I couldn't find anybody. I thought, okay, maybe they're outside. And I looked around outside. But at the time I was like, I'm sure they're all together. I had no reason to

believe otherwise. After Keith could not find Sherry and the kids inside or outside the house, he used the Find My iPhone app on his phone to see if he could figure out where Sherry was. And he located her phone near their mailbox. But their mailbox wasn't just like outside of their house. It was roughly a mile away. It was kind of one of those mailboxes where many different houses share like this mailbox unit. And then you kind of have to like walk to the mailbox unit to get your mail, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally. So Keith assumed that Sherry had gone out for a run because at the time of her disappearance, she'd been training for the CASA superhero run in Redding, which was a 5K race to benefit abused and neglected children, where the runners would

dress up like superheroes and then run the 5K. Keith said that the entire family had been planning to dress up and run the race together, and he knew that his wife had been using the one-mile stretch of dirt road between their house and the mailboxes as a jogging trail to prepare for the 5K. He opens up an app on his iPhone to see if he can track sherry's location i did the you know find my iphone app and it showed where her phone was so i assumed that's where she was and i assumed that the kids were with her where did the find my phone app show that sherry was and you thought with the kids on uh near our mailbox which is a ways away. It's about a mile away, actually. Are you worried? Not quite yet. Keith jumps into his wife's car and follows the breadcrumb pings on the map toward the mailboxes.

So I got in her car and I immediately drove down to the end of my mailbox and I was, you know, anticipating I would see her. But his family's whereabouts remain elusive. They are nowhere in sight. So Keith gets there to where the phone says it is, but he doesn't find his family. He did find Sherry's iPhone, however, laying on the ground with her earbuds wrapped around the phone, accompanied by several strands of her blonde hair. When he found the phone, he saw that it was playing the song Everything by Michael Bublé on repeat, and this was their wedding song. And that was when he began to get concerned. His first call was to his mother to see if she had seen or spoken to Sherry that day. When he found out she had not, Keith called the daycare that his children went to, and he

asked what time Sherry had picked them up that day. But he was told that she had not picked them up. And that sent alarms off in his head. Because remember, Sherry's life, her world revolves around her family, her children. She's super mom. And super mom does not forget to pick her kids up from daycare. Yeah, this is alarming. And I'm only going off just, you know, taking compartmentalizing things, not taking into consideration what's ahead. As a husband, you see the situation unfolding.

You're very concerned at this point, as you should be. A couple of little things to look into. And, you know, and obviously I might be looking too deep into it, but, you know, we have the iPhone. It's still playing a song. So that would suggest that the phone was dropped while she was using it. Right. But you said that the earbuds were, you know, kind of wrapped around the phone as if the way you would wrap them around when you're not using the phone. So that is a little contradicting. You would expect the earbuds to be, you know, still attached, but kind of like in two different directions as if they got ripped off her head. And that's where you would have the blonde hairs, right? They, you know, if there was an attacker pulls the phone away from her,

pull some strands of her hair with the earbuds as it's being pulled away. That's what you would expect to see. So this does, uh, raise some red flags that maybe she was, you know, taken, but the, the earbuds being wrapped around the full phone itself is, it doesn't really line up with the phone still being played. Because if the phone's playing music, you wouldn't have the earbuds wrapped around it. So that's my initial thoughts on that. But definitely concerning. Yeah. The way they made it seem was it was kind of very neatly set down. It didn't look like it had fallen. It didn't look like it had been torn from her hand. It looked like she had sort of taken it off, wrapped it up as if she was going to put it away in her purse or her bag. And then instead of doing

that, she just set it on the ground. And that's going to become clear, allegedly, in a little bit. Right. And that's why it's important to point it out, because you would expect some sign of struggle, maybe even a broken iPhone glass or something like that. There'd be a fight. So you have the blonde hairs, which suggest ripped off her head, but then you have the wrapping of the cables, which doesn't suggest that. It suggests, like you said, that it was taken out of her pocket or her purse and placed on the ground in the same way it was while it was in her pocket or purse. Right. So at around 5.50 PM, Keith Papini called 911 and reported his wife missing. Hello, can I help you? 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, it, like in the 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. Keith, 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 call my mom and have her do it. Okay. What's your wife's name? I'm going to, like, knock on every door.

Sherry, S-H-E-R-R-I. Is her vehicle there? Does she not have a vehicle? She has a vehicle. It's at the house. Okay, the vehicle is at 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? 100 pounds. Do you know what she was wearing? I'm assuming she went running. Okay, there's not an outfit she always wears or anything like that. Does she run with a dog or by herself? By herself. Okay, at what time were the kids?

She just started running again. 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? She sent me a text at 1047 asking me if I was coming home for 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 where 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. There's like, then there was hair like in the headphones.

Like it got ripped off. Yeah, no, I understand. I understand. Okay, I'm sorry. I know you're trying to keep me calm, but obviously. What kind of vehicle are you in? I'm in a black Kia Optima. Oh, my God.

Okay. And I live... I mean, we live down kind of a sketchy street, so I definitely... I don't know if I'm allowed to knock on everybody's door, but I will if I'm allowed to do that. Let's just have the officers contact you so they can start, you know, processing everything, figure out what's going on, okay? And I understand you're freaking out a little bit.

We want to make sure we get your kids, make sure they're okay. Yeah, I'm going to call my mom and have her go down. Yeah, they've been stuck call my mom and have her. Yeah. So you would agree he sounds pretty panicked and like stressed out in this call, right? Yeah. I thought he sounded very genuine. I didn't love the way that dispatcher handled that one, to be honest. I don't want to go on a tirade about that because it's not about that, but there is a way to keep composed and not bring emotion into it. I felt like she was a little condescending, but that's, you know. I know you're upset. You don't know where your wife is, but come on, man. It's her tone. It's her tone. As a sergeant, when I was overseeing our dispatchers, I've had to

address this type of situation numerous times where they forget that the person on the other end is going through something that might be their worst nightmare. But different story, different day. So I agree. I think he sounds truly stressed out. And this is going to be like a question that comes up constantly. Like, was Keith involved? Was he aware of this? And personally for me,

I'm not sure where I stand on it. However, I will say what I saw today, which I believe was an article just released this week, the police now like announced that they believe with whatever Sherry did, she had help. And we know she had help from someone, but I believe the way law enforcement is posing it now is she may have had help from an additional person. And there is some money involved and there's some like sort of shady financial dealings that Keith does appear to be involved in. So while I'm standing here saying I have no proof or evidence he was involved and I don't want to think he's involved. And to be honest, like even maybe he didn't know she went missing. Maybe he didn't know what had happened.

And then she came back and and then, you know, maybe at that point he kind of became an accomplice. But that's just allegedly that's just a possible, you know, sort of a side side street that we could take with us. And I think everyone should take into consideration that, you know, when we're dissecting this or as an investigator, when you're looking at it, you can identify stress, anxiety, or, you know, nervousness in their voice. What's really hard to interpret on a phone call is the why. Is he anxious and nervous because he's creating a narrative that he knows is false? Or is he anxious and nervous because he can't find his wife? We can all agree that he sounds upset and nervous. The question is why? And that's the hard thing to figure out. And that usually takes a lot more investigative work, looking into the background, looking into their circumstances, whether that's financial, etc.,

the status of their relationship, all those things. That's where you try and answer the why. It's not going to be through the inflections or the tone of their voice in a phone call. Yeah, I will say just going on my gut, which probably means nothing to anyone, going on my gut in this phone call, he doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on. And that's where I stand on it. But that's not to say he doesn't become involved at a later time. One thing, just for anybody who already also noticed it, little interesting that his first reaction wasn't just to pick up the phone and that it was to take a photo of it before picking it up. I don't know if I would do that

as a police officer. I mean, even though I know there could be evidentiary value, DNA, etc. I think my first thought as a nervous husband would be to pick up her phone and see if she texts anybody in the last couple of minutes or whatever to try to get a clue myself. I don't know if I would pull out my phone, snap a photo of it as if it was a piece of evidence before even picking it up. I might be looking too deep into it, but it's important to know. That is interesting. That is important to know because I missed that. I mean, I heard him say it, but I missed that there know, I'm paranoid. I'm taking pictures of cigarette butts at the end of my driveway. Right. But no, if I'm missing my husband and I find his phone sort of neatly sitting there, yeah, I'm going to immediately

pick it up and just like be like Adam and like start shouting his name because maybe he wandered away or something like, Adam, I got your phone, you know, something like that. But no, I don't think my first instinct would be to take a picture of it. No. So I found that one little thing. That's something I wrote down a little odd. You know, we'll see where it goes. So as soon as Sherry's reported missing, obviously there's an immediate reaction. Friends, family and the community gathered around Keith and his children to show their support. And people began talking to reporters explaining that Sherry would never have left her children and her husband of her own free will because she was a devoted mother and wife. The Shasta County

Sheriff's Office revealed that Sherry had been seen jogging around 2 p.m. that day in the area of Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive, and that's exactly where her phone was found. That's also something to note. And this is about less than a mile and a half east of Interstate 5. The Shasta County Sheriff's Office, along with Search and Rescue, spent all day and night combing through a half-mile radius around the area where Sherry's phone had been found. Authorities also checked for registered sex offenders in the area, and a search of the state's sex offender registry showed

that there were four men reportedly living within a mile of the state's sex offender registry showed that there were four men reportedly living within a mile of where the phone had been discovered. On November 4th, a friend of Keith Papini's created a GoFundMe campaign called Help Find Sherry Papini. The campaign stated that funds raised would be used to help bring Sherry home safely and all the money would go directly to the Papini family to use in search efforts. On the same day, a person who had donated money to the campaign asked how exactly the funds were going to be allocated and later that day the campaign was updated to read, quote, thank you to everyone who has donated so far today. The funds will be used in any means necessary for

the family to bring Sherry home, end quote. And in total, when all was said and done, this GoFundMe campaign raised over $49,000. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. So on the law enforcement side, extensive searches were being conducted all over Shasta County, as well as several other states, as the investigation gained national attention. Hundreds of tips were received and numerous pieces of evidence from these searches were collected, but nothing led to Sherry. Law enforcement went over the possibility that Sherry could have been grabbed up by a mountain lion while she was out on her run. Mountain lions would sometimes wander into the town from the surrounding foothills, but there was no sign of blood or a struggle, and scent dogs had not picked up the scent of a body. There was also a theory that Sherry may have been picked up by someone with nefarious intentions.

Like I said, Interstate 5 was less than two miles away from where Sherry was last seen, from where her phone was found. And this highway is known to be a corridor for drug and human trafficking. But police did review surveillance from homes and businesses in that area, and they couldn't find anything suspicious. Today we have many search parties going out. We have many different agencies that have coordinated a search here in Shasta County. Well, we have about 130 people from our community out searching for Sherry, helping organize the search and trying to keep everybody safe and checking in and checking out. We're going to put out a reward as soon as we can.

And just everybody, put your good thoughts out there, put your prayers out there and let's find Sherry. She was out for a run. This is very unlucky. She wouldn't leave her babies. There's no way she would do anything to disrupt her children's routine. You know, being that the phone was found

and she wasn't on her routine, yeah, there's no way she wouldn't have gone and picked up the children. They're on a very tight schedule and she's extremely close with them. She's here with them every day gardening and doing projects and there's just no way that she would take off. It's terrible. Sure. I mean, I'm in a state of just being emotionalist so that we can do what needs to be done and take care of my brother what is your reaction to her phone being found

on the ground I would say my personal reaction is that it's two fold one is that it's good to have some sort of clue. The other portion is it really points to she's been taken. I mean, she wouldn't just drop her phone if she was running away. So at least it's giving us some kind of information, but it's pretty, it's, we're, we're sick. This is a pretty sickening situation. So the, the woman you heard saying we're going to offer a reward, the woman who did most of the

talking in that clip was Keith's sister and standing next to her. If you're watching on YouTube, that would be Sherry's sister. So interesting video. Um, everyone handles these types of situations different. So I'm not going to look into how they're phrasing or anything like that. Everyone's there. Everyone handles trauma different. You can't judge someone based on this. They're being put thrown in front of cameras like this. One thing I was thinking about as the clips were playing is you had mentioned scent dogs being involved. So I'm assuming the scent dogs probably started from the Papini's home, hopefully traced her scent all the way up to the phone. And that's important because if the dog was able to track her scent from the home to the phone and then it goes cold, that would give them a clear indication that whatever happened to her at that point, she was no longer on foot.

So if this was a chase or whatever it might have been, at some point she was transported from that point in a vehicle. You know, that would be the only reasonable conclusion if the scent dogs were able to capture her scent from the home to the phone. Yeah, that would have to be an assumption at this point. They never said that, but I'm assuming, you know, he said the scent dogs didn't pick up any sign of a dead body. So I'm assuming if they're bringing cadaver dogs in, they're also bringing in dogs that are going to try to follow her scent. And yes, I think that your conclusion is correct. She must have left in a vehicle at some point. And this is a very like rural area as well. So you're not really going to be kind of wandering off on foot. You know, these are like dirt roads. They're not really going to be kind of wandering off on foot. These are like dirt roads. They're

not always paved like we were talking about mountain lions just be like coming down from the hills and wandering around. It's not really something you'd want to do. And from what I can tell, she used this one mile stretch of road from her house to the mailbox and she would run that and then turn around and run back. So she would get two miles in to train for that 2K. So she wouldn't normally in her routine, which according to her sister and her sister-in-law, she doesn't normally deviate from her routine too much. So these are assumptions that we're making based on her habits, her normal habits, her normal routine. And also, like you said, most likely the dogs couldn't find her scent after that area where her phone was. Right.

And to just even add on to it, we have witnesses saying they saw her running. So that's where some of the speculation on my part comes in. We do have an outside entity, a witness who is confirming that she was in fact on foot because I could have also said, oh, well, how do we know she wasn't in a vehicle from the time she left the home and just threw the phone out the window on the ground? She might have never been running, but we do have an outside party who's saying, yes, I saw her running. And the reason that's important is because if the dog's good and only the police department would know how good the dog should be able to take an item of their clothing and track that scent along the same area that this witness saw her running. So if the dog hits and you got something and then the dog loses the scent at the phone, I'm assuming that the canine handler probably came to the same conclusion that we're coming to right now. That whatever happened to her happened in that spot. And then she was transported by vehicle from the, you know, for the remainder of wherever she went. Yeah. People saw her jogging.

They said she was wearing a pink shirt. So it's definitely what she was. Yeah. It's definitely what she was doing. But as the days passed with no sign of Sherry Papini, public suspicion turned to her husband, Keith, as it does. Some people wondered if he had staged her abduction to cover up the fact that he had murdered her, but law enforcement stated that Keith had been very cooperative. He had turned over the family computers, iPads, and phones, as well as allowed the police to search his home and property without a warrant. He had also allowed law enforcement to question him without a lawyer present, and he had volunteered to take a polygraph test, which he passed. The sheriff's office was able to verify Keith's alibi that he had been at work

when his wife went missing, and Sheriff Tom Bisenko said, quote, it appears he is telling the truth. Generally, you can't trick a polygraph, end quote. Yeah, I mean, we know how we feel about polygraphs. I'll also say the time frame is tough tough too, because, you know, you can confirm that he was at Best Buy and, you know, we could go off the trail here and say he might've had her phone at that point and texted himself at 11. She might've already, we can go there. And I know that's a path we can go down, but just taking it at face value, if we're, you know, they could check her phone, her GPS coordinates of her phone when that text message

was sent. So law enforcement would be able to confirm that 11 a.m. when the text was sent asking if he was coming home, her phone was at the house while he was at work. So that's one thing to say, whoever had her phone, it wasn't the husband, right? Then you continue on where he can, you know, Best Buy, they got plenty of cameras in there, right? So they can confirm that he was at work to, you know, 4.30, whatever time it was. You know, they probably have security footage showing his vehicle arriving, you know, getting close to the house. You know, you can kind of time out how long it would take for him to get home from wherever they last saw him on video. He gets home around 5 and by 5.50, he's already calling 911. That's a lot to transpire in that

small window to the point where he's planning it and cleaning himself up, you know, and putting the place back together. So there's no sign of a struggle at the home. Possible? Yeah, anything's possible. I always like to qualify it by saying that, but very unlikely. Yeah. And I mean, but even then, even after the police are like, we verified his alibi, there's still going to be people who are like, well, he could have hired somebody to do it or he could still, you know, and there were people saying that, like, well, who cares if you if you have his alibi and you checked it out, he could be working with somebody or he could have hired somebody to do this. Very similar to referencing

another case I think you're not familiar with, but the Suzanne and Barrymore a few case where she went missing on Mother's Day. She was allegedly on a bike ride. He had an alibi, this, this, and that, but people were like, we still aren't buying it. And it turns out that was good instincts because Barrymore a few was recently arrested. Yeah. I mean, the polygraph, certain people believe more in them than others. And I think the polygraph in conjunction with some of the facts that we've laid out do start to create a picture. And they're going on, you know, what it's telling them. You know, nothing's 100% certain in this game, but a reasonable person based on these facts and circumstances would more than likely come to this conclusion as well. Yeah.

And he's talking to the police without a lawyer. He's letting them in the house without a warrant. He's answering their questions. He seems to be on the up and up so far. Right. Many members of the community did point to similarities between Sherry's disappearance and the disappearance of another young woman from the area. 16-year-old Tara Smith had been a student at Central Valley High School when she vanished without a trace in 1998.

In fact, there is a resemblance of Tara Smith and Miss Papini, which made it maybe even a little bit more eerie. This is the two of them side by side. Both were out jogging when they vanished. Both went to the same high school at the same time in the 1990s. Sherry even auditioned for the same role as Tara's sister in this fifth grade play. And both cases captivated the city of Redding, California. Okay, so that's interesting, right? Two ways to look at it. One, you could say this offender, whoever's doing this is maybe reoffending and they have a particular type that they like.

You could also, if you want to go another way, say that maybe Sherry was aware of the situation when it happened and it gave her an idea to do something similar. So whatever camp you're in, you can take that and go either way with it. Yeah, I agree. Right. Because I think, honestly, if you're asking me my opinion, the latter is a little bit more likely considering that Tara went missing in 1998. Right. And what kind of offender is going to wait that long between 1998 and 2016 before snatching another blonde girl from Redding, California? And yeah, like the like that clip that we played said they went to that. They'd gone to the same high school at the same time.

They live in the same area. So, yeah, Sherry would have been aware of this, right? It was a big case. It was a big deal in that area. Right. She saw the amount of attention that it got. She saw maybe the funds that were raised from it. Who knows? There's a lot of things that she would be able to gather intelligence about as far as what transpired after her disappearance that led to this. And I'm assuming this woman was never found? Never found. Nobody ever found. We're going to get there, And I'm assuming this woman was never found. Never found. Nobody ever found. We're going to get there. But I'm glad you brought that up because that's the reason I put this into into our episode today, because I feel like I almost brushed over.

I was almost like, oh, you know, it's like some of these cases, sometimes they just start throwing out all these theories and they think it might be this serial killer and you can't really put all of them in. But then I was like, what if it was a copycat, like a gone girl situation? What if that was why this seemed so familiar and there was similarities were so close because it was a copycat? And that's why I put it in here. And I'm so glad you picked up on it because you're not as blonde as you look. I'm just kidding. It's a joke. Everyone gets it. And I will tell you, I'm going to say right now real quick because we're deep into the story. The majority of you were brown,

but there was also a lot of you that were blonde and you weren't all kidding. I got to tell you, I said it on Instagram. This right here is why I always say when it comes to witness testimony, you got to take it with a grain of salt because it's very subjective

and you could ask 10 people what color my hair is and you might have five of them say one color and five say the other. So that's why whenever we bring up descriptions of suspects or whatever the accomplices from witnesses, all joking aside, that's where I'm coming from. Because I have been in situations where I've asked three people about the same person and gotten three completely different descriptions. And we were able to prove that with my hair, whether you think it's brown, it's blonde. You know, this is the new black and blue dress that someone pointed out in the comments, you know, depending on the way you're looking at it. I know it was blue and gold. I know what I see, but you know.

Which is even worse, even further apart. Yeah. I've only had this hair for 38 years. So who am I, you know? And I just want everybody to know I'm making a joke. I don't think that blonde people are stupid. It was just a joke to bring back the hair color thing. I'm actually a natural blonde. So I find myself to be very intelligent. So I cannot possibly believe that, but I don't want anybody to be offended. So sorry. Don't walk up on the stage and slap me. Oh, dude, you're going to get it in the comments now. They're coming for you.

So who you heard talking in that clip was Shasta County Sheriff Tom Basingo. And he said, quote, Papini is 34 years old, but she looks much younger. They could probably pass for sisters. End quote. There was a distinct difference between the two cases, however. In Tara Smith's disappearance, law enforcement did have a viable suspect, Tara's own martial arts instructor who had a prior rape conviction. He had told the police that he'd dropped Tara off on the night she disappeared just a few minutes drive from where Sherry's cell phone was found, but he also denied any involvement in her disappearance and he was never charged with anything due to lack of evidence. However,

Tara's family believes, based on letters and journal entries, that Tara and this man were having an affair and she had planned to end things with him the night she vanished. Now, due to the parallels in this case, Keith Papini did reach out to Tara's father, Terry Smith, to ask for advice on what to do. And all Terry could offer in the way of help was to tell Keith to let the police do what they needed to do. Terry Smith said, quote, At least in our case, we had a suspect, somebody we think was responsible for it. In many ways, it's worse than what we had to go through because at least we pretty much knew who did it and what he did. And even though we never found her body,

we've kind of come to terms with that. In the Papini case, they've got nothing, nothing at all. I didn't have a lot of comfort to offer him. I'm not real confident that anything is going to come out of it, but how do you tell somebody five days after their wife's gone missing that she's probably gone for good? End quote. But Sherry Papini was not gone for good. On November 24th, 2016, at 4.30 in the morning, motorist Allison Sutton called 911 to alert the authorities that she believed she had seen missing mom Sherry Papini on the side of the road in Yolo County near Sacramento, California, 150 miles away from where the Papini home was in Redding. I saw a blonde woman standing in like that V-shaped area that gets created between the right shoulder and the left side of an off ramp. But I wasn't quite sure where I was when I saw her.

I just caught a glimpse of her. The area where she was is not well lit, so I didn't actually see her until I was right up on her, which really startled me. And it kind of took me a few minutes to figure out what I'd seen. And I went a couple miles up the road to figure out where, until I saw road signs, so I knew where I was. And then I pulled off onto the shoulder and I called 911. Sherry had also managed to flag down a truck driver who had stopped and remained with her until the police arrived on the scene. Sherry had a chain around

her waist that one of her arms was tied to, and she had additional bindings around her wrist and each ankle. She was immediately transported to Woodland Hospital, where she underwent several physical examinations to determine the extent of her injuries. Sherry had lost some weight, and her normally long blonde hair had been cut short. Her nose was swollen, she had bruises on her face, rashes on her arms and inner thighs, and ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. There were also burns on her left forearm, as well as bruising on her pelvis and the fronts of both of her legs. Now, the clothing that she was wearing when she was discovered, that was not the clothing that

she had gone missing in, although she did tell officials that the underwear she had on was the same she'd been wearing on November 2nd. So they obviously collected the clothes she was wearing so that they could perform DNA testing on it. A physical exam showed that she had not been sexually assaulted, and Sherry's husband Keith was notified and he immediately drove to the hospital to see his wife. I just ran past everybody and I, you know, throw open the curtain and she was there in a bed in her poor face. And I just hugged her. I just held her. I felt like I hugged her for like 20 minutes.

Keith claimed that he was absolutely stunned by Sherry's appearance, telling Good Morning America, quote, My Sherry suffered tremendously, and all the visions swirling in your heads of her appearance, I assure you, are not as graphic and gruesome as the reality. End quote. Now, of course, the police, they're going to want to question Sherry about, you know, where have you been? What happened? But they did this in somewhat of an unorthodox way. Sherry refused to speak to any police officers or detectives because she claimed the people who had abducted her had basically told her that they were connected in some way to law enforcement,

so she didn't know who she could trust. So the police, they allowed Sherry's husband, Keith, to interview her, and they provided him with what questions to ask her, as well as a tape recorder to record it. And the detectives were present during her questioning, but Keith was the one asking the questions. So this probably would pose a set of problems, because if she won't even talk to you, you can't ask certain follow-up questions questions and Keith isn't going to know instinctively which follow-up questions to ask. Have you ever heard of anything happening like this? I've never been involved in a case, fortunately, where we've had a kidnapping and someone was eventually found and refused to speak to us. So I can't speak to that. Have I ever had a situation where they refused?

You know, I've had persons of interest, suspects refused to speak to me, but no, no, I haven't. So because she's not being Mirandized, because she's not at this point suspected of a crime, you could do this legally, but you're, you're a hundred percent right. As the police officer sitting there, he or she's coming up with questions that they would like to ask as follow-up, but to not deter her from continuing to speak, they're letting Keith handle it, which he's not a trained interviewer. So it could pose some problems. But at this point, you want to get something out there, especially if there's someone or multiple people out there on the loose that just committed this crime. So something's better than nothing. but this is definitely not ideal. Wouldn't you normally bring in like a mental health professional or a police psychiatrist or something like that to fulfill this role if they don't want to talk to a detective or a police

officer, you know, somebody who's trained still to ask police questions, but also, you know, is sensitive and able to handle whatever mental health thing that the victim is going through? Yeah, we've had to do it numerous times with children. We have a center here called Day One where you have people who are trained to speak to young kids. They'll be in a room. They're not a police officer in any way, shape, or form. They usually have an earpiece in. They're in a room that's comfortable for the child to play with toys, et cetera. And we as law enforcement get to watch from another room via the cameras where we can also use a microphone to speak to the person in the room with them. I'm sure they could have done

something like this with her. Maybe in their minds, again, it was a sense of urgency where they're like, hey, time is of the essence. Your offenders are probably in the immediate area still. They could be fleeing the country. They could be doing something out of fear of being apprehended. We want to try to box them in before they can get too far. What do you know? Do you know who this person is? Because if you do, let's set up some barricades, let's set up some roadblocks and try to get them before they get too far away. Yeah, I can see that. And if you're just looking at her strictly as a victim at this point and not even considering that it could be something else, this probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. But Sherry would be questioned about her ordeal

several times in the following months, and each time her account would be added to or slightly modified. But in this first interview, Sherry claimed that she had been abducted by two Hispanic women who mainly spoke Spanish. And since Sherry didn't know much Spanish, she couldn't understand what they were saying the majority of the time that she was with them. Sherry claimed the two women always had their faces covered, sometimes with different colored lace masks, sometimes with bandanas, and they always wore short leather gloves. One of the women was older, and she seemed like the meanest one out of the two. This older woman was tall, with straight dark or black hair that had some gray in it, and she spoke in a deep, raspy voice. The second woman was younger and

seemed to be a reluctant participant in what was happening to Sherry. This younger woman was smaller, and she had long, curly brown hair. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. So Sherry claimed that she was out jogging when a dark colored SUV with tinted windows drove by her. After it had passed her, Sherry said that the SUV backed up and a woman inside who was wearing sunglasses rolled down her window and said something to Sherry, which Sherry believes was, you know, like, can you help me? At which point the woman opened the door of the vehicle to show Sherry that she had a gun, a small revolver. Sherry was told that they did not want

to kill her, but they instructed her to put her phone down and get into the SUV, which Sherry claims had either no seats inside or only one seat on the far side of the vehicle. Sherry alleged that they put something over her head, so she didn't know where she was being taken, and even though she tried to stay awake during the drive, she kept dozing off. When Sherry was asked if she could tell the detectives anything about what the road felt like or if there were changes in altitude, she said, quote, I don't remember a lot. I'm missing time. The car smelled really bad, like sewage. She stuck me with something. I kept falling asleep, end quote. So I believe the narrative here is that Sherry was drugged. Sherry's telling these people that she doesn't remember the drive, so she can't tell them how long it took to get from point A to point B because she was in and out. And she can't tell them what kind of terrain they were driving down because she was in and out because she was drugged with something.

She was stuck with like a needle that had some sort of like sedative or something in it. It's important that she's laying out this story though, because if you believe she was kidnapped or you believe that this was staged, one thing you can do is we know where she was abducted from. We know where she was taken. And what they'll be able to do is say, hey, that was what happened on a road. That road only goes two ways. They'll be able to basically draw out every possible exit route from that location. And what they'll try to do is say, if she went to road A, there's a camera this far down. If she went road B, there's a camera this far down. Road C, there's a camera. Every optional route, these individuals, it's tedious, but you got to go through each one. And what they would try to do

is find a location where a camera would have picked up a black SUV around that time to confirm her story. And I'm sure that was done if possible. And some of these roads you may have to follow for a while, but if there's no alternate route to get out of there, eventually at some point, if they're going to get on a main interstate, you're hoping that they pass by a gas station or something like that, which would pick them up on camera. So I'm sure we will find out that that was done and we will ultimately find out the results of that as this goes to trial. If we don't already know already,

I don't know what you're going to tell us going forward. So Sherry claimed that the two women brought her into a room that had a closet inside of it. And inside the closet, there was a big metal pole that she was hooked up to with a cable and a chain that was tied around her waist. Sherry said that the chain was long enough so that she could reach the bed in the room, but not the door of the room. And inside the closet, her captors placed a bucket of kitty litter that Sherry would have to use if she needed to go to the bathroom. Sherry said that while she was held in this room, she could hear things going on around her, such as the television or loud music being played. In her words, the music was, quote, that really loud, annoying Mexican music, end quote. Sherry claimed

that she could sometimes hear birds, but really most of what she heard was that music because her captors had placed a stereo directly outside her room and it was constantly blasting. Sherry said, quote, there was a fireplace. I could smell it. I could hear that sound. You know, when you move the handle to open the fireplace, it made like a creaky sound and it was cold. It was always cold and it seemed like it rained every night, end quote. According to Sherry, if she made a noise or made her captors mad, they would come in and take her blankets, which would make her even more cold. In Sherry's story, she was fed once a day, usually Spanish rice or tortillas, sometimes apples or cream of wheat. If she was good and she behaved herself, she would get extra food.

But she said everything tasted horrible and she described it as, quote, leftover crap, end quote. She was also given one bottle of water a day, and when her food and water would be delivered to her, the door to her room would open, the food would be placed inside, and the door would slam shut again. Sherry briefly mentioned that her hair had been cut by these two women, and she claimed that they'd made her wear an adult diaper. But this diaper story is something that she never mentions again in any of her subsequent interviews. She also claimed that the first time she had tried to escape from this prison, she'd been branded. Sherry said that after this escape attempt, the two women had brought a long

table into her room, and they'd hit hit Sherry and then they tied her to this table before branding her with something hot she said she could hear her skin making a popping sound and it was very painful I'm not able to go into the specifics of what the branding is but it could be a number of different messages there and you know what the brandings were? Yes. Did they say something? It is not a symbol, but it was a message. To who? It could be a message to her. It could be a message to others. If you go deeper with this as to why they would brand a person, I think it's probably twofold.

One, it's a control thing, and it's also they're trying to move her, in my view, further and further away from her identity. Yeah, I agree with that. They're definitely trying to, if we're to believe the story, dehumanize her and make her feel like more of a possession as opposed to a person. Yeah, if we believe the story. If we believe the story. It's an ability in kidnapping cases to dehumanize them to the point where they feel like themselves, like they're no longer who they forget about who they were because it's been so long. And therefore, they're willing to conform more to their demands without any resistance. This is a crazy story so far, though, right? It's incredibly crazy.

And just at this point, the way it's laying out, and I'm sure there's a lot to unpack here, seems pretty legitimate so far, because I'm just listening along with everybody else. So at this point, you know, even the dropping of the phone, I could now visualize where she took her phone out of her pocket and they said, you know, hey, or, you know, she was taking earbuds out and to listen to them and she's wrapping it around her phone, not even realizing she's doing it. And they say, hey, put the phone down. And she places it down because they're pointing a gun at her. So, so far, you know, things make sense to me. I'm not going to jump to conclusions, but we can keep going. So Sherry claimed that these women had told her that she was being sold to someone. And this man wanted Sherry branded because that was his preference. Sherry said once again she only

spoke very little Spanish, so she wasn't able to figure out who this man was, but she did gather from conversations between the two women that they were discussing something to do with medicine, traffic cameras, a certain delivery date, and also something to do with gambling as well as specific insults directed towards her. Now, according to Sherry, she would be guarded by the younger woman when she showered, and this woman told Sherry that they had been instructed not to hurt her because they wanted to get paid. The women also read Sherry articles about her own disappearance, laughed at her, and made fun of her, saying, quote, no one believes you. Everyone thinks you ran away. No one believes

you. Guess what? The buyer's a cop. They're never going to find you. End quote. So that's where she's getting it from, right? Yeah. And I don't know if if because this is a constant thing where like she says, I don't understand Spanish. They were speaking in Spanish. But suddenly they'll like start talking to her and she'll understand exactly what they're saying in like full sentences. So I'm not sure if these women allegedly did speak English. They just only spoke Spanish to each other when she was around unless they were directly addressing her or if she suddenly, you know, took some babble courses and was able to pick up on her Spanish very quickly while she was in this room for over 20 days. I mean, it could also, and I'm saying I'm defending her broken English and with their

physical mannerisms, she was able to indicate, but to the point of what they said here, that the buyer was a cop, that would be something that you would have to verbalize in English. You know, that's. And they were reading her articles about her disappearance. Yeah, that is a little confusing. And the buyer's a cop thing, you know, it could be true. It could be a deterrent again for them to put fear in her that, hey, listen, you're really in a bad spot here because the only people capable of finding you, they're the ones buying you. So good luck with that. Again, creating less hope for her. Don't even think about escaping because it's not going to help. You might as well just accept your fate. Right. Like there's no place safe for you to go. Yep. You don't even bother thinking about escaping because all it's going to do is

lead you right back here and you're going to be in worse shape than you are now. Well, Sherry also claimed that she didn't remember much about the morning of Thanksgiving Day when she was released from captivity. She said she heard the two women arguing in Spanish and she thought she heard the younger woman tell the older woman that Sherry needed medicine before Sherry heard what she thought was a gunshot, at which point the younger woman left the house. And Sherry believed she was completely alone at this point, so she began screaming at the top of her lungs for help until she fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she had a pillowcase over her head, and she was being grabbed by the younger woman and put into a car. Once again, Sherry claims she tried to stay awake as they drove, but it was hard and she kept falling asleep. When the vehicle stopped, she was ordered to get out and the younger woman clipped something off of her arm, which allowed Sherry to be able to move that arm. Sherry then ran to a nearby church and banged

on the door, but no one was there because it was four o'clock in the morning. And so she ran to the freeway and began flagging down passing cars, at which point she was rescued. So that's Sherry Papini's initial rundown of what happened to her. And I want to point something out that when she was taken to the hospital, the day she's brought home, they obviously did a toxicology test and there was nothing in her system. So if she's trying to have us believe that she was put in this car and she couldn't stay awake, so once again, she can't tell us how long she drove, what the terrain was like, what sounds she heard, etc. If she wants us to believe she was drugged again, as she claimed to be on the way there, then we'd have to wonder where those drugs in her system went and why she wasn't able to stay awake on the drive back to wherever she was left. Yeah. Great questions. So I think the picture

she's trying to paint for us, for the law enforcement, is she was kidnapped by these two women. Something happened along the way where there was a disagreement or maybe the deal fell through, but possibly the younger woman and the older woman had an altercation. The younger woman possibly killed the older woman, had this change of heart, this coming to God moment and decided to release her because this younger woman felt that was the right thing to do. And that's the only reason she was able to escape. Is that pretty much sum up like what she's trying to infer here? So listen, in the affidavit, and you know how these documents are written because this one

was written by an FBI agent, they're law enforcement. They don't speculate. If something's not specifically said, they don't say it. But yeah, I do think that that's the general conclusion to come to because Sherry made sure to tell us that the younger woman was nicer. She was reluctant. You know, she maybe didn't want to be a part of it to begin with. And then you heard a gunshot. You heard the younger woman leave. And then all of a sudden there's a pillowcase over your head. You're being brought home. Yes, I think that's exactly the narrative that that she was trying to paint okay yeah i mean that's that's what we're picking up here so just going off of that all right for this for up to this point an hour in i'll buy it you would buy that like these two people who are working together in this illegal activity would just turn on each other over one person i don't have a reason at this point not to believe it if that but if you're a cop and you hear this i have an assumption yeah i have an assumption you know i have an opinion on it. And it's tough to be completely unbiased when I know that we're covering it, not because everything is what

it appears to be. But I always try to approach these cases where I cancel that out and I objectively look at or listen to what you're telling me. And at this point, you haven't told me anything other than the fact that there's some issues with the story, some issues with toxicology, things like that. Again, I'm noting it, not what I would expect to find. But at this point, I'm going to continue to believe her as we continue. And I'm going to let the evidence dictate whether I believe she's telling the truth as we continue. Okay. But Derek, you're a cop and you're listening to Sherry's story, her rundown of things. Are there red flags for you popping up now as a cop, as a law enforcement official?

There's some things that don't make complete sense, but I'm also limited and I don't have the advantage that these detectives have because I talked about it earlier where the detectives are going through her entire life and they're going to be looking into her journal entries, her text messages, her emails, and they have a complete 360 degree picture of this woman they're looking for. Were there issues before this, financial, emotional? So they know the person they're dealing with. I really don't. I don't have much of a background on her. So I'm only going off the story that she is relaying to us. I can only go off what Sherry's told me so far, but I know we still have another quarter of the script to go. And I'm sure from this point, there are going to be even more things that raise red flags. But to be fair, yes,

there are certain things at this point that seem a little off. And I will be the first to admit, I've never worked a kidnapping case like this. So I'm pulling off experience in other cases that aren't necessarily the same, but have some similarities as far as, you know, quote unquote, victims, maybe not telling the truth. That was a long winded explanation. You're going to keep your opinion close to the vest. All right. I got it. I got it. You know what I mean? Give the benefit of the truth. That was a long-winded explanation. You're going to keep your opinion close to the vest. All right. I got it. I got it. You know what I mean? Give the benefit of

the doubt. And as we continue, if I feel a certain way, I'll say it. You're not going to influence me, Stephanie. You're not going to do it. I think telling you she's arrested for faking her own kidnapping would be enough to influence you. I mean, that is how we started. Yeah, it is. I'm trying to stay objective here. I'm still going to take her at her word. Because I think a lot of listeners going into this, they want to come to their own conclusions. And I think that's why people like this format is I'm not going to automatically just, yeah, you're right. Because if I'm skewed going into it, how am I going to analyze what you're telling me in the most impartial way

I can if I'm already thinking she's lying? I'm glad that you are unbiased in this matter because I don't want to be. Well, that's why I was a detective. I got to be that way. If I always go into it, you know what? They're out. There's going to be a lot of people who I judge initially and I don't give them a fair shake as I do my investigation. So we try not to do it. Although we're human, it's very hard. So on November 28th and 29th, Sherry was interviewed by police again at her home. But she once again refused to be alone with the detectives. And she insisted that her husband be with her and present while she's being interviewed. But she did give further details about the ordeal that she had been through,

further details that sometimes contradicted or muddied her previous statements. So the detectives, they start off by telling Sherry that they knew some of their questions were going to seem like insignificant or odd to her or maybe even repetitive. But there was always a reason they were asking, to which she replied that she understood because she watched a lot of crime shows on television. Yeah, no, they're trying to find things that are going to contradict her original story. I mean, everyone knows that's what they're asking the same questions, because if it's the truth, it's really easy to regurgitate what you've already said, because the truth always remains

the same story. But if you're filling in the blanks as you're being asked the first time and you didn't have something prepared, it is hard to keep in check what you've already told police. So it's a tactic. And what's her response to this, right? Oh, don't worry. I know what you guys are going to do. I watch a lot of crime shows on TV. Yeah. Then she's an expert. Absolutely. So Sherry was then asked to go through everything all over again from start to finish. Sherry told the detectives that on Wednesday, November 2nd, she was going about her normal morning routine. She got the kids up and dressed and then dropped them off at daycare before returning home to do some cleaning and to wrap a Christmas present for her husband. She said that around 11 a.m. she had sent a text to

her husband, Keith, that she joked with the detectives had probably embarrassed Keith. Apparently, the text said, quote, honey, would you please come home to have sex with your wife for lunch, end quote. Now, when Keith had responded that he could not, Sherry decided to go out for a run, something she had recently been getting back into after having breast augmentation surgery. What do you make of this text, by the way? This text that she sends him in the middle of the day, come home and have sex with me for your lunch break. Oh, what am I supposed to think of that? What do you think about like if a woman sends you that text and then you say, no, I can't. I'm too busy. How is that woman feeling?

Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, he's at Best Buy. It's not like he can. He's not the CEO of Best Buy. He's got to be on the clock. And as I said earlier, there's cameras everywhere. He can't just disappear for an hour. He's got a lunch break. An hour lunch break? It's usually like 30 minutes. And I don't know how close he is to the Best Buy, you know, to his home, but I'm assuming between the drive there, the drive back and, you know, what would take place in between, I would, you know, I would think it'd be more than 30 minutes. I would hope for him. Shit. If I'm texting my husband in the middle of the day saying, come home and have sex with me on lunch and you say no, you better take a personal day. You better tell your boss you're sick. You

better do whatever it takes because it might be a while before you get that offer again. You know what I mean? All right. Listen, shots fired. So then Sherry had breast implants done recently, so she hadn't been running because obviously, I feel like that would hurt. I don't know, but I feel like new breast implants are probably super tender and running would be a little bit painful. Yeah, that wouldn't be fun. Yeah. So she wasn't running that regularly after the surgery, but she was trying to get ready for that 5K and she wanted to attempt to run that afternoon.

So Sherry popped in her headphones. She put on that Michael Bublé song, Everything. She played the song. She said it was a good pace keeper. I don't know about that, but there's plenty of other better songs to run to. But OK. And remember when her husband found her iPhone, that song, which was their wedding song, was playing on repeat. As Sherry approached the end of Sunrise Drive, she saw a dark-colored SUV approaching.

When the vehicle backed up, someone inside asked for her help. And Sherry remembered that she was holding her phone in her right hand, and she used her left hand to remove the earbud from her left ear so that she could hear what the woman was asking her. And at that point, Sherry said that she saw the gun, so she ducked down and set her phone and earbuds on the ground. And then she also claims she pulled out a few pieces of her own hair and purposely left them on the earbuds. Okay, that's odd. I'll tell you that's odd. And I'll also say, we're diving into the weeds here, but it also is a little odd because I just think about myself. If someone's talking to me while I have my earbuds in, I usually don't take the earbuds out and still have the music playing while trying to hear them because that's more difficult. I'll usually pull

my phone out, pause the song real quick, pull the earbud out and say, hey, what's up? Just so it's easier to understand what they're saying. So not impossible, but just not something I would normally do. And then to pull out her own hair and leave it next to it, that seems a little odd to me. Seems like she watches a lot of crime television. Right. I know police officers, when we go up to vehicles, sometimes police officers will actually, you'll see it on the dash cam. You'll see an officer walk up to a car and they'll touch the back of the trunk of the car. And some people, why do they do that? Well, what they're doing is leaving their fingerprint on the back of the vehicle so you can show that's the vehicle that they had contact with whenever happened happened to them. Not every police officer does that, but that's like leaving a sign.

And I don't know what the hair would accomplish because the phone's going to tell them who the phone belongs to. I don't think you would need hair. I don't see how it would work. She's doing that so that she can let whoever finds it know that there was a struggle. Because remember, her husband was like on the phone with 911. He was like, there's pieces of her hair wrapped around her headphones. Like something definitely happened here.

You know, like that obviously is what he took from it. So I guess she's she's claiming that she that's what she wanted him to take from it or whoever found the phone. But I mean, how are you going to assume it's him that's going to find the phone? Somebody could have done already picked up your phone and stole it by then. But maybe, you know, you do watch a lot of crime television. Maybe you are kind of on the alert. And I'm not going to say this isn't a smart thing to do because, yeah, it is. If you have no other choice and you want somebody to know that you didn't just drop your iPhone,

it was like, you know, willfully, not willfully, but somebody took it away from you, maybe violently. You want them to know that you have been taken against your will. I guess it's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. If you're having that much know-how to do that. Yeah, I agree. I will say that in conjunction with the fact that, again, her husband took photos of the phone, probably with the hair on it still a little odd for me. You talk about things that I'd be questioning in my head. Those are things I'd question. Me too. So Sherry could also not remember how she'd gotten into the vehicle.

She said that she knew there was a pillowcase or something over her head, but she couldn't remember who had put it there or how it had gotten there. She said she woke up in the car with the pillowcase over her head and she could smell laundry detergent. But remember last time she said it smelled like sewage and the van smelled so bad and now she smells laundry detergent. And she said she felt sick to her stomach and cold during the drive, which she spent laying on the floor of the SUV. Sherry said the road felt windy, her wrists hurt, and her hips began to ache because of the way she was positioned on her side. The detectives asked how long it typically took for her hips to start aching if she was laying on her side,

and Sherry responded that it usually took about 45 minutes based on the last television show she had watched, which was the crime drama The Blacklist. Sherry didn't know how long the drive was because she kept falling asleep, but she did not believe that they made any stops. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. So during the car ride, Sherry claims that the two women were talking in Spanish to each other and playing mariachi music, but she could not remember if there was any commercials in the music, which would have suggested that it was being played from the radio. Sherry also could not remember getting out of the SUV. All she could remember was being in the vehicle and then waking up in a room with her hands

zip-tied behind her back, wearing different clothing than she had put on that morning. She was now dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, which was the same type of clothes that she was wearing on Thanksgiving morning when she was found, but Sherry claimed they were not the same clothes she'd been dressed in upon arrival because the women changed her clothes more than once when she was there. So when she woke up in this room, the first thing Sherry did was try to get her wrists free from the zip ties, which she eventually did by placing the zip ties in her mouth and chewing through them with her teeth, resulting in her lip getting cut. She was not able to explain how she was able to get her arms out from behind her back in order to place her wrists near her mouth. But I mean, that's just a small detail, right? It's not important. again or she felt like sleepy at any other point during her kidnapping, during her capture where she assumed she had been drugged again? Or was that the only time that she inferred that?

No, she claimed that throughout the 20-something days she was there, she was being drugged and she was sleeping a lot. But then she also claims, and we're going to talk about it, she also claimed she was exercising every day. So I don't... That's interesting. I wanted to point that out because you talked about the toxicology report and you're right. You would expect to see something in there, but also you'd expect to see. And because even though she couldn't see what was going on, she could feel where she was being injected. So you think there would be track marks or some sign of an injection point to show. And we don't know what it was.

You know, there's not shown up in the toxicology report, but you can clearly see on her arm or leg or hip, wherever she said that she had been stuck. There's clearly some type of injection point here, especially if they did it quickly and hard, you usually have some type of bruising. So you would expect to see something and it'll, it'll be, I'm curious to see at court if they have pictures of that or anything that would show she was stuck with a needle. Yeah. But if she was stuck with a needle, you'd think that she would still have all that, especially if she's been being drugged for 20-something days, you'd think that some of that would be in her system still, right? Of course.

And that is a big question. But if there's no even injection points, it's even worse. But you're right. There could be injection points of an empty needle. So there's a lot there to kind of unpack. And these are all the questions I'm sure that detectives are trying to answer and hopefully documenting as they're doing it. Right. So Sherry gets her wrists free somehow by chewing through the zip ties. And she claims that she she went to the door in the room and she tried to open it, but it was locked with a deadbolt.

So she stood on the bed to try to get out of the window, only to discover that the window was covered with two boards. At this point, Sherry claims she, quote, yanked the fucker out of the wall super quick, end quote, breaking one of her nails in the process. Now, the noise from Sherry yanking the board off the wall, it brought her captors running into her room, and she claims they hit her with something that she didn't see, but she thinks it could have been a taser, although she never mentioned being tased in her first interview. The next thing she remembered, she was waking up with a lot of pain in her back, her neck, and the side of her head,

and she said that this was all she could remember about her first escape attempt, and this obviously led the detectives to question her about the event of her being branded, right? Because in her being branded, right? Because in her first interview, Sherry had claimed that she'd been branded after her first escape attempt. And so Sherry was like, no, no, no, that did not happen. Like I said, the branding didn't happen right after the attempted escape. It happened later as a punishment. And now that I think about it, I don't think it was because I tried to escape. I think it was a punishment because I was being too noisy. So Sherry said that the branding of her skin was done all in one extended period of time and it was the older woman who did the branding

while the younger woman stood behind Sherry holding the tools that were used for the branding. Sherry said she never saw the tools but but she heard them, saying they sounded like the quote, tinking of a metal pan, like if you were watching a show where they were removing a bullet from someone and dropping it into a pan, end quote. Sherry said she had a hard time remembering specific things about this whole branding experience because she was in a lot of pain from the branding as well as from the weight of her body on her chest and her new breast implants. She also said she didn't know what they had used to brand her with, but she thought the heat source may have been a craft

tool of some kind, something smaller than a fire poker and more the size of a screwdriver. However, several months later, Sherry would text a picture of a spoon to an FBI agent who was working on her case, and she'd say that she thought something similar to that spoon had been used to burn her arm. I'd like to see how that one plays out because we have the video of the police officer talking to the interviewer, whoever that was, and they're saying that it does appear that some type of brand that delivers a message or labels her a certain way. He wasn't being specific for obvious reasons, but it doesn't seem like it was a spoon or an object that could be easily identified based on the structure or the shape of the branding. It sounds like it was

some type of actual brand. So I wonder how that's going to play out. Maybe it says that she really doesn't know, but you would think she would be able to see the branding herself as well and know that it's not in line with a spoon. Yeah. We'll talk more about the branding, but I think what's important to know is there definitely was something that was like burned into her skin. So that's not made up, but maybe the story of how it got there, that may have been made up. Right. Yeah. I mean, the law enforcement confirmed it, right? They confirmed it, you know, so we know that there's some type of burning on her skin. There's no doubt about that.

So Sherry claimed that after she tried to escape, that was when the two women put a chain around her waist and anchored her to that metal pole in the closet. Sherry had tried to wiggle the chain down her waist and over her hips, but whenever she would move the chain, it would like clang against the metal pole in the closet and the women would be alerted to her attempt to get free. So they came in and they made the chain tighter. Sherry said the only reason that she was stuck there was because of the pole, because every time she moved, it would make like a noise, like a clanging noise, and they would come running in. And she had even attempted to rip the pole out of the closet, which caused her to break some more of her nails and

also injured her hands until they bled. Now, every time she made a noise, her captors would come running into the room and beat her, even though she also claimed that they were blasting music right outside her door most of the day. So I'm not sure how they would hear like a chain hitting a pole, but you know, that's what she said. The detectives asked Sherry if there was ever a time where she felt she was alone in the house and she said no, even though in her first interview, she had claimed that that one day she felt she was alone in the house and she'd screened for help until she fell asleep. Anyways, Sherry said no. She didn't think she was ever alone because she could feel movement in the house and she always heard the radio or the television.

When she was asked what kind of programs were being played on the television, she said she was always in and out of sleep, so she couldn't be sure, but the programs were in Spanish. According to Sherry, she was often screamed at, and her captors told her to not look at them in the face, so she had learned that every time they entered the room, she would have to get down on her hands and knees and stare at the floor or they would beat her. Sherry said she tried to exercise during the day so that she could keep in shape while in captivity, and when the detectives asked how she exercised without making noise with the bar and the pole and the chain, the noise that would cause her captors to come

running in and beat her, Sherry claimed that she held the chain tight and tucked it between her legs. I don't know how deep I can go because it does sound odd that she'd be working out during this time. But I guess maybe when you're,'ve never been in that situation you know i don't know if you would try to do things to keep your mind occupied to pass the time because otherwise what are you gonna do sit there and cry the whole time so i i am i am gonna acknowledge that a lot of this seems a little odd i will play devil's advocate as i usually do and say you know I'm sure there are situations where victims, real victims, and I'm not saying she is or isn't one, go through situations where it's so traumatic that they initially give a story and then as they have time to process that story changes.

So it's not always a telltale sign that when someone gives you an initial story and then it changes down the road that it automatically has to be a lie. It happens. I've seen it happen personally. I've been involved at where a victim has told me a story about something and then two weeks later, it's either more detailed or it's changed because they've had time to kind of replay it in their heads. But there are things about this story that seem more like a movie than reality. And I think that's important considering how we started this episode, because it does sound like something that would eventually be a movie script as opposed to what you would expect to hear or listen to as you're talking to a victim of a crime like this.

Yeah. And Sherry seems kind of like a badass, right? Sherry seems like a badass. I mean, she's like trying to escape the second she gets there. She's chewing her zip ties off her wrist. She's cutting her lips. She's yanking the boards off the wall. She's trying to rip the pole out of the closet. You know, like this seems like she did all this stuff as soon as she got there. And, you know, it does seem like maybe the heroine in a television show, like maybe The Blacklist. You know. I've watched The Blacklist. It used to be a great show until a couple seasons went by and then it sucked, but it was a great show. And to me, she sounds like she's sort of emulating the lead character. Her name's Elizabeth,

and this is something that Elizabeth would do, who's like a trained CIA operative, by the way. But, you know, I feel like for me, if I'm in this position, I'm not immediately making a fuss. If I'm in this position and these women have like guns to the point where they scared me to get in the car and they're beating the crap out of me every time I make a noise, like I'm probably just going to try to play nice for a little bit. I'm going to try escaping you know just because i don't want to be murdered but sherry's over here like ripping the damn boards off the wall and trying to get out and chewing through her zip ties that were behind her back somehow i don't know how she did this she must be very limber um to me like you said it does sound like a movie no yeah i there's definitely things here that are it's either a really compelling story that should be turned into a movie eventually, or it's the other thing, which is this was a movie in her head that she's being held prisoner. She claimed that the bucket with the kitty litter in it, that was her idea because initially they'd just given her an empty bucket and she informed

them like, hey, you know, if you line this bucket with kitty litter, it's going to make your jobs easier. So she was, you know, being helpful and trying to give them tips. And she was allowed to shower twice while she was there. And both women were present when this happened. The older woman would stand in the doorway and the younger woman would stand directly behind Sherry. She was given a body wash to use in the shower, which smelled like coconut, but no shampoo. And after her first shower, she attempted to hit the younger woman with something in the bathroom. Now, Sherry couldn't remember what she had used to try and hit this woman with, but the next time she was brought in for a shower, both the bathroom mirror and the towel rack had been removed, so she couldn't use them as weapons.

Now, in her first interview, Sherry had told Keith, who was acting as a representative for the police, that the women had allowed her to wash her underwear in the shower because she was wearing the same underwear the entire time she was gone. But in her second interview, Sherry claimed she had kept the same underwear the entire time she was gone. But in her second interview, Sherry claimed she had kept the underwear on while she showered. And as for getting her hair cut, Sherry said she didn't know exactly how or why that had happened, but she believed it was a punishment for making noise because apparently she was trying to like make the bed and this caused the chain around her waist to clang on the metal pole inside the closet.

The older woman came running in. She was speaking Spanish to the younger woman who remained outside the room, and then all of a sudden, Sherry claims she was hit on the shoulder and then yanked backwards, and it all happened really fast, but suddenly, the older woman had Sherry's entire ponytail in her hair, and she told Sherry she was going to send it to Sherry's mother. On November 29th, Keith Papini revealed to the media shocking details about his wife's condition that the police had hoped to keep under wraps, including the detail of Sherry being branded. Lieutenant Anthony Bertrain of the Shasta County Sheriff's Office said, quote, There's some unique information in there that was in his press release today that we were hoping to keep a tight rein on as far as what we were going to release to the public. It's not the first hurdle in this investigation that we've had. We've overcome many of them, not just in this case, but there are surprises in all investigations. So this is just it wasn't

good timing, end quote. So there were things in the press release that were put public for obvious reasons, because if they get someone in custody, they want to see if this person knows about the brand. And if they don't, they probably they'll use that as guilt knowledge. Right. If they can have someone come in and say, well, what'd you do to her? And they start pointing out things that only they would know or the victim would know. Yeah, that's that's pretty compelling. But now any person who wants to take claim to this has these details that police intended on using to ultimately catch the person who did this. So I can see how that would be frustrating. I've been in that situation before.

It's not fun. And here's the weird thing about it is you're very frustrated now with the victim or the victim's family. But at this point, they're still a victim and they're still, the families are victims as well. So you have to be very careful how you handle that because at the end of the day, as I just said, they are the victims here. And so although it's a mistake and although you're frustrated, you kind of got to say, it's okay, we can work around it, but please don't do anything else. Now, if the police already feel

like they're lying, that conversation might have been different. We weren't privy to that, but it might have. Yeah, it's my personal opinion that the police did believe that Sherry was lying at this point. But I don't think they suspected that Keith was involved. I think that they never really have, or at least in the early days. I don't know, obviously, where they're at now with it. But so I think they felt for him it was like an honest mistake. But yeah, it's going to throw a wrench in things. Doesn't help the investigation. That's for damn sure. Yeah. And Lieutenant

Bertrain also claimed that he understood Keith's desire to protect his wife and their family from a growing wave of skepticism towards her alleged abduction. And this was specifically in reference to a certain blog post that Sherry had allegedly written under her maiden name, Sherry Graff. Now, it was initially reported that this blog post had been found by some web sleuths in the archived material from a pro-white website called skinheads.com, but in the official affidavit, it's alleged that the post was found on MySpace. So I'm just going to go with the MySpace version because that just seems more legitimate. And like I said, although it's been alleged that

Sherry wrote this, as far as I know, it has not been proven yet. So I will carefully refer to the person as the author. Now, the blog was titled Keep Walking, and the author, who was either Sherry herself or someone pretending to be her, wrote that she had grown up in Shasta Lake and she'd been a good student and a good athlete, but she was constantly being picked on in high school by a group of what the author referred to as Latinos. The author wrote, quote, I used to come home in tears because I was getting suspended from school all the time for defending myself against the Latinos.

The chief problem was that I was drug-free, white, and proud of my blood and heritage. This really irked a group of Latino girls, which would constantly rag and attack me, end quote. The author of this blog post claimed that she and her father went to a homecoming volleyball game, at which point the group of these people who were bullying her, they were calling her father names like Hitler and Nazi. So she stood up for her father and she

broke the nose of one of the girls who was saying these things, causing, quote, three Latino guys and five girls to rush in and jump me. They kept hollering about how they hated skinheads and how all skinheads should be burned alive and how I and my ancestors were supposedly all KKK, end quote. The author claimed that they had titled the blog post Keep Walking because her father was proud of her for standing up for what she believed in and the fact that she had kept walking even after her shin had been split open during the altercation. According to the affidavit, detectives asked Sherry Papini about this blog post, which was originally written on a MySpace page, and they

asked her if she had a MySpace page. Sherry said she didn't remember if she'd had one or not, but she did not write that blog post, and she had hired a lawyer prior to her kidnapping in an attempt to get it removed because she believed that someone else had written it using her name, and ex-wife, claiming that this post was a malicious prank done by someone who had hated Sherry in high school, and he said that Sherry would never have written something like that because she was not a racist. So, a lot to unpack there, and I'm glad that we don't know whether she wrote that post or not, but a couple interesting things, and you had asked me earlier, like, Derek, you know, where are you at on this? And I'm like, I don't have a complete picture of who Sherry was or is. And things like this, if the police were able to confirm that this was written by her and they have their ways, you know, they can do things to try to narrow down the possibility that was written by her.

Would that play into my process? Would that play into my investigatory process as I go through and try to develop an opinion as to whether Sherry is believable or not? Yes, this is a character piece of evidence that would suggest a possible motive for describing her kidnappers as these certain individuals, right, that she may have had issues with long before this incident. The thing that's interesting about it is that although you may go down that path and think that as you're going through this blog post, then you have an ex-husband who I don't know. These are things I'd want to know, but I don't know what the relationship was at the time when they got divorced. Was it amicable? Was it not? What was

their relationship like at the time when he came out of the woodwork and spoke on her behalf? What would be the incentive for him to defend her? Right. So depending on that relationship, if they were on really bad terms and he's still coming out and saying this, it may be something I'd lead more towards believing. But if they're in cahoots with each other and they're on good terms and going on vacations and stuff together, he's not an impartial witness. So all those factors would come into play as I'm evaluating this type of evidence that I want to try to figure out whether Sherry wrote it or not. So it looked like her and her first husband, David Dreyfuss, were married for a very short time.

Right. I think they were together for like a year. They split up. I think it was in 2007. And the divorce wasn't even legalized until 2008. And from what I can tell, it appears that she married him for health insurance because she had a heart murmur at the time. So she had married him for health insurance. So I don't know if it was a love match or if it was kind of like a marriage of convenience. You know, he was in the army. Apparently, she traveled around with him for a little bit, like a year. It doesn't look like this was a, it kind of looked like a marriage of convenience.

Okay. So, so that wouldn't be a strong enough incentive for him to come out and start defending her to me. I mean, it doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like he would have to go out of his way to put himself into the situation when he's really not a part of it. So that would hold some weight from him. But he only knew her for a year. He only knew her for a year. So could she have been setting up this thing for a long time where she might have talked about people in her life who created these pranks? And I mean, she could have been planning this out for a very long time. Where would he get this information

from is the question, right? That this was a prank conducted by someone else who didn't like her. have it removed because it must have come to her attention that it was out there and she claimed she didn't write it and she didn't want it out there because she didn't write it so yeah she may have complained to him um who knows right really interesting wrinkle though huh yeah i would say and i would say the same thing if if this was legitimate and she wrote these things yeah it's kind of like the whole you know know, Casey Anthony talked about Zanny the nanny thing, you know, like she Sherry's over here saying like, oh, loud, annoying Mexican music. And she was like, they're disgusting, like food, like grainy Spanish rice or gritty Spanish rice. And she's very derogatory even when she's talking to the police about it, you know,

like mariachi music, things like that, little things that she'd say that sort of sound derogatory. And it does really remind me of the case we just did with Blaze and Sam, because when Sam gets questioned by the police, what did he say about Blaze to the police? He's gay and I think it's disgusting. Why would you say that? You don't think there's anything wrong with you saying that. You think that there's going to be people out there who are going to hear that and be like, yeah, fair enough. You know, but in reality, when she says things like, oh, they're loud, annoying Mexican music and stuff like that, like she sounds derogatory and I don't even think she knows that she does.

No, I agree with everything you said. I really do. And that could become from a place of unconscious bias towards someone, right? Where you're, right? Where you don't realize what you're doing, but you're basically painting your true colors. So now I'm completely in agreeance with you. It could be a deeper thing that she doesn't realize is coming across that way and giving detectives something to go off of. And I mean, I was even looking because I'm thinking to myself, OK, was she harassed? Was she bullied in high school? Like, can I get some confirmation from her father that this whole homecoming thing happened where she got in a fight because she was defending his honor? And, you know, he said, keep walking, you know, because she had a split open shin. Like, can I get confirmation that this happened? But her family hasn't really spoken to the media. Like her sister was very vocal, obviously. You saw her in a couple of these interviews, but her parents really haven't said a ton of stuff, except that they did come out recently after she was arrested and they said they think it's disgusting that she was arrested

and it's horrible. But yeah, I couldn't get confirmation of whether that really happened. Was she bullied? Did she get in this horrible fight during homecoming? You know, there's no confirmation of that. However, I will say that I guarantee you if it goes to trial, they're going to have her father get up there and testify and they're going to be like, did this happen? And, you know, he's going to have to go under oath and say whether it did or not. And I guarantee you the police already asked them that question. Prosecution, if it's important, it's compelling, they'll put them up there to have them repeat it to a jury. But that's where we're at too as far as this case where it's like once it goes to trial,

we're going to get those answers. They obviously charged her. They believe beyond a reasonable doubt that this to be the case. They're not doing it on speculation they're not doing it on contradicting narratives as far as what happened to her there's a lot more than that and it has to be something physical in nature something that's substantial enough to say hey we can we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she's lying yeah derek and we're going to talk about this next episode because right now we're just going through the

different versions of her stories and it's important to go through the different versions of her stories because we need to figure out, like, how did we get here? But there's DNA. There's cell phone records. There's a bunch of stuff. They've got plenty of stuff on Sherry Papini. But on March 2nd, 2017, Sherry would sit down with law enforcement for the first time without her husband present. And this interview was conducted with an FBI forensic interviewer. And it turned out that law enforcement had found some interesting things on Sherry's phone that they wanted to discuss with her.

Additionally, Sherry would reveal what Sherry was really doing during those 22 days that she claimed she'd been the prisoner of two Spanish speaking women who were trying to brand her and sell her to a cop. And that's where we will pick up in the next episode. Based on what you've laid out to me so far, definitely a lot of things that have raised an eyebrow, but by no means am I sitting here going, she absolutely planned this whole thing. Now, what you're leading us to, what you're teasing, more than likely, let's just be honest, is going to probably change my opinion. But to be fair, after part one, I'm still, I'm on the fence right now. I need more. I wouldn't feel comfortable. Let me put it this way.

If I'm the detective working this case and I'm contemplating charging the victim of a kidnapping and with all this publicity that's around it, you better be damn sure you're right. Because if you're wrong, your career is over. Not only is your career over, but you just re-victimized this victim. So this is something that you have to be absolutely positive if you're going to accuse this woman of lying. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how the second part goes. We know that she was charged. So I'm expecting some really compelling evidence to say definitively, oh yeah, she did it. And if I don't get that, I'll tell you guys, but I'm expecting some really compelling evidence to say definitively, oh, yeah, she did it.

And if I don't get that, I'll tell you guys, but I'm expecting it or, you know, there could be an issue here. You're going to get it. I'm going to get it. All right. Thank you guys so much for being here. If you're watching on YouTube, let us know what you think in the comment section. Now, our YouTube videos are coming out earlier than usual, right? They usually come out on Wednesday, but from now on, we're going to post them on Sunday. So if you're listening on audio, you'll hear us on Friday

and then you'll see us on YouTube on Sunday. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, go over and do that. It's just Crime Weekly on YouTube. Find us. And there's tons of videos on there that you can go through if you haven't seen or heard everything and follow us on social media. Derek's going to tell you where. Yeah, you can follow us on at Crime Weekly Pod on all of our social media platforms. It's really easy. And I'm really glad you brought that up. We told you we're getting away from Google monetization. We're with audio boom. With that comes some things. I'll spare you the details, but essentially the audio and video have to come out in the same broadcast week, which is a Monday to Sunday. So we have to release it no later than Sunday. That means you guys who are just watching it, you'll see it with our baked

in ads that we're reading as we go. We're getting away from the monetization that'll come out on Sunday for Patreon members. You'll get the video ad free on Saturday, Friday or Saturday, depending on how quick John and I can turn it around for you guys. We don't want it to be chopped up and not finalized. But as soon as it's ready for you, I'll get it posted on Patreon. So you're still getting it early and you're still getting it ad free. So we'll not have these baked in ad reads that Stephanie and I are doing. So thank you for your patience as we make this adjustment. Hopefully it's the final one for the next couple of years as we're growing.

But we're trying to get away from being dependent on YouTube and Google and all that stuff. And I think most of the response from you guys has been very positive. So I'm really looking forward to this trial, like probably more than I've looked forward to a trial in a long time. And I'm weird because I do really look forward to trials. Like I hope it's broadcast on Law and Crime Network. Like I hope they have the whole thing there. I am super pumped. I love to sit and watch a very lengthy trial in my spare time. It's just something that I enjoy. So I cannot wait to see that. And we will keep you updated on this case if more things come out as we would usually do. But until next time, what I don't know, we don't I don't know what we say at the end of the video. That's why I keep talking. I just keep talking, hoping that you'll come in and close it out. It's weird. It's like Ron Burgundy not knowing what to do with his hands. We will see you guys next week.

Have a good night. Be safe. Bye.