RedHanded - Bonus - Patreon Round-Up: March 2022

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

What do Will Smith, Sherri Papini, and an antarctic research station have in common?  They all featured in this month's Patreon round-up, where we take some of the best bits from our month on Patreon and give you lot a cheeky taster! Have a listen on the RedHanded feed anywhere you listen to podcasts, and if you like what you hear consider becoming a patron of RedHanded. If you do decide to take the plunge you'll have access to a whole host of bonus content (depending on your tier) including Under the Duvet, In the News, and even a whole bonus episode! If that all floats your boat, or should we say "warms your antarctic research station" head on over to patreon.com/redhanded and become a patron today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone.

By now, you know exactly what this is. This is a roundup of our very best highlights from the last month over on Patreon. If you're not yet a Patreon, you might want to have a listen to this because you are missing out on a shit ton of super great content. This month, we we talked of course on under the duvet our flagship after party show all about will smith slapping a certain chris rock at the oscars we had to do it had to be talked about so that's all over

there we also on in the news which is our monthly roundup of all of the most bizarre true crime stories making the headlines gave you all an update on miss sherry papini and her alleged abduction if you're not shocked by what we found out then i don't know what's going to shock you and then finally if you want to get a little taster of our full bonus episode that we release every single month for all ten dollar and up patrons, have a little listen to this because this month we talked about a very mysterious murder that took place in Antarctica. So enjoy! I'm Sruti. I'm Hannah.

And welcome to... Patreon bonus episode for the month of... Mouch. Yes. Mouch. Well done. Congratulations. Come on in.

The water's fucking icy. Yeah. Because this month's bonus episode takes us to a continent where there are no police, no prisons or prisoners, and a continent that has a crime rate lower than any Scandinavian country. In fact, it has the lowest crime rate of anywhere on the entire planet. And many of the residents of this continent even have PhDs. Is it Iceland that has the most Nobel laureates per capita because there's so few people? Oh, I didn't know that. I i think so i think it is iceland oh but that if it's per capita that's massive over representation because if it's like that's taking into account the fact that they've

got fewer people yeah so i think it's like maybe they've only ever had two but because there's so few people oh i see i see that like that's like the number of sure yeah the other natives of this particular continent the ones that don't have phds do have wings but they can't fly and they're born in tuxedos and are absolutely fucking adorable and however cute and romantic it might be and whimsical their name for this particular bird in mandarin does not translate to business goose however much people on hinge want you to believe that it does i saw a business goose swimming in south africa which was one of the coolest things ever because obviously kind of like the galapagos islands they do have like a special breed of penguin and they are fast and you'll just be in the ocean and

they'll just come and hang out with you and be like pew pew pew i'm penguin amazing they are very cute and actually i spent a birthday several years ago when i was traveling in torres del paine which is either in argentina or chile i can't remember but uh camped on the 29th of october it was absolutely fucking freezing yeah right next to a penguin colony colony fuck me are those birds loud they make noise 24 hours a day it's like they don't sleep or they take it in turns to sleep but they were very very loud so yes you've guessed it there are of course penguins and you have probably also guessed the magical utopic land that we are talking about today it is of course antarctica and much like its landscape if you look a little

closer at Antarctica, its record isn't quite as pristine as it might first appear. To this day, not a single murder has ever been recorded there, but that doesn't mean that nobody ever got close. The first violent crime on record in the Antarctic dates all the way back to 1959. And it took place on a Soviet research station known as the Vostek Station. Immediately, Soviet research station. Setting for a horror film. Oh, absolutely. The only thing that could top it is there's like, and it's a rom-com.

Set on a Soviet... And it's in space. Set on a Sovietviet research center yeah so apparently there was a rather heated chess game between two russian scientists and it ended up with one of them attacking the other one with an ice pick again very russian of them very trotsky-esque that particular stabbing incident unlike trotsky wasn, wasn't fatal. But after a KGB investigation, chess games were banned from then on in all Soviet Antarctic stations, which fair enough. Though I would say if you get angry enough to stab your comrade with an ice pick, I think it's probably not just about the chess. I don't think it's about the chess. I think it's about being so incredibly isolated and in the dark. I think I'd stab anyone after about a week. So when we were reading about this incident, we did sort of have a little think about whether something as inconsequential as a game of chess between two co-workers would have ended in the same way had they not been living together in one of the most isolated and brutal parts of the world. I hate chess. I think it's just invented to make people feel stupid.

I'm not very good at thinking steps ahead, which is why I'm terrible at chess and also not very good at Connect Four. But I just like the amount of time it takes to become good at chess, I think is specifically engineered for people to feel smug. I don't like it. Not a fan. Not a fan at all. I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at chess, but I feel like let them have it. I'm fine with it. So this isolation, this isolationist theme that's going to be running through today's episode, I think thanks to COVID, we all know now better than ever, the impact that isolation can have on

an individual's mental health. Everything ranging from depression to confused thinking, delusions, hallucination, emotional instability, and in extreme cases, even outright psychosis can spawn from long periods of social isolation. Now, if you double that up with the harsh conditions of Antarctica, a continent that has just two seasons all year round, summer and winter, where during the six-month winter, the entire continent is in perpetual darkness with absolutely no daylight whatsoever, you might begin to understand how someone could see murdering their co-worker with an ice pick as the only reasonable reaction to losing a game of chess. Especially since studies have clearly shown that when a person's circadian rhythm, the

biological system governed by the 24-hour day and therefore light and dark, is disrupted, they can become more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviour. Oh, 100%. You ever met a new parent? Yeah, like, just let people fucking sleep. Also people who do shift work. I'm like, how do they manage? How do you manage that?

Because it's just not, it's not natural. It's not. And the ice pick incident, the great ice pick chess game of the ages, isn't the only example of this kind of behaviour that we've seen. In April 1984, the Argentine Almirante Brown Research Station was burned to the ground by the station's disgruntled leader, a doctor who was rather upset when he was ordered to stay there for the entire winter. That would be me. I mean, I would burn it to the ground. I love that we've described him as disgruntled.

I'm like, yeah, it's like just a bit pissed off. Not like he's just fed up. Sent a bit of a, sent a bit of a pithy email. He fucking burned his research centre down to the ground so he wouldn't have to stay there. That would be me. So he sent me a picture the other day of a pithy email he fucking burnt his research center down to the ground so he wouldn't have to stay there that would be me saru sent me a picture the other day of a dog hugging a like pile of snow because saru loves the winter loves being cold whereas i hate it so i like sent back a tweet that was like i like to pretend that i'm a really complex emotional being but actually when the sun comes out i'm happy so i'm functionally no different from a large leaf which is true that dog video was so funny it's just like a ballad playing over this husky laying on top of a tiny little bit of snow that's left in his garden so this disgruntled man who was so disgruntled he set it on fire that meant that the station's personnel had to be

rescued by a ship and taken to a neighbouring American station about 60 miles away. And as recently as 2018, again on a Russian research station, the Bellinghausen station, a 54-year-old electrical engineer called Sergei Stavinsky stabbed 52-year-old welder Oleg Belozgakov in the chest multiple times. They'd been working together for about seven months at the base with 14 other people. During this time, tensions had risen between the pair of them because Oleg liked to wind Sergei up by repeatedly giving away the spoilers to every book that Sergei checked out of the station's library.

That's such a niche dick move. Oh, it's vindictive, isn't it? It's just so mean. It's so's so mean like I don't want a victim blame but what why why are you doing that Oleg leave him alone yeah so uh it seems that Sergei reached his breaking point at lunchtime when Oleg suggested that he should dance on the table for money and that's when Sergei lost it grabbed a knife and stabbed Oleg right in the chest oh dear I know people do get upset about spoilers and I've never really understood it. I think because like, I'm just one of those people where knowing what happens doesn't

ruin it for me. So I don't find it annoying. I've never fully understood why people get so enraged by it. Yeah. I'd rather not know. I'd rather you not whisper the ending of every book I pick up from pick up every book i pick up from this library when all we have to do is read these books and i'm like but i'm probably not going to stab you over it what are the what are the like all-time greatest i mean the sixth sense obvious one

bike club's another obvious one there's got to be more oh i've just finished listening to billy connelly's autobiography which I highly recommend by the way it's called windswept and interesting and there's a bit in it where he's talking about learning to scuba dive and then talks about like various interactions with sharks he was like yo it's like Jaws you know that film where the shark can play the cello I love Billy Connolly we'll listen to it in Sri Lanka you'll have a great time amazing so let's not get ourselves into trouble by giving away more spoilers and let's move on fortunately oleg the book spoiler was flown to a hospital in chile just

in time and he actually survived being stabbed in the chest multiple times so it happens when you're mean and vindictive but at the time of the attack sergey and the 14 others on the base had just come out of the Antarctic winter, which no doubt had had an enormous impact on their mental health. And mixed with all the alcohol that they'd been downing on a regular basis, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Now, you might be wondering how the law in the Antarctic is handled. We have done on this show, many a rundown on the legal systems of many a continent, many a nation, many a city, cathedral, city, whatever. Well, in the Antarctic, it's slightly different.

Since there is no government to make the laws and no state has sovereignty over the continent, the Antarctic is subject to a series of international treaties known as the Antarctic Treaty System. Great. But to be fair, easy to remember yes true if we were ever going to have to do an exam on the legal system of the antarctic presumably one of the questions wouldn't be what is the treaty system called the antarctic treaty system but if it was fucking pass so the most important of these treaties is the Antarctic Treaty. Again, just such original naming systems here. And this came into effect in 1961 and has since been signed by 54 countries, including the US, the UK and Russia. Presumably the nations that are spending the most time out on the Antarctic.

And it's mainly there to ensure scientific cooperation between countries and to outlaw any sort of military operations taking place on the icy continent. But how does the treaty deal with crimes committed there? Well, scientists don't suddenly get to act as law enforcement. No, no, no. Instead, as per the Antarctic Treaty, the person who commits the crime is subject to the law enforcement policies of their home country. Interesting. Okay. So kind of like cruise ships no the opposite of cruise ships oh oh yes cruise ships are wherever they're registered right unless they're within six miles of a country something like that that's just me remembering the amy bradley episode that i wrote fucking five years ago so if i'm wrong you brought it on yourself listener so for example let's have a

look at our book spoiler stabber sergey he was imprisoned in a church in antarctica for 11 days before he was flown back to russia there are churches on antarctica i also thought that but you know what probably those christians man they get everywhere they're trying to fucking convert some penguins you know why are you there while we're here let's build a church and the good thing about like a protestant church i don't know if it was but i assume maybe it was very simple to build yep cannot one of those up in a day probably most other religious houses gonna take a bit longer so they beat you to it welcome to my religious house just off the r Russian fucking research centre. I thought the Russians would have been orthodox.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Well, in the 80s, they would have been nothing at all. Of course. Yeah, that's why they were like, Sergei, to teach you a lesson, I'm going to fucking lock you in this godhouse. To the church with you. Once Sergei got back to Mother Russia,

it was discovered by those having a look at him that he was actually in the midst of a nervous breakdown when he had attacked Oleg. And the judge decided to drop the attempted murder case against him. Surprisingly, at the request of the stabby Oleg, who said he forgave Sergei and believed that he showed genuine remorse, which is extremely nice of him.

I wonder if he was like, you know what? Fair enough. I was, I deserved it. I was also having a tough time. We'd been in the dark for six months and I was being a right prick. Yeah, yeah. So you know what? There's there. At least it's holding his hands up. Equals equals. Equals equals. And now, of course, a case like this only works if the culprit is caught. And in all the examples we've mentioned of the previous crimes committed on the continent of

Antarctica, it's pretty obvious who was guilty. There's one case that stands out against the others, and it happened in May 2000. And it might well be the only murder to have ever taken place in the Antarctic that we know of. And to this day, almost 22 years on, it remains officially unsolved. It was the 11th of May 2000, and Rodney Marks was walking back to the main base at Amundsen Scott South Pole Station, when he began to feel slightly peculiar. But this wasn't the normal sort of strange feeling that everybody got from adjusting to the minus 62 degrees Celsius temperatures and the 24 hour long nights. Theyear-old astrophysicist's chest was tight

and he was struggling to breathe. A little later on, his vision started to blur and his entire body began to ache. Rodney assumed that he was likely just exhausted from working long hours and got into bed early, hoping that a good night's sleep might sort him out. He was wrong. Rodney didn't sleep a wink that night and by 5.30am, he was hunched over his toilet, vomiting blood. That morning, knowing something was definitely very, very wrong, Rodney stumbled to the biomed facility. He went back there three times over the course of the day, and after each visit, his symptoms were just worse and worse.

Every bone and muscle in his body felt like it was on fire. His eyes had become so sensitive that he had to wear sunglasses even though the sun hadn't risen over the base for weeks. It was not looking good for him. His physical state deteriorated, and his mind did too. On Rodney's third visit to the doctor, he was so agitated that he was almost hyperventilating. The doctor, Dr Thompson, couldn't think of a single medical problem that would be causing Rodney's symptoms and the only link to the outside world he had was a satellite phone and also an internet connection, both of which were down at the time. The only thing Thompson could think might have been the issue was potentially alcohol withdrawal symptoms or maybe the astrophysicist's high level of anxiety. So the

doctor decided that he was going to inject Rodney with the powerful antipsychotic Haldol, hoping that it would calm him down. Almost immediately after the injection, Rodney's body relaxed and he laid back on his gurney as his breathing calmed down. So it seemed like the antipsychotic had done the trick. But it hadn't. Just a few minutes later, Rodney's heart totally stopped. Thompson then spent the next 45 minutes attempting to resuscitate Rodney, but it was hopeless. At 6.45pm on the 12th of May in the year 2000, Rodney Marks was declared dead. I feel like today, should we start by talking about the Oscars? I like really don't want to I know but

I kind of feel like we have to and I feel like I've also made some notes on it I mean you you go off but like I I just I just I don't care I mean I also don't care I didn't care until I saw the fucking shit show and I was like well this is quite entertaining in a really horrible way i saw a really great meme that's like whoever like runs the oscars um with like obviously a picture of a clip of like what happened and then like spongebob and patrick being like we did it patrick we saved the oscars because like no i didn't even know it was happening until i opened my phone the next morning.

And then I was like, oh, the Oscars was last night, apparently. No, nor did I. And I generally like to actively take pride in not knowing anything about celebrity stuff. But this was quite entertaining. And I feel like we should give the people what they want. Because if we can say that we talked about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars, maybe some more people will listen to this episode everybody does hate Chris well I don't I fucking hate Will Smith because that was so embarrassing beyond belief like I hadn't

watched the video because I just thought it was like why are people falling into the hands of all of this fucking Oscars propaganda when it's just like marketing nonsense I didn't even know what happened i just saw the stills and it was happening everybody was like talking about it i was like do you people not have anything better to do with your life no um no and clearly nor do i because i spent 10 minutes on it this morning but um then i watched it yesterday in front of you while i was having my lunch and I was like oh shit he really fucking slapped him and I and I don't think it was planned I don't think it was a I've too and fro'd but I don't know I don't think it was I do think Chris Rock's reaction makes me think it absolutely and then also Wilson was like just crying after yeah it's just uh lots of embarrassingness yeah he just seemed a

bit unhinged he does and i think you know that's what i wanted to talk about actually because again my interest or like my knowledge of any of like will smith and jada pinkett smith's like life purely comes from the fact that i will watch anything that dr grande makes on youtube and like several years ago when they first had their like i think it was in 2015 when Jada Pinkett had her when she rebranded her affair as an entanglement yeah he did like a um analysis of the talk show well she has that talk show doesn't she called like red table talk or something I know they're insufferable they're she's insufferable particularly I can't I think Willow's worse than her

they're all so bad yeah I think Willow Smith is probably the most smug person on earth. I can't stand it. They're so awful. And like fucking whatever their son's called posted being like, that's how we do after. I was like, your dad just fucking humiliated himself in front of millions of people. But anyway, so in 2015, I remember watching Dr. Grande doing an analysis of the talk show Red Table Talk between Jada and Will yes I've seen it and so I watched that and I was like oh because like she basically for anybody who gives a fuck had um had an was basically I want to leave you apparently and he was and Will

Smith was like don't leave why don't you just sleep with other people and but don't leave me and she was like all right that works for me so then she starts sleeping with that guy August August but four and a half years of having a relationship and he basically like Will Smith gave us our blessing blah blah blah and I think Will Smith is just like yeah like he didn't want to and in that red table talk I think it comes across very obviously like that was a man who was like that's not really what I want but that's what I feel like I have to do yeah for this marriage to not have a breakdown and so then after that like that goes on for four and a half years which is pretty savage if you're not totally into somebody else banging your wife and then like then skipping

ahead obviously Jada Pinkett Smith's like I have alopecia and I'm embracing it. I'm going to shave my head. And she goes to the Oscars, shaved head, Chris Rock, who don't even know if he knew that she has alopecia. Oh, he did. Oh,

right. That's why, that's what the joke was about. Oh no. I mean like, I was like, does he know, or is it just cause she's got a shaved head now?

But either way, whatever. Like he makes a joke about G.I. Jane too. And it's a joke. It's a joke. Yeah. You can be like, it's insensitive. Maybe maybe you can be like i didn't find that particularly funny but like in a world where we constantly talk about people getting cancelled for jokes and like people losing their mind about jokes he got punched in

the face or slapped in the face for making a joke like that's not really very okay i was i was about to say reading i was on tiktok and um i saw this lady who made a really interesting point she was like there is something about when celebrities are like mentally not doing well we turn it into this like circus and it's literally the same as people paying to go into bedlam like when charlie sheen was having a very very public breakdown no one was like oh no he needs help they were like look at the funny man being ridiculous and like i do sort of like no i don't think you should have hit him but like i i was watching it and i was like oh maybe maybe you're not doing so well will smith oh no will smith's not doing well at all i absolutely think that's the crux of the whole issue. But I think the problem was it's like he hit Chris Rock in front of millions of people.

So clearly, like, OK, you can be like, I didn't like the joke. But I think the point that Dr. Grande makes on this, which I was watching this morning, was a really good point that he was basically saying that obviously Will Smith isn't doing good because if you are living that close to the edge, the one bad joke makes you physically assault another person. You're not okay. And I think that absolutely the bottom line takeaway of this entire thing is that somebody needs to get Will Smith some help because that man is not all right. Like he hits Chris. I mean, imagine if you are able to lose control of your emotions to the extent that even the knowledge that millions of people are watching and you are in a room surrounded by your peers and filled with video

cameras and you still did that you're not somebody who is totally a-okay right now I think the challenge was that somebody needs to help Will Smith that is a given the challenge was that then nobody kind of did anything in that moment he just went and sat back down and then everyone was just like let's just not like yeah remove him from the situation because he just physically assaulted somebody right I think like the one of the reasons that I thought it was staged I don't think that anymore but like one of the reasons I thought it was staged I was like this is the Oscars is there no no security? Can't you literally just walk up and smack someone in the face at the Oscars?

That's the thing that was really shocking is that it was like, you just let him stay there. And then he went up and accepted his award. And then people, some people gave him a standing ovation. I was like, I don't- Venus and Serena looked very unimpressed though. That was pretty funny. I know.

I was like like go hit him venus but no it just the whole thing was incredibly uncomfortable and it felt like nobody intervened nobody did anything yeah and i don't know the people who were kind of like on his side on twitter about it being like he's defending his wife i was like that's some toxic masculinity right there being like him defending his wife by punching another man in the face who made a joke. It's probably not what we want to be celebrating. I'd say that man needs help. There's no doubt in my mind.

And I think Dr. Grande also makes very good points about what might be going on. He's obviously like, I'm not trying to diagnose him. I think he clearly needs to get some help. But he clearly has a very, in his words, an immature and overzealous relationship with his wife. And Dr. Grande says that the thinking behind that is possibly because obviously stemming from the other relationship, the entanglements. And basically, I'd never heard of this theory before. But he says that if you don't know who Dr. Grande is, he's a fantastic YouTube psychologist. You should go watch immediately.

And he was basically saying that when people have affairs, they typically tend to pick somebody. And we're talking about hetero affairs here. When people have affairs, they typically tend to pick somebody to have the affair with who is like a ultra kind of in in their mind stereotypical version of a gender ideal so when women tend to have affairs on their husband they typically tend to pick somebody that they think is hyper masculine etc or like in direct and directly sort of like competition with the man that they were with and when men it, they typically pick women who are younger, who are perceived to be more physically, femininely beautiful or whatever.

And he was saying that Jada picking August, who was a musician who was considerably younger than Will Smith. Neck tattoo. Neck tattoo, that that would have been, that would have basically caused some of the issues for Will about his own sort of place in their family and his role as a protector and also just feeling pretty inadequate based on those things so obviously he's not like that's the reason people get cheated on all the time and

they don't like totally lose their shit but i think will smith needs some help um yeah and i think it was the shouting after as well when he sat down he carried on and the worst thing is not the worst thing a part of it is when you watch the scene he laughs at first oh yeah at the joke and then he looks to see Jade is not laughing and then that's when he goes and I think it's just so oh it's so painful so embarrassing so yeah like absolutely you know I think the bottom line is that he needs help but um he's but it was just the awkwardness of people giving him a standing ovation after him being like I mean just no one knows what's going on no nobody knows what the right thing to do is like nobody knows what's going to get you cancelled and what's going to get you like lauded the problem is the the those

Hollywood celebrities like to pretend like they are the most wokeity wokest woke of all and i'm just like he just he just hit someone he just hit somebody and you're clapping on live television standing ovation like there's a bit awkward don't do that that's not great um but anyway that was really i had to say about i did see a particularly funny tweet that was like oh if that's how angry Will Smith is in March, imagine him in August. Harvard is the oldest and richest university

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Start your free trial today. So that was a theme, a themed. And now I've just got a straight up blast from the past for mine yes we've never actually covered her on the show um i know who it is sherry bafini yes i i know you hate her you're just like i just don't give a fuck i just don't i just don't care i'm sorry like i know i should yeah but it's one of those cases where i'm just saying i know couldn't care less i'm quite interested because she's just

got such a punchable face yeah i think we're in agreement in general but like i just like yeah yeah i just don't have the energy like i know that if we covered it i would just get so annoyed that it would probably take me about a week to recover anyway so that we're doing it in the news instead um so let's let's refresh our memories shall we uh on the 2nd of november 2016 keith pepini was on his way home from work he was looking forward to chilling out with his family but when he got back to his home in redding california the place was empty and that was weird because his wife sherry was normally at home with the kids by now and he rang the daycare and he was told that nobody had ever gone to pick up the children he was getting more worried by the second and he rang the daycare and he was told that nobody had ever gone to pick up the children

he was getting more worried by the second and he tracked sherry's phone using the find my iphone app uh which is so useful i know i'm gonna get one of those ones you can put on your keys anyway um it showed that uh sherry's phone if notry herself, were at an intersection between two roads just less than a mile away from their home. He got there as fast as he could and he found his wife's phone, but no wife. That's not the thing he was looking for. No.

He's been bamboozled. He rang 911 and made a missing persons report. That is, I would argue, the one foible of the Find my iphone app yeah but she's not here i mean i'm i'm usually glued to my eye honestly i cannot wait till my phone is just a chip in my arm i just i cannot wait like just give it to me now even the even the apple watch notifications are stressing you out yeah you can turn them off. That's good. I just don't. So police turn up,

which is what generally happens when you call 911, and they comb the area tirelessly. Search and rescue teams all over the place, but nobody could find Sherry. So there was a $10,000 reward posted all over the place. And after a few days,

Sherry's family added another $ thousand dollars to this prize money can you call it prize money what's it called uh reward money what's it called when you have a hostage and you're asking for there's a special word pale no uh ransom ransom yes the opposite of ransom yeah honestly i don't know whether like you found a you hit the jackpot my brain is just i find i'm losing words so much at the moment just very tired just a bit worried my brain's dying anyway um i know we really do but so the ransom reverse ransom money made no good no made no good made no good difference yeah didn't matter um because sherry still nowhere to be found three weeks still no sign of her

until the 24th of nove, which was 22 whole days after she'd gone missing. At around 4.30am, someone reported having seen Sherry Bepini walking along an interstate road, roughly 150 miles from her hometown. Police picked her up, took her to hospital, and she was reunited with her husband. Later that day, Sherry told the police what happened to her. Allegedly. She claimed that two Hispanic women wearing bandanas over their faces had threatened her with a gun and kidnapped her while she was out running. She said that these women had held her captive for the last 22 days and that one of the women

had bound her and left her on the side of the road so she could be found by law enforcement it's kind of a bit like a an inverse jesse smollett you know what yes kind of five days after pavini made this statement her husband went on good morning america to speak about his wife's injuries never go on good morning america it never ends well no anyone on anyone on Good Morning America is lying. The only good thing that's happened on Good Morning America is when Russell Brand went on there and just skewered every single one of the presenters. If you haven't watched it, it's so funny.

No, I haven't watched that. Oh my God, it's so funny. Like, they just don't know what to do with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, he's just the king of thinking on his feet. So he just completely takes over the whole set and ends up presenting good morning america for like the rest of the segment because they all do you russell honestly i know problematic at times but like sometimes he's just a genius oh yeah no i'm i'm i'm here for russell i feel him i'll find it for you

afterwards you're gonna love it he's like isn't this your job yeah aren't you supposed to be doing this um anyway uh so, good morning, America. And he spoke about what happened to his wife and said that she'd been starved, beaten and branded by her captors. Oh, for God's sake. He also talked about how her signature long blonde hair had been chopped off and she'd been held with chains around her wrists and waist and placed with a bag over her head. The next day, detectives revealed thaty's abductors had actually branded her with a message but what that message was um we've never found out it's never been revealed she never showed anybody didn't happen oh that's interesting this sherry said was so that she could be

trafficked by her abductors like some sort sort of cattle branding, one would argue, maybe. I also watched quite an interesting little, expose is a strong word, an interesting little bit about somebody analyzing this, like a law enforcement person. And they were like, firstly, like if you're going to traffic people, you're not going to beat them up in the face and you're not going to cut their hair off and you're not going to like no brand them because you don't want to damage for one like i'm not trying to be crass but this is what they say you don't want to damage what is through your eyes the goods the merch and also if you're branding presumably that brand is associated to you in some way and if you're human trafficking what's the point you don't want anything to be found like threaded back to you it's not a cult you're not getting people to join your cult yeah so if you can't want anything to be found like threaded back it's not a cult you're not getting people to join your cult yeah so if you can't tell by the tone of our voice we don't

believe her uh anyway uh they also released descriptions of the perpetrators according to sherry and one woman was young with long curly hair and her pierced ears while the other was older had straighter gray and black hair not uh not massively vivid descriptions and probably as a direct result of um sherry burpini being a big fat liar the case went cold the next four years four years this feels like it just happened i know uh until 2020 right nothing happens and in 2020 police ran dna tests of burpini's clothes and that led them to James Reyes, who was Sherry's childhood sweetheart. And she'd previously been engaged to him. What? I didn't know this.

Wow. Welcome to In The News. I didn't keep up with this story. I didn't know that. We were quite busy in 2020. Why did they wait four years to test her clothes for DNA? It's not like it was in the 80s. they just got sick of her dna to be found get out of precinct sherry we're fucking done with your shit take your fucking clothes we don't even want to dna test them okay um so the police tracked down reyes and they talked to him on the 10th of august 2020 and they quickly learned the shocking truth behind what really happened to sherry papini

reyes told the police that sherry had not been kidnapped at all they were having an affair she'd been at his apartment oh no yes oh my god no way i did not know this yep well welcome to the news fucking hell james explained how he and bapini have been exchanging flirty texts for a few weeks before she yeah sorry i'm i'm full of questions yeah no go ahead bubbling with questions i won't be able to answer any of them. Just try. Let's put them out there. Okay. So the husband, I always thought he was in on it,

like in on the fake kidnapping scam. So if she was having an affair with this guy Reyes, the husband wasn't in on it. He genuinely just thought his wife had been abducted. Well, well. Maybe I'll just let you continue. Let's find out, shall we? So apparently, Pepini, after a few weeks of sexy messages maybe i'll just let you continue let's let's find out shall we so apparently yes for beanie after a few weeks of sexy messages with her her childhood beau little fucking bitch man

uh she tells reyes that keith is abusing her oh fuck you yeah yeah dick yep and uh she wanted to get away from him and that's why reyes said that she could go and stay with him white knight syndrome exactly but doesn't under stress help me he went on to tell the police that shit really got weird when sherry began starving herself and asking him to beat her up he refused to hit her but he did buy her a wood burning tool from a shop called hobby lobby and helped her use it to brand her arm no no no no hobby lobby no at the center of every crime it's quite a good name though it is an excellent we only have hobby craft hobby lobby is better lobby lobby is much better um also this guy's like i was a bit concerned but not that concerned that you didn't not go get her a branding tool from hobby okay not not to sound um like a heinous bitch

but it's who i am if you're in a relationship with sherry vipini you've probably got a few screws loose anyway i don't think he's i don't think we should be looking to him for what a normal person would have done under these circumstances this whole thing is so unbelievable how have we not done this as a main feed i mean i don't i hate her yeah but i'm also like maybe it would be quite funny because i didn't know all these developments i thought she was just fucking lying to like try get on like good morning america oh my god so this guy like must know she has kids right yeah he's in this day and age obviously and she's like i'm a super mom yeah i like posting her kids all over the internet so he's just like she's got kids at home she's got

husband at home yes she thinks she says that he's abusing her but she just left her kids with him and she's here and she's not eating she's beating herself up and she made me go buy her this branding kit from Hobby Lobby. And he's just fine. Yeah. All right. Good. Just so we're all on the same page.

I also just like saying Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby. So obviously this is a pretty high profile case because of Keith being on Good Morning America, obviously. So when Reyes came out with his story, even though there was a whole ass pandemic going on, people were pretty pissed off. And this week on Things People Are Angry About.

Brought to you by Hobby Lobby. And they're annoyed because Sherry had actually got a lot of money from friends and family because they all thought she'd been abducted and trafficked. Actually, she was just shacked up with her boyfriend this is outrageous this is way worse than i thought it was and also the state have estimated that her kidnapping cost 150 000 in taxpayers money fucking get that money from her and also all the police time she's wasted blah blah blah i think she should have to go work at hobby lobby and pay the government back

well actually she's been arrested oh good yeah not by hobby lobby by by the long arm of the law she's been arrested and she's up for she's up for fraud charges um good yeah man um male fraud and making false statements to law enforcement and uh ray as is set to testify at trial it looks like he's kind of got away with it not that he did anything but you know whatever i'm always like oh man throw them in jail um he was just banging her yeah i don't think he knew what he was getting himself into um apparently a lot of sherry's ex-boyfriend has to have described her as a quote attention hungry person and one of her ex-boyfriends said that she often fabricated stories of being the victim of abuse from her family her dad blah blah blah um and there's also evidence that in 2013 when she was 21 and living with her family she harmed

herself and falsely tried to blame it on her mom do you know what i think reyes is actually very lucky that she didn't fucking kill him because i think not to be uh hyperbolic but like we've seen this pattern before yes yeah she is gonna end up if she if she had carried on she would have ended up killing somebody and saying that she did it like in self-defense or sure yeah yeah shit man um so yeah uh she's out on bail apparently but uh we'll see what happens at trial well yeah curveball that is a shocker well and that's in the news i'm speechless that's all we've got that is that was a good one that was a good one. That was a good one. I mean, not for anyone involved, but for us. For us, we had a nice time. Well, there you go, guys.

That is the In The News for the month of March. Yeah. Hopefully you enjoyed that. And I can't remember. Oh, you've already had your bonus episode this month. So listen to that. Be quiet. Be quiet.

And we'll be back next month with some more content. Hooray. listen to that be quiet be quiet and uh we'll be back next month with some more content if you enjoyed that then head on over to patreon.com slash red handed that's p-a-t-r-e-o-n because i've seen some of you spelling it wrong dot com slash red handed take a look at the tiers that we offer take a look at all the delicious content you get pick your favorite tier sign up sit back and relax and let us do all the hard work. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul. The man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs.

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