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- [00:02]
Morgan Abshur
Hey, Cluminati, it's Morgan and Kalen. If you're loving clues, you need to check out Crimes of, the newest show from Crime House.
- [00:08]
Kin Moore
Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from Crimes of the paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. Their first season is Crimes of Infamy, the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains.
- [00:23]
Morgan Abshur
Crimes of is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find them on YouTube at Crime House Studios. New episodes out every Tuesday. This is Crime House.
- [00:48]
Kin Moore
All right, guys, today's case is truly stranger than fiction. In 2016, Sherry Papini seemed like the perfect mom with a perfect life. But everything changed when she went missing during a routine jog one November day. A massive search turned up nothing until 22 days later when Sherry mysteriously reappeared.
- [01:10]
Morgan Abshur
The story she told police was terrifying, but when investigators tried to ID the perpetrators, they learned that the truth behind Sher's abduction was a lot more complicated than she was letting on. And there's still plenty of lingering questions to this day. Hi, friends. Welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.
- [01:45]
Kin Moore
I'm Kin Moore, and I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the case files on these cases.
- [01:52]
Morgan Abshur
And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. I'm diving into the Reddit forums and anything else I can find online to pull out the threads that just don't add up. More on this case and the clues that defined it. After a quick break, one of this week's partners is Jenny Bird.
- [02:08]
Kin Moore
You know when you put something on and it starts to become part of your permanent rotation of jewelry? That's how I've been feeling about some of the pieces that I've gotten from Jenny Bird recently. I don't know if you can see, Morgan. I'm wearing one of my anklets.
- [02:20]
Morgan Abshur
The pearls on that are beautiful.
- [02:22]
Kin Moore
It's a Lucille anklet, but it's got shells and it's got pearls and it's just so summery and dainty. I've been wearing it literally every day.
- [02:28]
Morgan Abshur
It's beautiful. The monogram necklace I got has been my daily wear. I love how water resistant it is because I'm lazy and I don't like taking off jewelry when I shower. So it's perfect. It doesn't tarnish. It looks really cute. I got a cute little j To represent Justin A.
- [02:43]
Kin Moore
That's sweet.
- [02:44]
Morgan Abshur
I'm obsessed. I also got my friend Alejandra the Gemini necklace for her birthday. Jenny Bird is just such a thoughtful gift for someone. And it's these pieces that people are going to actually love because they're trendy and they're going to have for years to come.
- [02:58]
Kin Moore
And they're timeless, too. Like right now I'm also wearing this pearl bracelet that I got and I feel like pearls never go out of style. So I'll have it forever.
- [03:06]
Morgan Abshur
No, they'll never go to style. So if you're ready to try it for yourself, you can get 20% off your first order with Jenny Bird by visiting Jenny D. Bird.com and using code clues at checkout. This will be an interesting one today.
- [03:19]
Kin Moore
We talked about it before we started doing this episode. One of the reasons this is a little bit of an older case. A lot of people know this one, but Sheri is currently on a book.
- [03:27]
Morgan Abshur
Tour, talking about, on a tour, her.
- [03:30]
Kin Moore
Side of the story. Really trying to get that out as the main narrative of the story. And so Morgan and I thought it would be nice just to have on clues an episode where we break everything down, how it actually happened, not this new version that's coming out in this book this year.
- [03:45]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. With the evidence behind all of it. Support.
- [03:48]
Kin Moore
Yes.
- [03:48]
Morgan Abshur
So maybe start with this episode if you're thinking or considering reading the book, maybe start here and then decide if you still wanna read it afterwards. I know she's made some appearances on a few podcasts for the book tour, so really trying to plug it, but let's get into this first and see what you guys think by the end. If you know anything about this case ahead of time, put it in the comments. Reply to yourself afterwards if your feelings change. But I'm really excited to dive into this one.
- [04:14]
Kin Moore
Also, just a quick reminder for anyone who's watching this episode on YouTube, there's gonna be some photos that'll help paint a picture of this case. But if you're listening, you can also find those same exact photos on our social media. That's Luz podcast on Instagram where we post those. And before we dive in, I just want everyone who is listening and watching to know that this episode does contain depictions of self harm. So please listen with care. Our story starts today on November 2, 2016 in Mountain Gate, California. It's this rustic town. It's described as being almost Twin Peaksy. There's modest houses, a few small businesses, all nestled between beautiful trees and mountain ridges. It's Gorgeous. That Wednesday starts like any other weekday for the Papini family. 34 year old Sherry Papini gets up early with her husband Keith, who helps get their two young kids, their four year old son and their two year old daughter ready for the day. Just before 7am, Keith heads off to his job as an audio visual specialist, someone who sets up and does maintenance maintenance on tech equipment at Best Buy. And then Sherry drops the kids off at daycare. She's got a pretty typical routine planned for that day. She runs errands. Maybe she's gonna go do a workout later. She was recently let go from her job at AT T almost a year ago, but the severance package was really good. So for now she's a stay at home mom. At least just for the time being. And throughout the morning, Keith and Sherry text back and forth like they always do, checking in on things. It's normal married couple stuff. They coordinate things regarding the kids, that kind of thing. But the last time that Keith hears from Sherry that day is at 10:37am when she asks if he plans to come home for lunch. Keith would go on to say that he actually didn't see that message right away because he doesn't always have his phone on him at work. So he texts her back at 1:39pm and he says, quote, sorry, long day. After that, there's radio silence. Of course, Keith doesn't really think much.
- [06:12]
Morgan Abshur
Of it at first.
- [06:13]
Kin Moore
Maybe Sheri also didn't have access to her phone. Sometimes she goes for long runs outside or she'll get caught up in errands. But when he gets home at around 5pm, something definitely is off. Now, normally he would be greeted by Sheri at the door with a big kiss or a hug from his kids. But today the house is dark. Sherry's car is sitting in the driveway. But Sherry is nowhere to be found. And the kids are still at daycare. No one went to pick them up. And when he calls, the staff tells him that Sheri never arrived. Keith doesn't know exactly where Sheri is, but he does have an idea on where to start looking for her. He opens up his iPhone. He has the Find my iPhone app and it shows that Sheri's phone is about a mile north of their house by a mailbox along Old Oregon Trail.
- [07:00]
Morgan Abshur
And.
- [07:00]
Kin Moore
And it's also not moving in location. Now this is a rural road that she does like to jog on. So Keith drives straight to that location, a little worried that maybe something happened, maybe she tripped and broke her leg. While she was running, maybe she knocked herself unconscious. But when he gets there, there's no sign of Sherry. But his phone is still saying that her phone is there. And sure enough, in the grass at the location it says it would be, is Sherry's phone sitting in its black case. It's laying screen up. It's completely undamaged, and her headphones are neatly coiled on top of it, tangled with a few strands of long blonde hair. And Keith assumes that these are Sherry's pieces of hair, but that's the only sign that Sherry was there. So at 5:51pm, Keith calls 911 and he reports that his wife is missing. And within a few hours, this small town missing persons case becomes a national obsession. So who is Sherry Papini, the woman at the center of our story today? Although her life at age 34 looked really ideal, the start of her story definitely wasn't so. Sherry was born in 1982. She grew up in Reading, California with her older sister Sheila. Their childhood was described by being marked with instability and trauma. Their parents, Richard and Loretta Graffiti, allegedly struggled with serious drug and alcohol problems. And there was one particularly disturbing incident that was seen by a family friend named Jennifer. She said that she once witnessed Sher's mother, Loretta, grab Sherry by the hair and drag her into the bedroom. We don't really know how old Sher was at the time, but it seems like When Sher turned 16, she had enough of her family and she dropped out of high school. She ran away to Los Angeles and, and then she kind of bounced around the Bay Area throughout her teen years and her early 20s. She became what her family called, quote, a couch hopper. She was moving from place to place, kind of relying on friends and boyfriends to support her. Sheila didn't approve of most of these boyfriends that Sheri had at the time. She saw Sheri getting involved with men who didn't seem to be all that good for her. These were relationships that seemed to follow the same unstable pattern that Sherry had grown up with. And it's around this time that Sheri also gets married. In 2006, Sheri married her boyfriend named David Dreyfuss, who was being deployed overseas as a platoon sergeant with the armed forces. The marriage was mostly so that 24 year old Sherry could get health insurance for some medical procedures that she needed. It seems also like David knew about this. From what we can tell, it seems like Sherry was donating her eggs to make a little bit of money. And she actually had some complications from this procedure. And so that's what she needed health insurance for. The relationship wasn't very serious. Sherry and David didn't even live together during this time. And when he came back from deployment, Sherry told him that she wanted a divorce. By that point, she had already rekindled things with an old boyfriend named Keith Papini. They actually had met in middle school, and they dated briefly when they were in the seventh and eighth grade. They were even each other's first kiss. And the two fell out of touch, I mean, as most people do with their middle school boyfriends when Sherry moved away. But when she returned to Reading in 2006, she and Keith reunited. And Keith said, quote, next thing I know, I took her out for a date. And it was just immediate. I thought she was really beautiful. She liked all the things that I liked. Keith was stable. He was employed, described as being kind. Everything. It seems like the other men in Sheri's life had not been to her. Sheri talked about Keith as being like this fairy tale prince, her knight in shining armor, here to whisk her away to the happily ever after that she always dreamed of. So the couple got married in October of 2009. They bought a house in a quiet town called Mountain Gate outside of Reading. They had two beautiful children together. First a son that was born in 2012, and then a daughter born in 2014. And by 2016, Sheri seemed to have everything that she always wanted. This loving husband, this perfect family, this stable home. And she really threw herself into being a mother. She posted all the time about arts and crafts projects that she was doing with her kids. She posted about these elaborate birthday parties that she would throw for them. I often heard this term used about her at this time, but super mom? Everyone knew her as being this, like, super mom. From the outside, it seemed really like Sheri had kind of a beautiful underdog story, like she finally escaped this very troubled past and was able to build a perfect life. Life for herself. But that was at least until November 2, 2016, when she mysteriously vanished. So within hours of Keith's 911 call, the small Mountain Gate community is swarming with police officers. The Shasta County Sheriff's Office immediately launches a search operation, bringing in everything they have. Canine units, helicopters, search and rescue teams on horseback. And they comb through the rural areas around Mountain Gate, starting with the place where Keith found her phone. And something to understand about this neighborhood is there's a big bank of mailboxes that they use for their home, along with several others at the end of this Road. It was like a P.O. box that you would see at the the post office. But all the houses had mailboxes at this, like, big mailbox bank. And since Sherry's phone was found nearby, the police actually wanted to know if she maybe had stopped to get her mail before she was taken. However, when they opened this mailbox, it's completely full. And so police take this to mean that she probably disappeared before the mail was even delivered. So that was maybe sometime between 10am and 12pm which kind of lines up with the timeline that we think we have, because her last text to Keith was at 10:37am asking if he would be home for lunch. So because of that text, they were able to narrow down the time of disappearance to somewhere between 10:37 and noon. That's like 90 minutes. It's a pretty short window. So bit by bit, investigators start to create a timeline for this disappearance. And meanwhile, the whole community is out searching for Sherry. By November 3, hundreds of volunteers have shown up to help. They organize into these groups that fan out across the countryside. They're walking through forests and fields, and they're screaming Sherry's name everywhere. And even local businesses like Signorama and Office Max print out missing person flyers for free. The response is immediate. It's honestly inspiring to watch this community come together to try to help search for Sheri.
- [13:38]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, and you guys, this is also coming about a year and a half after Denise Huskins had gone missing. It's another case we've touched on. Also a Californian woman. So this is kind of forefront in their mind, and they are going to do everything they can to go try to look for Sheri.
- [13:54]
Kin Moore
Absolutely. And Sherry's friends and family are also really eager to get into their own search. They're not just going to wait for the officials to give them updates. So they start going door to door in the neighborhood, asking any of the neighbors if anyone saw anything suspicious, because sort of at this point, everyone's starting to think of the worst case scenario. I mean, you have this pretty young mother who disappeared in broad daylight in a small town where nothing like this ever happens. And it's already sounding like a Dateline episode just straight out the gate. And people start getting really afraid of what the outcome might be. And so they're desperate to help however they can. And the story, of course, is already starting to gain traction in the media. This is the kind of headline that sells Mother of Two Vanishes without a Trace. It's already on all of the newspapers. Keith even appears on Good Morning America. After just four days of Sheri being gone, making this really heartbreaking plea where he said his wife was, quote, unquote, definitely taken against her will. And you can see this interview, it's still online. And he looks like he has not slept in four days. He looks really exhausted. He looks devastated. He looks like a guy just trying to find his wife. He doesn't really offer any theories about who took her. He seems to be just as confused as everyone. But in his heart, he knows that his wife would have never left on her own accord. She had such a beautiful life. She had so much going for her, so much to look forward to and two amazing children, and he just thinks there's no way she would have left all of that. The family ends up setting up a GoFundMe campaign and offers a forty thousand dollar reward for any information leading to Sherry's safe return. And within a week, social media is really starting to buzz with theories. Tips start pouring into the sheriff's office from all over the country, from everyone that's watching the news and like hearing about this. But while the community is searching the terrain, the fields and the forests, really just trying to look for any physical evidence of Sherry's disappearance, investigators are starting to follow somewhat of a different trail, a digital one.
- [16:02]
Morgan Abshur
And that is where we get our first real clue in this case. Sheri's phone records. As a lot of you may know, one of the first things investigators like to do in missing persons cases is check that person's cell phone data. It's kind of the most accessible and seemingly easiest to get their hands on. So they go through things like text messages, phone calls, any sort of correspondence that might indicate where the victim went or where they were last. Well, a Shasta county sheriff's deputy named Kyle Wallace is in charge of the investigation. And on day one, he consults with the FBI for help with digital forensics. And soon they find something interesting. Sherry had been in contact with someone in the weeks and months leading up to her disappearance whose name was listed in her phone as a woman, but actually belonged to a man.
- [16:51]
Kin Moore
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- [17:05]
Morgan Abshur
It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics.
- [17:08]
Kin Moore
Basically all the stuff that makes your bank account get nervous. Claims are filed super easily through The Lemonade app and half get settled instantly. Get a'@lemonade.com pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled, drop it.
- [17:24]
Morgan Abshur
Hi, I'm Kristen Bell, and if you know my husband Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car.
- [17:29]
Kin Moore
Selling a car, not so much.
- [17:31]
Morgan Abshur
We're really doing this, huh? Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your van or license, and done. We sold ours in minutes this morning and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon. Bye bye, Truckee.
- [17:44]
Kin Moore
Of course, we kept the favorite.
- [17:48]
Morgan Abshur
Hello, other Truckee. Sell your car with Carvana today. Terms and conditions apply.
- [17:54]
Kin Moore
That's like the oldest trick in the book. Like, I wonder what she was doing.
- [17:58]
Morgan Abshur
Apparently, this person's name was Donovan Misk. And when police speak to Donovan, they find that he met Sherry five years prior. He was running a restaurant in Lansing, Michigan, which is the state he's currently living in. And Sherry was in town for a conference and had come into his restaurant. He introduced himself, and they went out to a couple of bars later that night. He said they were both super attracted to each other. And she told Donovan she was married, but also mentioned that her husband was, quote, the most evil man in the world. She told him Keith was abusive and violent. But Donovan didn't totally buy it at the time. She'd been married to Keith for two years, and they were preparing to have their first child together. Still, she and Donovan kept texting back and forth over the next few months. The texting would fizzle out, and then randomly, she would check in again, kind of out of the blue. Occasionally, the two would meet up when their jobs brought them to the same city. And then In April of 2016, Donovan and Sherry began texting pretty regularly again, and that led right up to her disappearance. Then on November 1, just a day before Sheri disappeared, the two talked about meeting up in Reading. Apparently, Donovan was in San Francisco not too far from her and was considering it. But according to him, it didn't happen. He was stuck at a work conference during that day, and then he flew back to Michigan on November 2, the day Sherri disappeared. Still, the police look into Donovan pretty hard. I mean, this is kind of their only lead at this point, but his alibi totally lines up and he is eventually cleared.
- [19:42]
Kin Moore
There's something else that the police discover during all of this. Apparently, it seems like Keith did see the text messages between Sheri and someone. I mean, if the name was saved as something different in the phone. He didn't know it was Donovan. He knew that Sheri was flirting with this person. Though there was part of Keith that thought that she might be meeting up with other men on at least one occasion. We know that this led to a huge fight. I will add here. It appears from what we know about this fight that it wasn't a physical fight. Even though Sheri kept insisting to Keith that these texts were just harmless flirting, she swore that she hadn't actually cheated on Keith. Which definition of cheating is different, I guess, for everyone, because a lot of people would see that as, like, emotional infidelity.
- [20:26]
Morgan Abshur
And honestly, for a lot of people, emotional cheating is worse than physical because there's so much of the person wrapped up into it.
- [20:34]
Kin Moore
A lot of people don't realize, like, how much they're hurting their partner when they emotionally cheat, that it can be just as devastating, if not more so. Keith, even though he was very hurt by this, he knew that he didn't want to get a divorce from Sheri. So he did forgive her. And presumably, after many apologies, she did agree to be faithful in their marriage. However, Sheri had violated his trust, at least in that moment, and it was going to be really hard to restore. So, as a condition to staying together, Keith insisted that they both sign a post nuptial agreement. It's kind of like a preunup, but it's for after you get married. So because of the way California specifically works, every state is different when it comes to divorce proceedings and laws. But the way that California works is if Keith and Sherry did decide to get a divorce, the state would have split their assets down the middle just in two. But if you have a postnuptial agreement, that's kind of a workaround to this. So with this postnuptial agreement, the couple did decide that they would keep their finances separate, and if they ever separated, they would each take what was already theirs. Which, when I first read this, I just thought that was so mature on Keith's part to be like, hey, I don't want to get divorced. But if ever we did decide that this is what was best for us, let's just put something in place where we both get to keep our own things. It makes it easier. It's probably easier on the kids, too. Thought it was a very measured response to something like this when. Which was interesting because Sheri is painting him to be such an abusive, violent person.
- [22:07]
Morgan Abshur
She's kind of the one at fault here, too. So for him to then be kind of seemingly gracious, it's an interesting reflection on maybe his character, Definitely based on what Sheri's telling people.
- [22:17]
Kin Moore
The police did not see it as that, though.
- [22:19]
Morgan Abshur
Interesting.
- [22:19]
Kin Moore
When the police saw that they had been fighting, that they had talked about getting a divorce. And now that they know that there's this trail of texts leading Sherry to Donovan, they just start thinking about how rocky the papini marriage was to begin with. And if Sheri was telling Donovan that Keith was abusive and violent, the cops don't want to ignore that. So they really start looking into Keith. They want to dig deeper into Keith and Cherry's relationship. And the detective that really leads this charge is detective Wallace. And so he goes out and he starts interviewing friends and neighbors of the papinis, and sort of a different picture starts to emerge than the one that Sheri was projecting. One neighbor says that the papinis had been having regular heated arguments, and those did sometimes turn into screaming matches. Apparently as recently as a week prior to her disappearance, they were having these really intense arguments. It must have been pretty bad if the neighbors could hear these arguments. The neighbor even said that she did hear Keith yell at one point, quote, I'm going to freaking kill you. Another incident that really caught investigators attention involved this Halloween party from a couple of years earlier. And this is where we start getting a little bit different picture of Keith Than what Sherry was telling to people like Donovan. So Sherry had told several people that she knew that Keith had intentionally hit her in the face at this Halloween party, and that it left a really nasty bruise on her. She had been painting this picture of Keith being really physically abusive. She said that he attacked her when they were playing some kind of party game. But what was surprising, when police actually tracked down the other witnesses who were there at the Halloween party, including the woman who hosted it, they all gave a totally different story. They all gave the same story independent of each other, too. But these people said that Keith and Cherry had been playing games on the Nintendo Wii During a really animated round of virtual fruit slicing. I don't know if you ever played.
- [24:18]
Morgan Abshur
That on Nintendo fruit ninja.
- [24:19]
Kin Moore
Yeah, you can get really competitive playing that game. And Keith accidentally elbowed Sheri while he was swinging his arm. It was most definitely an accident, according to everyone. And no one at the party saw it as anything violent and definitely not intentional. But Sherry kept painting this as, like, a totally different event to people that she knew. When police eventually did confront Keith about the fighting in his marriage, he was really open and honest about it. He said, yes, they did argue. Yes, things did get heated at times. But Keith told investigators that Sherry was the one who was typically getting loud and screaming, and sometimes she would actually get physical with him when she was angry. He described one intense argument they had where Sherry had grabbed a picture frame and hurled it at him, which split his knee open. And the more questions police ask, the more muddled this whole thing just gets. And despite everything, Keith keeps insisting that he does love Sherry. And through tears, he's getting very emotional about this. He tells the police that the only thing he wants is to bring her home. Despite all of this, Keith does have a rock solid alibi. He was at work at best buy the exact time Sherry disappeared, Literally surrounded by cameras and witnesses. And whatever the cops ask for, he gives to them. No lawyers, no conditions. He is fully cooperative with the investigation. And when they want him to take a polygraph test, he does. He passes. So on November 10, which is eight days after Sherry disappeared, the police officially clear Keith of any wrongdoing. And then days go by, and the police continue to just exhaust lead after lead. They all kind of result in no answers. People start really losing hope that Sherry's going to be found alive. After all of this, Tip lines are filling up with messages from people claiming to know where to find her body. But none of those ultimately lead anywhere. And then what police describe as a miracle happens. So it's 4:30 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2016. A semi truck driver is making his way down Interstate 5 about 150 miles south of Sherry and Keith's hometown, when something in his headlights catches his eye. There's a woman running alongside the highway in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, Frantically waving an arm, and she's screaming for help. The trucker immediately pulls over. He jumps out of his cab. He really wants to help this woman who he describes as being in really, really bad shape. She's emaciated. Her face is really swollen and bruised. She has what looks like a chain wrapped around her waist, and one of her arms is bound to it. So immediately the trucker calls 91 1. He gives her the phone. She is crying uncontrollably. She's barely coherent, but she gives her name, Sherry Papini. Through the tears, she tells the dispatcher, quote, I never saw her face. She took me. She said, if I don't struggle, I can go home. Something went wrong. Within minutes, highway patrol officers arrive, and they are shocked by what they discover, because this is the missing woman who's been all over the news for three weeks. Everyone in the Entire community has been looking for her. She's alive, but she looks like she's been through hell. And Sherry refuses to talk to the police officers beyond giving them her name. She won't answer questions about any of the specifics regarding her disappearance, like who took her or where she's been for the last few weeks. She keeps saying that she only wants to talk to one person, and that's her husband, Keith. But in the meantime, they transport her immediately to Woodland Hospital so that she can start receiving medical treatment.
- [28:10]
Morgan Abshur
And that brings us to clue number two. Sheri's injuries. Her long blonde hair, the hair that Keith had described so lovingly in all of his media interviews, has been chopped off in jagged, uneven chunks. She's lost a significant amount of weight. Her left wrist that wasn't chained when she was found has zip tie marks, and her ankles have ligature marks from some kind of other restraint. There are bruises on her face, her thighs, her arms. Her nose is broken, and parts of her body are covered in some kind of, like, horrible rash. And most horrifying of all to medical staff, investigators, her family, Sherry's been branded.
- [28:52]
Kin Moore
I have the picture up, and it looks like it's. It doesn't really look like it says anything, but you could definitely see where the. The letters are starting to scab over you guys.
- [29:01]
Morgan Abshur
If you're watching, you'll see a picture of this brand on YouTube. And again, if you're not watching on YouTube, go to our Instagram at Clues podcast to see it. I'm curious what you guys think it says before I kind of say anything because I want to see what you guys think.
- [29:16]
Kin Moore
Yeah, my brain read it as gibberish, as nothing.
- [29:19]
Morgan Abshur
I think I heard what investigators thought it was. So I think my brain is kind of filling in the blanks of what I can see. Investigators think they spell something like Exodus 6, 2, 2. And because of the scarring, some of the letters are super hard to make out. It's kind of like this raised, pink, angry flesh that's scabbed over. And a lot of it's just. It's hard. It's hard to see what it says. But they also perform a toxicology test at this time, and it shows no significant traces of drugs in her system. A physical exam reveals no evidence of sexual assault. Still, it's clear to them that Sheri has been through something traumatic over these past 22 days. And a lot of that is because Sheri was absolutely terrified at the hospital. Not just scared of her kidnappers, scared of everyone. She's kind of skittish around doctors and nurses, and she was especially fearful of the police. She refuses to talk to detectives and won't say a word unless Keith is in the room with her. She is released from the hospital after just a few short hours, but even then, she still won't speak to investigators. Finally, four days later, on November 28, she does agree to be interviewed, but again, only if Keith is sitting right there in the room with her. Which brings us to clue number three. Sheri's story. Here's what Sheri says happened. Sheri tells Detective Wallace that on November 2nd she was out for a jog, listening to everything, a Michael Buble song. She was very specific about that. Apparently, it was her and Keith's wedding song. She had just reached the mailboxes at the end of her road when a dark SUV with tinted windows passes her, then throws the car in reverse and backs up towards her. She sees two Hispanic women in the suv, and she specifically calls them out for being Hispanic.
- [31:12]
Kin Moore
Yeah, she mentions their race. Right away.
- [31:14]
Morgan Abshur
Right away, the one in the passenger seat calls out to her. So Sheri takes out one of her earbuds to hear what the woman's saying, and the woman motions for Sherry to come closer to the car. That's when Sherry says she sees a small revolver pointed at her. She can't remember exactly what this woman looks like or what she was wearing, but she remembers the gun. According to court documents, Sherry claims the woman told her to put her phone down on the ground and said, quote, we don't want to kill you. So Sherry followed the instructions. She dropped her phone, yanked out some of her own hair, which explained the blonde strands found tangled in the earbuds. She claims she did this intentionally so that her family would know it did belong to her when they found her phone. But here's where things get really, really strange after that. Sheri says she blacked out. Maybe she was tased. She can't really say for sure, but she can't remember getting into the car. The next thing she remembered was waking up with something over her face. She had a headache, and her clothes had all been replaced. Sherry said she tried to stay awake for the ride, but she kept falling back to sleep. She said that the car smelled really bad, like sewage. Later, Sheri said she woke up still with a pillowcase over her head, zip tied in what she described as a closet. She said her captors, who she nicknamed Smegma and Taint, were human traffickers. And yeah, yeah, you guys did hear that, right? Smegma Smegma. If you're not familiar with the term, google it.
- [32:54]
Kin Moore
Don't google it.
- [32:55]
Morgan Abshur
And if you're eating your brain, a lot of people don't know.
- [32:58]
Kin Moore
Just, like, imagine what it is.
- [33:00]
Morgan Abshur
I don't know. You guys don't eat. Don't be eating lunch and googling.
- [33:02]
Kin Moore
Don't look up pictures.
- [33:04]
Morgan Abshur
It's. Yeah, it's an interesting name to pick, I guess. Sherry goes on to say that these two hispanic women wore bandanas like mass, so that she never saw their faces. But one of them, smegma, was much bigger than the other and a total sadist. They kept her on all fours most of the time, chained her around her waist, and attached her to a metal pole and forced her to use a bucket with kitty litter as a toilet. They fed her very little food, mostly cream of wheat, rice, and tortillas. What's interesting to investigators, though, is that, like, her memory seemed so mixed, like she had these incredibly vivid memories about such little specific details, but then couldn't really remember big things. Like, for example, she would describe her room perfectly and recalled the, quote, really annoying Mexican music, end quotes they played. She remembered the layout of the house and could describe the unusual pipe she was chained to in the closet. But then she couldn't remember basic things, like how long the car rides took or how she was even abducted in the first place. And get this. According to Sherry, one of her captors told her she was going to be sold to a police officer, which is why Sherry said she didn't trust law enforcement enough to talk to them right away. She also mentioned some things that don't really line up with what her injuries were documented, like being at the hospital, for instance. She says something about getting into a fight with one of her captors in a bathroom when they let her go shower. And that during this fight, she actually slammed her abductor's head into the toilet, which is how she got a cut on the right side of her foot. Except there's no injury like this that was photographed on Sherry during this hospital visit. And things are just, like, seemingly getting wilder and wilder for investigators, because Sherry says that the night before she was released, Smegma and taint had a big fight. Since Sherry didn't speak Spanish, she didn't know what it was about, but she guessed there was some kind of problem related to her captivity. The next day, she heard a gunshot, and then the smaller woman, taint, came into her room and drugged her with food. When sherri woke up, her captor told her to get dressed, covered her head again, and marched her outside to a car. After several hours of driving, during which Sherry says she fell asleep, she was told to get out of the car, and one arm was freed. By the time she removed the pillowcase from her head, the car was already driving away, leaving her by the side of the road. Now, the police recorded this whole story in full detail, but the whole scenario was pretty unusual. I mean, a suburban housewife being trafficked to a police officer is not something you hear every day.
- [35:53]
Kin Moore
It's also not really how human trafficking typically works, really, if ever, which we'll get into more. But police were also surprised by that, too.
- [36:01]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. And, you know, despite all of this, her husband Keith, who is listening to all of this, he's in there with her the whole time. He hears all of this and stands faithfully by her side, ready to seek justice. And the police do believe her. They actually, you know, despite this being so odd and such a crazy story, they do believe her.
- [36:23]
Kin Moore
I wonder if any part of them had echoes, because this is also Northern California, but echoes of Denise Huskins. Exactly. And they don't want to be the ones that just don't believe this woman. So they automatically are like, yes, we believe. I know that this is all adding up, but we do want to believe what you're saying.
- [36:38]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, you cannot call this a hoax after what has just happened with Denise. And so Sergeant Brian Jackson and the Shasta County Sheriff's office said after interviewing her, quote, there is no information that would indicate that it is not true. We are working on trying to solidify information, and that is why we are working on the sketches with the FBI. And hopefully somebody will be able to recognize the females in those and provide us with concrete information so we can move forward and get some people in custody. End quote.
- [37:09]
Kin Moore
So for the next few months, after Sheri returned home, she was a complete nervous wreck. She went to therapy twice a week. Sometimes Keith would even join her for couples sessions just to support her on this journey. She had severe symptoms of ptsd. She would wake up with screaming nightmares. She had panic attacks all the time. She also could not be alone. She couldn't drive by herself. Even going to the bathroom with the door closed created intense panic. If Keith shut any door while she was in the room, she would break down crying. And she became very hyper vigilant about everything. Like, if she saw a stranger walking down the street, she would yell at her kids to come inside immediately. Like, the kids are also being very affected by her ptsd. So the Family had to cover all of the windows in their house with blankets because Sherry was scared that she was being watched. She couldn't eat unless Keith was preparing the food right in front of her because she was so convinced that the captors had been drugging her meals. While she was in captivity, the whole family, including her two young children, was helping Sherry heal from this unimaginable trauma. I mean, if you love someone who has complex trauma or ptsd, like, there is no way for you to not also be deeply affected by the trauma that they're holding. And so, I mean, she has kids that are 2 and 4 years old and they're watching their mother go through this, and it's just so hard on this family. But while Sherry's recovering at home, just taking it day by day, support of her family, there's people who start looking into her story a little bit more. And it's typically Internet sleuths and there's some private detectives that really heard some of the details about this case that didn't really add up and they're going to try to look into it on their own. Bloggers, Internet sleuths start publishing some of these questions that they have about this case on online forums. There's even some private detectives who start quietly following up on some of the plot holes and inconsistencies in this case. For example, one thing they can't wrap their heads around is why was Sherry targeted? Specifically Sherry? And also why was she targeted where she was targeted? And also, if these kidnappers really were human traffickers, after 22 days, why did they suddenly decide to release her? So good. So good. So good.
- [39:24]
Morgan Abshur
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Kin Moore
Because there's always something new.
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Morgan Abshur
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Kin Moore
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- [39:47]
Morgan Abshur
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- [39:55]
Kin Moore
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send events invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com One of the early doubters in this story was actually a blogger named Tim Scarborough. When he started following Sheri's case, he immediately thought the kidnapping location seemed really suspicious. And normally I'm really skeptical of people who start doubting victim stories right away, especially when it's a female victim, because we've talked about this, especially with Denise Huskins case, who was also kidnapped. Women often aren't believed, or sometimes it's believed that women could have done more in the situation to help themselves. But I have to say Tim brings up some really good points when he starts digging into this story. First off, he notices that where Sheri was abducted from was not a secluded area at all. Where she was taken was by a crossroads with a direct line of sight into five different houses. This was the middle of the suburbs. And he wondered, why would kidnappers, human traffickers who run their entire business in secret, choose such a public spot in broad daylight to kidnap someone? He also saw saw photos from where she was abducted that just didn't really sit right with him. There's the picture of her cell phone, and it is very neatly wrapped up in her headphone cord. It's not. It didn't look like someone just dropped it and the headphones splayed out everywhere. It was completely wrapped up. There's also gravel around that area, and there's no scuff marks. There's no signs of a struggle. Everything is still neatly in place. But the most suspicious detail to him was this surveillance footage that's recovered from the day of her escape from her captors.
- [42:04]
Morgan Abshur
And that brings us to clue number four, the church video. We don't know when they discovered it, but In November of 2017, almost a year after Sherry's return, investigators released a short video clip to the public. It came from a Jehovah's Witness, Kingdom hall, that was pretty close to where Sherry was found on Thanksgiving morning. The footage, taken minutes before her rescue at around 4:15am Seems to show her running. And we're gonna play a clip of this video for you guys so that you can see for yourselves what it looks like. This footage was taken minutes before her rescue at around 4:15am and it is super grainy, but it seems to show Sheri running somewhat easily and smoothly across the outskirts of the parking lot towards the building. And so when people like Tim saw the video, it set off alarm bells. To him. It looked like someone out for a morning jog, not someone who's been chained up and tortured for three weeks. Her movements are fluid. Her pace is steady. She doesn't look injured or impaired in any way. This footage was also taken just seven minutes before she flagged down this truck driver. And remember, when the driver found her, she had one arm chained to her waist. But according to Tim, he looks at this video and sees that her arm is kind of moving freely. And I will say, I watched this video. I don't see any arms. I just see a blob bolting across a parking lot. I don't think the video is sped up. She was moving fast. I'm curious to see what you guys think of it in the comments, but when Sergeant Brian Jackson and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office examine it, he says it looks like her left hand is bound to her side a bit, which was consistent with her being tethered with the chain on her waist. He also thinks her ability to run makes sense since she was no longer bound at the ankles. And I don't know, you guys, like, adrenaline can make people lift cars sometimes, so. Very true. I feel like, you know, being held three weeks and not being able to run. Like, Sherry was a jogger before this.
- [44:12]
Kin Moore
I think Tim sees this video, and he thinks it's sketchy, but the police see it, and they don't think that it changes their story at all.
- [44:19]
Morgan Abshur
I'm honestly like you. I can. I cannot tell it's Sherry. I can't make out a person. I literally just see blob. So I don't know. Tim must have like, 30, 30 vision or something. Really good. It's interesting. So we have a couple different takes on the video, clearly. But something else was released to the public just a month before the video was leaked. Which are the sketches of the suspects?
- [44:43]
Kin Moore
Yes. Which I wanted to talk about for just a second, because initially, when Sherry described these suspects, no flags were raised in the police minds. They were just like, okay, these are the women we have to look for. But the more that the case started seeming a little suspicious, the more that these sketches also started seeming suspicious. And so I have them up here, Morgan, for us to look at.
- [45:06]
Morgan Abshur
What?
- [45:07]
Kin Moore
One thing that one of the forensic psychologists noted was oftentimes when people are trying to. If you. If I were to ask you right now to describe two people, typically people will just think of one person and then describe the other person as being the exact opposite, because that's easy for our brains to do. So when you look at these women, there's so many opposite features of them. One is young, one is old, one is thin eyebrows, one is bushy eyebrows, One has straight Hair. One has curly hair. They're both wearing masks, so you don't have to describe the person being below the nose, even though. And Sheri was living with these people for how long? And she wasn't able to describe the bottom half of their faces. She only described them as wearing these bandanas, which I thought was really interesting. And so the sketches also kind of start falling apart in Sherry's story as well. So they already start thinking that maybe there is something suspicious about the human traffickers that Sheri was describing. So the sketches then kind of become clue number five. Even though they've been out for a while, they haven't really looked at them with a critical eye. And now that they're starting to, investigators start wondering if Sheri made up the sketches on the spot, like, kind of constructed to human traffickers and what they would look like on the spot. But it's not really much to go off of. It's still kind of a hunch. But then investigators get another real clue, and that is some DNA comes out.
- [46:29]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, clue number six. We have some DNA results. So when Sheri was found on Thanksgiving morning and brought to the hospital, investigators collected her clothing for DNA analysis. And they found her DNA, along with DNA from another female contributor. They also found something that didn't fit Sherry's story. Mixed in with Sherry's DNA on her underwear and sweatpants was DNA from a male contributor, too. And it definitely wasn't her husband's, Keith. They ruled him out immediately. And this was a huge inconsistency for Sherry's version of events. She claimed she'd been kidnapped and held captive by two women for 22 days. She never mentioned a man, and the hospital ruled out sexual assault.
- [47:12]
Kin Moore
She also didn't ever bring up sexual assault. I don't think.
- [47:14]
Morgan Abshur
No. So how.
- [47:15]
Kin Moore
Possibility. Yeah.
- [47:16]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. So how did a man's DNA end up all over her clothes, especially underwear and sweatpants? So investigators uploaded this unknown female and male DNA profiles into codis, and that's the combined DNA index system, Basically a massive federal database that stores all these different DNA profiles from criminals, crime scenes, missing persons cases. They didn't get any hits in codis. So for years, this DNA evidence just kind of sits there. Investigators would periodically run it through the database again, hoping that maybe their mystery suspects had been arrested somewhere and added to the system, but no luck. Then, in late 2019, California authorized something called familial DNA search. We're quite familiar with it at this point, I think Cluminati. So investigators uploaded this unknown DNA to genealogy databases. And on March 19, 2020 three and a half years after the kidnapping, they got a hit on a male sample. The DNA didn't match anyone specifically in the database, but it was close enough to suggest the mystery man was related to someone else in there. A potential relative. And the person had two biological sons. One of those sons was a guy named James Reyes living in Costa Mesa, California, who was 32 years old at the time that Sherry disappeared. And guess what? James had been one of Sherry's ex boyfriends more than a decade earlier. Investigators still needed to confirm this was exactly who the DNA belonged to. Right. They haven't actually gotten James DNA yet. So in June 2020, four years after the kidnapping, they sent agents to stake out at James's house and collect his trash. Specifically, they grabbed an honest honeygreen tea bottle that he had thrown away. When they tested the DNA from that green tea bottle against the unknown male DNA from Sherry's clothing, it's a perfect match. After four years of searching, investigators finally had their first real lead. The question now, though, how was James involved in any of this?
- [49:28]
Kin Moore
James and Sheri had known each other since they were teenagers back in the early 2000s. They had dated for a couple of years. They were even engaged at one point. According to people who knew them, James was completely devoted to Sherry. He was the guy that would do anything for her. After high school, Sherry had moved down to Costa Mesa to live with James for a little while. And Sherry referred to him as being a man's man. He was really into hockey. He didn't mind getting hurt. He had that kind of, like, tough, rugged appeal that seemed attractive to her. But like most of Sherry's relationships before Keith, this one did eventually fall apart. They went their separate ways, and Sherry moved back up north. James decided to stay in Southern California. But fast forward about 10 years later to 2015. James, who was two years younger than Sherry, was still living in Costa Mesa, living this really quiet life. He has his own apartment. He's close with his family. He, like, lives close to his family. By all accounts, he seems like this totally normal guy living a totally normal life. He's not married. He doesn't have any kids yet. But sometime that year, James is going through some of his old stuff, and he finds some personal items that remind him of Sherry. It was maybe some old photos or mementos that he just had from their time together. And for whatever reason, either he's being nostalgic or he just doesn't want to keep that stuff in his house anymore, and he thinks Sherry might want it. He ends up sending those items to Sherry's parents. And that gesture kind of upends his entire life, because it's not long after that that Sherry actually reaches out to James, and the two start to kind of rekindle their relationship, at least over text message. They do. Which is why five years after that, on August 10, 2020, the police are knocking at his door. Detective Kyle Wallace with the Shasta County Sheriff's department is there, along with an FBI agent named Peter Jackson. And they tell James that they have some questions about Sherry Papini, and he seems to cooperate. However, it's interesting reading about how this interaction goes down because he's, like, very spacey and distracted kind of right off the bat. Like, when the investigators first arrive, he won't answer any questions until Detective Wallace agrees to help him chase a pet bird that had escaped his apartment and was now under his car.
- [51:52]
Morgan Abshur
Oh, my gosh.
- [51:52]
Kin Moore
She just, like, really wants to get the bird back, and then he can talk about it. So as this kind of bizarre scene is unfolding, Agent Jackson is poking around James's house on his own while the other two are out under the car trying to get the bird. And as he's walking through this house, he notices something that just really catches his attention right away. But this house has the exact same layout that Sheri described in her statement to police. Like, in his mind, he's going through her statement while he's walking through the house, her saying, I was in the living room, and I turned left, and that's where the kitchen would be. And that's exactly how he is walking through this house. And he kind of can't believe it, Right down to the very unique closet that she was supposedly chained up in, the one that had the metal pole running through the middle of it. So once James is back in the house, Agent Jackson decides he is just going to cut right to the chase because he knows that something really fishy is going on. And he tells him straight up, the police have his DNA. He knows that James was involved in Sherry's kidnapping, and he has two options as of right now. He can talk to them, or he can lawyer up. And surprisingly, or maybe not surprising coming from a man that just spent 15 minutes chasing a bird around, but he does decide to just talk to the police.
- [53:11]
Morgan Abshur
Hey, this is his pet bird. He's gotta get it back.
- [53:14]
Kin Moore
No, I know, I know. I don't blame him.
- [53:16]
Morgan Abshur
Little bird, I mean, could be snatched up by a hawk.
- [53:19]
Kin Moore
He does not for a single second. Think he needs a lawyer. So he just starts talking, talking to them.
- [53:23]
Morgan Abshur
And I don't know if we've had anyone start talking so quickly in any of our cases yet.
- [53:28]
Kin Moore
Even innocent people.
- [53:29]
Morgan Abshur
I know. This is kind of a first for us here.
- [53:31]
Kin Moore
Really? Yeah.
- [53:32]
Morgan Abshur
So this is kind of where we get the juiciest clue in this case. James confession clue number seven for us. James tells the detectives about how Sheri reached out to him back in 2015 and how they started talking again. But it wasn't just typical old friends catching up. She told James the same story she told Donovan, actually, back in clue number one, that Keith was violent and abusive and that she'd filed a bunch of police reports, but the cops just weren't doing anything to help her. By the way, we cannot find any evidence of those reports based on our research.
- [54:08]
Kin Moore
Yeah. We also know now that Keith gave her an out in their relationship. He had kind of set up everything in case she did want to leave him.
- [54:15]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. And so, as far as we can tell, like, there's no physical evidence that Keith ever did anything to Sheri to intentionally hurt her. But James didn't know that he still loved Sheri. I mean, he had just sent back a box of mementos for whatever reason. Maybe a simple gesture, maybe getting rid of it, but it kind of, as you said, like, it opened this door, and James would kind of gladly do whatever Sheri asked of him. So as their conversations progress, Sheri goes on to say that she needs help escaping her abusive relationship. She doesn't mention anything about faking a kidnapping or anything like that. She basically just tells him that she needs to get out of her house. And James agrees to help. At her suggestion, they start using burner phones to communicate because they don't want Keith to find out that she's trying to escape. Then James says, On November 2, the day Sherry disappeared, he drove up from Costa Mesa in a rental car, per Sherry's instructions. He has a friend rent a Dodge Challenger so his own car wouldn't be identified and he wouldn't be tied to it. He meets Sherry at that jogging spot. She leaves her phone behind with the strands of her hair for people to find, though she didn't exactly tell James about that part. And then he drives her back to his place, where she stays at his apartment for the entire 22 days. She never leaves, not once. James says that he sleeps on the couch, and he actually gives Sherry his bedroom. And while she was in there, Sheri boards up the windows with particle board because she wants it to be really dark. And he doesn't seem to ask a lot of questions at this time. Like, he doesn't know what the end game is or how long Sherry plans to stay, which is wild to me. Cause I'm like, I have a houseguest for longer than a week. And I'm like, can you leave? Can you gotta go.
- [56:08]
Kin Moore
This guy's all vibes.
- [56:09]
Morgan Abshur
He's. He loves Sherry, and he seems to think that, like, they might actually be getting back together, and he doesn't want to jeopardize that. However, he does admit that they never had any sexual relations during this time. Now, here's where things get really disturbing. And I don't even know if disturbing is the right word for it. James tells investigators that Sherry was purposefully trying to lose weight. The whole time she was there. She was eating, like, super tiny portions of whatever he would bring her. And then she starts asking him to help injure her. He says she told him to, quote, bank a puck off of her. So he ends up shooting a hockey puck at her leg. Another time, she runs across the room straight into his hockey stick, breaking her nose. She's cutting her own hair. She's burning herself with cleaning supplies by rubbing them on her arms to create those rashes and the brand on her shoulder. She actually sent James to Hobby lobby to buy a wood burning tool. And then James goes on to say that he was the one that actually branded it into her right shoulder. Although he had no idea what those letters meant. Actually meant, and we kind of don't either.
- [57:28]
Kin Moore
It still seems like it was just a random thing that was branded into her.
- [57:32]
Morgan Abshur
I'm very confused by it. Again, I'm curious what you guys could make out based on the image, but these grotesque tasks kind of keep coming day after day. Sheri is cooking up new tasks for James, and James just goes along with it because I guess he really wanted to get back together with Sherry. And he says that when Sheri's not hurting herself, she's watching the news on her phone. She knows the whole west coast is looking for her. James knows it, too. He actually told his mom that Sheri was staying with him. And she actually got super concerned when she started seeing Sherry's face all over the news, but I guess didn't report it to police. Kind of a side note for us there, probably because she didn't want him to get in trouble. You know, he maybe told her that he was protecting Sherry from this really abusive relationship, and so he didn't really want anyone to know that she was at his house. So, aside from his mom and his cousin, James kept it a secret. But after about three weeks, Sherry tells James that she misses her kids and wants to go home. So at Sherry's instruction, James asks his friend to rent another car, this time a Mitsubishi Outlander. Then James and Sherry drive back up to Northern California. On the way there, Sherry tosses her burner phone out of the window. She's got a bag with her chains, zip ties, all the stuff she uses to bind herself up before she orders James to drop her off on that rural road near I5. And James tells police, I haven't talked to her since then. And the thing is, police believe him. Like, this story is really adding up for them. And when they start looking into evidence to support it, his credit card statements, what he said to his friends and family, it all lines up. Plus, he. He also has, like, knowledge about Sherry's injuries that weren't made public, and has all this other firsthand knowledge about her disappearance. And something that investigators really love is that James just agrees to take a polygraph, and he passes.
- [59:41]
Kin Moore
So on August 13, 2020, which is three days after they interview James, Detective Wallace asks Keith and Sherry to come in for a meeting. And mind you, this is four years now after the kidnapping. Keith and Sherry show up to this meeting. They probably think that it's going to be another update on the investigation, like maybe they found some leads on who her captors were. But instead, investigators sit them down and just start showing Sherry photographs. Photos of a house in Costa Mesa. Photos of a very specific closet with a unique design. Shelving with a pole running through it. Photos of a bedroom with orange shag carpet and wood paneling. And Kyle Wallace tells Sheri, quote, we found the house where you were held captive. Sherry looks at these pictures, and her reaction is kind of strange. And everyone takes note of it. You would think that she would be thrilled that they're still investigating her case, that they might actually be closer to figuring out who did this to her. But her reaction is actually really confused. She seems almost dazed. And then she starts just kind of try to play it off. She says the closet looks similar to what she remembers, but it's a little bit different. Not quite right. But she can't really explain. Explain how by this point, investigators just straight up aren't buying it anymore. They tell her that they have talked to the people who live in this house, and they know for a fact that she was there. And then comes the bombshell. Maybe not to Sherry, but definitely to Keith. They tell Sherry that they have DNA evidence from her clothing that belongs to a specific person, and this DNA belongs to a man, not the women that she had told them about. And that man has told them exactly what happened, that she stayed with him voluntarily for 22 days. She was not kidnapped by anyone. Meanwhile, Keith is sitting right next to his wife as the investigators drop all of this on them. So, I mean, we can only imagine what was going on through his head after four years of him very publicly supporting her story and telling people she's telling the truth and feeling bad for her and helping her through her ptsd. And now the police are telling him straight to his face, like, you've been cucked, essentially.
- [61:53]
Morgan Abshur
Horrible.
- [61:54]
Kin Moore
So after all this, Keith just turns to Sheri and he begs her to tell him the truth. But Sheri breaks down crying, and she doesn't confess to anything. She instead doubles down on the story, and she keeps insisting that she can't tell them the truth because. And she drops this new bomb on everyone. It would put someone in danger. And everyone's like, what are you talking about? It would put someone in danger. Who is this someone? And Sheri says that the woman who supposedly freed her, the good kidnapper that she lovingly called Taint, who let her go, it would put Ms. Taint in trouble. Meaning that Sherry is doubling down on her story, even with all of this evidence just mounting in front of her face. Investigators then remind her that it is a crime to lie to federal officers, because now it just seems like she's coming up with stuff to try to make the story make a little bit more sense or to explain why she was maybe lying about stuff. They remind her that they have James's confession. They have DNA evidence. They know what really happened. And finally she realizes that she's just completely trapped here. There's no way to back herself out of this corner, so she just asks for a lawyer. And with that, the interview's totally over. But to her and kind of Keith's surprise, officers just let her leave. There's no arrest. They don't threaten her with anything else. They just let her leave, at least for now. So Keith's world is absolutely shattered by this investigation. The interrogation that just happened.
- [63:24]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. Can you imagine the car ride home after that?
- [63:27]
Kin Moore
No. Well, seriously, he starts just kind of going through old memories and thinking if there was any weird flags that he missed. He's kind of reevaluating his entire life at this point.
- [63:38]
Morgan Abshur
It seems like you'd question everything you Would question everything.
- [63:40]
Kin Moore
And pretty much right away, he notices that, yes, there are red flags that he missed. Like, he thinks about how Sheri had this tendency to lie and just exaggerate certain things, really for no reason at all. He always kind of had pictured this as just being, like, an annoying little quirk that she had. But now he's realizing it was probably a lot more serious than just that. Then, of course, there's the cheating. He knows about the lies about his abuse, and this starts seeming like a pattern to him. But still, months go by. He keeps living with Sheri, though I can't imagine what that household was like. He's just kind of feeling like he was married to a stranger this entire time. But then there's also this voice in his head that starts questioning the investigation because he starts wondering if the cops are right about all of this and Sherry is guilty of lying, then why did they not arrest her? What he doesn't realize was that the police were actually hoping for a confession in that moment, and they failed without one. They have a little bit more work to do before they can actually prove that Sherry committed a crime. They just really have, like, the testimony of one person. They have the DNA, but that's still apparently not enough in this situation to make the charges stick. They really have to corroborate every detail, and having a confession from Sherry would really help that. So they start digging deeper, and they keep finding all of this evidence that supports James's story. They end up tracking down the rental car records that confirm, yes, James's friend did rent a Dodge Challenger, the exact dates that he claimed. Investigators also confirmed James's work schedule, which shows that he was off of work on November 1st and 2nd, 2016. Those weren't actually his normal days off, but they matched up perfectly with when he says he drove to Reading to pick Sherry up. They even find that Sherry had this secret Pinterest board that she made before her disappearance. It was titled, quote, gift ideas. Probably thinking that no one would ever look at it, because, right. If you're calling it gift ideas, people are like, oh, it's probably gifts for me. I better not look at it. But inside of this Pinterest board, it's just full of photos of wood burning tools, which, so weird. Now line up with the branding. I guess you could make the argument maybe she was gonna buy a wood burning tool for Keith at some point, but it's literally just pictures of wood burning tools. There's no other gifts in this Pinterest board. And each of these Discoveries builds the investigators confidence that James is, in fact, telling the truth. This entire time, he's been nothing but cooperative. Every single thing he's told them has lined up exactly with what they know and the physical evidence they have. So it just further proof to them that Sheri is lying.
- [66:19]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. And the. The thing that really seals the deal for them is our next clue. Clue number eight. The burner phones. James had actually told investigators that they destroyed all of these prepaid phones they used to communicate. At Sher's orders, of course. However, just because the phones were gone didn't mean they couldn't still be traced. So the FBI used cell tower records to locate two burner phones that were active near the exact spot Sher disappeared on November 2, 2016. Then, right around the time of the alleged kidnapping, they were able to use this cell tower data to show the two phones traveling south together down I5 all the way to Costa Mesa. That's their smoking gun right there. The phone data shows the exact route James said they took. Not only that, but there were call records between one of the burner phones and James regular phone. Altogether, investigators were able to follow kind of this, like, digital breadcrumb trail that solidified everything James had told them. It was proof in their minds that he was telling the truth and using these burner phones. Something Sherry thought she was probably being really clever about is what actually ends up proving that she's lying about everything.
- [67:35]
Kin Moore
I think most people's knowledge of burner phones comes from movies and TV shows.
- [67:38]
Morgan Abshur
I don't know much about them.
- [67:39]
Kin Moore
They don't really know how they work. But you can still track them.
- [67:42]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. I mean, look at Rex Long.
- [67:45]
Kin Moore
Yeah. People just think you buy a burner phone and become invisible. Yeah, investigators. And that's not the case at all.
- [67:50]
Morgan Abshur
No.
- [67:51]
Kin Moore
They literally can tell when your burner phone is, like, next to your regular cell phone. And where you've been was data that.
- [67:56]
Morgan Abshur
They had from Rex. Our Gilbert beach murders.
- [67:58]
Kin Moore
Exactly.
- [67:59]
Morgan Abshur
You get a lot more from burner phones than I would have assumed before diving into this podcast.
- [68:05]
Kin Moore
Yeah, it's not this, like, masterful piece of technology that outsmarts every single investigator. It's just a normal phone. It's just a different phone you can buy at a Walmart.
- [68:13]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. And it's just. It's pinging off the same towers.
- [68:15]
Kin Moore
Exactly. On March 3, 2022, more than five years after the alleged kidnapping, federal agents finally have enough evidence to move forward. They arrest Sherry Papini on charges of making false statements to federal officers and Also, they throw in mail fraud. Sherry spends five nights in Sacramento county jail before a judge grants her release on a120,000 bond. Six weeks later, on April 18, 2022, she officially enters a guilty plea and later is sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Papini also agreed to pay $300,000, part of which will cover the cost of the police investigation. Because she wasted everyone's time and money. She will also spend three years under supervised custody. After her release from jail In August of 2023, she was moved to a halfway house, where she remained until September of that year.
- [69:09]
Morgan Abshur
And boy, oh, boy, do we have a lot of loose ends with this one. Now, we know Sheri wasn't kidnapped by two Hispanic women. We know that she was with her ex boyfriend for 22 days and inflicted all of these wounds on herself, including the branding. But there's still this huge question for everyone. Why?
- [69:30]
Kin Moore
That's still the one thing that I can't exactly figure out.
- [69:35]
Morgan Abshur
I'm just like, why?
- [69:36]
Kin Moore
Because at first it sounds. Her text messages before she went missing really make her sound like a woman very interested in having an affair, which is very different from what she actually ended up doing. Especially if James said they never slept together the entire time. So that wasn't really the thing she was after, was it? Attention? I don't know, honestly.
- [69:56]
Morgan Abshur
And if you look at. It's. It's so hard, and it's. It is so frustrating to me because it's like you have a case like James Denise Huskins, who was, you know, accused of being a hoax and Gone Girl and this and that. But if you look at, like, what.
- [70:11]
Kin Moore
Sherry did, it's literally Gone Girl.
- [70:13]
Morgan Abshur
Sherry followed a similar plot line, reached out to an ex boyfriend that was.
- [70:17]
Kin Moore
Obsessed with her down to hurting herself.
- [70:19]
Morgan Abshur
Yep. Cutting the hair actually is the book. That's what's so frustrating for me. And, like, she's taking such advantage of a system that, I don't know, it's like, you're making it so much harder for every other woman going forward with a similar case or a kidnapping or a trafficking incident. Like, why? Why, why? And a lot of people, especially on the Internet, have a lot of theories on it. They think a big one is racism. And, like, you kind of see that with what Sheri gave and, like, all of her descriptions, she played into, like, a lot of racist tropes about Hispanic people. And there's this theory that stems from a blog post that's allegedly from Sheri from 2003. At the time Sheri was just coming out of high school. Her last name was Graph. And someone going by the name Sherry Graff posted an absolutely vile rant on a very racist website that year. The Post talked about getting into a fight with several Hispanic girls and that she proudly broke one of their noses. The Post also said things like, quote, being white is my family, my roots, my way of life, end quote. And I will say Sherry has always denied that she wrote that rant.
- [71:42]
Kin Moore
That's definitely not in the documentary. They left that part out.
- [71:45]
Morgan Abshur
But it's very interesting. Same name, timeline could line up. It's. I don't know, it's odd. She even told Keith that she'd hired a lawyer to take it down, claiming that someone was trying to smear her name deliberately. But I don't know, it's, it's interesting that it would be from 2003. Then it's, it's just, it's odd. Unfortunately, like this website is gone, but there with that is like there's no way to trace IP address or do anything to actually look into it to the Post. But if it is true, I mean it puts a lot of people and the Internet's racial theories into perspective.
- [72:23]
Kin Moore
I guess for me it was interesting. We kind of talked about that case that happened in Australia, the woman who poisoned her family with mushrooms. And when she was asked where she got the mushrooms from, she said the Asian store. And everyone was like, what are you talking about? And she couldn't name the store or where it was or when she had gone. But I, I figured the same thing about Sherry's case that you could play into these awful racist tropes and then people will stop asking questions like, of course they would have deadly mushrooms at the Asian store. Of course these two Hispanic women would have kidnapped you. We don't have to ask any follow up questions. But what's interesting about Sherry's case is she does continue to double down on the Hispanic angle the entire time as if that is part of the whole plan. Like even here when she was, she was like describing her abductors and what they would do. She said they were Hispanic women, but she was also using like all these ridiculous stereotypes saying that they would only blast mariachi music in the house, that they would just feed her rice and tortillas. She said everything tasted really horrible.
- [73:20]
Morgan Abshur
Just.
- [73:21]
Kin Moore
She was, it's just like a weird thing to double down on unless you are using that intentionally.
- [73:26]
Morgan Abshur
Knockoff shoes, big hoop earrings, something about gambling, but yet couldn't really describe them, but had all Those details.
- [73:34]
Kin Moore
Yeah, but she could not describe them past anything. She couldn't describe them as anything more than stereotypes that she held about Hispanic people, which is just like I. Yeah. Lack any sympathy for her, obviously.
- [73:46]
Morgan Abshur
It's. Yeah, it's odd. It's definitely odd. A lot of other people speculate that this was all from greed. I mean, Sheri ended up collecting over $30,000 from the California Victim Compensation Board. And this was over the course of like multiple years. It wasn't just one year, one payout. Her family also raised $50,000 through a Help Find Sherry Papini GoFundMe campaign money she never gave back. Allegedly, Keith did use some of that money to pay off credit card debts after she returned. So people are kind of speculating this was all an elaborate insurance type scam. Fake a kidnapping, collect the sympathy money.
- [74:27]
Kin Moore
Erase the debt, get the attention out of it that you're craving.
- [74:32]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, but still, people are like, you do all that and like, why did you go so hard on yourself? Why were you running yourself in a hockey sticks? Like you. You didn't have to do all of that. And so a lot of other people bring up the theory that maybe she has Munchausen syndrome.
- [74:49]
Kin Moore
That's so interesting because I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, you're the first one that told me that.
- [74:54]
Morgan Abshur
I'm like it. It kind of makes sense. Maybe I'm not a psychologist. If we have any, you know, psychologists, psychiatrists out there, please chime in. But this is a mental health condition where people will deliberately make themselves sick or injured to get attention or sympathy. And there's also Munchausen by proxy. There's, you know.
- [75:12]
Kin Moore
Yeah, the Gypsy Rose.
- [75:13]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, very famous case on that. But here's where things get really, really scary in terms of Sherry's kids. Investigators found evidence that Sherry might have been doing things to her kids too. So Keith kind of discovered this in a pretty horrible way when his daughter told him that her mom used to make her breathe in rubbing alcohol when she was sick. Sherry would soak rags and alcohol, put them in Ziploc bags, and tie the bags around her kids necks so they would breathe in the fumes. According to Keith, this would make the kids actually sick. And then Sheri would them take them to the doctor.
- [75:50]
Kin Moore
Oh, interesting.
- [75:52]
Morgan Abshur
But Sheri denies trying to harm her kids, and speculation about all her motives just continue. And I know at the top of this episode we did talk. You know, Sherry had a pretty traumatic childhood. Her parents have denied that, but her sister and at least one of her Friends have gone on record about it, and Sheri kind of dealt with this dysfunction differently. They say she would lie and escape. Friends remember her frequently fleeing to their house to get away from whatever was happening. She would also steal money from her dad, vandalize their home. And oftentimes people with Munchausens and Munchausen by proxy can grow up in situations like this. And that's kind of how they learn to cope with these self destructive behaviors. But again, take that with a grain of salt. Not a psychologist. It's really hard because I think a lot of us out there, we go into this like you believe women, like you believe these people, you believe victims. But when you have evidence that tells otherwise, what do you believe? The evidence, DNA evidence, cell phone tower corroboration. Do you believe the evidence or do you believe the person that's telling a story that doesn't have evidence to back up their story?
- [77:07]
Kin Moore
Right. I guess it's kind of the same with Denise Huskins, where people weren't even really looking at the evidence.
- [77:12]
Morgan Abshur
I know. And it's a.
- [77:13]
Kin Moore
It's almost story in your head.
- [77:15]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah.
- [77:15]
Kin Moore
And for Denise, they immediately made up her mind that or made up their minds that she was faking it. And with Sherry, they just immediately decided that she was telling the truth. And then a lot of the evidence just gets disregarded.
- [77:26]
Morgan Abshur
I know.
- [77:27]
Kin Moore
Regardless, it is.
- [77:28]
Morgan Abshur
It's really, really bad. Really bad spot.
- [77:30]
Kin Moore
We do have recent updates on this case, though. Updates that make our blood just boil. Yeah. So to this day, Sherry is insisting that she did not stage her kidnapping, I guess even though she pleaded guilty, which is confusing. On June 26, 2025, Sherry came out with a book. In the book, she claims that she was having a, quote, emotional affair with James, and James took things way too far. She accuses James in this book of being the one to orchestrate her kidnapping. She stands by the fact that her husband Keith was emotionally abusing her at the time. And by the way, Keith and Jerry are no longer together. Keith did file for divorce and custody of their kids just days after she pleaded guilty. The divorce was finalized in May of 2023, while Sherry was still in prison. In an interview with ABC when she was talking about this book, she's really on like this big book publicity tour now, so you don't have to actually buy the book. You can just like, don't buy them to her interviews and give someone else the YouTube money for it. But she does say, quote, I was taken against my will and I was held captive for 22 days and tortured and brutalized. She told Good Morning America, quote, I think everyone in this case has culpability here, not just me. She seems to be hoping that this book will apply pressure to James and get him to admit his role in this crime so she can prove to the world once and for all that her kidnapping wasn't a hoax. So she really. She says that James was the one inflicting all this pain on her and that he had kidnapped her. She was being held against her will. This was not things that she had orchestrated. One of. I was watching one of these interviews, too, and what did she say? Oh, the. The interviewer straight up asks her, why did you lie about the Hispanic women kidnapping you if that's the case? And she said she has this outrageous answer where she. Because James is Hispanic. So she's like, I was hoping that breadcrumb would leave the. Like, lead the police to James.
- [79:26]
Morgan Abshur
No one's gonna get that.
- [79:28]
Kin Moore
No. But it just goes back to molding the narrative to fit whatever's happening in the moment. Like, she's just gonna lie about whatever she needs to that fits that immediate moment so she can kind of wiggle her way out of something. You mentioned, too, that she's in a ton of debt, and that might be why she's doing this book.
- [79:43]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah, there's a lot of speculation that she's in debt, like, $500,000. I don't think she's paid back any towards the police investigation and make, you know, making those retributions. So a lot of people are speculating that she's in a lot of debt, and that's why this PR circus is all going about. She's. I mean, she's going on, like, pop. Reality recap podcasts.
- [80:05]
Kin Moore
Like, oh, yeah, she's on Nick Vile's podcast.
- [80:07]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah. Like, I mean, the podcast she's going on, it's just like, what? Okay. Like, it's clearly to sell the book.
- [80:13]
Kin Moore
Yeah.
- [80:13]
Morgan Abshur
I will say, like, I was so curious. I'm like, she's saying all this. She's. She is publishing this against James. I will say there, from what I can find, there's been no lawsuits against James on her behalf, even civilly, which, as we know, civil cases, you have way less, you know, burden of proof or whatever that term is. Like, you don't have to prove as much with civil cases. She's never gone after James for that. James has also not sued Sherry for any thing that, you know, she said. So I think that's super interesting. But this is where Worlds Kind of collide for me. I don't know if we have any Survivor fans out there. So there was a contestant from last season named Shaheen. Shaheen actually dated Sherry Papini.
- [81:03]
Kin Moore
You're kidding.
- [81:04]
Morgan Abshur
No. So Shaheen calls Sheri, quote, a compulsive liar. She would not talk to you for three or four days, and then all of a sudden, there'd be some fantastical story about what happened. And he goes on to detail in a couple different interviews with E. And people, like, all of these fabricated, needless lies. Like, Shaheen surfed all the time. It's something that he really enjoyed doing. And so he says that Sheri told him that she surfed all the time, but yet would never surf. Didn't have pictures of her surfing. And, like, she did have a surfboard at her house, but, like, that was it. So, like, weird. It could have been a decoration. And he goes on to say that she was faking a heart condition at one point. A bunch of people ended up figuring out it wasn't true. And Shaheen goes on to say, like, he was 15 at the time he dated Sheri, and Sheri was 20, which is interesting. But the whole reason he was even coming out and, like, coming and doing these interviews with press is people were accusing him of being James. They were mixing him up because he was one of Sherry's exes.
- [82:15]
Kin Moore
Yeah. So you could find him.
- [82:16]
Morgan Abshur
And so he was like, clear my name. Clear my name. So that's just like, a crazy intersection of my life. Like, I'm such a Survivor fan. And so when you watch Shaheen, you're like, he's so sweet. He's got seemingly a lot of integrity. And this is like, Survivor people go ruthless on this.
- [82:32]
Kin Moore
Right, right.
- [82:33]
Morgan Abshur
And so, yeah, I mean, you hear this story then from him, and he's like, she's a compulsive liar. And then we have everything we've presented today, and you're like, oh, my God. Like, okay, so this is where we're at.
- [82:46]
Kin Moore
I know. It's always interesting when other people corroborate the story.
- [82:50]
Morgan Abshur
Yeah.
- [82:50]
Kin Moore
Just kind of adds to the case against her.
- [82:52]
Morgan Abshur
I know. Fan in the flames a little bit here. And, like, the impact of Sheri's case has been pretty far reaching. I mean, it's got a lot of repercussions. Whether you believe hoax or no hoax. I'm curious where you. Our listeners align after, you know, seeing. Hearing all this evidence. And it. It really did inflame racial tensions in Reading and Northern California. So much so that A lot of women of color were afraid to go out in public together for fear of being stopped or even attacked. And while Sheri took a plea deal and admitted her guilt and dishonor, as she called it, this case, as I've kind of mentioned, has like, made it so much harder for victims of similar cases to be believed, for their cases to be taken seriously. Fortunately, we have people like Denise Huskins to raise actual awareness and advocate for change. But that is all we have on the case of Sherry Papini. And so let's, let's move on to our Missing person of the week.
- [83:52]
Kin Moore
This week we wanted to highlight someone who also went missing in Teton National Park. I was thinking about it when we were doing the Gabby Petito case, but. On June 8, 2021, 27 year old Kian McLaughlin, a Jackson, Wyoming resident with dual Irish US citizenship, set out on what would have been a routine solo hike in Grand Teton National Park. He was last seen entering the park via the Moose entrance station in the early afternoon wearing only shorts, a white T shirt, a bucket hat and hiking boots. Later that same day, a local climbing guide reported seeing someone matching Keane's description along the Garnet Canyon trail carrying just a water bottle. This was the last confirmed sighting of him. When Kian didn't report to work on June 10, friends and family grew concerned and he was officially reported missing on June 12. Park officials discovered his vehicle at Lupine Meadows trailhead on June 13, prompting a massive search operation that included ground teams, dog teams, helicopters and other specialized technology. Now, backcountry users in Grand Teton national park are encouraged to contact the tip line, 888-653-0009 if they locate any of the items that Kian was suspected to have had on him at the time of his disappearance, which included a red Apple watch, a red iPhone 12 mini gold wire rimmed glasses, a silver U shaped pendant, and a white T shirt. And that is all we have for this episode. Thank you so much for diving into this one with us. It's a big one, it's an emotional one. It's one people get really angry about. And we're just gonna have some unanswered questions on this one for a long time because I don't think Sherry's ever gonna be honest about what happened. But now we wanna hear from you guys. Your thoughts, your theories, your feedback. All of that makes this community so special.
- [85:34]
Morgan Abshur
I know I'm certainly unsettled after this one, but as always at Crime House, we really value your support. So again, share those thoughts on social media. And remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover our show. And if you're hungry for even more content, we've got you covered. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access, and ad free listening, join our Crime House plus community on Apple Podcasts.
- [85:57]
Kin Moore
We will be back next week with another case to unravel, and until then, keep searching and we will see you next time on Clues. Bye guys.
- [86:04]
Morgan Abshur
Bye. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season, starting with the crimes that inspired Hollywood's most iconic horror villains.
- [86:19]
Kin Moore
Follow Crimes of wherever you get your podcasts or find them on YouTube at Crime House Studios. New episodes out every Tuesday.