Five years after she claimed she was dumped on the side of a Northern California highway in chains by her kidnappers, Sherri Papini formally admitted in federal court Monday that she faked the whole scheme.
Papini, 39, disappeared from her quiet neighborhood in Redding in November 2016 while out on an afternoon run. Her husband found her phone and earbuds on the side of a road, with strands of her hair tangled up in the wires. A nationwide search ensued for the mother of two who seemed to have vanished.
She reappeared 22 days later, emaciated, her hair unevenly chopped off and she claimed “two Hispanic women had abducted her at gunpoint,” according to court records. But federal investigators said Papini was actually spending that time with an ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa, who drove to Northern California to pick her up at her request. The unnamed ex-boyfriend claimed Papini ate little, was bruised and even branded herself with a wood burning tool.
Papini claimed she was “physically and emotionally tortured, beaten, burned, branded, and drugged” as a hostage. After she returned home, Papini made numerous false claims to investigators about her abductors, weaving in details about her supposed kidnappers and the location where she was held, officials said.
Last month, federal prosecutors charged Papini with lying to federal agents during their investigation into the alleged kidnapping and 34 counts of mail fraud, after she received $30,000 from a state assistance fund for...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...