 incredibly long road and some stuff's come up. This is Sherry and she is about to have a bad day. Not surprising given she is sat in the Shasta County police station. Today is the bizarre penultimate chapter in a case of kidnap, physical abuse, lies and a hoax but confused a nation. My name is John and today we'll look at the Sherry Papini abduction. Meet Sherry. On the face of it Sherry Papini and her husband Keith have a nice life. A four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter and a residence in Reading, California known locally as the Jewel of California. I've never been there and that quote was from the city's own website so take that with a pinch of salt. I've also heard about its high crime rate as well. Sherry works as a national retail account executive for AT&T with Keith working as a home theater specialist at Best Buy. The couple have been married since October 2009. Sherry takes regular jogs. I mean with weather like this I think even I would lumber my walrus body out for a daily run but instead I have this. My lack of exercise aside in 2016 everything was pretty unexceptional. Well until it wasn't. The long jog. It is Wednesday the 2nd of November 2016 and Sherry has gone out for a jog at reportedly three different times during the day as seen by witnesses. Her last jog of the day is just after lunchtime. During the afternoon her two children are due to be picked up from daycare but Sherry doesn't arrive. Her husband Keith arrives at their mounting gate house at around 5pm to find no one home. No wife and even more worryingly no children. Keith rings the daycare centre and his children are still there but no Sherry. Wondering where she is Keith tracks Sherry's iPhone down on the Track My Phone app. Strangely it's showing at a rural road he finds her phone and earbuds with blonde hair entangled in them near Sunrise Drive. This prompts him to call 911 at 5.51pm. With Sherry now reported missing the Shasta County Sheriff's Office launches an investigation into her disappearance and the FBI are notified. Bizarrely not massively far away in Lewiston California another woman is reported missing. She hasn't been seen since the 12th of October. Initially it's looking like maybe the two are linked but it would prove not to be. Now searching for Sherry would continue for the next few days with a case being brought to local attention. Patrol deputies and detectives began to make checks on 290 registered offenders in the area. During this time the police are still not sure if it's a case of abduction or a case of voluntary disappearance. Although the Papines assert it must have been a kidnap. In an odd turn of events an anonymous donor would put up $10,000 for the return of the young mother. The donor may contact via family friend Lisa Jester but Keith initially refuses the random guy with money option. Around the same time the wider family put up a roughly $40,000 reward. This is what they call a reverse ransom offer and he is propagated amongst the media. Although the search is ongoing like most cases of mysterious disappearance the first suspect is the spouse of the victim. The police interview Keith and give him a lie detector test which he passes. This combined with GPS data from his work vehicle discounting from the suspect list. But another suspect has been discovered and on 7th November two police officers are sent to Detroit to interview a man that had been regularly texting with Sherry. But yet again this man was discounted from the suspect list. On 10th November Keith spoke out to the national press saying that his wife was definitely taken against her will. At some point during the first week the domain name of Sherry Papini.com was registered. The family hired a private investigator after a week of no sight of Sherry. In addition to the PI Keith accepts the financial help from the anonymous donor. On top of this a GoFundMe is created to help pay for the private investigator. Lisa Jester, Keith and the donor communicate with one another and the donor requested a spokesperson independent from the family and Jester knew the right person for the job. Enter Cameron Gamble, an individual who wishes to remain anonymous. This is Cameron Gamble. He's a self-professed private military contractor, hostage negotiator and international kidnap and ransom consultant. He was a local and a member of the local church congregation. He offered his services on a pro bono basis and even better he had a theory of why she was abducted. The family took him on as the middleman in this ever increasingly bizarre story. Apparently Gamble posited Sherry had been taken to be trafficked. This was in contrast to the local sheriff's office who still claimed that Sherry's disappearance may not actually be a kidnapping at all. On the 17th November the Sherry Papini website displayed an undisclosed ransom for Sherry Papini's immediate release. Setting a deadline of 5 a.m. on the 23rd of November. This was mirrored on a YouTube video posted by Gamble. It opened with the following statement. My name is Cameron Gamble and I am an international kidnap and ransom consultant. I've been retained by an individual who wishes to remain anonymous. An individual who has come forward to offer a cash reward for a ransom for Sherry Papini's safe return to her family. No one comes forward with any information and by the 20th of November the police have acted on 20 search warrants and have received over 400 tips. Two days later Gamble says publicly he believes the purported abductors are still in decision making mode whatever that means. He also declines to announce how much the abductor would receive but says it's a six-figure reward. By now Gamble have received no leads. The police had no leads and Sherry was still missing and Gamble's deadline was soon approaching. On the 23rd of November 2016 Gamble posted a new video stating the ransom has been withdrawn and the money will be combined with the $50,000 reward previously mentioned but yet again no leads come of it. Sherry reappears. It is 4.30 am on the 24th of November 2016 and a motorist is driving along Interstate 5 Yolo County which is around 150 miles south of Reading. They spot a woman by the side of the road and stopped to assist. The police are contacted and the woman is Sherry. She is beaten, bruised and bound by restraints and treated at Yolo County Hospital. Keith is contacted and he drives to be reunited with his wife. Six hours after her rescue the Sheriff's Office make the public aware of the new turn the case has taken. Whilst at hospital photographs of her injuries and swabs for DNA analysis were taken. An initial interview by law enforcement took place but not much came from this apart from that her captors were two Hispanic women in a dark SUV. She was sent home after just a few hours and wouldn't be interviewed for a few more days. On the 29th of November Keith Papini released a written statement to Good Morning America. This told the world that his wife was branded, covered in bruises and starved down to just 87 pounds. Her blonde hair had been cut short and she was thrown from a vehicle with a chain around her waist attached to her wrists and a bag over her head. The police had found CCTV footage of Sherry approaching a church and running away shortly before her discovery around the time of her release. A sketch of the apparent suspects was released but again the police had no solid leads. The same day Cameron Gamble state that the $50,000 from the mystery donor had been given back. Lead investigator Bosenko announces that Sherry's phone and headphones which were discovered on the evening of the second were found neatly placed on the ground. Lots of news interviews with Keith Gamble and the police go on all the way through December but Sherry doesn't appear on screen. Although the police don't have any leads to the two Hispanic women, they start to dive into Sherry's past. Rather bizarrely though the DNA tests come back with two results, one from female DNA as you would expect but the other is from a male. You see Sherry has some experience with dealing with 911 calls and making police reports which would become public knowledge after a story broke by the Sacramento Bee came out in April 2017. Cool records found by the news outlet revealed that Sherry in 2003 had allegedly been harming herself and blaming her mother for the injuries. The case would go quiet at least in the public eye as the police dig into the case and a year later they would release some arguably damning evidence. Remember that CCTV footage discovered at a nearby church? It showed a woman running in one direction and in back in the opposite direction. Oddly towards the same direction her captors had apparently released her. The police were starting to find cracks in Sherry's story and the vital DNA evidence would get a family match with an offender found in a data bank and the male DNA found on Sherry. It wasn't a direct match however, instead linking this offender as a potential relative to the mystery male DNA which after a little bit of digging came back to a James Reyes also known as an ex-boyfriend of Sherry Papini. This was confirmed when the FBI took a sample from a drinks bottle out of Reyes's bin and it matched that of the DNA found on Sherry's sweatpants. Boom they had a suspect but it wasn't two Hispanic women instead an ex-boyfriend and when being interviewed Reyes would spill the beans in August 2020. He was state that Sherry had been with him the whole time. Reyes had met Sherry on the second of November in her hometown in a rental car. The two drove to Reyes's residence in Costa Mesa. Neighbours of Reyes confirmed seeing Sherry and from the statements it hinted that she was there willingly. Reyes would pass a polygraph test and when asked why did the hoax end the ex-boyfriend stated that Sherry was missing her children. An excuse that Sherry had given Reyes for the whole reason for her disappearance was that she was trying to escape her abusive husband Keith. So I should say that the Papinis did rather well out at the kidnapping. The couple pocketed the go-from-me which had roughly $49,000 in it. Both Keith and Sherry used the money for personal use as well as paying off a few pesky credit cards. All the way back on November 28th 2016 Papini had applied to the California Victim Compensation Board for assistance. The Calvcb provides financial assistance to victims of violent crimes. In all she were claimed more than $30,000 for therapist trips, medical trips and for the emotional distress. The Reyes interview and the large amount of money pocketed by the Papinis meant that this was more than enough to bring Sherry in to talk to her once again with the police and this brings us back to the beginning of this video. It is the 13th of August 2020 and Sherry and husband Keith are brought in to talk to federal agents and Keith is going to get a very big shock. Bear in mind that she will be warned that it was a crime to lie to federal agents. Let's just have a look at her interview. Your presence here is voluntary. You can go at any time and all we want is truthful statements because it's a crime to lie to federal officers. Although things have started cordially, in an attempt to keep Sherry at ease the investigators begin to show her photos of inside James Reyes' property. So the table, the picture is a little drained out. To me, I see a table there that somewhat looks like something you described to me in the past. Yes, I just found the original one of that that I was trying to explain. It's a little bit different but it's pretty, excuse my language, it's pretty fucking similar. But. Is that the first thing that you challenged her to do? Oh, come on. We were talking about the order. We were talking about the order. That's nice, it's not open. I mean this doesn't look like the bathroom to me but the order is, yeah. Bearing in mind that the investigators know the truth, they laugh and play along with Sherry. What's interesting is that both parties, Keith excluded, know the photographs are from James's property. The following exchanges are kind of farcical and the investigators show great restraint in not calling Sherry out on her lies. But this is the same bathroom we showed you that. This is the same on it but. Charming magazine on the. Sports Illustration, yes. Look at that. So nothing jumps out at you at that point? We're not trying to overwhelm you. Obviously, it's been a long road and here we are. So we're showing you all of this because ultimately this is the house that you were at. We talked to the people that lived there. Sorry. We found the house. We found who was involved. We talked to who was involved. We talked to family who knows that you were there and talked to a couple people that or talked to one guy who did see you during this event. Fortunately, there's a lot of truth. There's a lot of things that were said that we have always confirmed that we've always said to a specific person but not a female. It led us to the car that picked you up but not an SUV. Sherry is confronted with the fact that the photos are from James' property and the male DNA found on her is from James. Your DNA that was on you belongs to James Reyes. The picture of the table is James Reyes' little brother who died recently. We talked to him. We've been on the polygraph. We talked to everybody around him. We have the rental agreements, the car rental agreements. We have everything that says that he said he told the truth. That's James brother. Deceased, Nick. So everything you've told us so many truths in this situation. The reason why you can describe the room is because you stayed in the room in the dark for hours, for days on end. The reason why you lost so much weight is because you stopped eating. The reason why you got a rash on your arm is because you cleaned his house. The reason why the brand is because he went to the store and bought the branding tools and branded you. The reason why your nose was broke is because of a hockey stick. I know all of those things and I know there was no sex. I know all of that because he passed a polygraph test. That said, it's not an abduction. She asked me to come together. I rented a car, drove up and picked her up. He passed the polygraph test, Sherry. If that's not what happened, what didn't happen, Sherry? I don't know the way. I'm so witty. The DNA doesn't lie. Keith asks to leave the interview room and the two investigators start to push Sherry, but she doesn't admit to her part in the hoax, instead seemingly trying to put the blame solely on Reyes. The fears of how out of control everything got. So you might as well get out of your head that James is not involved because James is clearly involved and James already told us he's the one that did the brain. Something that he admitted to in AAM. He admitted to the felony and put him in prison. Well you're afraid to go and do that. The interview ends with Sherry exercising her option to leave the interview room and now she is officially lied to the officers. It's only a matter of time before she is arrested. But this wouldn't come until the 3rd of March 2022, when Sherry would be arrested on charges of making full statements to a federal law enforcement officer and for mail fraud. After six days, Papini was released from jail before her trial on a $120,000 bond and on top of that she had to surrender her passport. Keith files around the same time for a divorce and is awarded custody of their children. Three days later she signs a plea deal and is sentenced in September to 18 months in prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release. Papini was ordered to pay $309,902 in restitution. The loss is incurred by the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office and the FBI. In November she voluntarily reported to the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex where she currently resides. What is scary is that her lies could have impacted random innocent people if it wasn't for the DNA evidence. And there is no apparent motive apart from attention seeking and a relatively small amount of money in comparison to the amount of fines she ended up receiving. Now for these true crime videos I haven't yet created a rating scale so let me know if you have any suggestions in the comments below. This is a plain looking video, all videos on the channel are creative commas activities and share alike licensed. Plain looking videos are produced by me John and are currently in a quite nice sunny corner of southern London UK. I'd like to thank my youtube members and Patreons for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch your random videos on this channel. I have Instagram and Twitter so check them out if you want to see behind the scenes stuff from these videos and just my general life and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play yourself please.