Sherri Papini, the California woman who faked her own kidnapping in 2016, has been released from a halfway house.Photo:AP/Rich Pedroncelli
AP/Rich Pedroncelli
Sherri Papini, the California woman who made headlines forfaking her own kidnappingin 2016, has been released from a halfway house.
Papini, 41, was released on Friday, eight months early in her 18-month prison sentence, according to theFederal Bureau of Prisons.
She had been under community confinement at a halfway house after being transferred in August from a satellite facility of the Federal Correctional Institution Victorville Medium I in Victorville, California, according toCBS News.The Daily Mailobtained photos reportedly showing Papini leaving the halfway house. She will now remain on supervised release for three years.
In 2016, the then-34-year-old wife and mother of two, claimed to have been the victim of a violent abduction while she was out on a morning run in her Redding, California, neighborhood on Nov. 2. After her husband, Keith Papini, reported her missing that evening, an extensive search was conducted.
Papini told authorities that she had managed to escape her captors, who she described as two Hispanic women. She said the women abducted her at gunpoint and forced her into an SUV.
“These Hispanic females are armed, considered dangerous and they have a handgun, at least a handgun with them,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko told reporters during a press conference at the time.
Charging documents released later in the investigation revealed that DNA evidence taken from the clothing Papini was wearing when she was found did not belong to her supposed female abductors. Instead, the DNA was matched to an offender related to an ex-boyfriend of Papini’s.
Investigators later pulled DNA from an iced tea bottle retrieved from the ex-boyfriend’s trash. Upon being interviewed, the ex-boyfriend admitted to helping Papini “run away” because she alleged that her husband abused her.
Sherri and Keith Papini.Courtesy Keith Papini
While her family believed she was missing, Papini was actually hiding out in her ex-boyfriend’s Costa Mesa apartment. After 22 days off the radar, Papini told her former boyfriend she missed her children and wanted to go home.
The ex-boyfriend told investigators Papini hit and burned herself to create injuries and asked him to drop her on the side of the road where she was later discovered.
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On April 12, 2022, Papini was charged with one count of making false statements to a federal agent and 34 counts of mail fraud. She pleaded guilty on April 18, 2022, admitting that her kidnapping claim was completely fabricated.
During her trial, Papini told the courtroom she was"deeply ashamed"of her behavior and “sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered… I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done.”
source: people.com
