Sherri Papini's kidnapping was a lie, the panic it sparked in her California town was real

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Sherri Papini's disappearance in 2016 left California's Shasta County on edge. 

She vanished while out jogging near her home, prompting a frantic search in Redding, a city nestled in the north end of the Sacramento Valley. After three weeks, she reappeared, bruised and branded, claiming she had been abducted by two Hispanic women. 

This month, Papini admitted it was all a lie. 

But in Shasta County, Papini's hoax was more than a lie. The fake abduction sowed fear, diverted local law enforcement's resources and made Latinas in the area targets in the hunt for her nonexistent abductors.  

The initial reports of Papini's disappearance "put everybody into a little bit of hysteria, as far as their own personal safety," Shasta County Sheriff's Captain Brian Jackson said. 

"People would call in somebody that just seemed out of place, and they referenced that person as this person might be responsible for kidnapping or taking the lady that was jogging," Jackson said. "It really left everybody unsettled."

At the time, Shasta County's former Sheriff Tom Bosenko said "there should not be a panic" amid Papini's disappearance. Meanwhile, volunteers searched for the mother of two.

"There was a huge community effort put into looking for her and providing tips to law enforcement, and it was a big deal. We're fearful and we're involved in the process of trying to recover her safely," Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said. 

She resurfaced on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 along the side of an interstate highway more than 140 miles south of where she was last seen.

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'It was hurtful to a lot of Hispanics'

After her reappearance, Papini told police two Latinas abducted her at gunpoint and kept her in a small closet for three weeks. Her account sent law enforcement looking for the Hispanic women that never existed. 

Investigators eventually said she was staying with a former boyfriend in Orange County during the time she was missing and had harmed herself to make her story more convincing.

"Everybody was on edge and looking Hispanic women and ladies with a skewed eye and wondering if they're part of it," Jackson said. "It just caused a bunch of people to feel ostracized or looked at in a different way all because of her false report."

The racial undertones behind Papini's story weren't lost on Araceli Gutierrez, a radio host with the station Stereo Salvaje. And as more details about her captors came out, the less Gutierrez believed it. 

"I didn't believe it when I saw the sketches, like now something's wrong. It's not making sense," said Gutierrez, who lives in the city of Red Bluff, located some 30 miles south of Redding. 

Papini, who is white, told investigators one of the captors wore "those big hoop earrings" and had thin, "almost drawn in" eyebrows. She said the women played "really annoying Mexican music" and fed her only once a day, "maybe rice or tortillas," according to the criminal complaint against her filed March 3.  

Gutierrez said Papini's account fell into racial stereotypes and was especially damaging coming on the heels of former President Donald Trump's campaign. 

"It was hurtful to a lot of Hispanics," Gutierrez said. 

'We needed to get the answers'

As police started getting more information on Papini's abduction, "some things made sense and some things didn't," said Jackson, who was a detective sergeant when Papini went missing. 

"One of the weird things about this case is, even though she lied about a lot of things, there's a lot of truths and many things that she was able to tell and she was able to hold on to, like the injuries that she got," Jackson said.

The bruises on her body were real, the captain said, but she lied about how she was hurt. Authorities eventually concluded she had done it to herself and that she had instructed her former partner to help create injuries. 

"There's many incidents like that, and so there's so many layers to that whole investigation as far as her lies and how it came about," Jackson said. "It was part of the cause for us to continue to investigate it for the last five years because we needed to get the answers."

District Attorney Bridgett said "a tremendous amount of resources" was put into Papini's case. Resources, she said, that were taken away from other cases. 

"Her sentence, I feel, needs to be severe, and it needs to serve as kind of an example to those that would lie and those that would do what she did and take resources away from victims," Bridgett said. 

Under the terms of her plea deal, Papini, 39, will be required to pay more than $300,000 in restitution to several government agencies. 

Papini faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for making false statements to a federal law enforcement officer. She faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for the count of mail fraud. 

Sentencing was scheduled for July 11 in federal district court in Sacramento.

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