HOAX: The Sherri Papini Story

After pleading guilty to lying about being kidnapped, Sherri Papini was charged with Making False Statements and Mail Fraud. Finally, her big day in court arrives where she’ll learn her sentence. After a dramatic memo from her defense lawyer and stunning statements in court, the Judge makes a shocking decision.

After years go by with little news about Sherri’s case, law enforcement makes a huge breakthrough that blows everything wide open. When DNA from the clothing Sherri was wearing in captivity shows that it belonged to an unknown male, the police use some of the same methods used to crack cold cases like the “Golden State Killer” and ultimately trace the sample to Sherri Papini’s ex-boyfriend. After authorities interview the Ex, they learn a stunning revelation: Sherri’s kidnapping was all made up…

As investigators continue to look into Sherri’s case, new details emerge about her life before she went missing. Her past includes a first husband, problems with her parents over the years, and a shocking rumor that she once posted on a white supremacist message board. With this new information, will investigators be able to track down her captors? Or will they conclude that the whole thing was made up?

After Sherri is unexpectedly found on the side of the road, her family is overjoyed by her return. But their happiness quickly turns to horror when they see what’s happened to her: she’s apparently been burned, beaten up, and branded. After law enforcement interviews Sherri about her ordeal, new—and surprising—details emerge about her alleged abductors and her time in captivity.

On November 2, 2016, Sherri Papini, a young mother of two kids in Redding, California, went out for a jog…and vanished. As law enforcement begin to hunt for clues, her worried husband shares the story of her disappearance with the media, prompting a mysterious anonymous donor to come forward and offer a “reverse ransom” in an effort to get Sherri released. The donor taps a self-described “abduction expert” to negotiate with Sherri’s alleged captors as days tick by and the case heats up. But, just as things look bleak, a major new twist develops three weeks after Sherri first went missing…