Search Box

Friday, March 31, 2017

Things aren't looking so good for Sherri

I wrote back in December about all the inconsistencies in Sherri Papini's story of kidnap and abuse. Now it looks even more suspicious. 

The NY Post ran an article yesterday, Jogger's family reported her to police years before abduction, which detailed Papini's past lies:

The California mother who says she was kidnapped during a jog last November before reappearing along a freeway on Thanksgiving was previously reported to law enforcement by her family, according to documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

Sherri Papini’s mother, Loretta Graeff, alleged to authorities in December 2003 that her daughter “had been harming herself and blaming the injuries on her,” in a two-sentence incident report from the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office obtained by the newspaper.

The incident report did not say whether officers found evidence that Papini — then 21 years old — had in fact harmed herself.

When asked what happened by the Bee, Shasta County Sheriff’s Lt. Pat Kropholler said in an email to the newspaper that a deputy spoke with Papini’s mother back in 2003 and “gave her advice.”

In addition to her mother, Papini’s sister and father also contacted law enforcement about her, according to the documents obtained by the Bee. Her father alleged his daughter burglarized his residence in 2000, and her sister alleged the same year that her back door had been kicked in and she believed Papini was the suspect.

The reports provided no details about any arrests, and the sheriff’s office did not confirm to the paper if Papini had ever been charged in connection with her sister’s allegation.

When asked further by the paper to answer questions about Papini’s alleged abduction, Kropholler only said a detective has been assigned to the case full time and the agency is “in contact with the Papinis on a regular basis.”


One of the arguments that Papini was really abducted was that she had been branded, had lost weight, and been shorn of her hair during her two week disappearance. But if in fact she was self-harming back in 2003, that argument is weakened considerably. And if Papini's own sister and father separately accused her of breaking in and burglarizing their homes, that lowers her credibility further.

And now, four months later, there's still no evidence to corroborate her claims.

At this point it looks as if Sherri has Munchausen's Syndrome, that peculiar form of sociopathy that causes its "sufferers" to feign serious illness -- or a kidnapping -- in order to gain attention and sympathy. 

Just one more piece of evidence that looking like an angel is no proof of being one.


Another thing I just noticed: Papini has "sanpaku eyes." (A phrase I learned just today thanks to commenter Smallberries Worldwide, who pointed out that the woman described in the previous post has them.) 

16 comments:

Smallberries Worldwide said...

John- It's interesting to note that there are no unstaged photos of Papini. In the few photos where her face is somewhat relaxed, like in your post, the sanpaku effect is most prominent. I wonder what she looks like qhen she's not "on".

Isn't one of the most telling parts of this case is the fact that a high school friend of hers disappeared in almost the exact same location. Not only that, but they look so much alike they could be could be confused for sisters. It seems extremely unlikely that there could be two instances where there would be copycat abductions from the same location and the two victims knew each other.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2346517/sherri-papini-kidnapping-similar-abduction-ex-classmate/

John Craig said...

Smallberries --
Interesting point about how all those photographs are staged, some obviously professionally. My guess is she always looks pretty good, she appears to the kind of woman who is very conscious of the effect she has on others.

Yes, that seems too much to be coincidence. The second one WAS a copycat "abduction," except that it wasn't really an abduction.

John Craig said...

PS -- For anybody else who comments, I may not have access to the internet for the next three days, so please forgive my tardiness in posting your comments.

Shaun F said...

John - Glad to see some news about this has materialized. Not sure about "Munchausen's Syndrome" though. It would be a safe plea if for some reason it goes unfavorably for her and ends up in cort. She strikes me as a con artist. Don't know why - maybe it's the cross, the visible cross. I've noticed with the few people I know that have visible crosses (or a cross in their office) - they were - it struck me as a sign that they were (or thought themselves to be) better than others, when after chatting with them - it became evident that their character was lacking integrity. On an aside, when I worked retail in the early 90s, I saw a couple very attractive, pleasant, young girls nailed for internal theft. You would never have known - unless you saw one of them escorted from the store by the police. Hope your time away was for something pleasant.

John Craig said...

Shaun --
I wrote about that "cross effect" here:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2016/12/lies-papini-style.html

Munchausen's Syndrome isn't a safe plea at all, other women who have had it have had the book thrown at them. There's no judge or prosecutor who''ll accept it as a legitimate defense, anymore than saying "I couldn't help it, I'm a sociopath" would be a legitimate defense.

I actually think that most of the hate hoaxes that have been perpetrated in the past few years have been done by people with Munchausen's. All these people wanted to appear the victim, and wanted to receive sympathy. The liberal media jumped all over those incidents at first because it looks as if it fit their narrative, but then when so many of those incidents turned out to be hoaxes, we basically didn't hear about them anymore.

Shaun F said...

John - Right! And today I made a very similar comment to what I said on that post.

Thanks for clarifying about it's lack of acceptability as a legitimate defense. That is encouraging.

I agree with your assessment of the hate hoaxes. It will be very interesting how this particular case plays out.

GT said...

At least it's not Munchausen by proxy. Bad enough she is doing this to herself but at least she's not using the kids to gain sympathy.

John Craig said...

GT --
Yes, Munchausen by proxy is far more despicable than regular old Munchausen's.

GT said...

Sherri Papini charged after prosecutors allege she faked 2016 kidnapping

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/sherri-papini-charged-after-prosecutors-allege-she-faked-2016-kidnapping/ar-AAUBPfr?ocid=msedgntp

I hope the trial will be followed by the media. I would like to hear her speak

John Craig said...

GT --
Thanks for remembering this post. I was happy to see that this morning on both Yahoo and the NY Post. I was afraid that the authorities were going to just let the case slide (that's what it looked like for a while). The news that she had spent the entire time in Orange County with an ex-boyfriend was new, I hadn't heard anything about that before (thank goodness for DNA), but her story stretched credulity from the start. And once the stuff about her background came out, there was no question that it was a hoax.

GT said...

Sherri Papini Will Plead Guilty, Admit Kidnapping Was a Hoax: 'I Am Deeply Ashamed of Myself'

https://people.com/crime/sherri-papini-guilty-plea-kidnapping-hoax/

Looks like this is all over....

I really wanted this to go to trial so we could get to the "why".

John Craig said...

GT --
I did see that yesterday, and had a small chuckle over her saying that she was "deeply ashamed" of herself. She's obviously a sociopath, and sociopaths by definition don't feel shame. Had she been capable of that emotion, she would have come clean long ago, rather than trying to keep the hoax up for years and years.

As to the why, I think her motivation was a witch's brew of (a) wanting to get away from her somewhat stultifying life with her boring husband, (b) wanting a romantic interlude with that ex-boyfriend in southern California (though he insists they did not have sex, and (c) wanting to get some attention and sympathy, in a Munchausen's sort of way. It's also possible that she thought she might be able to make some money off the entire caper.

BTW, I don't think those elements would necessarily have emerged in a jury trial; only Papini knows for sure, and she's not the type to come clean.

GT said...

Sherri Papini sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking her own kidnapping

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/sherri-papini-sentenced-to-18-months-in-prison-for-faking-her-own-kidnapping/ar-AA120FkY?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=5731cb9fa8e5408daba7234da946bd33

I liked this comment from Papini's attorney- "Whatever happened five years ago, that's a different Sherri Papini than the person you see here today,"

.....somehow I doubt she is a different person

John Craig said...

GT --
Thanks for that, hadn't seen the sentencing. It's got to be fairly rare that the hjudge hands down a sentence that's even more than the prosecutors ask for.

You're absolutely right, sociopaths are forever telling us they're turning over a new leaf or some such crap, but they never change.

Smallberries Wordwide said...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/19/us/sherri-papini-fake-kidnapping-sentence/index.html



Smallberries Wordwide

John Craig said...

Smallberries Worldwide --
Thank you for that. I love the way she says "the broken woman I was," as if she's no longer "broken." Once a sociopath, always a sociopath.