On Thanksgiving Day 2016, a woman named Sherri Papini was found on the side of a highway in Yolo County, California, about 150 miles from her home in Redding.
She had a chain around her waist. Her hair had been cut. She had bruises, a swollen nose, and a brand burned into her right shoulder. She had lost more than twenty pounds in twenty-two days. She told investigators that two armed Hispanic women had abducted her at gunpoint, held her captive in a closet, subjected her to abuse, and released her in the early morning hours before a passing driver found her and called 911.
The story was devastating, terrifying, and national news within hours. It was also a lie.
It took more than five years of investigation, a DNA match that tied her to a former boyfriend, a confrontation interview that she spent deflecting before finally breaking, and a federal guilty plea in April 2022 to establish what had actually happened. The two Hispanic women did not exist. The kidnapping did not occur. The injuries were either self-inflicted or, in some cases, requested. And behind the story of a “supermom” victimized by strangers was a set of deceptions that cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, sent a community into fear, and directed law enforcement suspicion at people who had done nothing wrong.
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## A Thanksgiving Day Return That Made National Headlines
The call came in at approximately 4:30 a.m. on November 24, 2016. A driver on Interstate 5 near Woodland, California, had spotted a woman with her hands bound and a cord around her waist. She was emaciated. She had obvious injuries. She was found on or near County Road 17.