The investigators who arrived at the hospital to take her statement were also, from the beginning, uneasy.
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## The Account: What Papini Told Investigators
In her initial interviews with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and, subsequently, with FBI agents who joined the case, Papini provided an account of her captivity.
She said she had been grabbed while jogging. She said two Hispanic women had forced her into a dark-colored SUV at gunpoint. She said she had been held in a closet, kept restrained, subjected to physical abuse that included the branding, the cutting of her hair, and the beatings that produced her injuries. She described her captors as speaking Spanish to each other and concealing their faces. She said they had threatened to traffic her to someone in law enforcement — a detail intended to explain why she was reluctant to cooperate with police.
It took investigators approximately a year to extract enough descriptive detail from Papini to produce composite sketches of the two alleged Hispanic women. The sketches were released in late 2017. They circulated widely. They produced tips. None of the tips led anywhere.
Former Shasta County Sheriff’s Captain Pat Kropholler, who would later be involved in the investigation, described noticing inconsistencies early. Papini’s explanations for the branding were inconsistent across interviews — she gave different accounts of how it happened and what it meant at different points. Her description of the alleged captors was vague enough to generate suspicion rather than confidence. And a review of her phone records, undertaken early in the investigation, showed contact with multiple men in the days before her disappearance.