Rotten Mango - #169: Project Taken (Abduction of Sherri Papini)

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

He ran an anti-abduction training program called “Project Taken.” He would teach young girls how not to get kidnapped. He was not someone to mess around. Ex-military man. Specialist in kidnapping prevention. International hostage negotiator. He did it all. Well, nobody expected he would find himself wrapped up in one of the strangest, most bizarre kidnapping cases in all of true crime history. The kidnapping of Sherri Papini. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to this week's main episode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue, and a young woman is walking around campus. She's kind of walking through the hallways, ignoring all the flyers on the wall. Project Taken, the flyer says. Yeah, like the movie, Taken, project Taken. 50,000 women a year are stalked or kidnapped. That's what the flyer says. You never need us until you do. While passing this row of flyers, the student bumps into this creepy, balding man,

and he's staring menacingly at her. And she's, oh, sorry, and trying to walk away. And he's just giving her the dirtiest stare in the world. Later, he abducts her in the parking lot, imprisons her in a tool shed, stroking her shoulders with his latex, gloved hands, and there's dramatic music playing in the background. He whispers in her ear, it was so easy taking you.

Don't cry. Don't be scared. And a voice goes off in the student's head. It's Cameron Gamble and he says, don't be scared. We can fix this. But you must do exactly as I say. Time flashes back to when the student is walking down the hallway and she's about to pass the project taken flyers and instead of just walking past and bumping into that bald man,

she stops. She takes a flyer and she reads it and in this alternate universe, she's not kidnapped. Her gruesome fate is avoided. Welcome to project Taken. This is an ad that ran all over the school campuses. Project Taken is essentially an anti-abduction training program that helps train young women on how not to get kidnapped. Ironically, it uses no resources to train men on not to kidnap. I mean, I- Listen, I'm not saying Project Taken has no good advice to give, but just imagine putting that much responsibility on a potential victim, the whole thing is so nasty. It's- it's fear-mongering at its worst.

Project Taken claims to be a nonprofit to help women not to get kidnapped, teach them valuable skills to protect themselves, all led by Cameron Gamble. He claims he learned all of this from his military training. He was a specialist in kidnapping, prevention, training, as well as a professional hostage negotiator. You can even donate to the nonprofit.

Contributor levels start at $30 a month to be considered a soldier, and $1,000 a month to be considered a liberator. The a month to be considered a liberator. The naming of these tears is terrifying honestly. So what does this have to do with today's story? Will Cameron Gamble, the guy that prides himself on teaching people how not to get kidnapped? He gets wrapped up in one of the strangest, weirdest kidnapping stories in the true crime world. The kidnapping of Sherry Papini.

As always full show notes are available at rottingapodcasts.com, but this is a recent case. In the sense that it didn't happen recently, it happened in a couple years back, but the sentencing is happening soon for the people involved. Like next month soon in July. I went through the affidavit, other sources, they're all linked below, it's intense. So let's talk about the truck driver. Truck drivers have some of the creepiest stories to tell. I mean, think about it. Maybe you've gotten a glimpse of what they feel if you've been on a long road trip. Maybe just by driving at night on a deserted freeway, there is this eerie-ness to it. There's this creepiness. You see things that you shouldn't see. Truckers, they see fatal car accidents, gang activity, maybe a UFO or two.

Or maybe you feel like something is watching you during your rest stop. There was a truck driver who was pulled over in a not-so-conventional truck stop. He wasn't really supposed to be there. You know, it's not a gas station, it's not a rest stop. He was just dead tired. It's the side of the road. There's no street lights, no other cars or trucks. Just pitch black darkness. He's thinking, okay, I gotta take a little quick snooze. He turns off his engine. Silence. He reaches first curtains, closes them. So nobody can peek in, right? He locks the truck, jumps into the bed, sets his alarm.

Five to 10 minutes go by. He's laying in bed. He's not asleep yet. And he hears a click. The passenger side door opens. Just a crack. Enough, because you know when you open a car door, the light turns on?

Yeah, but I thought he locked the door. Exactly. He's confused. The light in the front turns on. And he's in the back in the bed. There's like a little bed right behind the front seat. And he slowly grabs a tightening rod. It's like a metal rod right next to him. Waiting for someone to come in so we can bunk them on the head. An eternity goes by. Nobody. Nothing. Just eerie silence. He finally jumps out of bed, walks around his truck,

there's no other trucks, no other cars, not a person inside. It was the strangest thing. He goes back in, falls asleep, and the next morning the sun's out. The birds are chirping, he gets up, opens the curtains to the giant windshield in the front, and he's staring straight into his cemetery. He said the chill that he felt. The eeriness that he felt went through his entire body and he still cannot explain the feeling to this day. Another trucker had a very similar experience of shivers being sent down their spine. When he spotted a distraught woman on the side of the road, he just fell like something was off. I mean, he'd done thousands and thousands of miles as a truck driver and this just, this was a normal, not on the side of a highway like this. He stops, something in him tells him.

She needs help. He calls 911. He goes out to help this woman and he was right. She was in terrible shape. She had a chain around her waist. One of her arms was chained to that waist chain. There were other bindings around her wrists, each ankle. Her nose was swollen, she had bruises all over her face. She had rashes all over her arms and thighs, ligature marks on her wrist. Encles, burns on her arms, bruising on her pelvis. On both legs, she looked malnourished, very underweight. Her hair was chopped unevenly as if someone cut it by force. But moral arming was the branding on her right shoulder.

The branding didn't have a distinct word or symbol, at least not at first glance, but we later learned that it says exodus. All signs are pointing some sort of sex trafficking of some kind. We even later learned that when she's taken in by police officers, she said that the people that tried to take her into human trafficking, they kept telling her,

your potential buyer, not just like a one-day type of thing, but he wants to buy you from us. He wants to keep you is a police officer. As in, he's a bad cop. So she's terrified. She's terrified to even talk to these officers. Who's to say that the ones interviewing her right now are not bad cops? We don't know.

And this whole branding is so important to the kidnapping of this woman. Now, a little bit about the history of branding. A lot of farmers used to brand cows. That's kind of how it started. It was an easy way to prove ownership of livestock. And it's pretty important in parts of the world where cows from multiple ranches often run together. Or maybe you have two farms right next to each other.

What would stop your neighbor? Your neighbor that's also a cattle farmer from just stealing your precious livestock. Cowls are freaking expensive, okay? So this is the thought. Before the invention of cattle ear tags, you know, the little things on their ear and chips, at the end, you would just brand them,

like with burning hot rods. Nowadays, they use freezing cold rods, and they essentially freeze it, right? It's still painful in the end. The message is clear though. This is my property, and you can't steal it in the end. The message is clear though. This is my property and you can't steal it because I have proof. Look at this branding. This is my little signature right here. So this started with farmers in their livestock and of course because humanity is just freaking terrifying,

it led to humans branding their slaves. And now in today's day and age, that still happens. Slavery still exists in this world, but it continues to grow with sex traffickers branding their victims. Sometimes you see victims with barcodes and numbers underneath. It looks like a genuine barcode. You know how, when you go to the store every barcode has a couple of numbers, people speculate that the number has to do with this victim's freedom. That the pimp tells them, if you reach this number of clients, you'll be freed.

Or when you reach this monetary number that you bring to me in my pocket, you'll be freed. We also know that these are empty promises, but it is a specific type of branding that sex traffickers, specifically in Europe, use very frequently. Some reports say that these barcode tattoos were done in a way where rapists can also scan the code and it will tell you the price. In many instances

traffickers will tattoo their initials, sometimes it's the nickname of the trafficker. Sometimes it's accompanied with a rose, a crown, a heart, a lion's head. And what's so traumatizing is that if these women are able to escape, they still have a permanent reminder of their trauma on their very own bodies. And to get these tattoos lasered off, it's incredibly expensive, painful, and not even that, but a lot of the times the ink, the ink that is used to tattoo these women, it's so shitty, so you might not even recover well after lasering it off.

A survivor said, sitting there and watching the ties to my past, get physically severed and lasered off, has helped me heal. I am not sure people realize how imprisoning a brand can be. It chains a piece of you to this darkness forever. But by having these letters removed, seeing them slowly fade and burn has given me my identity. It's apparently happening everywhere. An executive for a nonprofit called Redefining Refuge, they work with victims of child sex trafficking. They said that the youngest that they have personally seen

was an 11-year-old with dollar signs tattooed on her eyelids. And he warns tattoo artists, if somebody is paying you to tattoo onto a child, a bar coat, some sort of money symbol, some sort of wealth reference, some sort of names or phrases like daddy call in for an abuse report. He said he thinks about it. Children in countries even like America are being branded like cattle that is what's happening and still happening today. So was that what was happening to Sherry? Is that why she was

found on the side of a highway chained up with a branding on her shoulder? How did they get her? What did they want with her? Was her buyer really a cop? Honestly, nobody expected to find Sherry. That's kind of how grim the chances and statistics are of finding missing woman and finding Sherry was not gonna be easy So the more time passes the more anxious authorities and the public were becoming Sherry's disappearance caught the attention of not just a whole community Not just a whole state, but like the whole world. I mean, how could it not? She was this beautiful blonde blue-eyed wife of your stereotypical all-American husband. They had two beautiful kids together.

It was hard not to care. Her face was everywhere. The wedding photos, the happy engagement photos, they looked like they had been plucked straight out of a wedding catalog, like those magazines. So what happened to this woman with a perfect life? Who would want to hurt her? And what does that mean for the rest of us, you know? If even she's not safe, what does that mean? Not only would local authorities involve the public, the FBI, the case was just gaining international traction. A GoFundMe campaign titled Help Find Sherry was set up. Donations start pouring in. And as the weeks go by, it seemed like nobody wanted to say it, but it seemed like Sherry was gone forever. And people started focusing on finding more about Sherry's personal life prior to the

kidnapping. I mean, of course, some people are like, it's the husband. Now, I don't want to say Sherry's life was normal because it wasn't necessarily normal, but it was an incredibly blessed, privileged life. Sherry had a picture-perfect life. I mean, literally picture-perfect. Her husband, her two kids, they were poster childs for upper-class American families.

Listen, I know that Mercedes is not an American company, but I don't know why I can totally see the family in a Mercedes commercial, just with the kids in the back of the SUV, driving through the windy road to their mansion, unloading the groceries together, they look like that type of family. Sherry's the homemaker. Keith is the breadwinner. They live in sunny California. It sounds super generic to say, but even the marriage, it's like they were made for each other. You're like, what do you mean? Tell me the love story. How can they be made for each other? Okay, we actually get a really good close up image

of what their life looks like, because Sherry had a blog. She had a blog? She wrote a lot about their relationship and how perfect it was. So let's read her blog post titled, How We Met. It's like a romance movie.

So she wrote, it all started with the first kiss in middle school. He was in the seventh grade, I was in the eighth grade. I never imagined my middle school first kiss in middle school. He was in the seventh grade, I was in the eighth grade. I never imagined my middle school first case would turn out to be my husband, but I moved away. We lost touch for several years. I moved back and I run into Keith in town.

We exchanged information and we arranged a date. So Keith picks me up at my apartment and the first date, oh my God, I was nerve-wracking, mostly catching up, sharing stories. And the next day, Keith calls me up in my apartment and the first date, oh my god, I was nerve-wracking, mostly catching up, sharing stories. And the next day, Keith calls me again. And I said, I wanted to take him out. So I told him to meet me at the docks at Whiskey Town Lake. And I set up this candlelit dinner by the water.

And he showed up with this gift, this gift for me. And it was a box filled with all the notes I had written him in the eighth grade. I could not believe that he kept them. It was a great night. And by our third day, we were head over heels in love, and we spent every day together since. I have never been so happy. We always laugh and always smile. We enjoy each other's company and we make, we make a great time. We're best friends and a perfect couple. I'm happy to say soon, I will be Mrs. Keith Papini and I will spend the rest of my life in love and full of joy. But wait, there's more. Sherry gives us a super intimate inside look into what her day-to-day life

looks like with Keith. She says, Keith moved into the townhouse that she was renting, and it's an interesting test-drive relationship. Luckily, thank God, Keith grew up with an older sister and a wonderful mother, so he was already adjusted to the territory of living with girls. I, however, did not have brothers, and I was unaware of how foreign living with a guy was going to be. Of course, we're getting on each other's nerves, but aside from driving each other crazy, we've become a lot closer as a couple. We built a great foundation to our marriage.

We shared everything, bills, chores, food, toothpaste, labs, and occasionally a good practical joke. Ooh, some of our favorite memories. For some reason, Keith and I couldn't brush our teeth together without laughing. I know, we had to turn our backs from each other to keep from laughing, even though sometimes just the fact that we had our backs turned

just made us laugh harder. We also had this run on gag, where we would pour a cup of cold water on whoever was in the shower. I started it one day to get back at the Keith for leaving the toilet seat up, and he ended it by filling up a huge pot of cold water and dumping it on me.

And when I got sick, Keith would take care of me. He would make me tomato soup, my favorite. But he didn't just make a soup. He went all out. He made it so fancy. He had the fan-dout crackers on the side, sprinkled cheese on top, a little parsley leaf. It looked gorgeous, and he was so fancy. He had the fan-dout crackers on the side, sprinkled cheese on top, a little parsley leaf. It looked gorgeous, and it was so cute. But when he brought it to me, the

spoon was practically standing up in the warm soup. He had only forgotten one tiny little detail. I asked him, honey, did you add water to the soup? Nope. Keith did not add water to the soup, and we had a good bath about it. Sherry even detailed her proposal, which she ended it with. I'm so happy, words can't describe the emotion I felt that night. It was perfect. Then the blog post about the stress of wedding planning and how much she incaps, loves being a bride, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation. So they get married in 2009.

They buy a house in Reading California and this is a really suburban feel. Like it's not going to be your SF or LA. It's got plenty of yard space for their two kids to run around. They truly settle into literally a perfect life. But seven years later, Sherry is sitting in front of the FBI agents, trembling in fear. She can't even maintain eye contact. Her kidnappers, she said they would beat her anytime she looked them in the eye. She said anytime they came into the room, she would have to get on all fours like a dog and was forced to not look at them and keep her head

down. She emotionally told the FBI agents about how they kept telling Sherry that they're prepping to close the deal, how she was going to be sold forever to a cop. So how did she get here? I mean, who kidnapped her? What happened? And before I answer those questions, I need to tell you a story that has nothing and everything to do with Sherry Papini. It's a story about how things are not always what they seem.

Did you know the full quote? It's by Fadress. It's written by Plato. But it says, things are not always what they seem. Did you know the full quote? It's by Fadress, it's written by Plato, but it says, things are not always what they seem. The first appearance deceives many. The intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden. So let's see if we can find everything hidden. Let me take you to Hangzhou City in China. Along the bank of the river in this town,

there's massive, expensive condo buildings that truly only the upper class can reside in. People passing this road often think to themselves, what the hell do people like that do for a living? And we gotta get in that industry. I wonder what their day to day looks like. You think they're just sitting there with the perfect family, eating the perfect lunch,

living a perfect life? I wish I could just switch one day with them and experience that kind of luxury. June 22nd of 2017, building 1802 in unit 2, nobody would look up at this fancy condo unit and think, wow, I wish I could live their lives. Because the entire unit was engulfed in flames. There was fire everywhere. The unit belonged to another happy and perfect couple. We have Jen the mom. She was 34 years old. Steve, the husband, and their three children, an 11 year old son, a nine year old daughter, and a six year old son. They really were the perfect couple. Even their fellow rich

neighbors were jealous of them. Steve was smart, he had this incredible business acumen and this undying work ethic. They both got married young when they had nothing really, and they built this massive clothing business together. Ironically, they actually sold children's clothes as well, and the daughter was so cute, and she just had this grace and this poise about her. She was a model for their family business. They would get up before sunrise every morning, get to work and I mean they were doing well. So much so that when Jen had three kids, she decides I'm gonna be a stand-home mom.

Steve takes over the businesses full-time. They buy this beautiful condo. Their kids are going to some of the best schools in the area. They spend their time going on really cute little family vacations. I mean, they're living the dream. People would often look at them and say, if I just had their life, I would never complain about anything like it's perfect.

They even looked apart. Steve has handsome like a movie star. Jen is incredibly elegant. She had this graceful presence about her. Everybody called her almost like a fairy. Their kids were cute. But of course, things are not always what they seem. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this?

No. Who's gonna catch us? What a police? It was the height of the crack era and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're gonna want some drug dealers and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%. I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey Originals documentary podcast series

available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shoes. I'm not a big guy, man, but I love being a dirty mother s***er. The couple had a full-time live-in housekeeper, OK? Her name is Mary. Mary was the same age as Jen, and she lived a slightly different life.

Mary lives with this family, and she's probably like the most intimate person to know the inner workings of this couple of the kids everything. Now Mary's mom passed away while giving birth to Mary. Her dad re-married and honestly the new stepmom treated Mary better than her own kids. Yeah, I know you were expecting like a creepy mean stepmom story. No, I mean she really, really spoiled Mary. She didn't want Mary to feel motherless or left out or jealous. She treated her better than her own kids. The couple spoiled her. She was turned into this little princess with honestly a bit of a temper problem.

But Mary wasn't scared of hard work. She worked as a finance officer in her aunt's factory. She treated those around her really well. She gets married, has a kid, and honestly, she's on track to live a rather ordinary but fulfilling life in just a few days before the fire. Mary asked Jen if she could borrow some money. She needed help to have her family build a house. It was going to be around $17,300.

And Jen, being the successful, amazing, nice person that she is, she didn't even ask any more questions. She was kind, she gave Mary the money, which honestly angered a ton of neighbors and friends. They would say things like, if my housekeeper asked to borrow money from me, I would fire her immediately. This is a working relationship, and there's a limit to that. That's uncomfortable. But the Lynn family has always been too kind, too kind for their own good.

That's what they said. But Steve and Jen, they were incredibly kind. But you know what they say. Things are not always what they seem. Mary wasn't just a devoted wife who wanted to build a house for her family. In fact, she didn't even have a husband. They had gotten divorced because Mary was a shameless gambler. a voted wife who wanted to build a house for her family. In fact, she didn't even have a husband. They had gotten divorced

because Mary was a shameless gambler. But Jen and Steve didn't know that. Oh, she loved it. She loved everything about gambling. She would go on websites to the casinos. She loved Ma Zhang as long as money was involved. She was in it to win it. Mary stole from her friends and would lose $10,000

in just one night. When she would run out of funds and friends, Mary started borrowing money from loan sharks. Now this is not your regular Schmuggler for getting chased, mortgage loan. Like this is, we're talking about she's going to borrow $15,000 and the interest would be $1,000 to $2,000 a week. Mary was physically assaulted twice for failure to pay. Sometimes loan sharks would comment to her house and spray red oil everywhere, as a warning of, you better pay and you better do it quick.

Or that's the blood? Yeah. Gonna be shed. And also how hard is it to clean oil? Yeah. Which in retrospect is counterintuitive, no? Spending all that time cleaning oil and not giving you your money back, I'm just saying. So Mary's family tried to pay off her debts at least twice, but none of them made enough to cover Mary's gambling addiction. She's going through like $10,000 a night easily. So Mary went as far to steal from her employers to feed her addiction, which would just ultimately hurt her,

because she would lose her job, then it's harder to find another one. But when Mary found work at the Linn House, her family thought that she might turn her life around. The Linn family took her in, and immediately they treated her like family. Even when they went on vacation, Mary did not have to come with them.

She didn't have to work, but she was still paid her full salary for all those days. Wow. And the kids, yeah. That's the dream. And the kids were so cute. They were not spoiled entitled little rich brats. In fact, when the family went on vacation to Japan, the little boy asked Mary, Auntie, what do you want from Japan? I can bring it back for you. Even with this type of generosity, Mary could not help herself. She was a snake. You remember this snake in the farmer's story, the frozen snake that was rescued by the farmer

who warmed it up by using his own body heat and the minute that the snake is strong enough, it bit and killed the farmer. Now, Mary sneaks into Jen's jewelry closet one day, steals a $30,000 Jade bracelet, runs to a pawn shop, and only it's a few thousand dollars for it. It's for some reason that drives me crazy. It's like you're going to steal but you don't even have the patience to at least get the money for it. Yeah. When that

wasn't enough, she stole a gold watch from Steve, a gold Jechele coute de watch. A gold JLC watch. She went out, pond it for $6,000. And lost all of it in a single night in just a few short hours. So Mary's in the house when the fire breaks out. She's in the living room trying to put it out. She's got this bucket of water and she's like, okay, I should probably throw it on the raging fire, right? But maybe she's frozen in fear in shock.

I don't know. Jen runs out, she assesses the situation, and she's like, hurry, Mary, calm down when one, don't just stand there, there's a fire in the living room. I gotta go get the kids. All three kids are home, and Steve is out work. So it's just them. So Jen goes to gather the kids. Their rooms are all on one side of the apartment, furthest from the front door. Jen rushes to get get her two boys and then goes into the daughter's room Now this room is the furthest from the living room But when Jen tries to take all three kids and leave the daughter's room to the safest exit the door doesn't open

Daughters room does it open? Yeah, so she calls her husband Steve. He's at work. He doesn't pick up From there a series of bizarre events take place Jen calls 911 and the dispatch said that they there, a series of bizarre events take place. Jen calls 911, and the dispatch said that they could hear a voice of a man in the background of the call. As if there was a man in the room with them, but he wasn't like freaking out, they couldn't really hear what he was saying, it just sounded like there was a man. Jen was anxious, she kept telling the dispatch she's with her kids, and they can't get out

of the room. Now the man's voice is very important because there is no man in the house at the time, at least that we know of. Security guards of the building were already on the move. They try to enter the unit, but realize that it's clotted with smoke. There's no way that they could go in. So they're working on bringing some hoses in from another floor

to try to put out the fire. Now, that's when they run into a firefighter. Oh, thank God. The professionals are here. We could just, you know, we're excited for this. We take care of packages. We do the night watch. This is above our pay grade.

There's a fire. But you know what they say. Things are not always what they see. Because the fireman was not wearing a mask. Nor was he carrying a hose. Nor did he really have any equipment to put out a fire. It was just strange. Yeah, he was in his fireman uniform, but it was weird. He

also wasn't asking the security guards any questions like, where's the fire? What's the closest exit to the fire? How do I get there? He just kept screaming into his walkie-talkie. And nobody was really talking back. Was he even a real firefighter? Because the fire truck wouldn't arrive till minutes later. Did he get there on his own? Wizion is way to work to the fire station and hurt it through the radio and showed up in his personal car. But even then, typically firemen don't keep their uniforms at home. Why would he even go without a gas mask?

What use could he be? The security guards saw the firefighter again, leaving the actual apartment unit that was on fire. The fire was still going strong inside. So are you leaving? Yeah. You know, so many questions. And the security guards ask, is there anyone inside?

Like, did you get the Lynn family? The Lynn family lives there. And he just said, there's nobody inside and just walked off. Oh my god. It's just so straight, right? The dispatch calls Jen back to let her know firefighters are on the way. They said that at this point, Jen was already having a hard time breathing.

She could barely talk. There was an eerie silence in the background. No kids were screaming or crying. It had been about 22 minutes since the fire broke out. And a lot of people were confused. Why didn't Jen do this or that? Was a huge point of contention. For example, there's a bathroom attached to the daughter's room that they could get to.

If there's a fire and you're inhaling smoke, it's typically common knowledge for parents to soak towels with water and cover the kid's mouth and nose. And even just spraying the room down with water could bring the dust down, reduces the possibility of inhaling all of that smoke. Or why didn't they try to clean the smoke out of their nose and their mouths in the bathroom? Gen is an incredibly smart, fast-thinking woman, and I think any mom would do anything to try and save her kids. So the question is, was there something preventing her from doing that? Now remember Mary, who had a bucket of water and was trying to put out the fire? The one that Gen told to call 911? Yeah, she's strange.

After she pours a measly little bucket of water on the fire, she claims she tripped and fell. On her knees, like she didn't bump her head or anything, she had a small loss of balance, and it's like she forgot what on earth to do in that situation. Because she calmly goes to her room, gets her phone, leaves, goes neighbor to neighbor. Not just on that floor, but the floor underneath the floor above

She hello. Hi, I'm Mary. Yeah, I'm the lens housekeeper Um, you need to evacuate the building because there's a fire. No, no, no, it's okay run. I'll go tell the other neighbors Why didn't you get Jen and the kids like the fire wasn't that bad yet where it was all engulfing she couldn't get to the daughter's room It would have been dangerous. Don't get me wrong, but was all engulfing she couldn't get to the daughter's room. It would have been dangerous, don't get me wrong, but what are you doing? You need to help the ones that are in the path of danger, like the people inside the fire, versus neighbors to floors down.

But she went up and down the floors, telling everyone to save themselves. Once she was done with that, she finally called 119, which was so useless because at this point, dozens of people had called about the fire. Her call was not breaking any news. The fire was getting to be alarming, but it still wasn't all in convincing.

In fact, people said that if a couple of neighbors got together, poured a bucket of water each, the fire would have been contained, not put out but contained. But they couldn't do that because Mary rushed them all out of the building, saying that the fire was only growing stronger and was going to kill everybody. There's a very strange choice on her behalf to do this. So Mary goes downstairs to wait for the fire department with all the neighbors, and she was a strange sight for everyone to see.

She was wearing pink pajamas, her hair was very wet, her clothes were a little wet, and she's holding a hammer. They're like, Mary, where's Jen? Where's the Lynn family? Oh Jen went to save the kids. I think they got out. I don't know, right? She told me to call 119 and she was going to get the kids and get out too. I didn't check, obviously, but I did try to use my hammer to break down the wall where

Jen and the kids were, because just in case and it didn't work. Later it was proven that there was no hammer markings anywhere. Wow, come on. And Mary would not let that freaking hammer go for anything. It's like she needed everyone to know how hard she tried to save her employer. Now it gets weird. A mysterious call is made to the 119 dispatch by a 19 year old who is being protected in the media, his name is not released, but he said that everyone in the unit was rescued from the fire.

And for some reason, the authorities just took this kid's word for it. And he said to his student that Jen and her kids were off somewhere reunite with Steve getting medical attention. So the firefighters, they take their sweet time putting out the fire. They would later argue, it's not that we didn't care. It's not that we didn't try and verify that nobody was in the house But rather we were distracted the water pressure was suspiciously low inside the house So we were trying to fix that and that's why Jen and the kids weren't saved the firefighters took about two hours

Working on the water pressure slowly putting out the fire listen. I'm not even saying it's quick to put out a fire But what I'm saying is if you're there for two hours You're not gonna check a single room to see if all I don't know. Maybe somebody needs help It's a residential place, you know They just took an anonymous call to tell them nobody's in the house and ran with it Mary alerts Jen's family. They rushed to the apartment buildings and Jen's brother demanded that firefighters clear the rooms This is two hours because the sisters there. So they clear every room and when they get to the daughters it was locked.

They break it open and they find that no part of the room was burned with fire but there is black smoke billowing out. Jen and her three kids were lying on the floor near the window. All dead. The suspicious thing was that if they had died of carbon monoxide, they would have fainted randomly in the room, not necessarily side by side, on the ground near the window. It's almost eerie as if they had just laid down together for a nap. The kids had smoke residue all over their faces and their arms, they were completely blackened. The smoke was trapped in the room and they had died of inhalation. It was deemed that they died of carbon monoxide poisoning

and in part due to the incompetent rescue efforts. So the police, they started investigating right away. They want to talk to Mary first. She's the only person that was there in the apartment when the fire breaks out, which of course makes her the first suspect. So the police, they start going through her phone and their suspicions are confirmed. Mary had searched lighter exploding automatically,

reason of sudden fires at home. Sofa suddenly catching fire, curtains at home suddenly catching fire. Will the person setting a fire be imprisoned? Is it easy for a fire to burn slowly? How can a fire burn slower when a fire occurs? How do people identify the cause of a fire? Is it easy to find out the cause of the starting point of a fire? It was so dumb and so shocking.

The housekeeper considered part of the employer's family deliberately killed them, including three young kids. Why? So Mary is quick to confess to everything. Remember how she borrowed the money from the family before the fire, the 17,300? Well she lost it all, and she lost all the money that she got from stealing the family's valuables, and she was desperate for more. She knew that Jen would never give her more money. Jen's nice, but she's not stupid. Those are Mary's words.

And she was being paid, unless Mary, and so Mary comes up with this great idea. Maybe I don't ask her for the money. Maybe she gives it to me. But why would she give me money? That means she wants to give me money. Why would someone want to give me money? Maybe if I do something so fantastic, so life-saving that you feel indebted to me.

Something so courageous and brave that you want to repay me for it. And even when you give me money, you'll feel positive about it. Oh my god. So in this state of mind, Mary starts plotting the great fire escape. She would start a fire in the living room. Everyone would be panicked. They would be scared. And she'd think into herself herself all set it out. I'll take out the fire and save everybody, and they will be so grateful that I not only saved Jen, but I saved the little kiddos lives, and she will offer me money. This is absolutely the craziest thing I've ever heard.

Just bonkers. But to Mary, it was a cute genius plan. Yeah, cute, a cute genius plan. Yeah, cute, what a cute plan. Jen would immediately ask her, Mary, thank you for saving us. Do you need money? I can give you money.

Thank you for saving my family. I mean, there's nothing I can do, but give you money. Oh, it was so good. But she just had to make sure of two things. One, the fire wasn't too big that she couldn't put it out. Two, the fire could never be traced back to her. And as long as she did that, it was a cute little plant. So she lights a book on fire, throws it onto the fabric couch in the living room.

Lights another book on fire, throws it at the fabric curtains. She's like cute little fire. And she's watching the living room just up in flames. And I guess in that moment Mary was shocked because she stood there frozen. Mary later claims that she freaked out and abandoned her plan to save Jen. She assumed that Jen would get the kids and come on out. She was concerned about her own personal safety. Now that she was seeing the fire up close and personal, it was a lot of fire.

So the media goes nuts with this case. I mean, Jen is this giver, this kind nurture, this sweet mother, and Mary was a taker. She was a vampire that sucked the life out of people around her, sucked the money, the emotions, the love, literally the life out of people. Mary did not care that Jen had gone out of her way to help Mary in ways that she truly did not have to. I mean, I can't even imagine giving a close friend $20,000 because that's a lot of money. But just a random person that recently started working for you, that's crazy. She truly didn't have to do that.

But here Mary was not having an ounce of gratefulness, just evil thoughts. Steve was out on business when it happened. And he had to live with the grief and the guilt that he wasn't there for his wife and kids. He slumped on the ground at the funeral with Jen's parents, they all sob together and it was just heartbreaking. His friend said that the funeral was the first time Steve spoke in weeks. And even for a little while after he just kept saying, I'll just never be myself again. Nearly a year after the fire, Maryess sentenced to death, and Steve receives a settlement of $15 million from the city for their horrible rescue efforts.

And like a lot of families of victims, Steve started a social media campaign to raise awareness. He had this account called, wife and children are in heaven. Now, that doesn't mean that Steve's life magically got better. He struggled with alcoholism. And when he tried to get clean, he went to a temple in the mountains to pray for his dead family. And he fell off a small waterfall.

He had to be rushed to the hospital. And when he woke, he was just screaming, why couldn't I have just died? Why couldn't I have just died? He spent 20 hours getting his wife and children tattooed on his body. He visited his family's graveside all the time. He had etched into his wife's tombstone.

Our love will continue into the next life. He kept some of the ashes of his wife and kids to make a bracelet to wear. And with time, with a lot of time Steve Hild, and he knew that Jen, his wife, would want him to continue living. So he poured his entire heart and soul and all his grief and he channeled it into the family business. He started doing these live streams to sell the clothes, which is common in China.

But sometimes people would comment, even nice words of support about his family, and he would just break down into tears. And he would try to stay positive and mention, break down into tears. And he would try to stay positive and mention, well, that's why we have the Family Foundation and 10% of all the sales are donated there. And with this positivity, Steve's business soon had over a million followers. And he was incredibly active. He donated 20,000 pairs of clothes to towns that had just been ravished by an earthquake. He donated money. He, during the pandemic, he donated masks. And he was just trying to truly make something good or something horrible.

And when he started a new family, everyone had nothing but praise and support. He tweeted that he had just welcomed a daughter into the world. Even a lot of big, big celebrities reposted this emotional post, wishing him nothing but the best. But you know what they say? Things are not always what they seem.

Because after the initial wave of love, people started doing the math. That means Steve would have been with this new woman since at least June 2020. And during June 2020, what was Steve doing? Steve was crying on live streams telling the world that he will never recover. He will never move on from his wife and kids dying.

Which I mean sure, you could be dating somebody and feeling these very valid feelings. Grief is a crazy thing. But it's just odd that he was selling so many of his clothes. Crying about how he'll never find someone like his wife and kids. But he's dating someone. Dating someone secretly. Yeah. Huh. Just be open about it. That's what people want. Just be transparent. Hey, I'm trying to go back into the dating world. It's rough. It's just weird. And more news comes out.

Jen's parents are now suing Steve. Jen had built the businesses with Steve, but he was refusing to give them a dime of anything. not even the $15 million settlement he supposedly got from the city. Which was contradicting because Steve had tweeted, 67% of the settlement money was used to pay back the mortgage and the cost of the funerals. The rest of the money was given to Jen's parents. Even our family car, the family Porsche was given to Jen's parents. The parents said we never got that. Now I don't know if this was a way to try and save Steve's image,

but Steve posted about his new wife and kids, and he captioned it. Finally, she came back. Implying that his daughter was Jen reincarnated. What? Which is creepy? Okay, forget the creepy aspect that you're considering your new daughter, your ex-wife.

But think of how unfair it is to everybody in this situation. Jen and her kids and the new wife and this new child, it's just a really unfair situation. Then the netizens, they do more digging. They find a picture of Steve six months after the fire. In 2018, holding hands with a woman that looks eerily similar to his new wife. So just six months after his family perished in a fire and were murdered, you're dating this new wife? It's weird.

Not only that, but some grainy footage of the crowd gathering at the building's entrance watching the fire on the fateful day was released, and some button that looks eerily similar to Steve's new wife was in the crowd. So of course a lot of people believe this, this isn't just a new wife helping him grieve and recover, this is probably a fucking mistress. Reports say that Steve also called his new wife the night before the fire and talked for about 20 minutes and 46 seconds. Sure you could say they were friends, It was all a coincidence, but really?

Text messages were also released between Steve and Jen. Steve, this whole time you have to remember that he's going on live strings, making money, selling clothes to people, saying, my wife must my everything, we had the perfect love, the perfect connection, everything was amazing. But these text messages, in one of them,

Jen opened up to Steve about how hard it's been for her to raise their three kids, not her kids, their kids. And he said, no pain, no gain. No pain, no gain. Yeah. Imagine I'm like, honey, I'm so exhausted, babe, blah, blah, blah. You're like, no pain, no gain. Divorce, divorce. She asked Steve, are you proud of your daughter's performance during the school dance? And he said, it's okay. Meanwhile, on social media, he's sobbing about how much his family meant to him and how being a dad was his greatest joy.

And remember when he fell off a cliff and was sent to the hospital? He made it seem like he was knocked out for a while and he just wanted to die. In reality, he was in bed liking tweets from random girls. Like he did trip off a cliff, but I guess it was a very small cliff. At all the clothes he donated to the earthquake, they were returned to him since they were in such poor quality, literally nobody could wear it. You know what happens during natural disasters? People are not picky. They are not like, this isn't my style.

On top of that, the foundation that he named after his dead wife and kids, the one that he donated 10% of proceeds to, yeah, no such foundation exists. And then there was this little thing that Mary had said before she was executed. She claimed, Steve flirted with her often. Everybody laughed it off thinking she was delusional. But now with everything, people realized this case is not what it seemed to be, not even in the slightest. Now, there is still no clear resolution, there is no answer to this story, except a video that is now circulating of Steve giving an impassioned plea during his family's funeral.

He's chanting his Twitter handle, asking everyone to chant it with him, and follow him on Twitter. He said, wife, babies, do you hear this? You guys went to the heavenly place and everyone is wishing you the best. I hope you are in heaven. He chanted more, wife and babies in heaven. Come on, make and babies in heaven. Come on, make me trending on Twitter. This is wild.

And right when he was done, the picture of his wife behind him that was set up for the funeral fell down. Nobody bumped it. Nobody pushed it. It fell down. Like Steve's facade of a good husband. So what does this story in China have anything to do with Sherry Papini? Is there another ball that's gonna drop?

Or is this really the unraveling of a sex trafficking ring that involves police officer buyers? Sherry had a lot of trauma to overcome. Keith, her husband, tried to help her settle back in her normal life with her family. Shearie had a lot of trauma to overcome. Keith, her husband, tried to help her settle back in her normal life with her family. But she just kept having these suppressed memories that were resurfacing. She just, she couldn't have any peace, not even in her own head. They tried to do a couple's retreat in Oregon, and they stopped by this dick sporting goods. Shearie's wandering around, she ends up in the gun section.

She sees a display of revolvers and she's just... She's panicking, she's having an anxiety attack and she's trembling. That's the one. She's pointing at a black revolver and she's screaming, that's the one, that's the one, that's what it looks like. She breaks down. Another time, Sherry was seeing a plastic surgeon to help the burns on her arms. During one of the treatments, the smell of her hair burning reminded of her of her branding experience. And she broke down, crying. She had to rush out of there. It was all taking her back to the day. November 2nd of 2016. The day everything changed. It started off normal. Keith went to work. Sherry took the kids to daycare and she started running errands. Around 11am, Sherry texts Keith,

Honey, would you please come home to have sex with your wife for lunch? Now, work happened to be busy, so Keith says, you know, sorry I can't but I'll be home after work for dinner and dessert. So when Keith gets home, you know he's probably excited, but there's this weird feeling, the house is so quiet, like too quiet. Usually you can hear the kids playing in the yard. You can hear them through the house. Nothing. Maybe they all went out. But when he got inside, Cheri's car was in the garage.

Okay, that's weird. He calls the daycare. Hey, did Cheri come pick up the kids? What time did she come? So your kids are still here. She never came to get them. We've been trying to reach you. She's like, what?

He uses my iPhone to get the. We've been trying to reach you. Keith is like, what? He uses my iPhone to get the location of Sherry's phone. And it's about a mile from the house. Now he's not aligned with it because this is where Sherry often goes running. So he's thinking, ah, shoot. She probably went jogging.

Forgot the time. She's late to pick up the kids. Nobody deal. I can hop in my car, drive down there, find her, and we can go pick up the kids together. So he gets in, using my iPhone, he traces it to Sherry's phone. And he's like, okay, well, she should be right here, and he's looking around, he's looking up, he's looking down, and that's when he sees it. Her iPhone is on the ground, playing Michael Buble's song, Everything. This was the couple's wedding song. It was on repeat.

Sherry's earbuds were wrapped around the phone with a few of Sherry's blonde hairs in the bundle. It was also strange. Keith later told the police, it's like someone wanted me to find it. Someone wanted to rub it in my face or something. Like, someone wrapped the headphones neatly and threw it on the ground, and the fact that her hair was in the headphones, it's like out of a movie like Gone Girl or something. So that day around 5.50, Keith reported his wife missing.

Of course the police are suspicious of him because you know, it's always the husband until it isn't, but he was quickly ruled out. He cooperated fully, he even passed a polygraph, and like I said, immediately, Sherry's face everywhere. People could not comprehend how a nice blonde,-eyed suburban mom, who was the definition of conventional beauty, how someone could dare hurt her. The girl finally raised $50,000. The search continued, three weeks later, Sherry Papini, is found.

She's found by a truck driver on the side of the highway about 150 miles from her house. And she's in bad shape. Bruises everywhere, noses swollen, chained up, burns, her hair is chopped off. She's already lost so much weight and she was already a very, very slender petite person. She's rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, she had no drugs in her system, no signs of sexual assault, but she's wearing different clothes from when she went missing. She's wearing the same underwear. They'd take it in. They could see that there was male DNA and it wasn't her husbands. Further analysis also identified some sperm on Sherry's underwear.

Originally, Sherry refused to talk to the police. She did not feel comfortable. She had this intense distrust in the police after she found out that her traffickers were trying to sell her to a police officer. So the police gave Keith an audio recorder and let them interview Sherry. Ali Sherry is comfortable with her husband. So at that point, any information the police could have find to get some headway on finding the kidnappers, that's really all that mattered. And eventually Sherry did feel comfortable enough to talk to the police. They eased her into it. The day of the kidnapping, Sherry recalls, she took the kids to take care.

She cleaned up around the house, and she remembers texting her husband for sex, but… And she's like, oh god, I bet you feel really embarrassed about that. So, Keith's not coming home. Why don't I go on a run? She loved jogging, and she recently had her boobs done, and they finally healed enough so that she could run again. So she takes the same route every time. It's from her house to this mailbox that's a mile away.

A mile out, a mile back, sometimes she would repeat the run multiple times until she got tired. She always listened to her wedding song, Michael Bubley, Everything, on repeat because it's a good pacemaker. Anyway, as she's running, she saw this SUV pull up and drives slowly alongside her. And it screeches to a halt and a woman in the passenger seat rolls down the window and

starts calling out to her, asking her for help. She's confused, but she wants to help, because it looked like two Hispanic women in the car. One was older, maybe in her 40s, maybe 50s, the other one was younger, maybe like 20s or 30s. And you're like, well, how do you know if they're Hispanic, Sherry? She said, oh, well, they had Hispanic colored, like dark colored skin.

That's what she says. Anyways, they called out to me in Spanish, and I don't know a lot of Spanish, but I think she was asking me for help. So I hesitantly take out one of my earbuds and I get closer to the car. The woman opens the car door and she flashes me her gun, a small black gun and she tells me, put your phone down.

I had my phone in my right hand and I had one earbud in still. So I see the gun, I'm trying to think quick, I pull out a few strands of my hair while I'm taking out the other earbud and I wrap the headphones around my hair and around my phone so that people know that there was a. And I wrap the headphones around my hair and around my phone so that people know that there was a struggle and I toss the phone on the floor. And the older woman said something along the lines of, we don't want to kill you, get in the car.

And when she was in the car, that's when her memory starts having holes. She doesn't know why maybe drugs were involved. She doesn't really remember much. She remembers that she had a pillowcase over her head and it smelled like laundry detergent. Okay, well, that she had a pillowcase over her head and it smelled like laundry detergent Okay, well did they put the pillowcase over your head right when you got in? I don't remember. I don't know. I think she might have tased me. The next thing I remember is all my clothes were gone

I tried to stay awake during the drive, but for some reason I kept dosing off Keith tried to ask her. Sherry help us. Do you remember anything else? I don't know. It's so hard. I don't remember a lot. I'm missing time. The car smelled really bad, like sewage, and she stuck me with something, and I just kept falling asleep, and it was cold. I was nauseous the whole time, and I was laying on the car floor. My wrist weren't pain. My hips were aching. It was painful. And Officer asked her, do you remember where you were headed? No, were they playing any music in the car? Yes, like the mariachi music?

It was all just so strange. At one point, Sherry told the police, you know, I watch a lot of crime shows. Regardless, Sherry doesn't remember how she left the car. But next thing she knows, she wakes up in a house. She had zip ties around her wrist, and she was in a new set of clothes but she had her underwear on. She went on to say that the two Hispanic women were the only ones that she saw for the three weeks.

They would change her clothes a couple times, they let her shower but she was always guarded in the bathroom. This shower had no shower curtain and sometimes she was allowed to wash her underwear. But she didn't have body wash or shampoo or even a towel to dry herself. She also went on to describe how the shower head was chrome and inexpensive. You know, people remember different things and different details of traumatic experiences. Yeah, do I think it's weird to note to officers that your kidnapper had a cheap shower head and that they could have definitely upgraded the bathroom a little bit, maybe a DIY wouldn't

have hurt. Do I think that's weird? Yeah, a little. But maybe that's how Shari deals with her drama. That's not where she starts losing the trust of the officers. In fact, she had the trust of the officers for two years. She starts losing them with her discrepancies.

The more and more, her case game traction, the more important people got involved. First, it was the local police, then probably state police, then it was the FBI, and now the public wants answers Where are the kidnappers? Why are you the FBI failing to find the kidnappers? So now the FBI they've got a they got a bit of an ego, okay? They're like we need to we need to find the kidnappers because we don't want to look like idiots This is a fucking suburban mom that was being taken come on. It's not like some crazy organized crime.

So what did you say happened? Sherry at first says that her hands were tied, zip tied behind her. Later when talking about the same situation, she said that she was able to chew through the zip ties and she even cut her lip in the process. So either Sherry's shoulders are the most flexible ligaments in the world and she has the longest arms known to mankind.

Or one of those statements is just not true. Oh, she said it was tied in the back. Yeah, but how do you chew through it? Exactly. Your hands, he just tried it. He's like, let me, let me try. It doesn't work. Yeah.

And the way that she described scenarios was really intense. She said that the windows in the room were boarded up. So she grabbed the board and yanked the crap out the wall super quick and broke her nail in the process. It's like, I don't know if I could yank the f*** out the wall super quick if a window was brooded, boarded up and I was chained. And her kidnappers heard her trying to attempt to escape multiple times and they they tased her and she says hey FBI agent does being tased disrupt my memory?" And they said no.

After that interview Sherry stopped mentioning the taser altogether never really brought it up again. Okay Sherry so tell us about your abductors. Well, there was the older one and the younger one like I said and they spoke Spanish a lot. They always wore masks or bandanas and leather gloves and it was black gloves. The older one was super mean and the younger one she seemed to not want to be part of it but she had no choice like that's kind of the vibe. The younger one had this really curly brown hair.

If she didn't put a ton of product in there it probably would have been super frizzy. She was wearing brown shoes and guess knock-off blue jeans. Like you know the brand guess but they were like knock-offs. And she wore these like big big hoop earrings and she had those thin almost drawn on eyebrows. The older mean one, she was taller and quote fat. She had some gray hairs and this raspy voice and her her breath always smelled like sweet and chocolate or sweet and coffee. I heard the older woman hitting the young woman on occasion but I never saw it happen.

She was definitely the one in charge though. Most of the time I was kept in a closet chained up. hitting the young woman on occasion, but I never saw it happen. She was definitely the one in charge though. Most of the time I was kept in a closet, chained up, they did give me a bucket with some kitty litter inside so I could poop. Eventually I was given more freedom, and my chain was tied to a metal pole in the closet, and I had enough room to leave the closet and reach the bed,

but not enough to reach a window or the door and try to escape. She hated that goddamn pole. She said, the fucking pole is the only reason I was stuck there. Sher and try to escape. She hated that goddamn poll. She said, the fucking poll is the only reason I was stuck there. Sherry tried to escape multiple times and it resulted in her being beat, having no blankets and being locked in the closet and having no access to the mattress. Later, Sherry mentioned that her kidnappers made her urinate and adult diapers. They were confused. They said,

wait, but what about the kitty litter? So did they do that half the time? And did they just give you your underwear back after you wore the adult diapers? How did you get the, because, you know, kidnappers are not going to log your stuff in evidence and then give it back to you when you leave. It's just so random. And she stopped talking about the adult diapers after that. Sherry said she was fed once a day. Some left over rice and tortilla, as usually.

Very dry. Sometimes she was given random scraps of meat, some fruit, some weird crackers. She was given a water bottle a day, and she really only got additional food when she was behaved well. She said that she felt that her food was being drugged, because she would get really sleepy afterwards. She said, the days that the older one felt really evil, she would come into the room and read her articles about her own disappearance, and she would laugh and say, no one believes you, everyone thinks you ran away.

And guess what, your buyer is a cop, they're never going to find you. I mean, it was confusing, Sherry was saying that the two women only spoke Spanish and Sherry couldn't understand them, but then she went on to list a bunch of interactions that they had. I mean, maybe they're bilingual, but why didn't she just say that? She just kept mentioning she doesn't understand Spanish, and they were trying to talk to her in Spanish initially. Sherry said that they would play loud music, and I quote, that really annoying Mexican music. Sherry goes on to say that one time she tried to escape and they branded her. They tied her up

on her stomach like laying on her stomach, and she said it was putting so much weight and pressure on her new breast and plants that she was in pain. She remember laying there, there was this fake marble table, the marble design was like peeling off. She said, and I quote, so obviously it was fake because I could see the brown wood underneath. So it's like a marble sticker. Again, is this HGTV or a true crime case, I don't know. The police thought it was just a lot of strange details. The woman told Sherry that the buyer wanted her branded because that's what he liked. So they branded her, kicked her off the table, and Sherry was going to give up on life. She thought it was over. But one day about three weeks into the nightmare, Sherry hears a gunshot.

She kept screaming for help, she was confused, what is the gunshot? She exhausted herself and fell asleep, and eventually the younger woman came back untied her, got her in the SUV, and put a pillowcase over her head, stopped the car and told her to get out. So it's implied the younger one never wanted to be a part of the kidnapping, killed the older dominant one, and freed Sherry. Wow. So Sherry got out, removed the pillowcase, but by the time she got the pillowcase off her head, the car was too far gone for her to read the license plates.

So that's when a trucker finally came and helped. Now, not gonna lie, the police do believe everything from the get-go. They were so desperate on catching the kidnappers, and let's be real, trauma makes you confused, and it's understandable that her story is all over the place. It was three weeks. But Sherry kept saying that the young woman drugged her before dropping her off on the street, there were no drugs in Sherry's system, so unless the kidnappers are using some super advanced drugs that can't even be detected, it's a plot hole. Even her trauma response seemed to be a plot hole. I know that sounds harsh, but it was strange.

Sherry went from being able to not talk to the police because her distrust. Then she went to joking around with them about how she watches crime shows and how Keith should be so embarrassed about her, come over and have sex with me for lunch, and then talking to the FBI normally, like she was with the police, and then suddenly she couldn't even look FBI in the eye, and she would say, sorry, I just, like she was like a baby bird.

She's like, oh, my kidnappers told me if I'd look at them at any time that I wasn't on all four, it's like a dog, with my head bad. I would I would be beat So I just I just subconsciously dropped my head and I don't make eye contact now Also when she talked about why they cut her hair I mean, I imagine most buyers wouldn't want that but she said it's because I was making too much noise and then later She said the older woman wanted to send it to my mom what like for ransom. That. I mean, is that an empty threat? What would be the point in it? Sherry also claimed and weren't insinuated, rather, that she had stock home syndrome.

Because after the SUV dropped her off, she ran after it. She didn't want the woman to leave. The whole thing is bizarre. The older mean harsh woman that is dominant and taking control of this human trafficking operation, the younger woman the hesitant follower with more humanity for the captive, Sherry being saved and released by the younger one and developing some sort of Stockholm syndrome, it feels a bit too fake to even be a crime show narrative. It's just not that believable. But what can the police do? There's nothing to prove that it isn't true. So they release a below on the Hispanic woman matching Sherry's

description, as well as sketches of where she was held captive. This is important later of what the closet looked like, the land of the room and everything. And for two years, law enforcement everywhere believed Sherry was kidnapped. And the sketch was shown to practically everybody. FBI and police got countless tips of seeing Sherry was kidnapped, and the sketch was shown to practically everybody. FBI and police got countless tips of seeing Sherry's kidnappers. I truly hope no Hispanic women found themselves in dangerous or uncomfortable situations because Sherry decided her story sounded better with Hispanic perpetrators. Yeah, at this point, we all know not everything is as it seems.

But truly, it gets bizarre. Investigators later find an old blog post of Sherries. Detailing how she was picked on by a group of quote Latinos in high school. She said, I used to come home in tears because I was getting suspended from school all the time for defending myself against the Latinos. The chief problem was that I was drug-free, white, and proud of my blood and heritage. And that really irked the group of Latino girls, which would constantly rag and attack me. She went on to detail a fight that she had gotten into the girls with the girls and how she broke one of the girls' noses and her dad was proud of her for it. She ended the post with, being white is more than just being aware of my skin. But if standing behind, insert very controversial word,

which also is like neo-nazis, like white to premises, who are always around in spirit and have pride for my country. OK. When detectives confronted Sherry about the Myspace post, she's like, oh oh it's awful that someone is posing as me posting stuff like this is horrible. Okay, if that was the only thing Sherry lied about, maybe someone might have believed her, but cops and people knew that she wrote it.

And to make it worse, a lot of people who knew Sherry said, her dad was kind of a Nazi. Like, we don't want to say that word, but kind of a... Like, I don't want to speculate too heavily, but if Sherry's dad really is anti-Semitic that just explains a lot about Sherry. That's all I'll say. Sherry's story was really crumbling at this point. The more the police questioned her, the more she forgot little details, the more she couldn't keep the story straight or she would just straight up add new details and contradict herself. She was never sexually assaulted. She said so herself and then later she went back and

said the older woman touched her everywhere with her fingers, implying she was assaulted. But it wasn't just her loosely tied story that made the police suspicious of her, it was Sherry's own phone records. Let me tell you the side of Sherry that she doesn't want the media to know. Sherry was texting men other than her husband and flirting with them and had saved their names on her phone as girl's names. So she could be texting, let's say, a guy named Mike, but his name would be saved as Lisa. So they find these dudes and they interview him and he's like, oh yeah, I've known her for years. We would flirt all the time.

She said that her husband was really abusive. Her dad was abusive and she was like, kind of this victim. Other people started coming forward to say that Sherry was a bit wild and did some really illegal things. When she was 20 years old and a camp counselor, she dated a 15 year old boy at camp. She loved to make a weird lies and all of them sent her to round her being a victim of abuse in her family or her relationship. Now, the police are incredibly skeptical of Sherry. They decide to try and run the DNA on her underwear

through the system to see if there's a hit. And there was a familial match, meaning it's not the person that it was a match to, but somebody related to him. The match was the father of Sherry's ex-boyfriend, James Rias. So the DNA belonged her ex-boyfriend. Huh, okay. What took them so long? Yeah, me.

They were like, let's just believe Sherry. Yeah, that's why I took them so long, honestly. Now, James gets brought in and he tells the police and this is going to shock the nation and honestly the world. James said, yeah, I help Sherry fake the kidnapping. A little backstory. James and Sherry knew each other since they were 13, 14.

They dated, they even got engaged after high school at one point, but they broke up when Sherry married her first husband. Yeah, plot twist, Sherry was married once before Keith. Then they divorced, and she got remarried, and they lost touch for a while, since Sherry got remarried and had kids, you know, now she's with Keith. But one day, James is cleaning his house, comes across a box of old photos and personal

items from Sherry. You know, when they were young. And he's like, okay, well, I want to give him back to her, but that's weird. So let me call a preparing to I was kind of close with and let them know that I'm shipping it to them. Now I don't know if Sherry was bored of her marriage life or what, but she felt compelled to reach out to James. And she just had this epic sob story about how Keith, her husband, was abusing her, beating

her, raping her how she's trying to escape, but the police refused to believe her. Side note, there is no record of Sherry filing any domestic violence report against Keith. The two start reconnecting, they bought prepaid phones to text each other, and Sherry starts talking about how she wants to run away. Now she's saving up money. James says, yeah, you can move it with me to get away from your abusive husband. Now, James was asked if any woman

were involved in Chery's kidnapping and if any of them were Hispanic and he said, and I quote, yeah, no, I don't know any Mexican girls. I hate these people. So great, cool, that settles it. Anyway, the way it actually happened, he said, was November 2nd, he had a friend rent a car for him. Picked up Sherry, she left her iPhone on the ground.

On the way back, Sherry seemed a little quiet and calm, but she napped most of the time. They drove down to Costa Mesa, to Orange County, yeah. James' two bedroom apartment. When they get there, Sherry chose which room she would like to Orange County, James is two bedroom apartment. When they get there, Sherry chose which room she would like to stay in, asked him to board up the windows, so that anybody that walked by wouldn't see her, and to get some clothes for her from TJ Maxx. What's wild is that the sketches that she gave the police

of the room she was held captive in. Yeah, it matched James' room, even the metal pole in the closet. So the police asked, well, James, were you dating? Like, was she seeing you? James said, I know it might sound bland, but we really just talked, hung out, ate food. We didn't really do anything in particular. We should really just kept ourself.

I mean, yeah, I hope the relationship would get romantic at one point, but yeah. It's really giving gone girl, isn't it? Yeah, what's going on? Yeah. James claimed they never had sex. OK, so far we can kind of see James aside a bit. I mean, if Keith really were abusive,

we might even not praise him. But OK, I can see why he did that of being a good host, kind of, you know. But then this is where he loses me. James, believe she was trying to purposely lose weight. She barely ate, and it wasn't because of a lack of appetite. It seemed more like a controlled thing she was doing, like a diet. Weird.

Okay. But then one day, James comes home from work and Sherry had chopped off all her hair. He never even asks her about it. He never even questions it. Just keeps going. James said near the end of Sherry's day, or whatever you call it, Sherry was purposely injuring herself. Like she wasn't just clumsy, you know?

It was clear when she was found, she looked beat up. Ew, she'd look like she had been held captive. You know? So does she know what she's doing right now? See, he claims he doesn't, but I think. It's pretty obvious. Yeah, you know, she's got bruises on her arms, her legs, burns on her arms, rashes everywhere.

He did brand her, so there's that. How do you even get around that one? She's just like, I just wanted to have two for fun. He bought a wood burning tool that was electric and it heats up and it glows red. You use it to carve wood. Sherry told him to get it and he branded her. He said that Sherry didn't complain at all. And afterwards, he's like, oh, this is a neat tool. I want to keep it so I can actually carve wood and Sherry's like, no, you better throw it away.

Now, this is where things get wild. Remember Cameron? Cameron gamble from the beginning? Well, he starts taking the news by storm. He's talking about how he had secured an anonymous donor that is willing to pay $50,000 in exchange for Sherry's return. And this donor has hired Cameron to be the professional hostage negotiator in this case. He believed he was the key to Sherry's release. He even posted on YouTube and said, my name is Cameron Gamble, and I'm an international kidnap and ransom consultant.

So of course, the media is, oh my God, obsessed, okay. This is a fascinating story. It's getting a lot of traction. Think about it, and anonymous donor with $50, obsessed, okay. This is a fascinating story. It's getting a lot of traction. Think about it. An anonymous donor with $50,000. This international military trained kidnap hostage negotiator, it's kind of like when anonymous gets involved in a case.

What is he trying to do here? He's saying he's trying to negotiate with whoever is holding Sherry captive. Who's this random donor? Probably not real. He's probably trying to get some media attention for his project taken. Because shortly after he files for bankruptcy,

the anti-abduction training courses for sale are not that lucrative with Cameron's involvement, Sherry's case blew up even more. And maybe it pushed Sherry to come to the realization of, yeah, this is not going away. I will never be able to live a life ever. Maybe she thought that it would die down, nobody would really care except for her little town of Reading, California, and she could start a new life in New York City. But no, the whole world is looking at your face and your wedding photos.

This hostage negotiator is getting involved. So Sherry tells James that she misses her kids too much and wants to go back. And I don't know why James is not scared for his life. Like you really think that Sherry wouldn't set you up for something? I mean, she's making herself look like she's been through some incredible horrible sh-t. Her DNA is all over your house. You're not even worried. You're not even intrigued.

Like, you're not even gonna ask a question about it. That's where people are like, James, come on, you knew more about this than you're leading on. Yeah. So James, friends, rent another car. James drives her closer to her house and drops her about 150 miles away. And it goes home and continues living his life.

The whole thing sounds absurd. I think, and my best guess is that they were dating. I think that they both soon realized they was ridiculous, that they would get in huge trouble for causing this huge mess. So they come up with a plan to make sure neither of them get in trouble. Sherry would protect James because he knew the truth.

James would protect Sherry because he knew the truth. Maybe he even helped her come up with some of the kidnapping story. All because she doesn't want to get a divorce. Um, yes. Sherry, what's interesting about Sherry is that I have a few theories. Either she just wanted fresh dick and she has no ability to be an adult or she's so into attention that it just spiled out of control. And I'm not saying that to loose in all of the responsibility off of her, but maybe she wanted the attention from James and was like, hey, my husband is abusing me.

Then that attention spiraled into her running away. Maybe she thought that would get Keith's attention. Maybe the attention of her family. But then it spiraled into the FBI getting involved. And it just kept spiraling and spiraling. And then now she's like, well, I'm racist, so it's got to be Hispanic women. I mean, I don't like her. I just hope that's clear, but I don't want to make it seem like I'm like, oh, she just

did a small thing and it spiraled out of control. No, everything was deliberate. She did it for attention, I believe. So the police armed with this new evidence, they sit down with her and they tell us the truth, Sherry. And she proceeds to lie through her teeth. So she's arrested for lying to federal agents, as well as spending the $50,000 of GoFundMe money

on personal expenses and paying off her credit card. She also received $30,000 from the California's victim compensation to pay for her therapy and medical bills, and she used $1,000 of that to buy all new blinds in her house. She was arrested March 3rd of 2022. Mm-hmm. Oh, just recently. So, for the longest time, this was just a case where we didn't really know, but it was all so suspicious. It's like, uh, you really think she was kidnapped?

No, that's weird. But now it's confirmed. Yeah. Wow. Sherry, since then, pled guilty. So it wasn't confirmed like March 3rd. Like, it was confirmed a while back if that makes sense. But for the first couple years after her kidnapping

from the 2017 like 2018 2019 I would say even till like maybe even 2020 is It was weird. It's like one of those things were oh, did it? What what's going on? It's unsolved. Yes But it's just you almost feel bad doubting her story because you shouldn't but it is weird So Sherry has pled guilty to both charges and she, I am so deeply ashamed of myself for my behavior and so sorry for the pain I've caused my family, my friends, and all the good people who suffered because of me. I will work for the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done. The same day that Sherry was arrested, Keith filed for

divorce as well as full custody. Keith is interesting too because he saw no plot holes. Okay, like fine. Love makes you blind. Do you believe your wife over anything? That's good. Well, why'd you spend the GoFundMe money? So Jerry is facing a max of 20 years and up to half a million dollars in fines. And because of her plea bargain, Jerry is going to pay over $300,000 in restitution, and

prosecutor said she will likely be sentenced to the lower end of jail time. Her setencing is set to July 11th, 2022. In her cases often compare to Gone Girl and I can see why. It's very creepy. And that's why they say not all things are what they seem. Nothing. Nothing, yeah. Nothing.

Nothing. And I hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode and I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode. Bye!