Jess Battison
The woman who faked her own kidnapping has been released from prison early.
Sherri Papini - now 41 - made headlines in 2016 when she went missing for 22 days in California while out for a jog.
She was found alongside a Sacramento-area highway on Thanksgiving Day with several injuries, including a broken nose.
The mom told police she’d been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women and even provided a description of them to an FBI sketch artist.
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DNA samples were collected but a motive was never determined, and no arrests were made.
Papini eventually pleaded guilty to making the whole thing up, and she had fled nearly 600 miles south of her home in Redding to stay with her then-boyfriend.
She was arrested in March 2022 and jailed nine months ago for faking her own kidnapping and lying to the FBI.
In court in September last year, Papini was given an 18-month sentence as well as 36 months of supervised release.
She was also ordered to pay $309,902 by 8 November 2022 in restitution for losses incurred by the California Victim Compensation Board.
However, The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed to UNILAD she was released on 16 August and has been transferred to community confinement - meaning she is in either home confinement or a Residential Reentry Center (or halfway house).
She is now set to continue her sentence under probation for the next 36 months.
BOP currently still lists Papini’s projected release date as 29 October 2023.
The break in the case came in 2020 after investigators took the DNA samples and tested them using genetic genealogy, which flagged up a connection to a family member of Papini’s ex-boyfriend.
Bringing him in for questioning, he admitted to helping Papini ‘run away’ from what she said was an abusive relationship.
He told police she had injured herself, cut off her own hair and asked him to brand her to make the whole thing look more believable.
Appearing in court last year, Papini’s attorney William Portanova said the sentence was ‘fair’ and told reporters: “Whatever happened five years ago, that's a different Sherri Papini than the person you see here today.”
Prosecutors said: “She maintained her hoax and received Social Security and California Victims’ benefits for years, demonstrating that she had no remorse for her actions even after the FBI presented her with evidence of her fraud.”
In April 2022, Papini said in a statement: “I am deeply ashamed of myself for my behavior and so very sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered because of my story and those who worked so hard to try to help me.
“I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done.”