Sherri Papini is going to prison for California kidnapping hoax, but she still got lucky

Sherri Papini, the Shasta County “super mom” who falsely claimed to have been kidnapped by marauding Latinas who’d branded her arm and tortured her with “annoying Mexican music” is still one lucky woman.

Because 40-year-old Papini, whose 2016 disappearance was really caused by wondering what an old boyfriend was up to, still has the support of the parents whose long-ago drinking and disagreements were the basis of her team’s argument that, in essence, they were to blame for her lies.

In court for her sentencing hearing in Sacramento on Monday, Papini’s mother nodded as her weeping daughter told Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb, “You’ve seen so much dishonor laid before you here in this room. People who are not willing to walk through the shame to say they are guilty. I am not one of them, your honor.” In the hallway after Shubb sentenced her to 18 months in prison, both of her parents hugged her for a long, tearful time.

She’s lucky to have had the able representation of William Portanova, who told reporters after the hearing that “we actually are believers” that the slight blonde we’d all just seen in court was “the new Sherri.”

Sherri 2 had little in common with her predecessor, he suggested: “She wants nothing to do with the person she had allowed herself to become, as the result of her own craziness and selfishness.” Yes, even if she had only come to Jesus, legally speaking, when there was no other way out. “She did a 180-degree turn in my office,” he said, just prior to signing the plea deal.

And though these were federal charges, because that’s usually how the story ends when you lie to the FBI, she’s also lucky to be living in California, where the public is less bloodthirsty than in some other parts of the country. Her prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Veronica Alegria and Shelley Weger, were themselves relatively lenient, arguing for only eight months in prison. Her team said one month behind bars would be a just outcome.

But even here, Papini finally seems to have used up her lifetime allotment of sympathy. Initially, oceans of care and concern flowed to her, not only during the three weeks that she was missing but during the years of sad-faced storytelling that followed.

Will the ‘new Sherri’ take responsibility?

As Shubb noted, she devastated her family and pained the neighbors and total strangers who worried both while she was gone and after she came home, because they thought her made-up kidnappers were still out there somewhere.

She did particular damage to a Latino community that had to dodge the many tips being called into police about brown people under suspicion as the direct result of her fabrications.

She made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for real victims, as well as Social Security disability payments. She defrauded every person who contributed a total of $49,000 to her GoFundMe, and all of the cops who spent time looking for her and her non-existent abductors. That was time that they could and should have spent on other cases.

She also sold a lie to the ex with whom she spent those three weeks in his Costa Mesa apartment, telling him that she was escaping an abusive spouse.

Not inconsequentially, she contributed to the cynicism of generous people, and gave those who never believe anyone anyway one more reason not to care.

Here’s a sentence I don’t get to say all that often, in a world in which so many of the wrong people are incarcerated: I agreed with the judge.

“People don’t like to be conned,” he said.

In April, she agreed to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of lying to the FBI.

The judge asked Portanova, Papini’s attorney, about claims from prosecutors that even since pleading guilty, she has continued to tell people that she really was kidnapped.

Portanova dismissed that as “gossip” from, among others, a therapist who in 250 sessions had helped her achieve zero breakthroughs. That’s because she wasn’t telling that therapist the truth, the judge noted.

Her attorney answered that, on his advice, she simply hadn’t bothered to correct the record with people she didn’t like or trust, apparently including that doctor. “I don’t think it was her responsibility” to go back and explain, he said.

Maybe not, but it does undercut the idea that “new Sherri” is a different person.

So, the judge persisted, was Portanova saying that Papini had not ever, since pleading guilty, told anyone that she had been kidnapped? “I can’t say that,” he responded, adding, “I’m sure everyone has an opinion on everything, but it doesn’t make it admissible or relevant or even true.”

In court, Portanova also argued that her behavior was “clearly the product of a diseased mind.” So what was that disease called, reporters asked him after the hearing. He didn’t know, he said.

I hope she does figure it out at some point, most of all for the sake of her children, who are with their father now. But just as consequences that are too harsh waste people’s lives, consequences that are too slight can warp them.

If it’s true, as Portanova argued, that she’s already punishing herself more than anyone else ever could, how can she disagree?

This story was originally published September 19, 2022 at 2:51 PM.