Sherri Papini went for a run on November 2nd, but never returned home. She did not pick up her two young children from daycare that evening and her cell phone was found lying on the side of the road. Three weeks later, she is found alive in the very early morning hours by a passing motorist on the side of a County Road approximately 150 miles from her home. She is chained and severely injured. Her nose is broken and her skin has been branded by her captors.
I live in the County where she was found that morning. A friend of mine was the CHP Officer first on the scene. When I got the news that she had been found alive, my first reaction was of shock and disbelief. Too often these types of missing persons cases end with a dead body. The cynic in me assumed that Sherri Papini would be found at some point in a similar manner. Thankfully for her children and family, her story did not end in a typical fashion.
Unfortunately, immediately upon her discovery, the media and public jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a hoax. Really? A hoax by whom? The severely beaten, branded and chained up woman who'd been thrown from a moving car onto the side of a pitch dark road in the middle of the night in the freezing cold? Why are people so quick to assume that she's lying, or her husband is lying? Perhaps I'm too trusting or gullible to believe otherwise. Or perhaps despicable people like Scott Peterson or Drew Peterson make it hard to believe the story being told.
The details will come out eventually and I hope whoever is responsible is caught. Any punishment the perpetrators receive, however, will in no way compare to the cruel and unusual torture that Sherri Papini endured and will continue to endure emotionally for the remainder of her life.
I live in the County where she was found that morning. A friend of mine was the CHP Officer first on the scene. When I got the news that she had been found alive, my first reaction was of shock and disbelief. Too often these types of missing persons cases end with a dead body. The cynic in me assumed that Sherri Papini would be found at some point in a similar manner. Thankfully for her children and family, her story did not end in a typical fashion.
Unfortunately, immediately upon her discovery, the media and public jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a hoax. Really? A hoax by whom? The severely beaten, branded and chained up woman who'd been thrown from a moving car onto the side of a pitch dark road in the middle of the night in the freezing cold? Why are people so quick to assume that she's lying, or her husband is lying? Perhaps I'm too trusting or gullible to believe otherwise. Or perhaps despicable people like Scott Peterson or Drew Peterson make it hard to believe the story being told.
The details will come out eventually and I hope whoever is responsible is caught. Any punishment the perpetrators receive, however, will in no way compare to the cruel and unusual torture that Sherri Papini endured and will continue to endure emotionally for the remainder of her life.
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