Sherri Papini.
Now thatSherri Papini has agreed to plead guiltyto lying about being kidnapped in 2016,Bill Garciawants to see her pay.
Garcia is a private investigator who donated his time to help find Papini five years ago, one of the small army of concerned neighbors who searched for Papini and donated thousands of dollars to help rescue her.
“It’s good she’s come forward and stopped the amount of money being spent to prosecute her,” Garcia tells PEOPLE. “With her pleading guilty, it’s just an end to a really horrific story where she claimed these innocent women kidnapped her. But we still don’t have a reason. I wonder if that will be laid out at some point.”
Trudy Nickens, the founder and director of Nor-Cal Alliance For The Missing, who organized a four-day search for Sherri in 2016, agreed.
“I’m not surprised and I’m glad she plead guilty. At least she is coming clean,” she says.
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But Garcia wants more than information. Papini’s family was the beneficiary of $49,000 that accrued to a GoFundMe account set up for her. And once Papini resurfaced — she turned up wandering in a parking lot on Thanksgiving Day of 2016,22 days after she allegedly disappeared— Sherri petitioned the state for more than $30,000 from the California victims abuse fund.
“She did benefit. They took the GoFundMe money and paid off credit cards, that’s a lot of money, and law enforcement should be reimbursed for their efforts,” Garcia says. “That money needs to be returned. Will she be held responsible for all that money that law enforcement spent?”
But not everyone involved is as angry. Missy McArthur, the former mayor of Redding, Calif. — the town that gave so much searching for a woman who had apparently masterminded a scheme — is more forgiving.
“I think most people would have some kindness in their heart and forgive her,” McArthur tells PEOPLE. “I would hope they would and move on. I mean she has got her own demons to face. She doesn’t really need other people piling on.”
source: people.com
