Unraveling the Sherri Papini Hoax: Nicole Rittenmeyer Reveals the Other Side — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00is Nicole Written Memire and we're going
2. 0:02to talk about Sher Pini caught in a lie
3. 0:06on the ID channel. Nicole, thanks for
4. 0:08stopping by. How are you? I'm great. I'm
5. 0:11great. Thanks for having me, Neil. All
6. 0:13right. So, Nicole, kind of, you know,
7. 0:14tell us how this got started for you.
8. 0:18Sure. Sure. I mean, it was it was an
9. 0:19enormous case. Um, national, you know,
10. 0:22national attention. Everyone was looking
11. 0:24for Sherry when she went missing back in
12. 0:272016, November 2016 during a run. Um,
13. 0:31and you know, the world was sort of like
14. 0:34anxiously like what happened to this
15. 0:35woman and was she abducted? Was she
16. 0:37trafficked? Her husband was going on
17. 0:40national media. Um, and then, you know,
18. 0:42she's returned. She shows up battered,
19. 0:44beaten, branded uh by the side of the
20. 0:47road with a very weird story um that the
21. 0:50FBI and local police looked into for
22. 0:53five years before the FBI finally
23. 0:56arrests Sherry for lying to them because
24. 1:00they say she perpetrated this hoax
25. 1:02kidnapping. So, she's never spoken to
26. 1:04anyone before. were the were the very
27. 1:06first team she's ever given an interview
28. 1:08to and she has a very different version
29. 1:10of events.
30. 1:12Isn't it interesting? There's always two
31. 1:14sides of the story as a documentary
32. 1:16filmmaker. That's you, right? You always
33. 1:18see two sides of the story in journalist
34. 1:19in ways, right? Yeah, absolutely. And my
35. 1:23sort of favorite thing to do is to take
36. 1:25a conventional narrative, the the story
37. 1:28everyone thinks they know, and sort of
38. 1:30upend it and dig into it and show you
39. 1:32what you didn't know, what got left out,
40. 1:35what was, you know, nuanced away. Um,
41. 1:38and the story of what happened to
42. 1:40Sherry, there's a lot of just outright
43. 1:43untruths and fallacies um that have been
44. 1:46told and she's never challenged any of
45. 1:48them. So, it's interesting because she
46. 1:50herself is an unreliable narrator. She
47. 1:52pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. So,
48. 1:55part of what we do is kind of try to
49. 1:58sort like what part of what she's saying
50. 2:01is real, what might not be true and can
51. 2:04we trust her? What? Here's my question.
52. 2:07This is very crazy. Is that why didn't
53. 2:10she tell her story earlier?
54. 2:14The stakes were very very high for her.
55. 2:17So, she she wanted to tell, but um she
56. 2:20wanted to tell what really happened to
57. 2:22her. But I I think a couple things
58. 2:24happened. She had been lying for so
59. 2:27long, which she admits now, um that when
60. 2:30she and you know, enormous resources
61. 2:33were spent, people's lives, you know,
62. 2:35the FBI agents, the the sheriff's
63. 2:38investigators devoted their, you know,
64. 2:40time away from their families to hunt
65. 2:42down, you know, go basically they went
66. 2:44in the wrong direction. She threw them
67. 2:47away from the person who actually did
68. 2:50the thing according to her. So there
69. 2:53wasn't a lot of tolerance or patience
70. 2:55for her when she started to be like,
71. 2:57"But wait, something really did happen
72. 2:58to me." It was a little bit like the
73. 3:00girl who cried wolf,
74. 3:02right? I got it. And some and does she
75. 3:05feel like I don't want to give this away
76. 3:07because again, this is the new side to
77. 3:10the story, Nicole. Right. So basically,
78. 3:13everyone thinks this happened and she
79. 3:15What was that kind of how much did she
80. 3:18deal with pain and suffering after they
81. 3:22found out she didn't that this didn't
82. 3:24happen to her? So-called didn't happen
83. 3:26to her. Right. Right. Well, I mean, you
84. 3:30know, she basically lost everything. Um,
85. 3:32she was sentenced to prison for 18
86. 3:35months. She served 10 months. Um, her
87. 3:37husband divorced her. He took their
88. 3:39kids. He has not returned them. They're
89. 3:41in a custody fight now. Um they had a
90. 3:44postnuptual document. So she basically
91. 3:47walked with what amounted to the clothes
92. 3:49on her back unlike you know California
93. 3:51law where you split everything because
94. 3:53of the existence of this postnuptual
95. 3:55agreement. She lost everything. So um
96. 3:59yeah the stakes were really really high
97. 4:01and this is exactly what she predicted
98. 4:04would happen if her husband knew the
99. 4:07truth.
100. 4:09Right. And it's just it's it's an
101. 4:12intriguing story. And her husband kind
102. 4:16of really wasn't very uh uh
103. 4:19understanding of this. Again, I'm trying
104. 4:23I'm trying to not give this away,
105. 4:24Nicole, because it's intriguing me and
106. 4:26I'm and I do this with authors all the
107. 4:29time. Other people will ask questions.
108. 4:31No, you got to tune in to the ID channel
109. 4:33to make sure that you know what
110. 4:36happened. But I'm going to want to find
111. 4:38out what happened. That's for sure.
112. 4:40Yeah. No, that's right. I mean, you
113. 4:42know, the little bit that we can say I I
114. 4:45think is that Sherry insists and this
115. 4:47was a surprise to me when I met her. I
116. 4:49fully expected to meet a woman who was
117. 4:51going to tell me, you know, I was on
118. 4:54drugs or I was going through a mental
119. 4:55breakdown or, you know, whatever
120. 4:57whatever the Mia was. And that is not
121. 4:59what happened at all. What she said was,
122. 5:02"What happened to me really happened to
123. 5:04me. I didn't I did not fake my own
124. 5:07kidnapping. I was abducted. I just lied
125. 5:10about who did it.
126. 5:12Oh, and that's we're going to find out.
127. 5:14See, you hit us where even more now. I'm
128. 5:16like, "Oh, no. What does that mean?" And
129. 5:20now I'm going to be I mean, I watch all
130. 5:23these stories all the time. Who's the
131. 5:25most credible? It really is how the
132. 5:27paint the it's the the the evidence that
133. 5:30you find Nicole because at the end of
134. 5:32the day at the other side doesn't bring
135. 5:34enough evidence then you start to
136. 5:36believe her more and you see this in a
137. 5:39lot of these kind of cases right? Yeah
138. 5:42that's exactly right. And I think in our
139. 5:44culture, one of the things that we sort
140. 5:46of expect in a criminal case always is a
141. 5:49trial where there's going to be an
142. 5:50airring of of, you know, both sides
143. 5:53present their best evidence and their
144. 5:54best case and there's testimony and a
145. 5:57jury or a judge comes to a conclusion.
146. 5:59There was no trial in this case. She
147. 6:01pleaded guilty almost immediately. Um,
148. 6:04and we go into the reasons why someone
149. 6:07would plead guilty to something they
150. 6:09maybe didn't do. Um, so you know, what's
151. 6:12out there in terms of media coverage and
152. 6:15you know, documentaries that Keith has
153. 6:17participated in is is kind of standing
154. 6:19as as the historical quote unquote truth
155. 6:23about what happened here. But we what we
156. 6:26learned is that it is significantly
157. 6:29flawed. There are some some full-on
158. 6:31inaccuracies that have been reported and
159. 6:35everybody has an agenda. Sherry is not
160. 6:37the only one with an agenda in this
161. 6:39case.
162. 6:41Everyone does and and that's the the
163. 6:43problem in these cases. Now, do you feel
164. 6:45after this airs that other people are
165. 6:47going to come out of the woodwork saying
166. 6:48she's
167. 6:49lying? They may. Um we talked to an
168. 6:53awful lot of people. Uh I think we
169. 6:57proved in some cases that what people
170. 7:00think they know about this case isn't
171. 7:02isn't accurate. But, you know, um I I
172. 7:05know this I spent more time with her
173. 7:07than the FBI did. Um, and I spent I mean
174. 7:10we have 1500 pages of transcripts where
175. 7:13I am just riding her. We gave her no
176. 7:17quarter. Um, we were relentless. And I
177. 7:20would like to think I'm old. I've been
178. 7:22doing this for a minute. I would like to
179. 7:23think I I would have gotten her to crack
180. 7:26if there was more that she was lying
181. 7:27about. She was surprisingly
182. 7:30um she stuck to her story about most of
183. 7:33it. There's there are a couple cracks
184. 7:34and you'll see them in the film. We we
185. 7:36preserve them. But uh but yeah, I was
186. 7:39kind of surprised, I have to say. All
187. 7:42right, we can check it out on the ID
188. 7:44channel. When will it be available,
189. 7:45Nicole?
190. 7:47Uh Monday is the premiere on the 26,
191. 7:509:00 p.m. Eastern time, and the next
192. 7:52night is Tuesday the 27th. All right.
193. 7:55Thanks again. Really appreciate it,
194. 7:56Nicole. Thanks for stopping by. You bet.
195. 7:59Thank you. All right. You're listening
196. 8:01and watching the Neil Haley Show. We'll
197. 8:02be back as the moment.