bdmetronews Desk ॥ As authorities hunt for two women who allegedly kidnapped Sherri Papini, friends and family of the 34-year-old California mother-of-two are struggling to make sense of her mysterious, sudden abduction.
“Why did they beat her and break her nose and brand her and burn her?” Papini’s friend and former co-worker Joyce Travis tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
“Every one wants to know why. Everyone wants the answer,” Travis says. “I am sure Sherri doesn’t know either. I am sure she is just as confused today.”
Papini was found Thanksgiving morning on a roadside about 150 miles from her home in Redding, California — 22 days after she says she was abducted during a morning jog. Her weeks in captivity were a nightmare, according to those closest to her. Her husband, Keith Papini, said in a statement to PEOPLE that Sherri was repeatedly beaten, the bridge of her nose broken and she was branded.
Sherri reportedly weighed 87 pounds when she was found and, according to the woman who called 911, looked “panicked and frightened.” Of the branding, Travis says it was “almost like they didn’t want her to be beautiful anymore.”
Keith has tearfully described how Sherri withstood her abduction: in part by imagining she was with her children, 4-year-old Tyler and Violet, 2.
