Sean J Longoria

Redding

It’s been nearly two months since Sherri Papini, who’s abduction from a sleepy neighborhood outside Redding sparked international attention, returned home.

It’s also been nearly two months since any new details were offered in the case beyond limited descriptions of two Hispanic women Papini said took her Nov. 2 from a rural road near her home and dumped her 22 days later on a Yolo County road near Interstate 5.

But that doesn’t mean the investigation has cooled.

“It’s still an active investigation,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Thursday. “We are waiting on some of the results on the evidence being processed by the California Department of Justice.”

It’s been a busy two months for investigators, who spent nearly half that time looking for the person who walked into a Burney-area gas station and lit a man on fire, killing him. Even with Thursday's arrest of Juan Manuel Venegas, 39, of Redding, the Dec. 21 murder of David Wicks remains among the highest priority cases.

Sheriff’s detectives also took lead on the fatal shooting of a man by Redding police that occurred just two weeks after Papini’s disappearance.

They’re also still looking for Justin Ryan Mulliken, 21, of Anderson, in connection with the Jan. 9 shooting of Dustin Lloyd, 31, in the parking lot of Win River Casino.

Those cases pulled attention away from the Papini case, though a detective still remains assigned to it and Bosenko called it a “top priority.”

Sherri Papini, meanwhile, has shied away from the public eye since she returned home and her husband, Keith, is likewise silent in the press after the early December airing of “20/20,” which revealed graphic details about his wife’s abduction and release. The family, though, before her disappearance was normally absent from the public eye despite deep roots and a large social circle in the area.

“I can’t speak to more recently, but even initially we had asked Mr. Papini to refrain from media interaction and especially after she was found, with some of the information he was releasing,” Bosenko said.

The intense media attention that characterized the case during the week after Papini’s return has cooled, though it re-emerged in national headlines this week after a similar, though possibly unrelated, kidnapping in the greater Los Angeles area.

In that case, two women took another woman from her Sherman Oaks home Friday night, eventually dumping her the street. Los Angeles police said they’re looking for two Hispanic women, which match the loose description of Sherri Papini’s alleged abductors.

LAPD Detective Tim Schey said the two cases aren’t related, though Bosenko said he asked his staff to look into the case and hasn’t heard back yet.

Shasta County detectives also checked whether the Elk Grove pimping case last month — alerted to police by an Uber driver — had any connection to Papini’s disappearance.

“We followed up on that one as well and that was not related,” Bosenko said, adding his detectives monitor similar cases.

Bosenko said the Sheriff’s Office has received more than 800 tips in the Papini case. Anyone with information on that or other crimes under investigation can call detectives at 245-6135.