this is "nightline." >> tonight, nearly a year after the abduction of the so-called california super mom -- >> they blanded her. >> new evidence raising questions about her disappearance. texts with a male acquaintance days before. the mysterious dna found on her clothes. police sketches of possible suspects and the newly released 911 recordings of her husband reporting her missing. >> found her phone on the ground. telling me that something happened to her. plus top-secret jfk files sealed from the public for decades now released, sharing light on the president and the assassination that spawned endless conspiracy theories and movies. >> coup d'etat with lyndon johnson waiting in the wings. >> was a newspaper tipped off before it happened? new revelations about cuba's

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good evening. thank you for joining us. for weeks her story dominated the headlines. a california mom disappeared and turned up 22 days later, beaten

and branded. now newly released evidence raising more questions about what happened to sherri papini, woman known as a super mom. here's abc's matt gutman. >> reporter: it's every family's worst nightmare. a wife and mother goes out for a run and disappears. without a trace. sherri papini was missing for 22 days. her distraught husband keith appealing to the public for health. >> i'm coming, honey. i'm trying, i'm doing everything i can. and i love you. >> reporter: then, on thanksgiving day, 2016 -- >> female needs medical attention, it's going to be some sort of an assault. >> reporter: sherri was found alive on the side of a highway, battered, bruised, and branded. long blond haircut short. these newly released sketches depict the two women papini claims were her sole abductors. but just this week a twist in the case. unidentified male dna found on

her clothes. and the shasta county sheriff's office also revealing papini was texting with a male acquaintance from michigan just days prior to her disappearance in an attempt to meet. that man has since been cleared by police. but the new details are raising new questions about what actually went down. >> the fact that she was trying to meet up with another man shortly before she went missing leads to questions about why and where was she going and could it have any relationship to this? up to this point, they were this loving couple who had nothing in their life that would lead to anything happening. >> reporter: the childhood sweethearts tied the knot in 2009, looking like a fairy tale couple. she, like a princess. he, like a prince. their photos together seem as if they're ripped from the pages of a glossy magazine. >> i was just head over heels for her and i knew i wanted to

marry this girl. >> 911, what is your emergency? >> reporter: in this 911 call released just this week, we hear keith just moments after discovering his wife had vanished from their northern california home. >> so -- i just got home from work, and my wife wasn't there which is unusual -- >> reporter: sounding remarkably composed. he tells the operator about the last he'd heard from her. >> she sent me a text asking me if i was coming home for lunch, and i said sorry, long day. that was the last. she never spoke to her on the phone or any other -- >> reporter: he tells the dispatcher his wife hadn't picked up their kids from day care. >> found her phone on the ground. telling me something happened to her is the way i'm looking at it. then there was hair like in the headphones. like ripped off -- >> yeah, i know, i understand. i understand. >> okay, i'm sorry, i know you're trying to keep me calm. >> reporter: as the call goes on, keith seems to unravel. >> oh my god. >> i understand you're freaking out a little bit.

we want to make sure we get your kids. >> reporter: i interviewed keith papini just days after his wife was found. he recounted those harrowing weeks when she was still missing. >> i don't think i ever lost hope, but it was really -- it was eating away at me big-time. >> at no point did you think she may be dead? >> there was a moment where we were heading back after we did a few mile search. and -- we look up and we start to see some birds circling. and i started walking and i just -- went to my knees. and i thought, am i really -- am i really -- i came out here to look for my wife. >> reporter: at first the couple's two children didn't even know their mother was missing. but keith felt he couldn't keep that terrible secret from their son tyler. >> he knew something was up. and he said, dad, you can tell me anything.

so i just said, son, you know -- mommy went running and she didn't come home and we're all looking for her right now. >> she is considered at risk due to the suspicious circumstances. >> reporter: there was sympathy for keith, of course. but there was also plenty of skepticism. police following standard procedure had to first consider him as a suspect. your wife vanished. >> uh-huh. >> but you're also the prime suspect. >> i never -- felt that. >> you never felt that? >> i didn't. it never occurred to me at first that people would think it was me. >> reporter: to try to clear any cloud of doubt, keith papini demanded to take a polygraph test. he passed it. >> it was basically nine days before he was really cleared of suspicion. >> yes. >> why so long? >> we were going through investigating hundreds of tips, looking at cell phone data, cell tower data. >> reporter: then out of the blue, on thanksgiving morning,

keith's phone rang. >> i pick it up. it was my wife. screaming in the background. yelling my name. and a chp officer said, i need you to be calm, i need you to be calm. >> are you panicked at first? hearing her scream. >> i'm panicked but i'm happy. because at this point, this is the first time i've heard her voice. i know she's alive. >> reporter: on the day she was found, investigators said they were only able to get the barest nugget from the traumatized sherri. >> which was two hispanic female afultz driving a dark suv. >> two hispanic females in a dark-colored suv in the state of california is not much of a tip. >> no. it would be literally a needle in a haystack. >> did she know the people she was with? >> no. >> did she ever see them? >> i will share with you that their faces were always covered. i can tell you that there was guns involved. >> reporter: according to keith,

sherri said her alleged abductors, those two women, drove her about 2 1/2 hours nonstop that first day and said her kidnappers spoke spanish most of the time. >> she literally lived through hell. the things she told me that she did -- acting like she was talking to our kids. she told me a lot of times she took some piece of cloth and rolled it up like it was violet, she would rock it. she's so strong. >> reporter: sherri hasn't spoken publicly yet. the account of her release comes solely from what she has told police and her husband. >> she was bound. she had a chain around her waist. she had a bag over her head. they cut something to free her restraint that was holding her into the vehicle. pushed her out. and drove away. sherri had one free hand and took a bag off of her head. >> reporter: stranded in the middle of nowhere, sherri felt

her only chance at rescue was to flag a motorist down on the highway. that motorist called 911. >> 911, emergency? >> reporter: rescue workers raced to the scene, the silence of the early morning filling with sirens and the crackle of radio chatter. >> unknown medical problem, it's going to be northbound i-5, female needs medical attention. >> reporter: sherri was disoriented from what police say was 22 days in captivity. keith raced to reunite with his wife, finding her in the hospital with bruises on her face and a cryptic symbol branded into her right shoulder. >> one of the officers braced me, kind of put his arm around me, he said -- you know, prepare yourself. she's alive and you've just got to be happy. they branded her. i just wanted to see her. so i just ran past everybody and

i, you know, throw open the curtain, and she was there. lying in the bed. and her poor face. and i just hugged her. i just held her. i felt like i hugged her for like 20 minutes. >> reporter: in the months since sherri's safe return, investigators have revealed little about what they found. until this week. in a new statement to abc news, keith said, we are hopeful that the release of additional information by law enforcement will expedite the capture of sherri's abductors. this has been an extraordinarily difficult time for our family. >> it's clear the investigation here is not just focusing on finding the two women in the sketches. this investigation is also focused on gettinganswers. broadly. about how did this happen? and what exactly happened? >> reporter: with each fresh

clue, more puzzling questions. for "nightline," i'm matt gutman in redding, california. next, what we're learning from the newly released top-secret jfk files. my 30-year marriage... ...my 3-month old business... plus...what if this happened again? i was given warfarin in the hospital, but wondered, was this the best treatment for me? so i made a point to talk to my doctor. he told me about eliquis. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots and reduces the risk of them happening again. not only does eliquis treat dvt and pe blood clots. eliquis also had significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. eliquis had both... ...and that turned around my thinking. don't stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis

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there have been endless conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of president john f. kennedy. but yesterday thousands of top-secret files pertaining to jfk were released to the public. what do these long-anticipated documents actually tell sinus here's abc's david wright.

>> reporter: more than 50 years after that tragic day in dallas, there's still no smoking gun. except for that .26-caliber rifle found on the sixth floor of the texas school book depository, a rifle seen here in the hands of its owner, lee harvey oswald. among the thousands of classified documents finally unsealed last night by the national archives, there is nothing that would contradict the central finding of the warren commission, that oswald alone murdered america's 35th president. >> when i got and saw the documents and started to go through them, it became increasingly clear it was a nothing burger. this was very, very disappointed. >> reporter: and yet some intriguing new details. among them a reporter for an obscure british newspaper claims to have received advance warning of the assassination in a phone call supposedly a half hour before the fatal shots were fired. new questions about the cia's role. new details about the possible

motives of the cubans to kill jfk. the documents also reveal how eager fbi director j. edgar hoover was to convince the public that oswald is the real assassin. but the biggest hope for conspiracy theories and jfk obsessives may be president trump's 11th hour decision to delay the release of the most-sensitive documents by a further six months. trump said he had no choice but to give the cia and the fbi more time to review them. >> if there's a smoking gun in these jfk files, and i don't think there is, they're in the documents that are still being held back. >> reporter: the jigsaw puzzle that has bedeviled this country for decades still has huge holes in it. >> president kennedy has been shot in dallas, texas. >> reporter: an overwhelming amount of evidence still points to the fact that oswald pulled the trigger that day. was he the lone gunman? was he acting alone? or were there others who got away with murder?

on the grassy knoll, or lurking somewhere in the shadowy background? half a century later those types of conspiracy theories burn just as bright as the eternal flame at jfk's grave. before we get into all that -- ♪ let's set the scene here. we're talking about camelot. >> although the president is running behind schedule, he pauses momentarily to shake a few hands. >> reporter: a handsome young president and his glamorous wife jackie kennedy, just 34 years old in that pink suit and pillbox hat in dallas. a generation of americans remember exactly where they were when walter cronkite delivered the tragic news. >> from dallas, texas, the flash apparently official, president kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. central standard time. 2:00 eastern standard time. some 38 minutes ago.

>> people who have experienced the tragedy of 9/11 who were alive then understand what a terrible shock it was to the country. the assassination of john kennedy in 1963 was as great a shock or greater. it affected every american in a way that was immediate. >> shoot kennedy coming up houston, there's plenty of time -- >> reporter: oliver stone's blockbuster movie "jfk" stirred up huge interest in conspiracy theories. >> the magic bullet enters the president's back, headed downward at an angle of 17 degrees. it then moves upward in order to leave kennedy's body from the front of his neck. wound number two. >> reporter: so much so that congress hoped to arm americans with the facts. 25 years before trump, they passed a law requiring the declassification of the kennedy assassination archives. unless the president at that later time were to object. so what do the newly declassified files contain? there are some tantalizing

tidbits. for one, the cia's role in the assassination remains unclear. there's this secret defendant by the former cia director richard helms. asked point blank by the warren commission, is there any information involved with the assassination of president kennedy which in any way shows lee harvey oswald was in some way a cia agent or agent? the document ends there, suspiciously. no answers given. there's new details about cia plots to kill cuban leader fidel castro involving a poison skin diving suit and explosive seashe seashells, enlisting the help of the mafia to carry them out. those cia mafia plots have long been advanced as possible motive for cuba to kill jfk. but a newly declassified draft report of the house committee on assassinations rebuts that possibility in granular detail.

camelot may be ancient history. but it's a chapter that continues to fascinate people. for young congressman joe kennedy of massachusetts, it's a living legacy, one that he tries every day to live up to. >> you're what, 36 now? >> yeah. >> you'll be just about the same age as jfk when he ran? >> a little bit younger. i got no plans on that. >> reporter: maybe not. but presidential politics is in his blood. >> this was a print that was given to me by my aunt. >> robert kennedy was your grandfather, john kennedy your great uncle. is it hard to walk in those shoes? >> you don't walk in those shoes. how do you possibly live up to what giants and titans have done? >> reporter: he wasn't happy about the release of these files, understandably so, it's too personal. >> i absolutely tend toward disclosure of government documents. that being said, it would have been nice if there were some communication between this administration and members of our family.

>> reporter: as for the rest, the documents the cia now promises no document will be withheld in full. we've waited more than half a century, what's six months more? i'm david wright for "nightline" in new york. and next, president trump welcomes the children of the white house press corps into the oval office for halloween. that cough doesn't sound so good. well i think you sound great. move over. easy booger man. take mucinex dm. it'll take care of your cough. fine! i'll text you in 4 hours when your cough returns. one pill lasts 12 hours, so... looks like i'm good all night. ah! david, please, listen. still not coughing. not fair you guys! waffles are my favorite! ah! why take 4-hour cough medicine? just one mucinex lasts 12 hours. start the relief. ditch the misery. let's end this.

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♪ that one. this. that one. ♪ ♪

finally tonight, it was an early halloween treat for the children of the white house press corps. not only did they get to meet the president, they finally got to hear him pay their parents a compliment. >> how does the press treat you? i'll bet you get treated better by the press than anybody in the world, right? huh? i think so. anyway, well, congratulations, folks. you did a good job. you did a good job. here you did a good job. i wouldn't say you did it very well here. but really beautiful children.

>> thank you for watching abc news. and as always, we're online at abcnews.com and our "nightline" facebook page. thanks for the company, america. have a great weekend. good night.

accused of obstructing justice to theat the fbinuclear war, and of violating the constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth. if that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? i'm tom steyer, and like you, i'm a citizen who knows it's up to us to do something. it's why i'm funding this effort to raise our voices together