"It is not a symbol, but it was a message," Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said, referring to the wounds suffered by Sherri Papini.
He did not elaborate on the message but said it could be related to an attempt by her abductors to exert "power and control."
Bosenko said the 34-year-old woman's long blond hair was perhaps cut off in a bid by her "very sick" captors to humiliate and "wear her down."
The mother-of-two vanished on November 2 when she went for a jog near her home in a rural town in northern California.
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She was reported missing by her husband, Keith Papini, after he returned home from work and realized she had failed to pick up their two children from daycare.
The slight woman was found on the side of a road before dawn last Thursday after her captors dropped her off -- bound with restraints and a bag over her head -- about 150 miles (240 kilometers) from her home.
She used the bag to flag down a motorist and was taken to a hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.
Bosenko said investigators are looking for two Hispanic women armed with a handgun and driving a dark-colored SUV.
Keith Papini, who passed a polygraph test to rule him out as a suspect, said on Tuesday that his wife had been beaten badly by her captors and her face "was covered in bruises ranging from yellow to black."
He told the "Good Morning America" news show in a statement that the bridge of her nose was also broken and her emaciated body was covered with severe burns, red rashes and chain markings.
"My Sherri suffered tremendously, and all the visions swirling in your heads of her appearance, I assure you, are not as graphic and gruesome as the reality," he said.
He also denounced rumors that her abduction may have been fabricated.
"I understand people want the story, pictures, proof that this was not some sort of hoax, plan to gain money or some fabricated race war," he said in his statement. "I do not see a purpose in addressing each preposterous lie."
