After Sherri Papini went jogging November 2, 2016, and then didn’t return, her husband, Keith Papini, became a familiar face on the news during the media frenzy that followed.
“If she is listening, I want to say, ‘We are trying. We are trying the best we can, and I am sorry I’m not there,” he said in one heart-tugging interview, crying. “I’m doing everything I can, and I love you.” On Thanksgiving, Sherri was found 150 miles from home, bruised and burned, telling a horror story about having been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women.
Investigators pulled at some threads in her account, though. Male DNA on her clothing was traced back to an ex-boyfriend, James Reyes, leading to the revelation that Sherri had lied: She faked the abduction and spent those 22 days with him. (Reyes denied abducting her, saying he believed she was a “friend in need asking for help” escaping an abusive marriage. Every bit of harm, he said, was inflicted at her request.)
In the bombshell Investigation Discovery documentary Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, she changes her story and names Reyes as her kidnapper — not her coconspirator in a hoax. And she also speaks further about Keith. Keep scrolling for more on her troubled marriage, the ways she says her husband tried to control her and how she believes their kids were “stolen” by him.
Not-So-Perfect Couple
On the surface, he and the so-called supermom from Redding, California — who wed in 2009 — seemed to be a perfect couple, but rumors contradicted that: Friends and neighbors spoke of arguments, his need for control, her need for drama.
In the doc, Denise E. Farmer, the now-retired lead investigator for the FBI, talks about the disconnect. “As we found these stories that people have heard about Keith being this violent monster, we also found stories that pretty much everybody [Sherri had] been [with] in a relationship had [makes air quotes] ‘abused’ her: ‘he abused me,’ ‘he sexually abused me,’ ‘he beat me’ — whichever person she was talking about.”
Sherri, now 42, also confirms the reality behind the façade in Caught in the Lie: “Just because you can smile for a picture doesn’t mean that you’re not dying inside. Just because you look glossy on the outside doesn’t mean that that’s not what’s going on behind closed doors.” (Although Keith was not interviewed for the ID docuseries, in a statement via his lawyer, he denies any “allegations of severe abuse, manipulation and lying” made by Sherri, insisting that they are “false and disproven by a mountain of documentary evidence and objective, indisputable facts.”)
While Sherri acknowledges that both she and Keith behaved in ways that were “really immature” and sometimes “pretty toxic,” she describes the beginnings of their relationship as happy times. “I ran into Keith in town, and then we went on a date. And then it was like we were together every day since then. I loved him. We were each other’s first kiss in the seventh grade. There were beautiful moments in our marriage — beautiful, wonderful moments.”
Man in Charge
Some seemingly beautiful moments, she reveals, were not. She references being at a wedding expo during their engagement, and he shoots a video of her gushing about how he had come to surprise her. “But there’s, like, that background behind the curtain. He was following me and making sure that I was where I was supposed to be,” Sherri says now.
That behavior was common, she notes. “Keith was [a] ‘what are you wearing, who are you talking to, how long are you gonna be gone, did you check in, keep in touch with me every 10 seconds’ kind of situation.”
The problem was exacerbated following her layoff from AT&T in 2016, she says. “He had the job, so he was allowed to go and do whatever he wanted to do. I was the one that stayed home with the kids. And then it became, Keith is now in charge of my life, and he’s in charge of my social circle.”
She continues: “Slowly but surely, my social circle kept dwindling. At that time, Keith had instated a new rule that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him at night — like, I literally was a ghost. Or I would try to talk to him, and he would turn the TV up.”
According to Papini, much later, after her abduction (“I was a mess”), he took charge of her finances. “Keith decided… we’re going to file for disability. So, every single month, the Social Security disability would go into my checking account, and you would see a withdraw Zelle straight to Keith Papini — including the first deposit of $20,000,” she says. “No Starbucks, no gas, no clothes, no nothing. I had zero control over my finances. I used to come over and clean his aunt Pam’s house every once in a while because I didn’t have any access to money, so she would give me cash to clean her house.”
Looking Outside Her Vows
Sherri Pappini YouTube/Investigation Discovery
As she became increasingly unhappy, Sherri sought out the things she was missing from her marriage. “My emotional affairs were just about having someone that I could relate to, that I could talk to,” she explains. “It was not sexual.”
At one point, Keith caught her text-messaging another person, she recounts, and asked her to sign an extensive postnuptial agreement: “Keith had said if you cheat on me, if you step out in any way, if you do something that displeases me, I will get everything. I’ll leave you with nothing, and you will be worthless. His exact words were that I was going to end up living under a bridge.”
Despite the postnup, Sherri took her chances with Reyes, whom she’d dated back in 2003. “James was someone that was actually listening to me and hearing me, and that’s what I needed,” she explains. To keep their emotional affair secret, she acquired a burner phone — which she used to make plans to meet him that day in November.
Life After the Alleged Kidnapping
At the time Sherri was trying to focus on her kids and using EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) to treat her trauma, she describes Keith as vigilant for inconsistencies in her unraveling story. She says he was “waiting for me to trip up and waiting to catch me in a lie and waiting to punish me. Catching me in a lie was far more important than what actually happened to me.”
Papini ultimately walked back her kidnapping story, and in April 2022 she pled guilty to one count each of making false statements to a federal officer and mail fraud. Sentenced to 18 months in prison, she ended up serving 10 months. She was also ordered to pay restitution — more than $300,000 — to the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, for losses incurred by the lies she’d told.
The day before signing that deal, Keith found out from Sherri’s attorney, William Portanova, that she and Reyes had communicated via prepaid cell phones — and according to Sherri, her attorney said he was angry. “That is not something I’d ever told [Keith],” she comments. “I did not want him to find out that the abduction happened because it started with an emotional affair.” (Of course, Keith had also just learned that his wife was about to officially go public with her signed confession before being incarcerated.)
Keith came to see her at the home of his sister, Suzanne Papini, who’d taken Sherri in. In the new documentary, Sherri replays the conversation, which she had secretly recorded. He wanted full custody of their son and daughter and had brought documentation for her to sign giving up her parental rights. “If I feel like it’s not good for you to be around for whatever reason I deem as the sole person, I will exercise that right and say no, you are not allowed to come see them,” he said that day. “I don’t want to pressure you. If you don’t like it, then do not sign it.” He went on to say: “Your best bet is to sign that thing. If you go to court, you will lose and you will spend a lot of money. You are a master level of deception.”
Sherri comments in her new interview, “Just because you say it’s not a threat doesn’t make it true.”
He continued: “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to everyone. I’m crushed. Everybody in your life is going to be crushed. I’m simply telling you this is the nice way to do it. The other way is not gonna be nice. You have no idea what’s about to come your way.”
An Accusation of Abuse
In Hulu’s 2024 documentary Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini, Keith shares an anecdote about his daughter revealing a “trick Mommy used” — allowing the kids to inhale rubbing alcohol. According to Keith’s account, “Sherri would soak rags of alcohol and put it in a Ziploc bag. And tie a string so that they would continue to smell the fumes to make ’em not feel good so that she could take ’em to the doctor.”
Sherri addresses this in Caught in the Lie, saying that six weeks after their custody argument, CPS called with questions about her encouraging huffing. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard, and the allegation is that I poisoned my children.”
She explains that lots of moms use Vicks to help kids with a stuffy nose breathe, but “my kids have incredibly sensitive skin, so when I put Vicks on their skin, it rashes out. So, instead of that, I take essential oils and I put it on a cotton ball and I put it in a cloth bag and I wrap it around their neck. It’s loose. It’s obviously something that can be pulled off. I don’t let them sleep with it.”
After an investigation, a 2022 report indicated that the allegations were unfounded and “no safety threats were identified at this time.”
The doc shows a video she took of herself in her car outside the local post office, where, she says, she sent Keith a certified letter “to cease and desist these ridiculous child abuse allegations.”
She goes on a tear, adding: “They’re gonna see you, Keith. You cannot undo what you just did. My daughter has to live with that on the internet for the rest of her life. And so do you.”
Speaking now, she comments: “If you use critical thinking and you even look at the details of that ridiculous allegation, it doesn’t make sense to use my daughter and to curate a bulls–t allegation that scientifically doesn’t even hold up. He’s not protecting them, he’s using them. [With sarcasm] I thought I was the liar.”
The fact that Keith has custody of the kids rankles. “My children were not taken away from me. They were stolen by my ex-husband,” she asserts. “I have never been ruled as a threat or a danger to my children. My children were never taken by the court — they were taken by Keith. Before I went to prison, he filed an order to get 100 percent physical and legal custody, and it was granted because I was going into prison.”
These days, she continues, “I have phone calls every Sunday at a certain time, but he has a tendency to cancel them at the last minute or shift around the schedule. It’s been that way for almost two years now.”
A custody battle is ongoing in family court.
The four-hour Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie airs on Investigation Discovery Monday, May 26, and Tuesday, May 27, at 9 pm ET. Episodes will also be available to stream on Max.
