Sherri Papini, the mom convicted of faking her own kidnapping in a bizarre hoax reminiscent of the movie Gone Girl, has changed her story again and now insists she was abducted.
The mother of two vanished while on a run near her home in Redding, California, in November 2016 and miraculously emerged 22 days later on Thanksgiving, battered and emaciated, claiming to have been held captive by two armed Hispanic women.
Her seemingly remarkable reappearance stunned America and made headlines around the world, but a six-year FBI investigation revealed an earth-shattering truth: there was no kidnapping – Papini plotted and staged the entire ordeal to conceal an affair she was having with her ex-boyfriend, James Reyes.
She admitted to concocting the elaborate ruse in a plea deal in 2022, and promised to spend the rest of her life trying to ‘make amends’.
Three years on, Papini, 42, is again attempting to rewrite history in an Investigation Discovery docuseries, Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, which airs on May 26.
In the series, she stunningly accuses her ex Reyes of kidnapping and sexually abusing her over three weeks inside his home in Costa Mesa, California.
She also claims she never named Reyes as her alleged attacker because she was terrified of him and worried her husband, Keith Papini, would take her children away if he discovered the truth.
In a bid to prove her unhinged story she even submits to a polygraph test, but the results are far from a home run.
‘I told law enforcement I was abducted by two Hispanic women, which wasn’t true. I was abducted by my ex-boyfriend, who kept me captive for 22 days,’ Papini sensationally claims in the second episode.
‘I lied about James’ identity for several reasons. First and foremost, I was in danger; I was terrified of James, and keeping his identity concealed was keeping me safe… on top of that, I couldn’t tell my husband I was having an affair.’
Sherri Papini attempts to rewrite her already contentious history in the new documentary series, Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, which is due to air on ID and HBO Max on May 26
The married mom-of-two vanished for 22 days in November 2016. Her husband Keith (right) believed she’d been abducted – but really she was with her ex-boyfriend hundreds of miles away
Papini showcases the branding scar she claims to have suffered at the hands of Reyes. The assortment of letters was believed to relate to a bible verse
According to Papini’s latest version of events, she was in an emotional affair with Reyes in the months before she disappeared.
While her marriage to Keith appeared picture-perfect, she says behind closed doors she was ‘dying inside’.
She accused Keith of being emotionally abusive and controlling, claims he has denied.
When she was caught texting another man early in their marriage in 2011, Keith asked her to sign a post-nuptial agreement that would give him ‘everything’ if she stayed again.
Papini says got their marriage back on track.
They had two children, and everything was fine until 2016, when she got laid off from her job at AT&T and no longer had access to her own finances.
‘The dynamic of our marriage shifted,’ says Papini. ‘He had the job, so he was able to go and do whatever he wanted to do, and I was the one who stayed home with the kids.’
Portraying the image of a neglected wife, Papini claims Keith starved her of affection and drove her to seek the attention of other men.
She rekindled contact with Reyes – who she dated as a teenager in the early 2000s – in 2015 after she learned of a death in his family.
It was Papini who initiated the contact.
James Reyes (above) denied all of Papini’s claims in a statement issued via his attorney. He has never been charged with any wrongdoing in the case
The fake abductors: Sketches composed by investigators from Papini’s sham recollections are seen above. She claims made the image of one the captors (right) to resemble Reyes’ mom – who is later revealed to be Irish, not Hispanic as Papini claims
Keith Papini made several tearful appeals for his wife’s safe return during the 22 days she was supposedly missing
She denied her affair with Reyes was sexual and insisted it was only emotional.
To conceal their tryst, Papini claims she and Reyes each bought pre-paid burner phones.
Authorities would later accuse Papini of using those same burner phones to plan her elaborate hoax with Reyes’ help, but she denied that was the case.
‘The truth is I was concealing an affair from my husband – my husband who was threatening to take everything away from me if I was found out to be having any involvement [with another person],’ Papini claims.
She says Reyes’ developed deeper feelings the longer their text relationship went on, but they weren’t reciprocated.
When Papini decided to break it off, she claims Reyes threatened to drive up to Redding and ‘blow s*** up’ by telling Keith.
They eventually agreed to meet in Redding for what was supposed to be a ‘goodbye’.
On the morning of November 2, 2016, Papini says she texted Reyes to let him know she was ‘going out for a run’ and would arrange a place to meet after.
She left home, and claims to have been startled by a car pulling up sharply in front of her that was driven by Reyes.
Papini said she dropped her phone in shock, and as she bent down to pick it back up, everything went black.
Papini had been caught by Keith texting other men years before she disappeared. She rekindled with her old-boyfriend Reyes (right) in 2015
Papini claims Reyes abducted her while she was out running after she tried to put a stop to their digital affair
Her husband Keith later found her phone by the road and called the police.
The headphones, which were still attached, appeared to have been carefully wound around the phone, and several of Papini’s hairs were caught in the wires.
Investigators deemed the placement of the phone to be suspicious, as if it had been intentionally laid on the ground rather than dropped during a struggle.
Papini’s remarks about her phone in the documentary differ from what she told Keith after returning home in 2016.
The interviewer reminds her she previously claimed to have purposefully pulled her hair out and placed her phone and earbuds on the ground to leave a clue that she’d been abducted.
Asked which version is true, Papini talks in circles.
The exchange is one of many inconsistent statements from Papini during the documentary.
Still, she claims to have no memory of getting into Reyes’ car, nor of the subsequent 10-hour drive from Redding to Costa Mesa.
‘I wish I could just say I don’t f**king remember getting into the car, and you’re trying to get there and trying to get this moment that I can’t tell you,’ she tearfully snaps at the interviewer.
One of the next things Papini says she remembers is waking outside of Reyes’ apartment and him leading her inside by the arm.
‘He tried to kiss me and I refused,’ claims Papini. ‘Then I woke up naked in a room with boards on the windows.’
Papini agrees to submit to a polygraph test in a bid to prove her latest allegations, but the outcome is anything but a home run
In the documentary, Papini accuses Keith of being emotionally abusive and controlling
Papini also claims Reyes punched her in the face and knocked her unconscious when she tried to escape the room.
When she came around, she claims she woke up attached to a pole in a closet by a chain around her waist.
Over the next 22 days, Papini claims she was beaten, assaulted, drugged, and sexually abused by Reyes, often with masochistic acts.
‘My pain got him off,’ she alleges. ‘The more pain he could inflict, the easier it was for him.
‘How can you consent to that when you’re being chained to a wall and starved?’
Reyes has denied all of Papini’s claims through his attorney and has never been charged with any crimes relating to her disappearance.
His version of what happened during Papini’s infamous absence is the version of events accepted as truth by authorities.
He told the FBI Papini contacted him out of the blue in 2015 and told him she wanted to run away with him, because Keith was abusive and she needed to get away, court records show.
On the day of her disappearance, Reyes drove to Redding and picked Papini up in a rental car, he said.
When at his home in Costa Mesa, Reyes said Papini asked him to place boards over the window of the room she was staying in and locked herself inside for hours on end, often refusing to eat.
After Papini eventually decided she was going to return home, Reyes claimed she began inflicting injuries on herself, burning her arms, striking herself in the face, and even instructed him to brand her with a biblical passage on her right shoulder using a wood-burning tool from Hobby Lobby.
He told police he came home from work one day to find she’d cut off all of her hair.
Reyes’ version of what happened during Papini’s 22-day absence is the version of events accepted as truth by authorities
Papini claimed she was too afraid to tell husband Keith about what she claims really happened to her
On Nov. 24, 2016, an emaciated Papini was discovered wandering down a road 150 miles from Redding in Woodside, California, with a broken nose, her hair hacked off, and restraints around her wrists and ankles.
She told investigators she’d been held captive and abused by two Hispanic women.
Asked in the documentary why she invented two Hispanic female captors, rather than identifying Reyes as her attacker as she alleges, Papini bizarrely states that she was too afraid that Reyes would come after her, and she hoped the ruse would help lead cops to his door on their own.
‘I couldn’t say it was James because I was scared to tell the truth about what he did to me,’ Papini states with a tearless cry.
‘I said [Hispanic women] because James’ mom is Hispanic and I was trying to give them breadcrumbs to lead them to who did this. It was the best that I could do.’
Papini further claims to have created one of the sketches of her fake abductors in the image of Reyes’ mom.
But in a stunning twist, the documentary crew later reveals that a private investigator had been digging into Reyes’ family and found that his mom isn’t even Hispanic – she’s Irish.
‘Hm, okay,’ responds Papini with a shake of her head, before backtracking: ‘I’ve met her twice… it had very little to do with his mother and her ethnicity. It was about trying to alert them to his identity without saying his name.
‘Quite frankly, I didn’t give a f**k if she’s Hispanic or not.’
Papini was heralded as a ‘super mom’ when she was first reported missing. Keith said he had no doubt she’d been abducted because he didn’t believe she’d leave her kids
Sherri and Keith are currently locked in a custody battle over their two children, who are now in their early teens
Papini said she also never told Keith about her abductor’s true alleged identity, because if he discovered she’d had another texting affair she knew he’d leave her and seek full custody of their children, which he eventually did.
In the series, Papini agrees to undergo a polygraph test to attempt to prove her claims against Reyes.
She is only asked a handful of questions, and the results are largely inconclusive.
Reyes, meanwhile, underwent a polygraph in 2020 and passed on every question he was asked.
He refused to talk on camera for the documentary.
Reflecting on the outcome of her results, Papini asks the interviewer: ‘Do you think this film is going to do more harm than good for me?’
Not even Papini’s parents appear to buy into her latest yarn, telling the crew: ‘No, it wasn’t a kidnapping,’ she just wanted out of an unhappy marriage.
Papini has a well-documented history of making false accusations.
In 2003, her mom Loretta Graeff, contacted local police to report that her daughter had been harming herself and falsely attributing the injuries to her mother.
Her ex-boyfriends and acquaintances have previously described her as a habitual liar. One ex recounted that she would fabricate stories without apparent reason, such as claiming to be an avid surfer.
Her father and sister have also accused Papini of burglarizing their homes.
Papini’s parents say they don’t believe their daughter was kidnapped – she just wanted to get out of an unhappy marriage
The release of Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie comes within months of a Keith Papini-led documentary series that aired on Hulu.
Papini said she felt compelled to share her story on screen because she was ‘sick of living the lie’ and wanted to dispel long-standing notions that she is a ‘master manipulator.’
Sherri and Keith Papini are currently locked in a custody battle over their two children, who are now both in their early teens.
Having spent years supporting Sherri in the face of mounting skepticism, Keith filed for divorce two days after she confessed to staging her kidnapping in April 2022.
She was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to federal investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors, and walked free in August 2023.
The case has been likened to the plot of the 2014 movie Gone Girl, in which the lead character stages her own abduction to spite her husband.
Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie will premiere across two nights on May 26 and May 27 from 9-11PM ET/PT on ID and HBO Max.