The ex-husband of kidnapping faker Sherri Papini has revealed further details about their relationship and how he thought her lie did not make any sense.
Sherri Papini disappeared while out for a jog a mile from her house on November 2, 2016 before resurfacing three weeks later on Thanksgiving.
But the 41-year-old mother was jailed in 2022 for the Gone Girl-style plot after it became clear she lied to police and gave herself injuries in an elaborate ruse to match the faux abduction.
Now Keith Papini has opened up about his marriage with Sherri and the moment he questioned his wife’s claims when she returned following her disappearance.
‘There were many things that just didn’t add up, but I wanted to support my wife,’ Keith told Fox News Digital.
‘If you can’t trust your wife, who can you trust? I just kept saying to myself, “I’m going to do everything for my wife.”
‘I was led to believe that she was happy with us and that she didn’t want any other life with anyone else.
‘I just wanted to support her at all times that we were together. With that being said… I’ll never know all of the truth.’
‘I never felt unloved by her,’ he admitted though of their time together before the hoax. ‘She would tell me how happy she was in our marriage and how we would never get a divorce.’
Keith insisted he and Sherri were in love and had enjoyed a happy marriage up until her disappearance.
‘She would write songs, she would write me notes constantly,’ he said. ‘She would tell me how happy she was in our marriage and how we would never get a divorce.
‘She was just so in love with me, and I would repeat those things back to her.’
He added: ‘There was no part of me that ever thought she would fake injuries and have this whole hoax to the extent that she did.
‘I could not foresee that. But I did think we had a happy life. We do have amazing children. I was blindsided.’
Sherri’s scheme captivated the nation and has been the center of true crime documentaries and podcasts.
She was reported missing in November 2016 when she suddenly vanished after going out for a jog.
Sherri, who was 34 at the time, appeared ‘dazed, battered and bruised’ three weeks later on Thanksgiving about 145 miles away from where had been last seen.
Keith continues to look back and question why his ex-wife faked her own kidnapping.
‘I do believe the core thing would be attention,’ he said. ‘I think she likes it when people feel for her and look at her as a victim… at anyone’s cost.
‘To be honest, I don’t think she’s capable of seeing what she did and the lives that it affected, the ripple effect, how much pain she caused so many people.
‘I always think about all the people [who tried to help] during those 22 days [she was missing].
‘All the kids that probably weren’t allowed to ride their bikes anymore, all the women that probably didn’t go jogging anymore… I don’t think she has any understanding of how detrimental it was.’
He tried to shield his children from the possibility that Sherri’s kidnappers could come back for them.
‘We lived in a sense of fear that somebody was after us,’ Keith added.
‘If the kids were outside playing, and they saw anybody, it was almost like they were taught to run inside.
‘There’s a part of me that knows that those six years of their childhood were almost stolen away by Sherri.’
He filed for divorce from her in April 2022 and sought to maintain custody of their two children following her release from prison.
‘This wasn’t just some lie she told that ended when she got arrested,’ Keith said.
‘This was a lie she told every day, every minute… Maybe being a stay-at-home mom wasn’t fulfilling her… She has never apologized to me or the children… She acts like it never existed.’
There were claims from Sherri in a new Hulu docuseries titled Perfect Wife that Keith had been an abusive and controlling husband, which he strongly denies.
He said: ‘She was saying I was beating her and that the cops wouldn’t do anything.
‘[When it came to] our mutual friends… it was a totally different story… It was hurtful to hear those things at the moment because I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating.
‘I’m fighting for my wife’s life. And to know that she was going around saying these… untrue things, it’s hurtful… But you can see a pattern here.’
Officers discovered Sherri with a chain around her waist, multiple injuries and a brand on her shoulder.
Over the following weeks she crafted an elaborate ruse, telling officers that she had been abducted by two Hispanic women who had beaten and branded her.
But her story unraveled when officers found her ex-boyfriend’s DNA on her clothes in 2020 and discovered she had been holed up with him the whole time she had been pretending to be missing.
It emerged that her injuries were all self-inflicted to back-up the kidnapping story.
Keith spent the time she was missing desperately searching for her while also being treated as a suspect in her disappearance.
After her trial and imprisonment, he was given full custody of the children.
Sherri is currently battling for more access to their children Tyler and Violet while Keith wants her to undertake a psychological evaluation and be barred from seeing them unsupervised.
She is also demanding he hand over an array of items from the marital home in Redding, among them ‘Grandpa’s truck, an inflatable water slide, a leaf blower and a smart TV’.
An expense declaration obtained by DailyMail.com shows that the petite blonde claims to have an income of just $1,000-a-month, half of which she says she pays out in rent.
She was previously awarded just $10,000 in her divorce and ordered to pay half of a $3,000 debt she racked up on a BestBuy credit card after she was arrested in April 2022.
Last week, exclusive DailyMail.com photos showed Sherri locked in an embrace with her auto dealer boyfriend Shawn Hibdon, 49, following an amorous encounter in the backseat of her white Jeep SUV in a Starbucks parking lot in Orland, California, on Monday.
After an hour in the car with Hibdon, who arrived separately in a gray Hyundai with distinctive dealer plates, she emerged giggling and dressed in a pink tank and flashy tie-dye leggings.
The pair then enjoyed a smooch – having first checked the parking lot to make sure no one was watching – before leaving in different cars.
Hibdon has been single since losing his wife Brittany unexpectedly at the age of 36 in September 2021 and is a single father to their two sons Houston, 16, and Westley, 14.
A source told DailyMail.com the relationship began prior to her 10-month stretch at FCI Victorville, with the pair meeting in Chico – a town located an hour south of Sherri’s former home in Redding.
She briefly lived in the area after being thrown out by her ex following her arrest. Her sister Sheila also resides in the town.