Sherri Papini is changing her story in a big way, but does she have any credibility left to sell her new claim that her ex-boyfriend kidnapped her in 2016?
Papini was released from prison more than one year ago after serving 10 months of an 18-month sentence for falsely claiming two masked Hispanic women kidnapped and tortured her.
Papini disappeared on Nov. 2, 2016, after she had left her home to go for a jog in rural Redding, Calif. Keith Papini, her husband, reported her missing, and the whereabouts of the mother of two became a national story as neighbors and family members conducted exhaustive searches to find her. A GoFundMe account for the family raised more than $49,000.
Twenty-two days later, Sherri Papini resurfaced, 150 miles south of Redding, walking clumsily along a highway in the middle of the night. She was covered in bruises, burns and rashes and appeared emaciated.
Her once long blond locks had been cut off, and she had a chain around her waist and hose clamps around her wrists. Police said Papini had been branded on her right shoulder.
But it was all a hoax, Papini would later tell police. She had been staying the entire time at her boyfriend James Reyes’ apartment in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Now she’s changing her story again.
“The truth is,” she said, “I was concealing an affair from my husband, who (was) threatening to take everything from me if he found out that I was having any involvement (with another man).”
The other man, Reyes, was holding her against her will, she now claims. Papini’s shocking allegations will be featured in an upcoming documentary, “Sherri Papini — Caught in a Lie,” premiering May 26.
“I was abducted,” she insisted. “I remember waking up briefly in the back of the vehicle and not being able to even keep my eyes open. And then the next time I woke up was when he was getting me out of the vehicle to go inside, and it was dark. He had one hand underneath my arm trying to help me walk. And I just remember thinking, ‘This is not where I’m supposed to be.’”
“I’m supposed to be picking my kids up from day care. I am not supposed to be here,’” she continued. “The injuries that occurred… the bites on my thigh, the footprint on my back, the brand, the melting of my skin—I am telling you there was no consent.”
Papini claims Reyes kidnapped her after he discovered she intended to end their long-distance relationship. The two had been communicating for nearly a year prior but their romance never turned sexual, Papini insists.
“James was someone that was actually listening to me and hearing me, and that’s what I needed,” she said.
Papini said she woke up in a tiny room in Reyes’ apartment. She tried to escape, she said, pulling a board off the window, but Reyes stopped her, hitting her in the face.
“And that’s the first bruise that I got,” she said. “And after being knocked out and waking up, that’s when the chain was around my waist, secured with a padlock attached to a cable that was attached to a pole in the closet.”
Papini said she warned Reyes that her now-former husband would not give up until he found her.
“You need to let me go,” she recalling telling him. “He was like, ‘Well, there’s too much has happened.’ So it all came down to me. It all came down to my coverup, and that’s [when] I agreed to . . . make up that someone else did it.”
In April 2022, Papini pleaded guilty to felony charges of making false statements to federal agents and mail fraud. She was also ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution to multiple law enforcement associations.
There is little evidence about whether Papini’s third story is true. DNA found on the clothes Papini was wearing when she was recovered was traced to Reyes. He told FBI agents Papini had planned everything, including the decision to use a wood-burning tool to brand her shoulder.
“I didn’t kidnap her,” said Reyes, who passed a polygraph test administered by the FBI. “She was just a friend in need asking for help. She was trying to get away from her husband.”
Asked about her decision to identify two Hispanic women as her kidnappers, Papini claimed that one supposedly looked like James’ mother.
“I was trying to give them little breadcrumbs and trying to give them little clues of who was involved, without directly saying who was involved,” she said. “Doing a sketch of James’ mom was like trying to lead them to James without revealing James’ identity. It was the best that I could do.”
However, producers of docuseries hired a private investigator who discovered Reyes’ mom is Irish.
Keith Papini, her ex-husband who has full custody of the couple’s two children, said his former spouse has a tendency to stretch the truth.
“She definitely had a history of exaggerating,” he told People. “And I would say at this point, lying.”
Keith Papini said he didn’t find out about the kidnapping hoax until 2022, when she pleaded guilty.
“Even if she were to come out someday and do a book or magazine, I can assure you that whatever is in there is going to be what she thinks she should say to get whatever goal she’s after, but it will not be the truth,” he said.
