The California woman accused of orchestrating her own kidnapping hoax says she's finally ready to start telling the truth in this new ID docuseries

When Redding, California resident Keith Papini called first responders on Nov. 2, 2016, he feared the absolute worst. 

He had returned home from his job to find his two children alone in the house, and his wife Sherri Papini nowhere to be seen. After using the Find My app to track her location, Keith found Sherri’s phone lying in the dirt on the side of the road, headphones coiled around several strands of her hair. Local law enforcement brought in the FBI, and the search turned into a national media frenzy. Sherri was found 22 days later, starving, bruised, branded, and claiming to police she was abducted and held captive by two masked Hispanic women. But after a six-year investigation, officials had an alternative hypothesis, eventually accusing Sherri of manufacturing the kidnapping to run away with her former boyfriend, James Reyes. 

The claims skyrocketed the attention, painting Sherri as a real-life Gone Girl. She was convicted for mail fraud and making false statements to the FBI and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. After leaving prison, Sherri remained out of the public eye, refusing to comment even as her story was turned into a Lifetime original movie (Hoax: The Kidnapping of Sherri Papini) and the Hulu documentary Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini. But now, Sherri is speaking publicly for the first time since her disappearance about what she says really happened  nine years ago. In the new docuseries  Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, out May 26 and May 27 on ID and Max, Sherri tells her firsthand account of her experience — including the revelation that she did lie about her whereabouts, but was actually held against her will. 

“The story that the world thinks they know is that I am a master manipulator who has fooled everyone,” Sherri says in the opening moments of the docuseries. “The Sherri Papini that’s out there, it’s not me. She’s not real. I’ve gone from teenage sex worker to criminal mastermind to master manipulator. I poisoned my children. [I’m a] liar, cheater, whore. . . . I’m so f—ing tired of keeping the secret and living the lie. Now I get to tell the truth.”

Here’s five things we learned from Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie. 

According to Papini, she and her now ex-husband Keith had an incredibly toxic marriage. She claims he was often emotionally abusive, and controlled her finances, friendships, and even when she was allowed to speak in the home (Keith denied all of these allegations through an attorney statement in the docuseries.) 

Because of this tension, Sherri claims she started an emotional affair with a former boyfriend James Reyes. The two spoke often on burner phones, but never met up, she says. According to Sherri, when she went for a run that Nov. afternoon, Reyes pulled up and abducted her. 

“I remember waking up briefly in the back of the vehicle and not being able to even keep my eyes open,” Sherri says. “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.’”

Police interviewed Reyes during their investigation, who claimed that he picked up Sherri with consent and allowed her to stay at his house — where she planned her injuries and often refused to eat. (Reyes did not participate in the documentary, declined to comment to filmmakers, and has not been charged with any crimes.) But Sherri claims she was held against her will. 

Sherri’s ex-husband Keith and several members of her family participated in Hulu’s 2024 docuseries Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini. The series also included testimony from the case’s lead investigators and FBI officials. But according to Denise Farmer, the FBI’s lead investigator on Sherri’s case, ID’s docuseries is the first time investigators have been able to freely speak about the case. 

During previous interviews, they had public relations officers in the room to make sure they didn’t spill any sensitive techniques or confidential case files. This one is different because no FBI minders were present during any law enforcement interviews — allowing Farmer to speak in more detail to the ID team about the investigation and when they first began to suspect Sherri of lying. 

“Our work speaks for itself, but we don’t speak about our work. We’re silent professionals. We don’t wanna just tell the whole world how we investigate these cases,” Farmer says in the docuseries. “That’s just not something we’re gonna publish. This time is different, because I’m retired now.” 

Sherri was found on Thanksgiving day by a motorist near Interstate 5, 22 days after she disappeared. When police questioned her at the hospital, she claimed that she was abducted by two Hispanic women who kept their faces hidden behind masks. She kept this claim up throughout the investigation, even self-publishing a book about her time in captivity called 22 Days. In the book, she nicknamed the two women Smegma and Taint, and described several instances of being injured, beaten, and starved. 

Officials said she lied to keep the kidnapping hoax going, something that eventually led to her and Keith’s divorce. “To go back and watch the footage to see all the people that were affected, and knowing that she’s lying — not just lying; she’s watching videos of everyone search for her. All the signs, and knowing that her children are at home, and being OK with that? It’s painful, and it definitely separates into, this isn’t just a lie,” he told Rolling Stone in 2024. This was planned. So it’s very painful, and it really shows the level of manipulation and deceit that she put upon us.”

But in the docuseries, Sherri claims she lied when she was found because she was afraid of Reyes and that her husband would find out about her emotional affair with him. Sherri had signed a postnuptial agreement, which gave Keith a large portion of their funds if she ever cheated on him. 

“The truth is,” she says in the series, “I was concealing an affair from my husband, threatening to take everything from me if he found out that I was having any involvement [with another man].” 

Much of the trouble with Sherri’s case is her shifting story about what happened to her. During the investigation, Police could not find any record of the two women she claimed had kidnapped her. After speaking to Reyes, they found several people who corroborated the fact that Sherri was in his home. The investigation also confirmed that she and Reyes were in communication prior to her disappearance. 

Sherri confirms in the docuseries that she was speaking with Reyes, and even might have mentioned in passing a plan to meet up, but never consented to leaving. Her psychologist, Dr. Stephen Diggs, claims in the series that Sherri has self-defeating personality disorder, which makes her susceptible to pleasing behavior. Diggs says this could explain why Sherri kept communicating with Reyes and might have even agreed to meet up with him over the phone. In the docuseries, Sherri even tries to recreate her abduction, but says the exercise doesn’t jog any memories. 

“I was abducted,” she says.  “I don’t remember if I got into the car.” 

Sherri maintains that while she lied about many things, she is not lying about her interactions with Reyes. For the docuseries, Sherri passed a polygraph saying that she did not ask him to brand her. 

“The injuries that occurred, the bites on my thigh, the footprint on my back, the brand, the melting of my skin,” she says. “I am telling you there was no consent.”