Why Did Sherri Papini Fake Her Abduction: Sherri Papini Case

Keith Papini, Sherri Papini’s husband, gets home from his job on 2nd November 2015, and he couldn’t find his kids or his wife at home. He calls up the daycare, and the daycare says that Sherri didn’t come to pick up the kids.

Keith goes driving out to where he knows she went jogging. He used the “Find My iPhone” feature to locate her phone and found it over a mailbox area a mile away from home, along with Sherri’s phone and headset.

Keith immediately knew that there was foul play. Keith called 911. Word spread out immediately about someone kidnapping mothers, so women were terrified to go out for a jog by themselves.

22 days later, on November 22nd, 2016, Sherri was found walking down Interstate 5. This was around 150 miles away from her house, which is a 2-hour drive. A woman ended up picking her up. She said that Sherri was taking off her shirt and flagging down vehicles to stop and pick her up. She had a chain around her waist, was beaten, battered, and bruised. She had a broken nose, black eyes, her hair was cut, she had lost weight, she was 87 pounds, she was emaciated like she had been starved, and she was branded on one of her shoulders like her skin had been burnt. She was rattled.

The woman who found her got in contact with law enforcement, which then contacted Keith, her husband. Keith came and met her. When Sherri got in contact with law enforcement and was eventually taken to the hospital, she didn’t want to talk to the police. At this point, the FBI was involved. Sherri described two Hispanic women pulling over in a van, putting a pillowcase over her head, taking her inside the van, and tying her up. She said that she fell asleep in the van and didn’t know where she was taken. Then she was taken to a place where she was beaten and really went through it. She also said that these women told her the police were involved and that if she ever told them, her kids would be hurt, and they would come back to get her. Because of that, she had PTSD.

She also got about $30,000 from the victim’s advocate fund, which was for her to go to therapy. Sherri did not do any interviews with the media or press.

She had male and female DNA present on her, but neither matched her nor her husband. The FBI ran the samples through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and found no matches. Later on, in March, the DNA matched one of her ex-boyfriends, James Reyes, who confirmed that Papini stayed with him at his residence in Southern California during the time she was allegedly kidnapped.

She was arrested for falsifying a police report on a federal level as well as mail fraud, and she faces up to 25 years.

After 6 years, according to the criminal report, they said it was all traced back to some DNA found on Sherri’s underwear. The DNA matched her ex-boyfriend, James Reyes. When investigators asked James Reyes, he said that Sherri asked him to pick her up, and they had been communicating via prepaid phone for a while before this. She also said that her husband was putting hands on her and treating her badly. According to James Reyes, she mailed a letter to him with instructions on where to pick her up. He accordingly picked her up and gave her a place to stay.

James said that he went to work, and Sherri stayed at the house in a room with no windows or access to the outside world. She didn’t go anywhere the whole time she was missing. He said that he noticed she was not eating or eating very little. James used to bring her food or sometimes groceries, and she would cook but ate only small portions. She told him it was because she wanted to lose weight. He also said that she asked him to hit her, but he refused. She also asked him to go to Hobby Lobby to get a wood burner, and he branded her shoulder. After 3 weeks, she told him she was missing her kids and needed to go home. This is when he drove her to the location (Interstate 5).

The woman who picked her up did multiple interviews and talked to the media. She said, “How can people say that she made this up? She didn’t make this up. There is no way that she would’ve made this up.” She further said, “I saw her, she was in distress.”

Allegedly, Sherri planned this entire thing out.

Police also investigated another ex-boyfriend other than James, and he allegedly said that she would make up stories all the time and that if she wasn’t getting enough attention, she would make elaborate stories. Allegedly, Sherri has faked a kidnapping before.

James also told the police that Sherri cut her own hair and he also saw her hurting herself, making bruises on her arms. She did all this at different times while she was there.

On March 3, 2022, Sherri Papini was arrested by the FBI, accused of lying to federal agents and faking her kidnapping to spend time with her ex-boyfriend, away from her husband and family. In April 2022, six weeks after her arrest, Papini pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento to one count of making false statements and one count of mail fraud as part of a plea agreement. She admitted to orchestrating the hoax. Thirty-three other counts of mail fraud were dropped as part of the plea agreement. Her husband filed for divorce after her guilty plea.

In the September 2022 sentencing hearing, she apologized and accepted full responsibility. In sentencing submissions, her attorney cited past mental health issues as contributors to her actions. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $309,902, including restitution to cover the multi-state police investigation that the hoax prompted. Papini was released from prison in August 2023 and placed in a halfway house.