The Sherri Papini Hoax: The Lying, The Confession, and The Aftermath (Part 2)

Welcome back for Part 2 of the Sherri Papini story, picking up right after her dramatic reappearance. Outside the hospital, media attention exploded, with paparazzi following the family's car and reporters knocking on their door. The family retreated to a secluded log cabin in the mountains to escape the chaos, but behind the scenes, investigators were relentlessly digging into the truth. We discuss Sherri's multiple emotional interviews with police, which she would only sit for with her husband, Keith, in the room. The investigation ultimately uncovered a stunning truth: Sherri Papini's abduction was a total fabrication, staged with an ex-boyfriend. This episode covers the federal charges, her tearful confession, her prison sentence, and the final aftermath of the elaborate hoax that fooled a nation.

Check-out bonus episodes up on Spotify and Apple podcast now!

Get new episodes a day early and ad free, plus chat episodes at ⁠Patreon.com/momsandmysteriespodcast⁠ 

Check-out ⁠Moms and Mysteries⁠ to find links to our tiktok, youtube, twitter, instagram and more. 

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome back to the Moms and Mysteries podcast. We are getting into part two of our Sherry Papini episode. If you missed part one, go back and find it on the feed. Uh, it was posted today as well. And now we're just going to dive right into part two where we left off. Here we go. So outside the hospital walls, media attention was exploding when Sheri first went missing.

Keith had taken to every media outlet he could get on. He wanted Sheri's face on every screen and wanted the whole world looking for her. But now it was really all too much. It. Paparazzi was following their car. Reporters knocked on their front door, and the family really couldn't go anywhere without being photographed.

A friend offered the papini a secluded log cabin in the mountains to get away from all of it, and they accepted the offer. The Papini family went dark for several months. They didn't leave the cabin, they didn't do interviews, and they hardly [00:01:00] engaged with the outside world at all. To onlookers it looked like the family was focused on healing.

Behind the scenes investigators were still digging into what happened and looking for answers. In the days following her return, Sherry sat for multiple interviews with police, but she would only talk to them with her husband in the room. On November 28th and 29th, she gave two interviews. In the first one she was emotional and crying throughout much of it as she described what she remembered about the day she was taken.

She struggled to recall timelines, locations, and details about the way certain events unfolded, but investigators reassured her that this was normal and that trauma could really do that. They asked her to try and picture the scenario from above as if she were watching it from a bird's eye view. At that point, it seemed like her memories started to become more clear.

Meanwhile, a local blogger named Tim Scarborough became one of the first vocal critics of Sherry's story. He pointed out how strange it was that her [00:02:00] abduction took place in broad daylight on a street with an. Site of five different houses, yet nobody saw or heard a thing. Surveillance footage was found from the morning Sherry resurfaced that showed her running through a parking lot with her arms clearly swinging freely and completely unrestrained.

But when officers found her, her arms were bound. These inconsistencies raised even more questions, and Tim Scarborough started to suspect that Sherri was lying. He also speculated that her husband, Keith, may have been involved, or at least knew more than he was letting on, and Keith was well aware of these rumors, and he just kind of tried to tune out all that extra noise.

Keith gave the police full access to his phone and Sherry's, and after looking over both of them, he was cleared. But the biggest question of all was who did the unknown male DNA found on Sherry's underwear belonged to? And that question still wouldn't be answered for a little while longer. In the months after Sherry returned home, her life became defined by fear.[00:03:00] 

She slept with all the lights on, and she was triggered by loud noises, unfamiliar faces, and even certain smells. Sherry would particularly start spiraling anytime she encountered anything related to Latin culture, which is actually just so infuriating the more the story goes on. Oh yeah. Sherry stopped driving and wouldn't eat unless Keith or her sister Sheila made the food, and even then she had to watch them prepare it for her.

She said that her captors drugged her, so she couldn't trust anything that came from outside of her immediate circle. Keith did all he could to protect his wife, including installing security cameras around the couple's home. He pinned blankets over every window and lived in constant anxiety that someone might come back, not just for Sherry, but for their children.

Sherry started therapy, which Keith also went with her to twice a week, and Sheila even attended some of these therapy sessions and described watching Sherry curl up into a ball and cry as she worked through one memory after another. Privately though Keith was also starting to question [00:04:00] some things. At one point he even confided in Sheri's therapist that sometimes he didn't believe Sheri was telling the full truth about what happened in those 22 days.

She's therapist tried to reassure Keith that Sheri's story had never changed and he pointed out the severity of her injuries, which seemed insane for someone to have inflicted on themselves, but still Keith wasn't so sure. He admitted that he actually could see Sheri hurting herself like that. And also to the therapist.

Yeah, she changed quite a few of these details. Uh, yeah. Even up until this point, she's, she's changed quite a few and she will change it so much more. So, years earlier, Sherry had shown Keith two Crescent shaped scars on her back and told him that an ex-boyfriend named James had cut her with two knives.

But her childhood friend Jennifer, heard a different story about the scars. She said that Sherry told her the scars had come from her father who had pinned her down and sliced her with an exacto knife. Eventually though. Sheri admitted that she had given herself scars. Keith also knew that [00:05:00] his wife had a history of manipulation, but he also believed that she was more fragile than ever.

When Sherri returned, she referred to herself as a different person and even called herself Keith's second wife, and said she was incapable of lying after what she'd been through. Keith really didn't know what to believe, but he knew that challenging her version of events and leaving her now would only hurt her more.

In a therapy session, the idea for Sherri to write a book to organize her memories came up. She agreed and she started writing her story, which she titled 22 Days In the book, she gave her objector's nicknames, and these are nicknames that we're not going to share here. Keith said that writing the book was part of Sherri's healing process.

The emotional toll continued to bleed into every aspect of their lives. Sheri often broke down in front of the kids, which Keith didn't like. Their home, which had once been bright and normal, was now a bunker filled with paranoia and emotional distress. To make matters worse, nobody still really knew [00:06:00] exactly what happened during those 22 days, and we have more to get into somehow after One quick break to hear word from this week's sponsors.

So before the break, we broke down the story that Sherri Papini told investigators after she was found, beaten, starved, and branded. 22 days after she vanished, investigators were still trying to put together the truth about what really happened. As doubts began to grow in the community, and even within Sherri's own household, her husband Keith, supported her publicly, but in private, he feared that Sherry was being dishonest.

In the midst of public scrutiny, Sherry tried to move forward with the help of therapy and even writing a book, but authorities were still digging into exactly what happened in the case of Sherry's alleged abduction and captivity. Even his doubts swirled though Keith remained focused on one thing, finding the people who took his wife In the documentary Perfect Wife, he talks about the ways their entire family had changed.

He said their kids were traumatized and his life had been turned upside down. [00:07:00] He was determined to help the FBI catch the people who were responsible. Keith even sat down with Sherry and helped her create a sketch of the room where she was being held. He researched tables online until he found one that actually matched the description of this table with a fake marble surface, which is something she referenced.

Keith passed along every new detail Sherry shared with him to the FBI. Meanwhile, Sherry continued to be fearful of the police. In March of 2017, she gave another interview, but this time with a forensic interviewer from the FBI. Sheri immediately said she couldn't trust the woman. She was scared, and she was still convinced the police might somehow be involved.

Despite the tension, Sheri kept offering up new details, but many times they really just didn't match previous versions of her story. At the end of the interview, Sherry asked a question that surprised everyone. Did they ever figure out what it says? On my back, she said referring to the brand on her back.

She said she had tried to look at it in photos and thought it might say [00:08:00] Exodus, but she couldn't make out the numbers. She said she tried to read a passage in the Bible that she thought it might be related to, but it didn't really make any sense. Exodus is a book in the Bible that's like. Plagues, um, different things that like you wouldn't really think like, I think I said this in the, uh, the documentary one that we talked about, but it's like revelation.

You'd expect revelation on somebody's back. Exodus is just not one of the books of the Bible that would make a lick of sense. But a few weeks later on March 31st, Keith called the FBI with more updates. Sherry had remembered more details about the room she was held in. Now she was saying the walls were half covered with something like beadboard paneling with drywall above it.

She said the carpet was orange and shaggy. They drew up new diagrams that included the chaining device that Sheri said was in the closet. In June of 2017, Keith reported two incidents where Sheri had completely shut down. The first time was at a Dick's Sporting Goods in Oregon. They had wandered into the firearm section and Sheri [00:09:00] spotted a black Ruger revolver.

She pointed it out to Keith and said, that's the gun they used, and then she just froze. The second incident was during a cosmetic treatment with a plastic surgeon to help repair the burns on her arm. But when she smelled the burned hair from the laser, she shut down again, and the treatment had to be stopped to Keith.

These moments were proof that the trauma was real, but to the FBI, they just seemed like more pieces to a puzzle that wasn not quite fitting together. After all the sketches, all the memories and all these emotional triggers, they still didn't have any leads. That month. Sherri agreed to help the FBI try to identify her captors and she looked at a photo array and gave general descriptions of the two women.

The details were oddly specific. Sherri said the older woman was a few inches taller than her and had what she said were fat fingers, smooth skin and coffee breath. She said she wore her hair in a braid or a ponytail. The younger woman was shorter, muscular, and [00:10:00] had curly hair and wide hips. She wore hoop earrings and had hairy arms.

I feel like she's just trying to be mildly offensive to both a hundred percent these fake women. Yeah, that's what I was kind of saying, uh, before I'm like the just. Everything is offensive. Like whenever she talks about like the women and, um, and whenever you realize, uh, something's later on in the story, you're like, wait a minute.

Like you didn't have to say all that or act like all that at all. Sheri did say that both women smelled like laundry detergent and they always appeared clean. Sheri went so far as to find reference photos online to show the police images of people with similar skin conditions and examples of the types of masks the women wore.

The FBI revised the sketches based on Sheri's new recollection, and Sheri approved them for public release. What followed was not a flood of helpful tips, but instead a flood of calls reporting random Latina women for absolutely nothing. This is all given, given Susan Smith from back in the nineties, the lady whose.

Said that her two sons were kidnapped [00:11:00] by a black man at a, at a stop sign. And that ended up being, obviously she did it, but it was like a whole thing. And that seems like about as helpful as this is being that, uh, Sherri's saying now. Right. So the FBI did quickly become concerned that the release of these sketches could trigger racial profiling or even much worse within the FBI.

Some agents were growing more and more uneasy with Sherry's story and then they found something else. MySpace blog post titled Keep Walking was written by Sherry Graf, and that again was Sherry's maiden name. The writer described going up in Shasta Lake and being bullied in high school by a group of Latino girls.

One passage read, quote. I used to come home in tears because I was getting suspended from school all the time for defending myself against the Latinos. The chief problem was that I was drug free, white, and proud of my blood and heritage. This really irked a group of Latino girls, which would constantly rag and attack me.

The writer also bragged about a [00:12:00] fight where she broke another girl's nose and split her eyebrow. The writer of the blog closed the post with this disgusting line. Being white is more than just being aware of my skin. If standing behind skinheads who are always around in spirit as well and having pride for my country.

Quote. Okay. The days of MySpace were a while, but I never ran across. This is insane. So gross. So when investigators asked Sherry about this blog, she said she didn't remember having a MySpace account, but she did admit that she had seen the post before and had even hired an attorney in 2017 to try and get it taken down.

Wow. That's. That's tough. Sherry, she claimed that someone else must have written it under her name, but insisted the blog did not reflect her personal views. Hmm. Okay. Unfortunately, for her, the Post had a photo of her on it, so she wasn't very convincing. Keith had also seen the post and said that Sherry had denied writing it and claimed it was a cruel joke that someone played on her.

But now in light of the racially charged [00:13:00] descriptions of her supposed abductors, the FB, I couldn't ignore it. I'd like to hear from that attorney as well. Yeah. How come you weren't able to take it down if it wasn't her? Right, because he couldn't in good faith, take her money when all he had to do was say, log in and delete it.

A hundred percent. Yeah. On October 16th, Keith and Sheri met with the FBI again, and they were shown two mugshots and several Facebook photos of possible suspects. Sheri didn't identify anyone, but she did say that one of the women's eyebrows looked kind of like her younger abductors. This wasn't exactly a breakthrough, but Sheri did share more details that day.

She said that during her first shower in captivity, she begged the younger woman to let her go, but the older woman passed by and hissed at her. Then the younger woman allegedly told Sherry they were selling her and that the buyer was a cop. Sherry also said that the large SUVs, like Suburbans or Tahoes, made her physically sick to look at, and she believed the car she was taken in [00:14:00] had a rear hatch and was possibly an SUV.

During the meeting, Keith shared a photo of a cut on she's foot from the day she was found. It was the same foot she claimed was injured when she attacked one of the captors in the bathroom, but there was just one problem. The wound in the photo didn't match the dramatic story Sherri originally told.

Keith then took another look at it and he realized that the police were right. Something actually didn't really fit about the whole thing. The foot wasn't dripping with blood like Sheri had claimed, and it just didn't really appear to be as serious. Sheri admitted that she did exaggerate the story, but the truth is that she, you know.

Actually had never seen those injury photos before. And then once she saw them, she really had no choice but to try and backtrack, and this is of course not a huge moment in the investigation, but it was still very telling as time went on. Sheri continued to supposedly remember new details that she would share with the FBI on March 16th, 2018, almost a year and a half after the supposed [00:15:00] kidnapping.

Sheri told the FBI that she recalled something important during a therapy session. The burns on her arm, she said, had not come from a branding iron, but instead from heated silverware that her abductors, you know, I guess had heated up like a knife or something and then placed it against her skin. But what was even crazier is that Sherry told the FBI, she believed she has the exact same kind of silverware at her house.

Wow. Yeah, so Sherry said that she was out of town on a trip and had poor cell reception. Like while she's telling them about this silverware thing, she says, you know, I'm calling from out of town. I'm on a trip. I don't have good cell reception, but as soon as I get home I'm gonna send you a photo of the matching.

Matching utensil. Yeah. So a few days later she texted the FBIA photo of a spoon and wrote. I don't recall seeing anything other than the shine, but now that we look closer, you can see the first spot. She touched it to my skin when I jerked away, and that it appears to [00:16:00] be drag marks. Question mark the second when I flinched and the deep mark when she held my arm and pressed it in there and held it there.

So just like the rest of Sheri's story, this is somehow like very vague and oddly specific at the exact same time. Unreal. Literally. So for years, Sherry's story captivated the public and consumed the investigators, but the case remained unsolved. That is until a crucial scientific lead quietly cracked everything wide open.

On September 26th, 2019, investigators took a new approach. They submitted the unknown male DNA, originally recovered from Sherry's underwear for a familiar DNA search, hoping to find someone genetically related to the person who left the sample behind. In March of 2020, the results were in, A man was flagged as a possible relative of the DNA contributor.

This man had two sons. One of the man's sons was James, who just happened to be Sherry's ex-fiance. At this point, the pieces started to fall [00:17:00] into place and things started to add up. Sherri and James had been close since they were teenagers, and at one point they had gotten engaged, but they split up in 2006 and hadn't spoken for years.

Until 2015, nobody actually knew that Sherri had quietly reconnected with James. So the FBI began investigating James and found some odd overlaps. He had briefly been connected to a property owned by Sherry's parents, and he and Sherry had access to a joint a OL email account. They also found a Facebook photo from James' brother that showed a coffee table that looked suspiciously like the one Sherry described, laying on when she was branded.

In the summer of 2020, agents went to James' home and collected items from his trash can, including a bottle of honest Honey green tea. The items were sent for testing and the results were definitive. The DNA on the bottle matched the unknown male DNA found on Sherry's underwear. The story Sherry had been telling for years about two [00:18:00] masked women being chained up in a closet and supposedly being sold to a police officer.

All of it was unraveled, and the FBI was more than ready to confront the truth. On August 10th, 2020, nearly four years after Sheri's high profile disappearance, the FBI sat down with James and the case was finally about to be cracked wide open. From the start. James didn't hesitate to admit that he helped Sheri run away.

According to him, it was all Sheri's idea. There were never any mass abductors, no chains and no trafficking ring. Just a woman who wanted out of her life and enlisted an old flame to help her do it. James said that Sheri contacted him with an urgent request. She claimed that her husband, Keith, was physically and sexually abusing her, and the police were doing nothing to help her.

She claimed that she had filed reports, but nobody believed her, and she was just desperate to disappear. James believed Sherri was in real danger, so he agreed to help and said he genuinely thought he was just being a good friend [00:19:00] and possibly even saving Sherry's life. He said they first reconnected in 2015 after he found a box of Sherry's old belongings, including photos and mementos, and he sent this box to Sherry's parents' house.

Shortly after that, Sherry got in touch with him and one thing led to another, and eventually Sherry proposed this escape plan. They started talking through prepaid phones. Eventually Sherry sent James a care package while he was recovering from a hospital stay, and inside was a piece of paper with the location that she wanted to be picked up.

James followed the instructions. He drove to Redding, stopped at the specified location and picked Sherry up on the side of the road. There were, as we said, no masks, no weapons, no SUV, and definitely no Latina women. When authorities asked James if there were any other women involved, James laughed it off and said, no.

He didn't even know any Latinas. James told police on October 31st, 2016, he asked a friend to rent a car for him, but never explained why it was a dark colored [00:20:00] Dodge Challenger, and by November 2nd, James was on his way to riding in it. James stopped by Trader Joe's and Starbucks to pass the time while he waited for Sherry's instructions.

Eventually, Sherry texted him the pickup location. When James pulled up to the road, she approached the car and climbed into the backseat without saying a word. James drove nearly 600 miles to Costa Mesa, only stopping for a few quick things along the way while Sherry stayed quiet and slept for most of the trip.

Occasionally she would mention her kids and her concern for them once they got to James' house. Sheri didn't leave, not even once. She asked James to buy her some basic clothes like sweatpants, socks, and t-shirts from stores like Target, TJ Maxx or Ross During the day, James went to work while Sheri stayed inside.

She chose to sleep in a room with limited window exposure, and James believed she did that on purpose to isolate herself further. The house had two bedrooms and James slept on the couch. He said there was no sort of [00:21:00] romantic reunion. It was just Sheri quietly existing in the man's house, completely cut off from the rest of the world.

And then the most striking details came to light the closet in the room where Sheri stayed, had a poll running through it, just like the one she described to the FBI in her story. Investigators confirmed that James' Closet matched the unique design of the one Sheri claimed to have been chained up inside of.

James also said that Sheri requested he board up the windows a few days after she got there. She said that she wanted the room to be dark. Every detail of the house, including the bathroom and the layout matched the house that Sheri described in her abduction narrative. James said that Sherri started to deliberately restrict her food and would only eat small amounts because he believed she was intentionally trying to lose weight.

One day he came home from work and saw that Sherry had cut her own hair. He said he didn't know what she did it with, but it happened early in her stay and things started to spiral into something much darker from there. According to James, all of Sherry's injuries, [00:22:00] the bruises, the burns, the fractured nose, all of them were self-inflicted.

He said she started hurting herself shortly before she planned to leave and even asked for his help in creating some of the injuries. Though he was adamant that he never directly put his hands on her. He said she would hit herself, and James would sometimes help in ways that felt more detached, such as holding out a hockey stick while Sherry ran face first into it, which is what fractured her nose.

I can't imagine. It just seems to go against all logic. Like most people can't do that to themselves. Like, you're not supposed to be able to do that. You're not supposed to be able to run face first into something and like without flinching. Um, yeah. That's not, not slowing down. Right. Yeah. I don't even have words to describe.

Disturbing. Yes. Very disturbing. James also said that he would use the same hockey stick to apply pressure to Sheri's back or push her into a wall at her request. And on one occasion she asked him to hit a hockey puck off of her leg, so he complied. James said he didn't know why Sheri wanted to [00:23:00] hurt herself like this, but it all seemed to ramp up as the end of her stay approached.

At some point, Sherry told James to purchase a Woodburn tool from Hobby Lobby, and very specifically said she wanted a small plugin tool with interchangeable metal letters. James bought the item in cash and took it home where Sherry declared that James was going to use it to brand her. She lifted her shirt and told him what phrase to brand and he complied.

James said Sherry never flinched or complained, but he was nervous about doing it wrong or hurting her, and he even bought her burn cream to help afterward. James said the branding took place within the first week of Sheri's arrival. When it was done, Sheri told James to throw the tool away, and so he did.

Investigators would later end up finding Sheri's Pinterest account, and they saw that she had a secret board labeled gift ideas, and that board had pictures of different Woodburn tools on it. Did she ask an attorney to take that down because it wasn't actually her Pinterest board? Goodness. So during your time at [00:24:00] James' house, Sherry avoided contact with the outside world.

James didn't have a tv, but Sheri had a phone and followed the news of her disappearance, so she was very aware of how her abduction was being portrayed. At one point, Sheri developed a rash on her arms, and James bought multiple creams to help, but nothing worked. James wondered if he and Sheri might reconnect romantically, but he insisted that nothing sexual happened between them during those 22 days.

Just before Thanksgiving, Sherry told James she missed her kids and wanted to go home, and James admitted that he was bummed about her decision and hoped they would rekindle their relationship, but Sherry had made up her mind. She told James to help her stage her return. She said she needed zip ties, a chain and other items to make it look like she had been held captive.

James bought some of the supplies at Ace Hardware and other items came from his personal stash at home. James asked a friend to rent a car again. This time it was a white Mitsubishi [00:25:00] Outlander, and then they drove over seven hours back to Reding. If I was his friend, I'd be like, rent your own dang car.

Why are you asking me? That's so wild to me. So before leaving Sherry badged and discarded anything that could identify her, including items she used at James' house. As it got closer, James dropped her off along a remote road near an orchard. There were no houses or lights nearby. Sherry had a black prepaid smartphone, but she had tossed it out the window on their drive.

She also had a bag with her that contained the restraints. She would later be found in. She Sherry used the restraints to bind her own wrist and ankles before attempting to flag down help on the side of the highway. After he dropped Sheri off, James drove straight to San Pedro and attended Thanksgiving lunch at his aunt's house, and then he returned the rental car the next day while Sheri was hiding out with James, his cousin, cousin's spouse, and his mother knew that she was there.

But James had explained that Sheri was fleeing an abusive marriage. [00:26:00] The cousin who lived across the street saw Sherry twice. Once through a window and once when the cousin entered James' house unexpectedly. And Sherry ran and hid actually both times that she was spotted. James's cousin also shared that Sheri had asked James to punch her in the face, but James refused to do it.

Instead, Sheri hurt herself by slamming her head into the bathtub and bathroom floor, all in an effort to make the story of her abduction seem more believable. By the time James confessed his role in Sheri's disappearance, investigators had a mountain of evidence already to back up his claims. Though he admitted to helping Sheri run away, he insisted that he did it to help her and believed he was doing the right thing.

It wasn't until he saw the news and learned that Sheri staged an abduction complete with masked captors and chains, that James realized how serious the situation had become. He told the FBI, he didn't know he could get in trouble for his involvement, but he decided that if authorities ever did come to him, he wouldn't lie.

He never came forward on his own, but he also never tried to cover [00:27:00] anything up either. He also said he didn't know there were any monetary rewards involved in Sherri's disappearance until after she had already left his house. James said that he had not heard from Sherri since the day he dropped her off.

The investigators believed everything James told them. He was able to describe specific injuries and events that had not been released to the public, and his story did match the phone records, travel logs, and even the mileage on those rental cars. Records showed that he and Sherry were in contact 29 times between December of 2015 and March of 2016, and that contact continued during the time she was missing.

On August 13th, 2020, investigators sat down with Sherry for another interview. Keith was there, kind of like he always was, and at this time things were going pretty well for the family. He was working from home due to the COVID outbreak, which made Sherry feel more at ease. Though she still struggled with anxiety, especially because as she claimed face masks were a trigger for her, but Keith said they were making progress.[00:28:00] 

However, the FBI warned Sherry that lying to federal agents is a crime. And that it was time to come clean and tell the truth. Sheri did not heed this warning and had said she continued to stick to her lies. Investigators showed her photos of James' house in hopes that it would rattle Sheri, but she just said that it looked pretty effing similar to where she was held captive, but she didn't admit to actually having been to that specific place.

Once the agents told her that they were showing her pictures of the house where she'd stayed for 22 days, she reacted as though she was stunned. They asked if she'd like to have Keith step outside while they questioned her further. Instead, Sherry asked them for privacy so she could talk to Keith alone.

And Keith, you know, when they were sitting together, urges her to tell the truth and admits that she's not making any sense even to him, and he was getting scared. He said, quote. So you need to tell me what's going on immediately. Sheri though clung to her story and claimed the [00:29:00] police were just effing with him, and that she didn't want the woman who took her to get in trouble because according to her, that woman had let her go.

Sheri Papini is a saint. I mean, 'cause imagine being able to apol, I mean, being able to forgive somebody for Right. Keeping you from your family for 22 days. So when the FBI agents came back in, they told Sherry they weren't going to find any mysterious female captor because she didn't exist at that point.

The agents confronted her with the most damning evidence they had. The male DNA found in her underwear was a match to James. They told her then that they knew her entire abduction story was a lie. And Sherry broke down in tears, as you would assume she would, but she said there's no way it could have been James because he loves her.

What is going on here? I know she denies the accusations, but when she's shown phone records that proved otherwise, she was again reminded that lying to federal agents is a crime in itself. Eventually, Keith left the room and Sherry partially admitted to what [00:30:00] happened. She acknowledged that she had spoken to James A.

Little and admitted to talking to other men during work trips. But her cooperation really ended there. She said she wanted a lawyer, preferably the one she got on MySpace and she refused to continue speaking outside the interview room. An FBI Agent warned Keith that Sherri might try and hurt herself.

Keith expected Sherri to get arrested, but she wasn't taken into custody that day. After that bombshell interview, Keith was shaken to his core and he couldn't even stand to be around Sherry. He asked her to leave their home and she went to stay with his Aunt Pam for a little while, but she still did not drop the act.

Sherry continued to insist that the FBI was wrong and none of what they told Keith was true. Eventually Keith did let her come back home. He said he just felt so torn and he wondered what if, against all odds, Sherry was telling the truth. He didn't wanna just abandon her if she truly went through something terrible.

This part, [00:31:00] that part of it, like this back and forth that Keith is having, like throughout this whole thing, honestly, it just breaks my heart because I feel I, I feel like I am the same way. Like you always wanna see. You don't wanna believe like the worst thing possible in front of you. No. Like, you know, like it would be so hard to just like.

To think like, what if I did abandon my spouse? And it came out that like, you know, all of this was like a crazy, you know, thing. I don't, I just felt so bad for him, like having to sit there and be like, I don't know, you know, feel so torn like that. 'cause I feel like I, I understand like what that would feel like, you know, to feel like on one hand this doesn't make sense and the FBI literally has proof that you're lying.

Right? But on the other hand, like, you're my wife, the mother of my babies, like the person I thought I had like a whole life with. Like, there's no way that, like you could have set all this up as a hoax. How would you ever get Right your mentally to believe that, you know? I feel like until that person actually told you, it would be impossible to fully let that go, at least at this point.

Like he's just finding this stuff out, you know? Yeah. So [00:32:00] Sheri was able to twist the narrative just enough to convince Keith that James May have been involved, but that she had still been kidnapped. Like, yes, maybe it wasn't these two Latino women that I said, but I was still kidnapped. You know, she's still sticking with that part of the story.

So life slowly started to drift back to normal, and the investigation kind of went silent for a little while. It's worth noting that Keith had mentioned James's name very early in the investigation when he told Detective Wallace that James allegedly had abused Sherri in the past, some of Keith's friends had even been surveilling James's house themselves because they thought something was off, but they had never confronted James directly.

As investigators started to conclude that the kidnapping was all a hoax, the attention shifted toward the money trail. In the wake of Sherry's rescue, quote unquote, a GoFundMe had raised nearly $50,000 to support the family. And on December 6th, 2016, Keith had deposited $31,818 and 13 cents from that GoFundMe into his personal bank [00:33:00] account.

That same day, he wrote a check for $1,160 and 6 cents, and that check was made out to Sherry. It was learned that over $8,000 of the donations was used to pay off Keith's own credit cards, and Sherry used just over $3,000 to pay hers off. The rest of the money went to various personal and household expenses, not to the search effort as the donors had believed.

In addition to the GoFundMe, Sheri also received over $30,000 in compensation from the California Victim Compensation Board between 2017 and 2021. This money covered things like ambulance bills, therapy, and even new blinds for the house. Oh, wow, Sheri. Yeah. Sheri had to sign a paper under penalty of perjury, affirming that her account of being abducted at gunpoint and held for 22 days was true, correct, and complete.

But as we all know. It wasn't so collecting that money was a big fat crime On March 3rd, 2022, more than five years after Sherry's hoax the FBI finally made their move. Agent showed [00:34:00] up early that morning and began surveillance in Sherry's neighborhood at 7:00 AM waiting for her to leave the house. It wasn't until around two 30 that she finally stepped out.

Sheri drove to the Redding Music School where her kids had a piano lesson While she was there, agents staged ous and told her that someone had hit her car to lure her outside. When Sheri stepped outside the building, they told her she was under arrest. Sheri handed her phone and belongings to her young son and told him to call Keith, but it was actually the kid's piano teacher who used Sherry's phone to make that call.

She got Keith on the line and bluntly said quote. FBI got Sherry, you need to come get the kids. End quote, emphasis mine. I don't know what the emphasis was there, but that's in my head. That's how I read it. So Sherry was charged with two federal crimes, one for male fraud, for taking thousands of dollars in victim compensation and the other for making false statements.

Two federal investigators. Both charges carry severe penalties. Mail fraud is punishable [00:35:00] by up to 20 years in prison and fines. Reaching up to 250,000 and making false statements can mean up to five years in prison and similar fines. Keith was completely blindsided. He later said that Sherri had wanted to take a plea deal that would come with six months of house arrest and an ankle monitor, which Sherry said was really no big deal since she didn't like leaving the house anyway.

Keith really just could not wrap his brain around it. She insisted she was innocent for years, so why would she now wanna take a plea deal? Then? Keith was confronted with the truth by Sherri's own attorney who told him that Sherri had confessed to everything and admitted that her whole abduction was a staged planned hoax.

From the start. She admitted to following the coverage of her story from her burner foam while she was hiding out at James' house. Yikes. Mm-hmm. On April 12th, 2022, Sherry pleaded guilty to both charges against her as part of her sentence. She was ordered to serve 18 months in federal prison with the potential for a 54 day sentence reduction if she [00:36:00] demonstrated good behavior after serving one year.

Sherry was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $309,686 and 33 cents to the victims of her fraud, which included the California Victims Compensation Board, the US Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff's Office, and the FBI. At the sentencing hearing, Sherri addressed the court with a carefully worded apology that basically amounted to something along the lines of, yeah, I totally lied and screwed over a bunch of people, but I'm super sorry.

Thanks to everyone who supported me while I was being, you know, a complete dumpster fire, ready to move on, heal, not fake any more kidnappings, and never lie again. Mm-hmm. That's what she said. She's incapable of lying. So, you know, um, and I don't think a lot of people took her apology too seriously. In the years following Sherri's, fabricated abduction, those close to her have speculated on a wide range of theories to explain why in the heck she orchestrated such a bizarre, intricate, and damaging lie.

Sergeant Wallace [00:37:00] believed Sherri thought her life was slipping outta control, and she was desperate to reclaim some type of power. Her sister Sheila chalked it up to just craving attention. Keith who lived through the chaos firsthand, suspected that Sherri borrowed heavily from real life cases and stories such as that of Elizabeth Smart Tara Smith, and even the movie Gone Girl.

Keith filed for a divorce in April of 2022, and he was granted full custody of the children. Sherri was released from federal prison in September of 2023, after serving just under 11 months. She was sent to a halfway house in Sacramento, but the saga didn't end there. As we said earlier this year, 2025, a docuseries called Sherry Papini, caught in the lie, aired on investigation discovery and um, we are doing this docuseries on Patreon and for our subscribers this week.

So this is a really, really good one, even though we've just kind of have covered this whole story. The documentary has Sherry speaking for the first time publicly. Yeah. And um, [00:38:00] it really is a really good one to watch. So yeah, check that out for sure and check out our discussion on it. You'll be able to find that in the feed.

Um, this week and as of today, Keith and Sherry, if you were wondering where they're at, they are divorced and they're entangled in a custody battle. Sherry is desperately trying to reclaim more time with their kids. Of course, uh, you understand why Keith is kind of like. I want to protect the kids because I don't know what you're capable of.

So, and look what you've already done. Exactly. Um, so yeah, absolutely. A wild and crazy story. I have, we talked about this in one of the recordings we did of the, so, uh, bonus episodes. Um. About what we think about why Sheri did this. I genuinely believe that she is just the type of person who needs attention.

And she did this purely for attention because, and the reason I say that is because even after the fact, after she returned, she still used this fake experience to get sympathy for herself. Over and over again. She would have these fake mental breakdowns and these things that would trigger [00:39:00] her, that would lead to her husband or her family members, you know, coming and, you know, crowding around her and providing, comforting her.

Right. Exactly. And, oh, poor Sherry, she's been through this horrible thing. You know, let's all focus on Sherry and feel bad for Sherry. And it was just a way for her to get continued attention. Yeah. For something really big. And, and it was kind of like a thing like, well, don't you believe me? And like, you know, the people, like her husband was like, well, I.

Don't, but I want to. And like I feel bad if it, if you are not lying. And so just to put your family and a husband and kids through that, you know? Mm-hmm. To put your kids through not knowing where their mom is for three weeks and for what? Literally. For what? For attention. Yeah. 'cause there was no other motive.

It's not like she did it for money or for, you know. No, no. I feel like she wanted attention from everybody and that's what ended up happening. And then she got attention from the world and now she's lying. I mean, it's wild. The thing she says now, like where I don't know it. You hear from her attorney in this documentary.

[00:40:00] You hear from her psychiatrist, you hear from all these people who very much. Tend to like lean on her side. Not necessarily saying that everything she's saying is true, but like they very much got the, this is very heavily skewed to make her look better. Better. Right. I don't know that it worked at all.

No, no. I, not for me, no. And I do feel like, yeah, there was some, even the people who were allegedly being open and honest and speaking. Mm-hmm. You know, um, to tell the true story. There were some things I could tell were being held back and that were not set in the documentary and like, you know, like you said, there's, it was framed in a way to.

To, um, favor Sherry, but, um, I don't know that it had that effect. It was giving, uh, the Casey Anthony when she did that peacock thing. Yeah. I never watched it, but I remember seeing previews from it and it just made me so mad. But it felt very much like that, where it's like, well, if you knew the real story, you wouldn't feel this way, and you're like.

Why are you mad at me? You're the one that lied, not me, right? Yeah. I'm just watching this. Right, exactly. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for listening to these, uh, two, [00:41:00] two part episodes. I know it's a lot. I think we will probably won't have an, hopefully not another super long one for a little while.

We'll try not to anyway. But yeah, thank you guys so much for checking it out. And we will be back next week, same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. Bye.