Kidnap Hoaxer Sherri Papini Has Changed Her Story: Inside Her New Bombshell Claims

Sherri Papini made nonstop headlines around the world in 2016 after disappearing on an afternoon jog near her home in Redding, Calif.

She then reappeared 22 days later, claiming that she’d been abducted, tortured, and even branded on the back by two mysterious masked Hispanic women.

Six years later, she was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after admitting that she lied to investigators and that her kidnapping was a hoax.

Now the 42-year-old divorced mother of two is back, speaking publicly for the first time in an explosive new four-part docuseries Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie — premiering on Investigation Discovery on May 26 and streaming on Max — to tell what she now says is the real story behind the scandal. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)

In the doc, Papini says she concocted her story about the two masked women in an effort to cover up an affair she was having with former boyfriend James Reyes because she feared what her now ex-husband Keith Papini would do if he found out about the relationship.

“The truth is,” she says, “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].” 

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She also now alleges that her former boyfriend snatched her after she had urged him to come to Redding because — unbeknownst to Reyes — she intended to end their long-distance romance. 

“I was abducted,” she says, insisting, “I don’t remember if I got into the car” before allegedly being driven away. 

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

In August 2020, DNA found on the clothes Sherri was wearing when she was recovered was traced to Reyes, who told FBI agents — and later passed a polygraph test — that Sherri had planned “everything.” Even the decision to use a wood-burning tool to brand her shoulder was Sherri’s idea, Reyes insisted, adding: “I didn’t kidnap her. She was just a friend in need asking for help. She was trying to get away from her husband.” 

Nine months after Sherri’s release from a federal prison in Victorville, Calif., Reyes is now being cast as the villain in her new version of events.

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In Caught in The Lie, she claims that the first thing she remembers after arriving at Reyes’ apartment in Costa Mesa, Calif., is waking up naked in a tiny room.

“I wanted to leave,” she says. “So I tried to pull one of the boards off the window and James came in and hit me in the face. And that’s the first bruise that I got . . . 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.”

Shortly before reappearing from her 22-day ordeal — after being found near a highway on-ramp 150 miles from her home in Redding — Sherri recalls having a hard talk with Reyes, who declined to comment on Sherri’s allegations, over dinner.

“James had let me off the chain,” she claims in the doc. “I said, my husband’s going to find me. He’s never going to stop looking for you . . . You need to let me go. 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.”

Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie will premiere across two nights on Monday, May 26, and Tuesday, May 27, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT on ID. Episodes will be available to stream on Max.