Just because Sherri Papini has finally identified a new person responsible for her alleged kidnapping doesn’t mean the FBI agents who worked on her case believe it wasn’t a hoax.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from Investigation Discovery’s Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, a government official — who was involved when Papini, 42, was originally investigated — spoke out about her new claims.
“When you tell the truth, there are corroborations that bind that story together. When you are making stuff up, it is impossible sometimes to prove or disprove,” he explained. “It is hard to corroborate Sherri’s claims.” (Among Papini’s new claims are that she was kidnapped by an ex-boyfriend who she spoke to leading up to the incident.)
The FBI agent questioned why it took her so long to try to clear her name, adding, “She had four years where she could have said, ‘I was having marital problems so that is why I had these events take place.’ She never said that.”
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In response, an offscreen producer asked whether Papini “could be the girl who cried wolf.”
“What if any part of these things really did happen to her?” the producer noted. “Not at her direction but against her will and without her consent?”
The agent wasn’t quick to believe Papini’s new story. “If she is the girl who cried wolf then with her background she is going to need a picture of the wolf, paw prints from the wolf, confession both verbal and written from the wolf in order to corroborate her version of the wolf actually coming to get her,” he said. “[This is] based upon the problems with her credibility and her veracity.”
Papini disappeared in November 2016 after going for a jog in her California neighborhood. She resurfaced 22 days later and claimed she had been beaten and branded by captors.
Papini was ultimately arrested in 2022 for orchestrating her abduction. She pleaded guilty to a federal judge later that year and was sentenced to 18 months in jail for committing mail fraud and lying to a federal officer about being kidnapped.
“[I am] so sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered because of my story and those who worked so hard to try to help me,” Papini said in a statement at the time about how “deeply ashamed” she was of her actions. “I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done.”
Papini was also ordered to pay more than $300,000 in restitution for losses incurred by the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was released from prison in August 2023.
In 2024, Sherri’s experience was addressed in Hulu’s Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini where her now-ex-husband, Keith Papini, and several of her family members and loved ones participated in the docuseries.
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Investigation Discovery’s Caught in the Lie, meanwhile, allowed Sherri to share her side of the story, claiming her ex-boyfriend James Reyes was allegedly responsible for her kidnapping. Reyes has disputed the claims when interviewed by government officials, which is when he claimed Sherri asked to stay with him after leaving her husband.
Reyes was never officially charged in connection to Sherri’s kidnapping and once again denied her allegations in the ID doc. Sherri refused to change her story when interviewed for Caught in the Lie.
“I wanted to leave,” she claimed. “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.”
Sherri continued: “James had let me off the chain. 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 airs on Investigation Discovery Monday, May 26, and Tuesday, May 27, at 9 pm ET. Episodes will also be available to stream on Max.
