With notorious kidnap hoaxer Sherri Papini telling a different story in the upcoming Investigation Discovery documentary Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, have those close to her come to a new understanding of what happened in 2016?
Papini, now 42, was out jogging near her Redding, California, home November 2 of that year when she seemingly vanished. The story caught media attention across the country, and the question “Where is Sherri?” gripped the nation. The answer didn’t arrive until 22 days later: Roughly 150 miles from Papini’s home, a motorist came across the mother of two walking in a parking lot. With a chain still around her waist, she was emaciated and marked by burns, bruises and even a brand on her right shoulder.
In the account she gave to authorities, two Hispanic women had kidnapped her at gunpoint. But not everything added up: Detectives found male DNA on her clothing that did not match her husband, Keith Papini. It was traced back to an ex-boyfriend, James Reyes. In an interview with investigators, he admitted she had been at his Costa Mesa, California, apartment for those three weeks, explaining that he thought he was helping her “run away” from an abusive marriage. Every bit of harm, he said, was inflicted at her request. “I didn’t kidnap her.”
Papini ultimately walked back her initial story of what happened, and in April 2022 she pled guilty to one count each of making false statements to a federal officer and mail fraud. She ultimately spent just under 11 months of an 18-month sentence in prison, getting out in 2023. She was also ordered to pay more than $300,000 for losses that were incurred during the extensive search for her.
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In the ID show, Papini again changes her narrative, and in an explosive accusation, points to Reyes as her captor. While acknowledging they’d been having an emotional affair and that she had plans to meet him November 2, she says she didn’t leave with him of her own free will: “There was no consent. And he still did it. The injuries that occurred. The bites on my inner and outer thigh. The footprint on my back. The brand. The melting of my skin. I can’t do that myself, and I am telling you, there was no consent.”
Papini’s therapist, Dr. Stephen Diggs, who specializes in the treatment of personality disorder, says he believes her, and a new polygraph adds partial support to her allegations, but what about her inner circle? Keep scrolling for reactions from her mother, father and others close to her.
Parents Richard and Loretta Graeff
Papini has been living with her parents, and their once-distant relationship has become a close one. Yet asked point-blank, “Do you feel like you know today what happened with Sherri?” her father, Richard Graeff, simply says, “You’d have to ask Sherri.”
Her mother is more definitive, pointing to the Papinis’ troubled relationship: “When James showed up and Sherri went with him, it wasn’t a kidnapping,” Loretta Graeff says. “It was more, ‘I want to have a little bit of happiness in my life because it’s been very, very hard.’ And again, I understand this completely because I had two marriages before Richard — I know all too well about that. She needed to get away from [Keith]. And she didn’t abandon her children. She would never do that. But no, it wasn’t a kidnapping.”
Loretta doesn’t absolve Reyes of all guilt, noting, “If they’re saying she did this on her own accord, I don’t think anybody could ever believe that she could orchestrate this by herself. I mean, this is totally unimaginable. How do you take a branding iron and brand your own back?”
Interjected her father, “I don’t think it turned out the way she planned.”
Back when signing her plea agreement admitting to the hoax, a “deeply ashamed” Papini wrote that she was “sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered.”
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Former Sister-in-Law Suzanne Papini
Keith’s sister, Suzanne Papini, is candid that she and her brother are not close — “I don’t know Keith very well as an adult” — and Sherri “felt like a sibling in a way that I hadn’t had before.” In fact, Suzanne took Sherri in at one point, and she’s visibly emotional when talking about her onetime sister-in-law. (Sherri and Keith divorced in May 2023.) “I don’t need to believe anyone to believe in them,” Suzanne says.
Regarding November 2, 2016, Suzanne staunchly supports the idea that Sherri was unaware what would happen that day. “I think that she thought that [she and James] were going to go on a daytime date. And he knew that she was going to be in that location because they were in communication,” Suzanne says. “But I saw her body. I saw her brokenness. She doesn’t have any sort of historical context of being into physically abusive sexual practices. And it’s also very problematic to me that if it were to be true that she orchestrated all of this, that even if she were to go to someone and say, “Hit me in the face” and “Drug me, starve me, burn me,” he’s never had to have a consequence?”
Reyes — who passed a polygraph during the investigation — was never charged with anything. In the new doc, an investigator briefly speaks with him in Nogales, Arizona, where Reyes says he’s been tending to his grandfather. Of the latest allegations, Reyes says he’s aware and “I’ll have to contact my lawyer in California.”
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Sister Sheila Koester
Papini’s older sister, Sheila Koester, supported her even after she recanted her initial story about being kidnapped. While Koester was not interviewed for Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, she did speak out about the case in Hulu’s Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini, from 2024.
“I wish she would have made different choices. I think she wasn’t getting the attention that she wanted with being at home. I think she just really wanted to feel important — she always has,” Koester explained. “I would say because of the trauma that she and I experienced as children, Sherri sought out that positive love and attention. She would exaggerate a lot and wasn’t honest a lot.”
Sheila was asked whether she “still had love” for Sherri, to which she replied, “I don’t think that will ever go away. When you have a sibling, you always love them. I still don’t know why she chose to do what she did. I don’t think I will ever know why.”
The four-hour 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.
