A new documentary has been released on Hulu that narrates the 2016 hoax in which a woman from California pretended to be abducted and then disappeared. Keith Papini endured 22 agonizing days in the fall of 2016 while he awaited word about his wife’s news and held onto hope.
Sherri Papini disappeared from her Redding, California, home in 2016. She was found seriously injured near an expressway about three weeks later, claiming to have been kidnapped and tortured.
Keith Papini finally speaks on ex-wife Sherri Papini’s kidnapping hoax
Keith Papini revealed in a recent interview how his ex-wife had been lying to him for a long time. Papini told Today, “She made us all believe that her story was true. Every single day, she committed to the lie.”
Furthermore, he revealed that at first, he had questioned himself whether his ex-wife was telling the truth about being abducted, but he soon felt guilty for questioning her story.
Sherri Papini admits to faking her own kidnapping
Six years later, Papini acknowledged that she had staged her own kidnapping, following years of intensive investigation by the authorities that cost a significant amount of money. It turned out that she had been staying with an ex-boyfriend during the weeks she had been missing that November.
She had continued to lie even to her husband and their little son and daughter were among her closest family members. Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison after entering a guilty plea in April 2022 to one count of making false statements and one count of mail fraud.
Keith called Sherri a cunning manipulator who frequently exaggerates and lies, using her difficult upbringing as a justification, adding. “She told me she hadn’t done anything, and I trusted her. In the end, you believe that your life partner is the one person you can trust the most. However, I was mistaken.”
Keith on raising his kids as a single parent
Since being divorced, Keith is raising their two children, Tyler, 11, and Violet, 9, on his own. He is sharing his side of the story in Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini. Papini said, “I wanted to get the truth out there and really wanted to let everybody know how convincing Sherri was all those years and how I believed everything she was telling me.”
Keith spoke about moving forward in life, saying, “I try to be very positive. I want to move forward. I want to give my children the best possible childhood I can and just surround them with loving people and that’s my biggest goal right now.”
Keith and Sherri’s relationship
Keith Papini and Sherri Graeff shared their first kiss at a middle school in Redding when she was in the eighth grade and he was in the seventh. When Sherri’s family moved out of town in 2006, they lost contact with each other. Three years later, they got back in touch when she moved back. Keith who married Sherri in 2009, filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, on April 20, 2022.
