Sherri Papini, the California woman who pleaded guilty to faking her own abduction but who has since changed her story, claimed her “emotional affair” meant “prison was safer” than her then-husband finding out.
Papini told ABC News that she was afraid of what would happen if Keith Papini learned about her relationship with ex-boyfriend James Reyes.
“Prison was far safer than the consequences that I would suffer if my ex-husband found out I was having an emotional affair,” Papini claimed. “I’d prefer prison over telling Keith Papini that I was having an emotional affair.”
Papini claimed her then-husband was emotionally abusive, which he has denied, adding that she has a history of lying.
Initially, Papini claimed that two armed, masked Hispanic women had abducted her while she was out jogging in November 2016. She was tortured, branded, and kept chained in a bedroom, she claimed.
When Papini was found three weeks later, emaciated, her then-husband stood by her.
But authorities learned that her wounds were self-inflicted—some with the ex-boyfriend’s help—and that she had been hiding out with him in Southern California, claiming that Keith was “abusive.”
Yet in the four-part docuseries Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, Papini changed her story by claiming that it was Reyes who kidnapped her.
“I don’t remember if I got into the car” before Reyes drove away with her, she said.
“I remember waking up briefly in the back of the vehicle and not being able to even keep my eyes open,” she said, thinking to herself: “This is not where I’m supposed to be.”
“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,” she said.
Papini claimed that Reyes prevented her from escaping.
“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,” she said.
Reyes has previously denied Papini’s claims, and was never charged.
In 2022, Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to federal agents and mail fraud, but served a lesser sentence and was released in August 2023. She also had to pay more than $300,000 in restitution.
Keith Papini filed for divorce in April 2022, shortly after her guilty plea. They have two children together.
