Sherri Papini’s ex-husband reflects on living under her hoax, years after learning about her phony kidnap plot

The ex-husband of the California mom who faked her own abduction and lied about it for years during their marriage recently spoke with ABC News for the first time since her arrest.

Keith Papini revealed new details about moving on after his former wife masterminded her own disappearance, inflicted numerous injuries on herself, lied to authorities and falsely claimed that she was kidnapped by two Hispanic women.

“She took advantage of everybody’s kindness and so many people were hurt,” Keith Papini said in a June 2024 interview with ABC News’ Matt Gutman. “She made us all believe that her story was true … Every single day, she committed to the lie.”

A "20/20" episode airing on June 28 at 9 p.m. ET revisits the six-year saga and how investigators were able to unravel Sherri Papini's lies.

Sherri Papini, a then 34-year-old mother of two, went missing on Nov. 2, 2016, while out for a jog in her Redding, California, neighborhood. A massive search was launched for her, with community and family members pitching in to find the missing mom.

On Nov. 24, 2016, Thanksgiving Day, Sherri Papini was found on a highway about 146 miles away from Redding, with injuries covering her body, including a Bible verse branded on her shoulder.

Recorded police interviews with Sherri Papini in the hours after her return showed she was reluctant to speak with investigators, claiming that her abductors told her she was going to be trafficked to someone in law enforcement.

"Two women. There was an older one and a younger one," Sherri Papini told police. "They were Hispanic. They spoke Spanish a lot."

Given her reticence to speak, officers had her husband sit in with her during one interview and ask the questions about what happened.

Detectives later returned for a second interview, but Sherri Papini remained reluctant to open up to them.

"I don't know you guys. I don't know if you're in my corner. I know my husband, I know my husband's in my corner," she said during that interview with investigators.

She claimed that two Latina women abducted her at gunpoint and took her in an SUV to a location where she was kept restrained with chains.

Police had very little to work with aside from that vague description of the suspects.

Former Shasta County Sheriff's Deputy Capt. Pat Kropholler told ABC News that investigators noticed several red flags in the story Sherri Papini told about her abduction and abuse. For instance, she had different explanations as to why she was branded by her abductors.

After her return, investigators collected Papini's clothing so that it could be tested for any biological material.

Investigators were eventually able to determine that DNA belonging to a male was present on her clothing, but when that DNA was searched in the criminal database, no positive hits were returned.

While searching her phone records, investigators also were able to determine that in the days prior to her abduction, Sherri Papini was in touch with several men.

Police also began to question Papini's friends and an ex-husband who spoke about her tendency to lie and run away.

"That is how she used to deal with things as a child. When things got hard, she would just run away," Asia Coleman, one of her friends, told the Shasta County Sheriff's Department during an interview.

"There were some infidelity issues in her background that even Keith had told us about," Kropholler told ABC News.

Investigators made little progress in the case until 2020, when, with the help of genetic genealogy, that DNA that had been on her clothing was finally matched to James Reyes, an ex-boyfriend of Sherri Papini.

When the police questioned him, Reyes initially said that he had not spoken to Sherri Papini in years, but he eventually revealed that she had asked him for help.

Detectives told ABC News that Sherri Papini lied to Reyes, telling him she was being abused by her husband Keith.

"She was trying to get away from her husband," Reyes told investigators, unaware that Sherri's allegations against Keith were unfounded.

Reyes added that he didn't know anything about the two Hispanic women who Sherri Papini said held her at gunpoint and was unaware of her scheme.

He revealed that Papini suggested he rent a car and pick her up. They then traveled nine hours south to Costa Mesa, where she stayed at his apartment with him for weeks. Reyes also revealed that the bruises, cuts and burns on her body were largely self-inflicted, and that she also asked him to hurt her. Reyes recounted to investigators how Sherri Papini asked him to brand her.

"I'm like, 'oh, this is probably going to hurt.' I mean, I've never done this," Reyes told investigators.

Reyes said things changed on Thanksgiving, when Sherri Papini told Reyes that she missed her kids, and wanted to go home.

Now that investigators were armed with James Reyes' account of the supposed kidnapping, they called Sherri Papini and her husband in again for questioning.

In August 2020, the police questioned Sherri Papini again with her husband by her side and told her that they matched the DNA to Reyes. They also told her that Reyes had shared everything he knew.

Sherri Papini at first deflected questions about Reyes' story, maintaining that she did flirt with other men, and stuck to her story that it was two women who abducted her.

"I don't understand; there's no way this is James. He loves me," she told investigators.

Keith Papini was shocked at the revelations and, at one point, walked out of the room.

"I'm the idiot husband who stayed around the whole time," he told investigators.

Keith Papini would eventually file for divorce in 2022.

Reflecting on the saga with his former wife, Keith Papini said he felt “there was always something that wasn’t right.” He now said he had doubts, even when first encountering Sherri Papini in the hospital.

“When I pulled back the curtain and I saw her and I saw the look in her eyes, I felt in that moment that she was lying,” Keith Papini said in his 2024 interview with Gutman. “And it wasn't until I went to her to embrace her and I could just see the amount of injuries, bruises, burns to her body. And it was a shock to me. And I remember thinking how horrible of me to even think that she could've done this to herself."

Keith Papini also said Sherri Papini’s allegations of abuse “hurt and they are painful.” He denied ever physically or mentally abusing his former wife.

In March 2022, Sherri Papini was arrested and charged with making false statements and mail fraud. She owned up to her lies in April 2022, pleading guilty to one count of making false statements and one count of mail fraud.

In her statement to the judge before sentencing, Sherri Papini said she was willing to accept responsibility for her actions.

"I am not choosing to stay frozen like I was in 2016. I am choosing to commit to healing the parts of myself that were so very broken," she said.

Sherri Papini was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. She served 10 months and was released from prison in August 2023. She remains on supervised release.

ABC News contacted Sherri Papini and her ex-boyfriend Reyes for comment but neither responded at time of publication. Reyes passed a polygraph test and was never charged with a crime in connection to the Papini case.

Prosecutors have said that Sherri Papini's hoax kidnapping cost taxpayers more than $300,000 in wasted resources, including money she collected from the California Victim's Compensation Board and Social Security Disability income. U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb ordered Sherri Papini to pay $309,000 in restitution.

The Papinis’ story is now the subject of a three-part docuseries, “Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini,” on Hulu, a division of Disney, ABC’s parent company. Keith Papini said he hopes viewers can see “the level of dedication that Sherri put into tricking everyone.”

Keith Papini said he and Sherri Papini are still working through a custody agreement for their children, now 11 and 9, and that the entire ordeal still haunts him.

“I think it’s always going to be there, but we do want to move past it,” Keith Papini said. “I do want to provide my children an amazing childhood, but I think it’ll always be there.”

ABC News’ Tim Gorin, Glenn Ruppel, Sunny Antrim, Sean Dooley, MaryEllen Resendez-Schwisow, Ivan Pereira and Brian Mezerski contributed to this report.