Papini and her husband, Keith Papini, met with Shasta County Sheriff’s Office investigators on August 13, 2020. Before her story came out, detectives asked if she wanted her husband to leave the room. “They’re asking you. They’re not asking me,” Keith Papini says as Sherri sits silently next to him. When Sherry didn’t answer, the two detectives got up and left, giving the pair a few minutes to decide with the camera still rolling. In hushed tones, Sherry is heard urgently telling her husband that she did not want the police to find her kidnappers. Papini claimed two “Hispanic women” kidnapped her on a jog near her home in Redding in November 2016. “I don’t want them to find her. I don’t want to press charges,” he says repeatedly. When asked by her visibly disappointed husband to explain why, Papini says: “Because he saved my life.” “You’re making no sense right now,” Keith Papini replies. “To the point where I’m afraid.” When the detectives returned to the room, they gave Sherry one last chance to get her husband out. He stayed and Sherry began to repeat her claim that she did not want her kidnapper to be found. “We won’t find her,” a detective replies. Then the dynamic changes. Detectives launched a play-by-play of how Sherri Papini faked her kidnapping by asking her ex-boyfriend James Reyes to pick her up in Redding and hide her in his Costa Mesa home. DNA found on Sherry’s body matched Reyes, who readily admitted to the plot when investigators tracked him down. “The DNA alone says it’s him and when we talked to him, confronted him with the DNA, he told us what happened,” says the detective. “He told us 100% what happened. He gave us details that no one else would know.” At this point, Sherri put her head in her hands, barely looking up for the rest of the interview. She alternates between repeating, “no, no,” and saying, “I don’t know,” with a wail as the detectives pressure her to tell the truth. Sherri Papini arrives in federal court for sentencing accompanied by her attorney, William Portanova, right, in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. Federal prosecutors are asking that she be sentenced to eight months in prison for faking her 2016 kidnapping (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press About 20 minutes into the interrogation, Keith Papini asks to leave. (In April, he filed for divorce and sole custody of their children, citing “the adverse effect of their mother’s bad reputation,” in court documents.) she made her test. “Why did I do that?” she cries at some point. “We’re trying to figure out why you did it too,” says a detective. “We’re trying to figure it all out.” Just before the video ends, Papini mutters, “I’m horrible.” “I don’t think you’re a horrible person, Sherry,” the detective replies. “I think things went a little sideways on you.” Sherri Papini was charged with lying to the FBI and fraud. On Monday, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. prosecutors had asked for only eight. He is due to report to prison in November.
