When Sherri Papini vanished from her Redding, California neighborhood in November 2016, Keith Papini led the search to find his wife — but even though she later returned and claimed to have been kidnapped, it was all a lie.
ABCKeith Papini, husband of Sherri Papini, sits down for an interview with ABC in 2024.
In 2016, Keith Papini’s wife, Sherri Papini, went missing while jogging in Redding, California. The disappearance led to a massive search effort that lasted three weeks as her family waited in agony for any news.
When Sherri reappeared, emaciated and injured, she claimed that she had been kidnapped and tortured by two Hispanic women. Keith stood by her throughout the ordeal, deeply shaken by the horrifying account his wife shared with the authorities.
However, in 2020, investigators discovered that Sherri had faked the entire kidnapping with the help of an ex-boyfriend, James Reyes. She had stayed at his apartment during the time she was missing and even harmed herself to make her story more believable. This revelation shocked Keith to his core.
After Sherri’s arrest in 2022 and her confession, Keith filed for divorce and sought full custody of their two children. Sherri was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and their marriage was officially dissolved in 2023. Now, Keith Papini and his children are working on trying to close this horrible chapter.
This is his story.
The Early Life Of Keith Papini And His Relationship With Sherri Papini
Keith PapiniKeith Papini with his wife, Sherri Papini.
Keith Papini was born on March 25, 1982, in Redding, California to parents Kathleen and Kenneth Papini. He reportedly met his future wife, Sherri Graeff, in middle school. The two shared their first kiss together when Keith was in seventh grade and Sherri was in eighth grade.
Though they lost touch after childhood, the couple began dating in 2006 after Sherri moved back to Redding as an adult. From the beginning of their relationship, Keith got a sense that his significant other had a bad habit of exaggerating or even fabricating stories about her life.
“She told me she used to sell cars at a dealership and all these different things, and I wasn’t going to go calling around to verify that those were real,” he told Oxygen in 2024. “But there were definitely times where I’m like, ‘Hey, the timeline doesn’t match up. Like, you said you did this, or you lived at that spot, but this doesn’t make sense to me because the timeline’s not right.'”
Despite the falsehoods, Keith sympathized with his girlfriend. Sherri shared her allegedly abusive upbringing and even showed Keith scars on her back that she claimed were inflicted by an ex-boyfriend.
The couple dated for three years before marrying in October 2009.
HuluSherri and Keith Papini on their wedding day in 2009.
By all accounts, the Papinis had a normal, happy marriage. They welcomed a son, Tyler, in 2012, followed by a daughter, Violet, in 2014. Sherri became a stay-at-home mom, and Keith worked full-time as a Home Theater Specialist at Best Buy. The couple lived in a home in Redding, California, close to their family and friends.
Papini Family And ChildrenThe Papini family prior to the 2016 incident.
But the couple’s fairytale marriage shattered on Nov. 2, 2016. That day, Sherri Papini disappeared.
Sherri Papini Goes Missing While Jogging In Redding, California
Keith PapiniKeith and Sherri Papini prior to the disappearance.
On Nov. 2, 2016, Keith Papini returned home from work as usual. But instead of being welcomed by his wife and young kids, Keith found the house was quiet and empty. Sherri was in charge of picking up their two kids from daycare every day around 4:30 pm — but neither she nor the children were anywhere to be seen.
When Keith called the daycare, he discovered that his wife had never picked up their children. Immediately concerned, Keith began to search for his wife in the neighborhood and nearby trails where she liked to jog. She had recently picked up the hobby in preparation for a Thanksgiving race.
Using the “Find My Phone” function on his smartphone, Keith was able to pinpoint the location of Sherri’s phone at a nearby street corner. However, when Keith arrived he found her phone and headphones discarded in the grass. Disturbingly, they were tangled up in clumps of her hair.
This shocking discovery prompted Keith Papini to report his wife’s disappearance to the police. Soon the whole town of Redding was looking for the missing mother. In the following weeks, volunteers and the authorities organized searches for Sherri Papini while the police tried to figure out what had happened to the missing mother of two.
The police even polygraphed Keith Papini and ruled him out as a suspect.
YouTubeKeith Papini at his first interrogation.
For the next three weeks, Keith Papini was in emotional agony thinking about what could have happened to his wife.
“I’m just wondering about her health. Are they feeding her? Is she hot? Is she cold? I thought about her being there screaming my name, and I wasn’t there and that really… got to me,” Papini said in an interview with 20/20.
Keith Papini had no idea that the case of his missing wife was more complicated — and unexpected — than he ever thought possible.
Sherri Papini’s Wild Story About Her Kidnapping
On Thanksgiving Day in 2016, a woman discovered Sherri Papini bound on the side of County Road 17 near Interstate 5 in Yolo County, California. She was emaciated, only weighing about 87 pounds, and covered in injuries.
Federal Bureau of InvestigationAn FBI sketch of Sherri Papini’s alleged kidnappers.
At the hospital, Keith Papini met with his wife for the first time in 22 days.
“My first sight was my wife in a hospital bed. Her face covered in bruises ranging from yellow to black because of her repeated beatings. The bridge of her nose broken,” Keith wrote, according to PEOPLE. “She has been branded and I could feel the rise of her scabs under my fingers.”
In the following days, Sherri Papini told police that she had been abducted by two Hispanic women at gunpoint. She claimed that they beat and imprisoned her for three weeks, subjecting her to mental and physical torture and feeding her “stale bread, beans, tortillas, leftover meat, and apples.” Sherri claimed that one of her captors let her go.
After Sherri was released from the hospital, she and Keith tried to pick up the pieces of their life while the authorities began to search for the kidnappers.
“You would expect that I want to get these people … and then your mind goes into a place that it shouldn’t and I think most people are doing that,” Keith Papini told ABC. “Clearly, I want justice but right now I’m just happy that my wife is back. I don’t have to raise my kids without her.”
However, it wasn’t long before the police began to doubt Sherri Papini’s story. In 2019, DNA from her sweatpants and underwear matched to a potential male relative of the perpetrator. When authorities tracked down this lead, they realized that the DNA matched a man named James Reyes — a former boyfriend of Sherri Papini.
HuluSherri Papini with her ex-boyfriend, James Reyes.
From there, Sherri Papini’s story began to fall apart.
Keith Papini Discovers The Ugly Truth About His Wife’s Disappearance
On August 10, 2020, investigators tracked down James Reyes and interrogated him about Sherri Papini’s disappearance. Reyes quickly admitted to helping Sherri Papini orchestrate an elaborate kidnapping hoax.
He confessed to letting her live in his apartment in Costa Mesa, California during the three weeks she was missing. What’s more, Reyes claimed to have witnessed her starve and beat herself to make her kidnapping look more legitimate. He said that she lied and said that Keith was abusing her, and eventually decided to go home because she missed her children.
That month, authorities confronted Sherri Papini with this information during an interrogation with both her and her husband. Sherri stuck to her story, but Keith was shocked to hear what the investigators had learned.
YouTubeSherri Papini, sitting next to her husband, breaks down after her scheme is revealed.
“I’m the idiot husband that stayed around the whole time,” Keith told investigators. “Now you are telling me, ‘OK, you can go home now,’ Well, do you think I want her anywhere around my kids or around me at all at this point? I don’t know what the next stages of this are. It’s not us together. I can tell you that much. I’m in shock.”
Keith Papini’s Life Today
Keith Papini kicked his wife out of the house, but he eventually relented and let Sherri stay until her arrest on March 3, 2022. Six weeks after her arrest, Sherri Papini signed a plea deal admitting to fabricating the story. She was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Days later, Keith Papini filed for divorce from his wife. He also petitioned the court for full custody of their children.
“I wish to make it clear that my goal is to provide a loving, safe, stable environment for [our children] and I believe the requested orders are consistent with that goal and the best interests of the children,” he stated in court. “I do not want to say anything in the pleadings connected to this matter that would inflame the situation or attract media attention.”
The couple’s marriage dissolved in May 2023, and they only speak during court proceedings. Keith maintains full custody of their children. He says that they’re all traumatized, but taking things one day at a time.
“My current focus is on moving on and doing everything I can to provide my two children with as normal, healthy, and happy of a life as possible. I’ve accepted that I will never know the truth. No one ever will,” Keith Papini said.
After reading about Keith Papini, dive into the story of Jordan Graham, the newlywed who pushed her husband off a cliff so that she could avoid consummating the marriage. Then, read about Rosemarie Fritzl, the former wife of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian rapist who kept his daughter hostage in the family basement for 24 years.
