Coming clean hasn’t been easy for Sherri Papini.
In 2022, the California mother of two was sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking her own kidnapping so she could go back to an ex-boyfriend. Her disappearance resulted in a three-week multi-state search before she surfaced on Thanksgiving Day in 2016.
Now, the 42-year-old is reenacting her disappearance and taking a lie detector test in the Investigation Discovery (ID) true crime docuseries, “Sherri Papini: Caught in a Lie.”
“She really did not want to do either one of those things, but I think she saw this as her one shot at getting her story out, and she was going to do whatever it took,” director Nicole Rittenmeyer told Fox News Digital.
“We made sure that we were in close contact with her therapist,” Rittenmeyer explained. “We had safe words in case she couldn’t handle stuff. She had emotional support, and humans were there for her so she could get a hug.”
Despite Papini’s hesitations, she ultimately agreed to do both for the docuseries and have it filmed. She’s now alleging that she was the victim of a violent kidnapping.
The lie detector test was conducted by polygraph expert Brett Bartlett, a retired police officer with 20 years of experience in law enforcement.
In the docuseries, Bartlett told Papini that he believed her when she claimed that she was not free to leave her former boyfriend James Reyes’ home and that she didn’t ask him to brand her on her right shoulder.
When Papini was asked if she planned to travel to Southern California with Reyes, she said no. However, Bartlett told her, “Your body is telling me otherwise.”
“I remember making a plan with James,” said Papini. “Leading him on. So that we could talk. [I kept] telling him that I wanted to be with him. There was a lot of leading him on to keep him interested.”
Rittenmeyer said Papini was “very anxious” after cameras stopped rolling.
“She was very mad at herself for not being as forthcoming,” said Rittenmeyer. “… I was feeling like she was holding back, and the polygraph broke it open.”
On Nov. 2, 2016, Papini’s husband, Keith Papini, reported his wife missing after he discovered she wasn’t home and hadn’t picked up their children from daycare. Her purse and jewelry were left behind. An extensive search for the missing mom ensued.
It wouldn’t be until Nov. 26 that an emaciated Papini was spotted by a driver 150 miles from her home. She was covered in bruises, burns and rashes and was still bound by restraints. The flesh on her back was still blistered with a blurred branding and her long blonde hair had been cut short. Papini told authorities two masked Hispanic women forced her into an SUV at gunpoint and held her captive.
Investigators began to question Papini’s story. They later discovered evidence that would contradict her stories. In reality, authorities said, Papini was staying with Reyes nearly 600 miles away from her home and had hurt herself to back up her false statements.
Papini eventually confessed that it had all been a hoax, and she was staying at Reyes’ apartment the entire time she was missing.
In the docuseries, Papini said she had an emotional affair with Reyes after being unhappy with her marriage and feared losing her children. But the kidnapping wasn’t consensual, she claimed. Reyes’ DNA was found on the clothes she was wearing when she was recovered.
Rittenmeyer said this is the first time Papini is publicly sharing this account.
“She never shared it with anyone except for us and very close members of her family,” said Rittenmeyer. “This is going to be the first time Shasta County sheriffs will hear this story when they watch it with the rest of the viewers.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, Keith’s attorney and Reyes for comment. According to the docuseries, Reyes vehemently denies kidnapping and abusing Papini.
“He maintains that any harm he inflicted on her was done at her direction,” the docuseries shared. “He has not been charged with any crime in connection with Sherri’s disappearance.”
When questioned by FBI agents, Reyes claimed that Papini planned “everything,” including the decision to use a wood-burning tool to brand her shoulder. He passed a polygraph test.
Keith’s lawyer told the docuseries that any allegations of “severe abuse, manipulation and lying” are false and “disproven by a mountain of documentary evidence and objective, indisputable facts.”
In the docuseries, Papini claimed that the descriptions she gave of the two masked Hispanic women were supposed to represent Reyes’ mother. She hoped investigators would use it to track down Reyes without her saying he abducted her. But Rittenmeyer told Papini that Reyes’ mother was Irish.
“OK. I’ve met her twice,” Papini responded. “It had very little to do with his mother and her ethnicity. It was about trying to get them to alert them to his identity without saying his name out loud. Quite frankly, I don’t give a f—k whether she’s Hispanic or not. It was about James. It wasn’t about her.”
Rittenmeyer said that the docuseries will detail “a specific personality disorder that she has.”
“I went into this understanding that the conventional wisdom about Sherri is that she’s a sociopath, a narcissist who faked a hoax kidnapping to get attention,” said Rittenmeyer.
“[But]… there are certain ways that Sherri’s personality manifests that are very theatrical and can feel performative. And so, given what we understand about her, I think it’s basic human nature to be incredibly skeptical. I did not trust anything she said to me. If she told me my mother loved me, I was going to get a second and third source because, even as her lawyer says, she’s a convicted liar.”
“What I learned… is that her particular form of personality disorder results in a lot of pleasing,” Rittenmeyer continued. “There’s an effort to please, which served us well when we did reenactments and the polygraph because she didn’t want to do those things, but she did them.
“… We assume people lie because they’re trying to deceive because there’s financial gain or something that they’re trying to get over on us. And in the case of her personality disorder, she lies as a protective mechanism. It’s like default. She’s gotten a lot of therapy, and she’s a lot better than she used to be. But… there was so much more nuance to her and why she did the things that she did, and what drove her to do them.”
In 2022, Papini accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors and acknowledged she made up the story that prompted the frantic search. That same year, Keith filed for divorce.
“I am deeply ashamed of myself for my behavior and so very sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered because of my story, and those who worked so hard to try to help me,” she said in a statement at the time. “I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done.”
The plea agreement called for Papini to pay restitution topping $300,000.
But today, Papini is adamant that she was a victim.
“Haven’t you ever lied? And then, has the lie been blown up?” Papini said in the docuseries.
Rittemeyer said that Papini, now out with her story, is “working on being a better person.”
“I do think the person I interviewed is very different from the one… Shasta County interviewed,” said Rittenmeyer. “She went through it. She served her time. She’s done a lot of therapy… If there’s a lesson to take away from this film, I think it’s don’t lie. You kickstart events and you’re going to spiral horrifically out of control.”
“Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie” premieres May 26 and May 27 at 9 p.m. on ID. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
