Keith Papini is finally speaking out.
Seven years after his ex-wife Sherri Papini’s kidnapping was revealed to be a hoax, the father of two shared why he thinks she faked her abduction. He believes she wanted him to be her “knight in shining armor.”
“I think she wanted to plan a fake kidnapping,” Keith said on Good Morning America on June 17, “but in her version, I was supposed to find her.”
Sherri—who has a son Tyler, 14, and a daughter Violet, 12, with Keith—disappeared while jogging near her home in Redding, Calif., in 2016. She reappeared in Yolo County 22 days later with injuries and claimed she was kidnapped and abused by two Hispanic women. Four years later, investigators matched DNA on her clothing to an ex-boyfriend, who admitted to helping Sherri “run away.”
Keith supported her until 2022, when she was charged with lying to federal agents about the kidnapping and defrauding the state’s victim compensation board of $30,000. After Sherri pled guilty, Keith filed for divorce after 12 years of marriage and requested temporary sole custody of their children.
Now, Keith wants to “get the truth out there” through the upcoming Hulu documentary Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini. He aims to show how “convincing Sherri was all those years.”
“She made us believe that her story was true,” he said. “Every single day she committed to the lie.”
Keith also recalled installing security measures like new doors, locks, and cameras while they believed her kidnappers were still out there. “The amount of fear that our family lived in that was fake was excruciating,” he said.
While Sherri, who was released from prison in 2023 after serving 18 months, has never apologized and shows “no remorse,” Keith’s main goal is to “move past” that chapter in their lives.