Sherri Papini, the woman who served 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to her own kidnapping hoax, has now accused her ex-husband and sister of having an inappropriate relationship.
Papini, then a 34-year-old married mother-of-two, gained attention in 2016 when she “vanished” for 22 days until she was found several hundred miles away, covered in bruises, claiming she had been held captive by two Latina women. Papini was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to carrying out a kidnapping hoax.
Following the recent release of Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, a four-part docuseries that marked Papini’s first on-camera interview since the kidnapping saga unfolded, she sat down for an interview with Nick Viall of The Viall Files podcast.
Speaking to Viall, Papini said she doesn’t have a good relationship with her sister, Sheila Koester. “She’s very harmful and she’s very toxic,” Papini said when Viall asked about her sister’s relationships with their parents. She noted the two “were never close” but said everything changed during Papini’s 2016 disappearance.
“She was very involved with being on camera, just as [Papini’s ex-husband] Keith was,” Papini, 43, said. “Then she started developing a really inappropriate relationship with Keith. Then they got really close and they still are really close. They still have, I would say, a highly inappropriate relationship.”
When pressed further about a potential romantic relationship between the two, Papini elaborated. “I think that there’s a lot of inappropriate things that have happened between Keith and Sheila and a lot of things that I’ve seen,” she said.
Papini then mentioned a “really cool home video” she was hoping would end up in the docuseries, “where you see Keith and Sheila engaging physically” in a way that made her father react by saying, “Oh God.”
The mother-of-two, whose case has drawn comparison to the fictional Gone Girl book and movie, gained national attention when she vanished in November 2016. Her phone, earbuds, and strands of her hair were found by her then-husband, Keith, around a mile from their house.
Papini, who would turn up on Thanksgiving morning on the side of a highway just three weeks after her purported disappearance, alleged upon her return that she’d been tortured, branded and kept chained in a bedroom, claiming that her so-called abductors were two masked Hispanic women. Her disappearance triggered a massive law enforcement operation.
Papini was arrested in March 2022 and then admitted to staging her own kidnapping the following month, pleading guilty to one count each of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud for a narrative she cooked up alongside her ex-boyfriend, James Reyes. She ultimately served 10 months behind bars and was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.
Her husband filed for divorce days later. The pair’s 13-year marriage ended in a contentious divorce, involving a custody battle and fighting over finances.
However, Papini changed her story about her disappearance in the new Investigation Discovery docuseries.
“I had told law enforcement I had been abducted by two Hispanic women, which wasn’t true,” Papini admitted in the series. “I was abducted by my ex-boyfriend, who held me captive for 22 days.”
That ex-boyfriend is Reyes, with whom Papini admitted to having an emotional affair during her marriage.
“There was no consent,” Papini said in the docuseries, backtracking on previous statements she had made about voluntarily staying with Reyes. “He still did it. The injuries that occurred, the bites on my inner and outer thigh, the footprint on my back, the brand, the melting of my skin — I can’t do that myself. I am telling you there was no consent.”
Reyes has denied the allegations against him and hasn’t been charged in connection with Papini’s disappearance.
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