What Happened to Sherri Papini? Hulu’s Perfect Wife Documentary to Revisit Kidnapping Hoax

Hulu’s documentary Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini will explore the details of the infamous case. The three-part series about Papini’s supposed kidnapping from Redding, California, in 2016 will air on June 20, 2024. Director Michael Beach Nichols called the case “a real-life psychological thriller with one jaw-dropping revelation after another.”

Reportedly, there has been speculation about what happened to Sherri Papini when she vanished on November 2, 2016. Three weeks later, on Thanksgiving, she reappeared and told authorities that two Hispanic women had kidnapped her. She claimed it happened while she was on the jogging trail that morning. However, detectives, after a thorough investigation, found that Papini’s kidnapping was a hoax.

Sherri Papini: Why did she fake her kidnapping?

According to NBC News, while investigating what happened to Sherri Papini, investigators found male DNA evidence. They found this evidence on her clothes, which led them to Papini’s ex-boyfriend. The investigation revealed that while Papini claimed kidnappers took her, she was staying with her ex-boyfriend in his Costa Mesa, California, home. She was married to her husband, Keith Papini, at the time and even had children.

People Magazine stated that Papini had asked her ex-boyfriend to wound her intentionally. She planned to make it seem like the kidnappers had tortured her while they kept her captive. The ex-boyfriend told authorities that he refused to hit Papini. He claimed to have held a hockey stick so she could run into it. Additionally, he admitted to pelting her with hockey pucks. Then, three weeks later, the ex-boyfriend left her near Interstate 5 so she could return home. He never faced charges in the case.

What happened to Sherri Papini remained a mystery for years because she faced charges for the hoax. After returning home, she continued living with her husband, Keith, and their children. Eventually, more than five years later, authorities arrested her, following which Keith learned the truth behind the supposed kidnapping.

Papini faced a federal indictment of 35 counts, and in April 2022, she pleaded guilty to two charges. The charges were mail fraud and lying to a law enforcement officer. Sherri Papini received a prison sentence of 18 months. The court also ordered her to pay $300,000 in restitution. Papini never directly admitted to faking her kidnapping, and the charges stemmed from the lies she told afterward.

Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini documentary will further examine what happened to her during the weeks when she was missing. Sherri Papini served less than a year of her prison sentence in a federal facility before her release in August 2023.