11 Things to Know About Sherri Papini's Kidnapping Hoax: From the Time of the Incident to Her Arrest

On November 2, 2016, Sherri Papini went out for an afternoon jog in her Redding, Calif., neighborhood and did not come home. Her then-husband, Keith Papini, realized something was wrong when the matriarch failed to pick up their kids, Tyler and Violet, from daycare.

Keith tried to track her location through her phone and earbuds, but she was never found in the detected site near the intersection of Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive.

As the missing person case became a national story, the investigators and the Shasta County Sherriff's Office conducted a search. Authorities initially assumed Keith had something to do with Sherri's disappearance as rumors about him lawyering up emerged. The buzz was debunked by self-identified family member Rod Rodriguez III.

"In regard to the hurtful rumors regarding Keith, everyone that actually knows him knows of his and Sherri's wonderful loving relationship and devotion to their family and knows he had nothing to do with Sherri's disappearance," said Rod. "That is why everyone of them was out searching last weekend, one notable family rented search helicopters and another couple cut their vacation short and flew home across the Atlantic while another flew down from Idaho."

Keith passed a lie detector test, and his alibi proved he did not have something to do with Sherri's disappearance.

At the time, Shasta County Sherriff's Office spokesman Lieutenant Anthony Bertain noted in a November 11, 2016, statement that detectives were trying to determine whether Sherri's case was voluntary or not.

In her statement included in the 55-page criminal complaint affidavit, Sherri claimed two Hispanic women forced her into a dark SUV while she was out for a run. She said she was chained to a metal pole in a bedroom closet for three weeks and heard her alleged kidnappers conversing in Spanish.

According to Sherri, she tried to escape several times until she was reportedly able to run away. She informed the therapist that she was "physically and emotionally tortured, beaten, burned, branded, and drugged." The specialist diagnosed her with acute post-traumatic stress disorder after the incident.

However, investigators who interviewed her repeatedly found lapses in her story.

In August 2020, authorities determined that Sherri fabricated her story after hearing her interview with the FBI. They received a tip about her ex-boyfriend picking her up and driving her to Costa Mesa, Calif., where she reportedly voluntarily stayed.

Investigators also had her clothing tested for biological matter, and they soon discovered a DNA belonging to a male. They tried to run a search in the criminal database but found no positive hits.

It later matched to James Reyes, Sherri's ex-boyfriend.

"There were some infidelity issues in her background that even Keith had told us about," Former Shasta County Sherriff's Deputy Captain Pat Kropholler told ABC News.

Detectives said Sherri lied to James when she told him she was being abused by Keith. James added he had no idea about the two Hispanic women and the alleged gunpoint Sherri talked about. He said she also cut her own hair and self-inflicted most of her injuries, completing the kidnapping story.

Despite the findings, Sherri firmly stuck to her story, which involved unidentified Hispanic women.

In July 2023, Lifetime released the film, Hoax: The Kidnapping of Sherri Papini, with Jaime King as the lead star.

"Frankly, it made me mad," King said of the story. "You could see this woman that's seemingly beautiful and perfect, and the way that they told her story was basically that she's this terrible human being that did this horrific thing to her family and the community. And she did make some horrific choices, absolutely."