Kidnap Hoaxster Sherri Papini Claims 'Inappropriate' Relationship Between Sister and Ex-Husband

On Wednesday's new episode of The Viall Files, Papini started off by discussing the series, sharing that she wasn't involved in the editing process, so she saw it -- including "a little bit of inaccuracies as well" -- at the same time everyone else did.

Before long, though, she drifted a bit to talking about her family, and in particular her relationship with her sister Sheila and her ex-husband, Keith Papini.

Keith was a significant figure in the initial kidnapping drama, as it was he who came home from work on November 2, 2016, expecting to find his wife. Instead, he found her cell phone and earbuds at an intersection about a mile away.

On November 24, Sherri showed up again, still wearing restraints, about 150 miles away, saying she'd just been released by her captors. In a statement, Keith said she was physically abused during this captivity, was branded with the word "EXODUS" on her right shoulder, had her nose broken, hair cut off, and weighed just 87 pounds.

After a DNA match brought investigators to an ex-boyfriend of hers named James Reyes, he confirmed that she'd been staying with him at his place in Southern California during the time of her disappearance.

This led to her arrest on March 3, 2022, and eventual admission that she had faked her kidnapping as part of a plea agreement. She was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in prison and $300,000 in restitution.

Just a few days after her guilty plea for mail fraud and making false statements, Keith filed for divorce, and sought sole custody of their children.

She told Viall that she and Keith are still bickering over custody after he'd previously accused her of child abuse. She currently sees her kids once a month and is fighting for joint custody.

In the three-part Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie -- which features new interviews with many of the players involved in the true saga including Sherri, Keith, and Sheila -- Sherri stands by her initial assertion that she was abducted by Reyes. He has long denied this and never been charged.

While Keith had strong and immediate ties to every beat of Sherri's case, that wasn't the case for Sheila. In fact, Sherri told Nick Viall that she doesn't really talk to her, and they've not been close for a long time.

"I don't have a very good relationship with my sister," she said. "No, Sheila and I were never close."

"We were close for a short period of time," Sherri continued, "when the abduction happened, and started getting on the news with Keith and started getting highly involved with everything. That's when she suddenly became a part of my life."

Sherri also claimed that Sheila was "highly abusive" to their parents, "and so they are doing the best they can to manage what they can as her mom and dad."

"She's very harmful and she's very toxic. It is emotional [abuse]," she added. "She's just horrible to them and it really very sad to see."

Not only that, she said that the dynamic between her sister and ex-husband started to look and feel different. "She was very involved with being on camera, just as Keith was," Sherri said. "Then she started developing a really inappropriate relationship with Keith."

"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 added, going on to detail actual physical evidence she says she has of this 'inappropriate relationship.'

"I had this really cool home video that I had that I was hoping would end up into the film where you see Keith and Sheila engaging physically, in a way," Sherri claimed on The Viall Files. "Then you hear my dad in the background go, 'Oh God.'"

Caught in the Lie wasn't the first time Keith and Sheila have shared the screen for a story about Sherri's alleged kidnapping, as noted by Us Weekly. They also featured in Hulu's 2024 docuseries The Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini.

In that project, Keith praised Sheila for her support throughout the whole ordeal. And while he's never spoken publicly about his personal life outside of how it directly relates to Sherri's case, he did also tell TV Insider in June 2024 just how supportive Sheila was toward him.

He also hinted at deeper issues within the family. "[Sheila] almost made it like, 'You need to really cut [Sherri] out because she's going to continue this,'" he told the outlet. "She knows that I love her. I mean, this is my wife. Obviously, I was very dedicated. I didn't want this. I always wanted to be her husband and have our family."

But, he continued, he believed Sheila was saying this because she believed Sherri "would just continue to manipulate me."

In that interview, he had described his ex-wife as "extremely manipulative," referring to the six-year hoax she allegedly perpetrated on her family, friends, community, and the entire nation.

"When I cut Sherri out in the beginning, it was like a weight off my shoulders because everything was like, what is she going to say next?" Keith added. "It’s not true, and I always feel like I have to defend myself. It’s just tiresome to do that all the time."

Sherri has also accused Keith of being abusive toward her, which he has vehemently denied. She told Viall she was "more afraid of my ex-husband than I am of law enforcement and going to prison," accusing him of being controlling to the point of "turning over your phone at night and allowing him to check it at any moment."

As for her claims that the kidnapping was real, as she asserted in the latest Investigation Discovery docuseries, Sherri stands by them. And despite her mother seeming unconvinced, Sherri insists that was a trick of the edit, and her mother firmly believes her.

"My mom definitely knows that I was held captive and that I was kidnapped. That’s definitely the stance that she's on," Sherri told Viall in Wednesday's episode. "There's context to be added there. And while everything was very confusing in the beginning, we have a greater understanding of what actually happened now, and that is not how my mom feels now."

She also insists the women she claimed helped her ex hold her captive were real. "When James would leave, he would have me observed by the people. He would have me watched. He had two family members that lived in the same cul-de-sac, one of which had a wife and then we have James' mother," she said.

"These are not made up people. They're real people," she insisted. "So there's an uncle and there was a cousin, and the cousin has a wife. The FBI did interview her."

"I'm Sherri Papini. I was abducted and I was tortured and the FBI says I made it all up," she says toward the end of ID's docuseries.

Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie is now streaming on (HBO) Max and Prime Video.