The sordid story of the faked 2016 disappearance of Redding housewife Sherri Papini, and her subsequent guilty plea in federal court to charges of lying to law enforcement and mail fraud, is now getting the documentary treatment on Hulu.
Papini, who you may recall disappeared while out jogging in November 2016 and then mysteriously returned to Redding, bruised, branded, and wearing a chain around her waist several weeks later, has had her story compared to Gone Girl. And since it took place just over 18 months after the disappearance of Denise Huskins from Vallejo, there were comparisons made there, too — only in the case of Huskins, she actually was abducted and sexually assaulted, while Papini just staged her kidnapping for attention, or something.
Huskins's painful story was recounted in the Netflix docu-series American Nightmare earlier this year, and now Papini's will get the Hulu treatment in The Perfect Wife, a docu-series that will drop later this week.
The series had a special screening Monday in New York, and Papini's soon-to-be ex-husband Keith Papini is an active participant in it.
Papini spoke with SFist alum Eve Batey for a piece in Vanity Fair this week, in which he says that he has had no contact with his ex, outside of court dates, since he filed for divorce from her in 2022. That divorce filing came after the obviously horrifying revelation that Papini had been lying to him and to law enforcement for years about the kidnapping.
Papini said that her abductors were two Hispanic women who decided to release her after an argument they had in Spanish, when in fact, as federal investigators would discover, Papini had spent her entire time away at the home of an ex-boyfriend in Southern California.
She had even had that ex-boyfriend help her to injure and brand herself in order to corroborate her abduction story, something that she ultimately admitted in federal court when she pled guilty in 2022.
The FBI publicly released Papini's interrogation video in 2022, in which Keith Papini was present, showing her bizarre, squirming reaction when she was presented with the incontrovertible evidence of her lies.
What's worse, is that Papini continued manipulating her husband after she returned home — he says that after she returned, she told him, "I have to live with the fact that you never found me." — and she is apparently still telling lies to her family, and she's still living in Redding after her release from prison last year, as Keith tells Vanity Fair.
"Based on what we've heard from people that are closer to Sherri, it seems like she's sort of sticking to her story, that she was abducted," Keith Papini says to Vanity Fair.
Keith also says that he agreed to participate in the documentary series because he's grateful to people for their support, and he wants to give thanks — and he wants to make sure his ex can't continue spinning her lies.
The Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini debuts Thursday, June 20, on Hulu.
See the trailer below.
Previously: NorCal's 'Gone Girl' Who Faked Her Own Kidnapping Let Out of Prison After Less Than a Year
