When Sherri Papini (Jaime King), a young suburban supermom, disappears on her daily jog, police launch a nationwide search. Her family’s overjoyed when she’s found alive and wandering the highway three weeks later, but the Papinis don’t realize how long the road to justice will actually be. As Sherri heals from her various injuries — including allegedly being branded — detectives begin to investigate her claims that two women kidnapped and assaulted her. Over four years, the inconsistencies in Sherri’s ever-changing story cause investigators to wonder if the entire incident was a staged hoax. Directed by Marta Borowski, the dark thriller Hoax: The Kidnapping of Sherri Papini — now streaming on Netflix — is based on the real 2016 missing persons case.
On Nov. 2, 2016, Sherri Papini failed to return home from her daily jog. Her then-husband, Keith Papini, reported her missing, which launched an FBI-assisted nationwide search. Three weeks later, Sherri was found by a motorist roughly 150 miles from her home in Redding, California, and reunited with her family on Thanksgiving Day. Sherri had been discovered emaciated, wearing chains, and visibly bruised, and when questioned by police, she claimed to have been abducted at gunpoint by two masked Hispanic women and violently assaulted in captivity. Investigators then launched a search for her alleged captors, who they were led to believe were Spanish speakers who — according to Sherri — fed her mostly tortillas and rice and listened to mariachi music.
“She fell into stereotypes about the Latino community that are far too prevalent in the population at large, but clearly, she was also counting on law enforcement relying upon stereotypes,” said Thomas Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), in a 2022 CNN article about the case.
But DNA evidence found on Sherri’s clothes — as well as multiple inconsistencies in her story — pointed detectives to James Reyes, her ex-boyfriend. Sherri led Reyes to believe she needed somewhere to stay after escaping her abusive marriage from Keith (a claim that her now ex-husband “has vehemently denied”). While Sherri later claimed that Reyes was her abductor and caused her injuries, Reyes told investigators that she’d asked him to cause visible injury to her to make her staged kidnapping more believable. He has denied her claims and has never been charged with a crime.
On March 3, 2022, police arrested Sherri on charges of mail fraud and making false statements to federal law enforcement. Six weeks later, she accepted a plea deal, was eventually sentenced to 18 months in prison, and was ordered to repay more than $300,000 to cover the cost of state and federal resources expended to find her. Sherri received early release in August 2023.
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