Serialously with Annie Elise
283: Sherri Papini DOUBLES DOWN on Abduction Claims. Says She’s the Victim
Mon, 02 Jun 2025
This week on Serialously with Annie Elise, SHE’S BACK. And this time, she's talking. Thanks to Investigation Discovery, we’re diving headfirst into Sherri Papini: Caught in a Lie, a brand-new four-part docuseries that gives Sherri the mic for the first time since her headline-grabbing disappearance in 2016. After years of silence and speculation, now it’s Sherri’s turn. She’s sharing her version of the story, and whether it’s truth, spin, or something in between… you know we have to talk about it. 🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks 🔎 Join The Club: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to EXTRA deep dive episodes every week on Apple! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 🚩Announcements🚩 Enter to Win 2 Tickets to CrimeCon! 🎟️🕵️♀️ https://tinyurl.com/Annie-Elise 🌸 SPRING MERCH IS OFFICIALLY HERE! 🌸 Shop now at https://annieelise.com/collections/shop-all Don't miss out before your faves sell out! 🛒🌷 Follow Annie on Socials 📸 🩷Instagram: @ _annieelise 💜TikTok: @_annieelise 🗞️ Substack: @annieelise 💙Facebook: @10tolife ⭐️Sponsors ⭐️ Hiya Health: Get 50% when you go to http://www.hiyahelath.com/ae. OPositiv Health: Head to http://OPositiv.com/AE or enter AE at checkout for 25$ off your first purchase. Helix: Go to http://Helixsleep.com/serialously for 20% off sightwide. Hero Bread: Hero Bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to http://www.hero.co and use code AE at checkout. SimpliSafe: Visit http://SIMPLISAFE.com/ANNIE to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. Shop Annie’s Closet & Must-Haves! 👗 Poshmark: https://posh.mk/Tdbki6Ae0Rb ShopMY: https://shopmy.us/annieelise Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/10tolife?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_aipsfshop_BKN1ZMCMEZHACVFQ2R75&language=en_US Disclaimer ‣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 🎙️ Follow the podcast for FREE on all podcast platforms! Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6HdheEH8WeMTHoe5da34qU All Other Platforms: https://audioboom.com/channels/5100770-serialously-with-annie-elise Get Involved or Recommend the Case 💬 About Annie: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [email protected] Episode Sources 🔗 ABC10 ABC News Good Morning America KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco People.com TODAY Wikipedia Yahoo *Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. •••••••••••••••••• Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.
Chapter 1: Who is Sherri Papini and what happened in her case?
Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly. Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. We have got like the motherlode of all deep dives today. It's a case that I honestly did not think that I was going to be revisiting anytime soon. Not even anytime soon. Anytime period.
I didn't think that I was going to be revisiting it. Yet here we are because this chick, the enigma that is Sherry Papini, just will not go away. Now you might have recently heard that a new documentary came out where Sherry is giving an interview.
She's retelling her version of events and what happened that day, which if you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry, I'm going to recap it for you. But you might have heard how she's like doubling down on her claims. That's not all. In addition to doubling down on her kidnapping story or abduction story, she also is making some pretty serious allegations against her former husband.
And almost as though she's justifying what happened to her and what she did and saying that he is the root of all evil and that he was evil long before the whole thing. hoax thing ever really happened. So there is a lot that we need to dissect. There is a lot we need to go over.
Now before I give you the very brief recap of who Sherry Papini is and what she did and why pretty much, I would say, the majority of the country dislikes her, I do want to give you some good news, okay? You might have heard if you listened to headline highlights last week, but once again this year I am heading off to CrimeCon. This year, it's in Denver. Last year, it was in Nashville.
Last year, about 6,000 people attended. And if you don't know what CrimeCon is, it basically is exactly what it sounds like, almost like Comic-Con, but for crime. And it's not some weird, crazy convention like Let me just get ahead of it. It's not like we're all these like crazy true crime fans are going and it's all weird. It's, I mean, I guess a little bit, but it's more than that.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of CrimeCon in true crime discussions?
It's basically a convention where, yes, true crime content creators, podcasters, and networks all come together. Victims' families also come. Last year, JonBenet Ramsey's father was there. The Petito family was there.
Dateline goes, Court TV goes, Nancy Grace goes, and it is just this big crime convention where there are panels, there are live episodes being recorded, there are crime scene analysts who are giving you guys tools and tips and things on how they do all the scientific stuff forensically. There's also educational courses, and so it's become a pretty big deal.
Like I said, last year over 6,000 people went. And this year it's expected to be even larger and it's in Denver. So last year was my first year. This year I'm going back. We're going to have a booth set up again. I'm going to be doing a live episode from there. I'll be at the booth meeting you. We'll have exclusive merch. We'll have all of the things.
But my point in all of that is that I am giving away two free passes to you. I've partnered with CrimeCon and they sell their passes as like a full weekend pass. I think they also sell day passes, but they are giving away two free weekend passes to you. So I'm going to give you some details later on in the episode of how to enter.
I will announce the winner this Thursday, but give you all those details later on in the episode. So if you are interested in coming and you've been thinking about it, but you're not quite sure if you're ready to pull the trigger, just wait and I'll give you the full details.
And if you know you want to go and you don't want to miss out and you don't want to wait and risk tickets selling out because they definitely sold out last year, you can always go to the CrimeCon website and buy your tickets right now. And you can also use my promo code AnnieElise to get 10% off.
But if you prefer to wait and have the freebies and take your chance at that, totally understand it and we'll give you the details soon. So now let's get into Sherry Papini because as I said, this woman is like a full-on enigma. I don't even know how to describe her. I don't know how to get inside her brain.
There is so much to unravel and I'm really curious to hear from you after I break down this new documentary. Do you think that she was lying all of this time and that it was all some big hoax because she wanted to just run off and be with her ex for a while?
Or do you think that there is validity in what she is now saying and truth to her allegations against her husband and allegations of the abduction? I'm curious to know what you think. So we are going to jump right in. I'm Sherry Papini.
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Chapter 3: What were the details surrounding Sherri's abduction?
She was missing, and it wasn't until later in the day that her absence was even noticed. Keith came home from work, and he found it weird that she wasn't there because she typically always was at the house right around the time he got home from work. On top of that, the kids were not home either.
So, a little bit worried, he ended up calling the kids' daycare to see exactly what time they had been picked up that afternoon from Sherry. Maybe he'd get a better idea of what their day had been like, where they could all possibly be. Maybe she picked them up early, took them to ice cream, to a movie.
But the problem was the daycare told Keith that the kids had not been picked up at all that day. In fact, they were still there. So that is when Keith called 911.
Hello, can I help you? Yeah, so I just got home from work and my wife wasn't there, which is unusual. And my kids should have been there by now from like daycare. So I was like, oh, maybe she went on a walk. I couldn't find her, so I called the daycare to see what time she picked up the kids. The kids were never picked up. So I got freaked out, so I hit, like, the find my iPhone app thing.
And it said that her – it showed her phone, like, at our end of our driveway. We don't have really good service.
Okay.
Not the end of our driveway, but the end of our street. So I just drove down there, and I saw her phone with her headphones because she started running again. And it – I found her phone, and it's got, like, hair ripped out of it, like, in the headphones. So I'm, like, totally freaking out thinking, like, somebody, like, grabbed her.
Okay, what's your address? Redding. Okay, what's your last name?
Yes. Papini, P-A-P-I-N-I.
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Chapter 4: What did Sherri experience during her time missing?
I'm going to, like, knock on every door. Sherry, S-H-E-R-R-I.
And same last name?
Yes.
Is she a white female?
Yes.
What's her date of birth?
It is June 11, 1982.
Is her vehicle there? Does she not have a vehicle?
She has a vehicle. It's at the house.
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Chapter 5: What were the findings when Sherri was found?
Eye color?
Like a bluish blue.
Okay, hair color?
Blonde.
Do you know what she was wearing? I have no idea.
I'm assuming she went running.
Okay, there's not an outfit she always wears or anything like that. Does she run with a dog or by herself?
By herself.
She just started running again. When's the last time you heard from her?
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Chapter 6: How did the FBI's investigation unfold?
They didn't understand how a mom and a wife could just be minding her own business one minute, going for a jog in the morning around her seemingly safe neighborhood, and then be abducted the very next moment. So maybe part of the public interest and public attraction was because people saw a little bit of themselves in her? I'm not really sure.
Maybe it made them even more fearful or empathetic towards the situation? I'm not sure. Now, as we all know, When somebody goes missing and foul play is suspected to be involved, most of the time, the first person and the first point of contact that investigators will look to is the spouse, the partner, right?
And it's all a bit subjective depending on who you're asking or what video you're watching. But all in all, Keith seemed to truly be a very confused and very scared husband. He was doing extensive media interviews. He was constantly pushing for more updates, more information, just really trying to get Sherry's case known and out there. And he was just not letting up, which is a good thing.
Don't get me wrong. And on top of that, he was cooperative with the investigators. His story completely checked out. So now, without the focus being on the spouse... The question really was, and the theory was, you know, where is Sherry? What happened to Sherry? Who could have done this to her? Today's episode is sponsored by Hya Health.
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Chapter 7: What new evidence emerged years later in Sherri's case?
So, although there were some different theories floating as to who could have been responsible, the main root of this that everybody agreed on was that she had been abducted. And the same went for law enforcement. Everybody thought that she had been abducted, and they were not only looking for Sherry, but they were also now looking into any potential avenues of foul play.
They didn't really have much evidence to go off of, but they were using whatever they had to work with trying to piece this case together. Now what the public didn't really realize at the time was that the FBI was heavily involved with this case behind the scenes, pretty much from the get-go.
And when it came to the FBI's theories, well, let's just say they were making sure to check all of the boxes. They wanted to just be very, very thorough of all of the possibilities. Maybe they were even, I don't know, a little bit skeptical.
I mean, of course, they were still looking into the possibility that Sherry had been kidnapped, because by all means, it certainly looked like that was the case. But they also had their suspicions. Like Keith said in the 911 call, he took a photo of Sherry's phone that was lying on the ground left behind before he picked it up. And that picture was a big red flag for a lot of the FBI investigators.
To put it bluntly, Sherry's phone just seemed a little too staged. It was right there, lying on the ground, face up, no scratches, no damage to screen, certainly not indicative of there being any type of struggle or being thrown out, just...
almost very carefully and strategically placed so much so in fact that the headphones were still connected they were coiled up together on top of the phone which if you go back to 2016 that is before airpods were a thing that's before people wearing little beats before any of that stuff it was when you had the tethered corded little buds for your ears so here it was it was almost like coiled up together just rat like in a circle on top of the phone almost like somebody laid it on
way. And yeah, sure, her hair was also wrapped up inside of it, but it didn't look natural. Now in this docuseries, a woman named Denise Farmer, who was the lead investigator for the FBI on Sherry's case but has since retired, described their suspicions overall by saying, this isn't our first rodeo. Which, that's a pretty bold statement, right?
Meaning, they had seen kidnapping cases before, they knew what to look for, they had seen some very serious and very gruesome things. And something about this case? It was just off. But they couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. And despite all of the extensive searches, despite the FBI being involved, and Sherry's face being plastered nationwide... Sherry stayed missing for three whole weeks.
But then, early morning on Thanksgiving Day in 2016, Sherry reappeared. Almost as quickly as she had vanished, she was just poof, back. And she was seen on surveillance footage running through a parking lot, almost as though she was running for her life away from her captors. She had managed to flag someone down during this sprint, and she had them call 911 for help.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of Sherri's claims against her ex-boyfriend?
Yet, at the same time, it was almost like she had no answers at all. For example, she was able to give a description of her kidnappers, who she, by the way, described as two Hispanic women who were wearing masks. But then she explained that they had kept a bag over her head the majority of the time. So because of that, she couldn't really ever see much.
And Denise, the FBI investigator, noted that she was really descriptive about some of the things. yet never too descriptive about anything of use. Like how, for example, she remembered the exact coffee table that she was bent over against when she was branded by her captors.
She remembered the color, the style of it, everything, yet she could never recall the color of the vehicle that she had been thrown into when she was abducted. And Denise almost made a joke about this in the docuseries, kind of being like, you know, I can't exactly find a place or a kidnapper based on the coffee table that they own. Like, I need something more, right?
And she wondered if that was purposeful on Sherry's part. Again, this isn't the FBI's first rodeo, and Sherry's interviews with the investigators just kept bringing up more red flags. Denise also noted in this episode that she found the description of the kidnappers to be very odd.
Because not only do women not typically do the heavy lifting if they are involved in some sort of kidnapping, but in general, women don't really do a lot of kidnappings or abductions. I mean, sure, yes, Sherry was a tiny woman, so overpowering her definitely would not have been too difficult. But still, it was just weird.
I mean, why wouldn't a man be the one doing the abducting and the kidnapping? Why would two women do it? What's the motive there? What's the endgame there? And it wasn't as though these women were doing the man's dirty work, because according to Sherry, she said that those two women were the only ones that she ever came into contact with.
There weren't any other women where she was taken to, there was never another man, just these two women that she described. So what would their motive have been?
Then there was also the fact that Denise said that during Sherry's interviews with the investigators, she came off as almost flirtatious, kind of like sexual in nature, which that was very odd considering everything that had happened to her. But she was smiling and she was laughing most of the time.
So again, it didn't seem like the behavior or the mental state of someone who had just gone through hell the past three weeks and finally returned. And I gotta say, there are some parallels too with Jodi Arias and how Sherry was acting. And obviously it's very different circumstances, right?
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