New footage captured the moment a mum who faked her own kidnapping and torture has her lies unravelled in front of her.
Sherri Papini broke down sobbing when two detectives from Shasta County Sheriff’s Office rumbled her years of lies in front of her disbelieving husband.
Instead of having been kidnapped by two Mexican woman and tortured, Papini had absconded to her ex’s house and hid out with him.
She disappeared for 20 days back in 2016 only to suddenly reappear on Thanks Giving day in rural Yolo County, California with a ‘brand’ on her shoulder.
It was then she began to spin her web of lies and told cops she was abducted by a pair of armed Hispanic women when out running near her home on November 2.
She claimed they tortured her for almost three weeks and convinced her family and friends of the horrific ordeal.
For years she sustained the lies until she was found to actually have been at her ex’s apartment.
The clip, from August 13, 2020, was over three years after she had been claimed to have been kidnapped when out jogging.
Her husband Keith Papini was in the room and he had loyally stood by his wife and defended her for years.
But over the space of a few minutes all that was shattered as her extensive lies were revealed and their marriage destroyed.
The 40-year-old fraudster was rumbled when officers found DNA evidence belonging to her ex James Reyes, according to the video obtained by ABC News. Then they confronted him when the true story came out.
The video shows Papini and her husband Keith sat one side of the table, with the two detectives across from them.
The law enforcement officers repeatedly asked her if she wanted her husband to leave the room before they “moved onto the next stage of things”.
However, her husband was present for the moment their marriage was shattered by her lies.
The couple were left alone in the room for several minutes during which time a panicking Papini tells her husband that she “doesn’t want them to find” one of the women she claimed abducted her.
She added: “I don’t want her to be arrested. I don’t want to press charges on her. I don’t want them to find her.”
Her husband, confused by her startling admission, said: “Honey, there’s obviously something going on here. There’s obviously something you’re not telling me. This is going to be really bad if you do not tell me.”
However Papini maintains the lie and claims the woman saved her life and is the reason she can see her children every night.
Keith added: “No matter what happens, do you think this just sits here? Whatever happened is over. And it doesn’t matter what you say. The girl is going to get in trouble.
“You’re not making sense … to a point where I’m getting scared now.”
It’s at this point detectives return to the room and drop the bombshell evidence proving Papini lied to the authorities, faked her kidnapping, decieved her husband, and stowed away with her ex-partner.
“The DNA that was on you belongs to James Reyes,” an investigator says.
Keith can only hold his hands in his lap and watch in disbelief as his wife’s lies are unravelled in real time around him.
The detective went on: “We talked to [James Reyes]. We’ve been on a polygraph. We talked to everybody around him. We have the rental agreements. Phone rental, car rental agreements. We have everything that says that he said he told the truth.
“Everything, you’ve told us so many truths in this situation. The reason why you can describe the room is because you stayed in the room, in the dark, for hours, for days on end.
“The reason why you lost so much weight is because you stopped eating. The reason why you got a rash on your arm was because you cleaned his house.
“The reason why [you had] the brand is because he went to the store, got the branding tools and branded you. The reason why your nose is broke is because of a hockey stick.”
Reyes passed a polygraph test where he said Papini had contacted him to ask him to “come get her” in a rented car.
Papini began sobbing at this point and covered her face as she said: “No,” over and over and claimed “There’s no way it’s James”.
She tries to maintain the lie and claims she hasn’t seen Reyes in years.
But one detective said: “He told us what happened and gave us details nobody else would know.”
On Monday this week Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison on one count of mail fraud and one count of making a false statement after she agreed to a plea deal in April.
She also has to pay out over $300,000 (£268,000) in restitution. Two days after her confession Keith filed for divorce.
