Sherri Papini Slams Ex Keith for ‘Stealing’ Their Kids From Her & Addresses Rubbing Alcohol Claims
Sherri Papini is firing back at allegations her ex-husband, Keith Papini, made in the 2024 docuseries Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini. Speaking out for the first time in the new four-part ID docuseries Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, Sherri responded to Keith’s claims that she “poisoned” their two children by making them breathe in rubbing alcohol while they were sick.
Sherri claimed that Keith was “furious” when he found out she was using a secondary phone to communicate with her ex James Reyes. “He tried to get me to sign a contract that stated that I would relinquish all of my parental rights,” Sherri alleged. “The leverage he had over me was my kids. He said, ‘This is the easy way. If you sign this, this is the easy way.’ I chose not to sign the contract and everything that I’d been afraid of happening if I told the truth [about James], happened. Everything he threatened to do, happened.”
Six weeks after the confrontation, Sherri said she got a call from a member of Child Protective Services (CPS), who “questioned [her] about [her] methods with the children” and asked if she’d “ever encouraged [her] children to huff rubbing alcohol from a bag.” She insisted, “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. The allegation is that I poisoned my children.”
Sherri revealed that CPS did an “incredibly thorough” investigation in 2022, which has “been closed [and] unfounded.” However, Keith’s allegations were made public when he spoke about them in Perfect Wife two years later.
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In the 2024 doc, Keith said, “One day, after Sherri was already in prison, as I go and lay my daughter to bed, I push off the bed, and I kind of make a little grunt sounds, like, ‘Ah!’ You know, I was a little bit sore. Violet, she was like, ‘Daddy, are you sick?’ and she goes, ‘Why don’t you do mommy’s trick?’ I was like, ‘Mommy’s trick? What are you talking about?’ She was like, ‘Well, you just breathe in this rubbing alcohol,’ and I was like, ‘What?’ She goes to the bathroom, she knows right where the rubbing alcohol is. She wads up a thing of toilet paper and just soaks it and then hands it to me to breathe.”
Keith claimed his daughter told him they breathed in the rubbing alcohol “every single day” when they were sick. “[I] find out Sherri would soak rags of alcohol and put it in a Ziploc bag and tie a string…” he alleged. “Would tie a string around their neck onto the Ziploc bag… so that they would continue to smell the fumes to make them not feel good so that she could take them to the doctor.”
However, Sherri had a much different version of the story. “When [the kids] sick, stuffy, nose is running, most moms would want to rub Vick’s on their skin and help them breathe,” she explained. “My kids have sensitive skin, so instead of that, I take essential oils, and I put it on a cotton ball, and I put it in a cloth bag and I wrap it around their neck. It’s loose. It’s obviously something that can be pulled off. I don’t let them sleep with it. It’s just something to help them breathe.”
Keith filed for divorce from Sherri in April 2022 after she pled guilty to mail fraud and making false statements. Her guilty plea was part of a plea agreement where she admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016 (now, she says she was legitimately kidnapped by Reyes, and claims the only thing she lied about was the identity of the person who abducted her).
While Sherri was serving her prison sentence, her divorce from Keith was finalized and he received sole custody of the kids. “My children were not taken away from me. They were stolen by my ex-husband,” she said in the new docuseries. “I was never ruled as a danger or a threat to my children. My children were never taken by court. They were taken by Keith. Before I went to prison, he filed an order to get 100% physical and legal custody, and it was granted because I was going to prison.”
She added that she now has phone calls with the kids every Sunday, but accused Keith of having the “tendency to cancel” or “shift the schedule” at the last minute. “It’s been that way for almost two years now,” she shared.
However, Sherri isn’t giving up. “Sherri continues to fight in family court for custody of her children,” a title card at the end of the series read.
Keith did not appear in the ID docuseries, but in a statement via his lawyer, he denied any “allegations of severe abuse, manipulation, and lying” made by Sherri, insisting that they are “false and disproven by a mountain of documentary evidence and objective, indisputable facts.”
Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, Monday and Tuesday, May 26 and 27, 9/8c, ID and Max
Conversation13 Comments
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Comments are closed on this story.
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G
Let's see - one of you faked a kidnapping in order to spend time with your ex-boyfriend. You fraudulently accepted $30,000 from the California Victim Compensation Board. Now, you want to say your ex-husband lied about you? Guess who I would believe.
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G
Like this is the main reason woman are never believed because of one’s like this who lie through their teeth to play victim. She wanted to cheat with her ex, so she ployed up a kidnapping story, then when that was said to be a lie she then changed it to oh my ex made me, then went to oh my husband physically abused me and was so scary. No one will ever believe a single word she says and I hope her children will forever see this woman as not a mother. I pray keith and the children get the peace they deserve.
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G
This woman is the master manipulator, I mean her own mother said she played the same ploy in 2003 blaming it on her. She is a liar. I don’t know why they would give this woman a spotlight after all of her bullshit. She deserves to be alone.
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K
Sherri is a narcissist, habitual liar, psychopath for what she did and she has the audacity to slam Keith who has nurtured and has and still is taking care of his children, even when as she put them through hell! She got way too easy for everything that she did, I think she should’ve been put in a psych ward because anybody that does that deserves to be in one. Grow a brain Sherri, you deserve and are not entitled to anything! You made your sick choice now live with it!
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O
This woman hasn't changed!!! She went after my partner like a dog in heat--all the while telling certain friends "she was AFRAID of him" and encouraging him to "get rid of me." The witch is sick, sick, sick.
Read all about it on Reddit at ThePapinis subreddit. (My posts are the ones that talk about the Homewrecker in the title.)
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R
She should have her legal parental rights REVOKED for good and a NO CONTACT order should be issued.
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O
The Redding family court system (judges and attorneys) are ill equipped in identifying which parent the kids would be best suited to live with and stop the ongoing litigations. They will simply continue draining the clients pockets with the expensive litigations while on the side line privately conferring with the opposition to an outcome each and every time, just to continue litigating time and time again. Thinking a attorney is a free thinker working on behalf of the clients best interest is a pipe dream there. It would seem from everything heard in this case the kids are just fine with Dad leaving the current limited exposure with Mom.
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O
She’s a good actress. Don’t believe a word. Maybe a little crazy.
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B
The woman is a pathological liar and if caught in a lie, will concoct another in a flash. They will not hesitate to throw their nearest and dearest under the bus if necessary. She is as bad as Elizabeth Holmes. They get away with it by flashing their big baby blue eyes and the innocent act..
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R
She is lying!! Dr. Riggs has got to be the most gullible psychologist in the world.
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G
I am not sure what their marriage was or wasn’t could be truth to what she said maybe she was unhappy but it doesn’t excuse what she did. However I don’t believe her husband about the rubbing alcohol because no small child is going to say that. Do what mommy does she goes and gets the rubbing alcohol they wouldn’t even know the name.
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R
I will say children can get things mixed-up SOMETIMES. What Keith said is close to what Ms. Thing's (a name ((along with IT)) that is my way of not using the exact name I have in my head for her) version is. But I believe that what Keith says the daughter said IS what the daughter SAID...but that goes back to children getting things mixed-up....SOMETIMES The only difference I can tell is that the daughter said rubbing alcohol and IT says is "essential oils"...funny thing is...IT doesn't say WHICH ones. BTW, when I was a kid I knew the names of lots of things...since I could READ.
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B
You don't think an eight year old knows what rubbing alcohol is, when they clearly had it in the house? She wasn't 2 or 3 when she told this to Keith ffs.
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