Keith Papini on Wednesday filed for divorce in California state court after her wife’s fabricated tale of being violently abducted unraveled under the glare of the national spotlight. The divorce filings are the latest for Sherri Papini who could face jail time and steep fines when she’s sentenced in July.
Just two days after his wife pleaded guilty to lying about her kidnapping, Keith Papini filed for “dissolution with minor children” in Shasta County Superior Court in northern California, reported The Sacramento Bee. The hearing is set for May 9.
For three weeks in November 2016, Sherri Papini, 39, went missing, sparking a nationwide search for the mother of two. Twenty-two days later, Papini was found disheveled and bruised on the side of a road with a chain around her waist that was bound to one arm, along with other bindings on her other wrist and ankles.
Papini claimed that two Hispanic women kidnaped her at gunpoint while out jogging in her hometown of Redding. She said the women beat her before one of them released her nearly 150 miles away in Yolo County, California.
“I thought about her being there screaming my name, and I wasn’t there and that really got to me,” said Keith Papini, fighting back tears in a 2016 interview with ABC’s 20/20.
In the interview, Keith Papini described being “head over heels” in love with his wife. He also recalled the difficult job of breaking the news to their 4-year-old and promising his mother would be found.
“I know she was taken,” he said in the interview.
But problems with Sherri Papini’s story began to emerge. Hospital workers also couldn’t find a cut she claimed to have received while fighting her captors. Tests found both male and female DNA on Papini’s clothing and skin, undermining her story. The DNA sample did not match her husband.
It later emerged that Papini was staying with an unnamed ex-boyfriend and had planned to run away a year before her disappearance, according to documents filed by federal prosecutors.
On Monday, Sherri Papini confessed in court to faking her kidnapping. She already has to repay more than $30,000 worth of psychiatric treatments covered by the state victim fund on top of $128,000 in disability payments.
“I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done,” Papini said in a statement released early by her attorney William Portanova.
She is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 and could face up to 25 years in prison or additional fines as high as $250,000.
Portanova declined to comment to Newsweek.
