You’re forgiven if you think you’ve already watched a true-crime docuseries about the case in Perfect Wife. It’s the story of a beautiful blond woman who was mysteriously abducted from a Northern California town in the mid-2010s, then emerged from captivity to growing skepticism from local law enforcement. Based on that outline alone, it sounds enough like the recent series American Nightmare that a certain amount of market confusion is understandable—but it’s also incorrect.

That’s because Perfect Wife, which drops on Hulu Thursday, June 20, is a photo negative of the abduction and vindication of American Nightmare’s Denise Huskins. Instead, it’s the story of a bizarre, yearslong deception, by a (spoiler alert!) convicted perpetrator who still insists they did nothing wrong.

Sherri Papini, then a 34-year-old mother of two, made national headlines after she vanished while out on a run near her Redding, California, home on November 2, 2016—leaving behind her cell phone, headphones, and a chunk of hair. Keith Papini, her husband, was targeted as a suspect by online sleuths, who dissected every move he made in his many media appearances. “Everybody thought I was a suspect,” he says in an interview. “But I had nothing to hide. And I certainly, at that time, did not think Sherri had anything to hide.”

Three weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, Sherri was discovered by the side of a remote road, covered in injuries and a chain around her waist. She refused to speak with police initially, but eventually said two women had taken her captive, trapped her in a small, dark room, and starved, beat, and branded her. A dispute in Spanish between the pair prompted one of the women to release her, Papini said. Her memories of her captivity were foggy, and her trauma appeared severe.

Law enforcement tried in vain to find the women, as the community worried that Sherri’s abduction was part of a larger pattern. Suspicion shifted from Keith to any pair of Latinx women you might see on the street. Reunited with her family, Sherri appeared to struggle emotionally, telling Keith at one point that “I have to live with the fact that you never found me.”

“I remember I was pleading with her,” Keith says now. “Like, ‘I did everything I could, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’”

“She knew what she was doing in that moment. And to this day, I remember that time, and it hurts. I’ll forever remember that.”

That’s because in 2020, after years of dead ends, investigators with the FBI and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office discovered that Sherri hadn’t been abducted at all.

That shocking twist is what attracted true-crime filmmaker Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs Spears, The Ringleader) to the story. Carr, an executive producer on the series, suggested director Michael Beach Nichols tell the tale.

“I was immediately compelled, and shocked that I hadn’t heard about it before,” Nichols says. “There’s this huge hook—just when you hear what the story is, you’re immediately sucked in.”

The three-episode series unfolds chronologically, rewarding viewers who stick with an initial episode that appears to detail a straightforward kidnapping. Nichols admits that the approach was a gamble, saying that he wanted to “immerse the audience in what everyone was experiencing at that time, in real time.” It’s as the show continues, and we see more and more interviews with Keith—but none with Sherri—that we start to realize that things aren’t what they seem.

In a stunning piece of interrogation room footage, we finally learn the truth. DNA discovered on Sherri’s clothing was linked to James Reyes, one of Papini’s ex-boyfriends. When investigators tracked him down, he told them that Sherri had asked him to pick her up at a staged abduction site, then to take her back to his home in Costa Mesa, hundreds of miles down the coast. She’d even asked him to help her injure herself to bolster her kidnapping claims, he said. (Reyes was not charged in connection to the crime.)

A federal agent and sheriff’s deputy reveal this to Sherri as Keith sits next to her, and we watch via a camera above. It’s a remarkable, axis-shifting moment. “She fooled him, which is a lot more understandable because it's his partner,” Nichols says. “But she also fooled law enforcement, high levels of law enforcement.”

Almost two years later, Sherri pleaded guilty to lying to a federal officer and to mail fraud (the latter related to funds she received from California Victim’s Compensation Board based on her false story), and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. When asked by a federal judge if she had been kidnapped, she answered “No.” Keith filed for divorce two days later.

“It's sad,” Keith says now. “I loved this woman. I would have done anything for her. I love our children. I was blindsided.”

According to Nichols, Keith would make self-deprecating jokes about being the “idiot husband” to the crew. “And we were just like, ‘What are you talking about? Like, who would think that their partner would lie about all of this?’”

“His whole sense of identity was tied into having this relationship with his wife, the mother of his children.” Nichols says. “If he doesn't believe in that, then all of that just crumbles. I completely understand why someone would want to fight for that, and would want to fight for the relationship and would want to believe their partner.”

In the years since, Keith has grown more clear-eyed about what he refers to as Sherri’s “craft.” But he doesn’t seem angry or resentful. In fact, there’s a comforting sense of peace to the man. More than once, he expresses concern to me that, as a NorCal resident myself (I live in San Francisco), I might have lived in fear when news of Sherri’s abduction broke.

He’s not wrong. When Sherri’s kidnapping was in the news, my husband asked me not to go for a run in Golden Gate Park—and if I must go, not to wear headphones. Keith winces when I tell him that. “The ripple effect,” he says, “I take that on.

“I think of all the people that didn’t let their kids ride bikes anymore. I just overwhelmingly…” He trails off. “I'm just so sorry.” That self-inflicted guilt is one of the main reasons he participated in the series, Keith says. “I really wanted to say thank you, for everyone coming together.”

Sherri was released from prison last fall, and has returned to the same community that searched so hard for her eight years ago. Keith, however, has no contact with her. “I don't talk to her whatsoever, with the exception if we have a court date. We’re not talking, but we’re in the same room. And she sees the kids once a month on professionally supervised visits.” A final custody arrangement has yet to be agreed upon.

Nichols says he tried every avenue he could to speak with Sherri, but she never responded. That means the motive for her deception remains a mystery. Even now, Nichols thinks Keith is still “worried that Sherri will be believed, because he believed her for six years.” When I ask how this could be, after she admitted to the hoax in court, Nichols pauses for a moment.

“Based on what we’ve heard from people that are closer to Sherri, it seems like she’s sort of sticking to her story, that she was abducted. There’s a whole story that she’s still telling.”

“I would wager that she’s not happier now than she was when this all happened,” the filmmaker adds—a notable contrast to how Keith says he feels today.

“I wanted to let the community and my friends and family members know that we’re doing great, the kids are thriving,” he says. “A lot of people will go through a lot of very crazy things in their lives. Mine was publicized, and mine was put out there. And it’s very odd and strange. But you know, I need to be there for my kids. I don’t have time to sit there and yell at everybody. And I just need to keep moving forward.”