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So-called ‘Gone Girl’ kidnapper faces new charges


Prosecutors have announced new charges against a man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman in what was initially believed to be a hoax and became known as the “Gone Girl” kidnapping..

Matthew Muller, 47, the man who kidnapped Denise Huskins in Vallejo in 2015, is now charged in two home invasion cases dating back 15 years.

Muller broke into the women’s homes in Palo Alto and Mountain View in 2009 with the intent of raping them, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

Thanks to the new lead and advances in forensic DNA testing, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, along with Palo Alto and Mountain View police, were able to identify Muller in the cases.

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Matthew Muller, a disbarred, Harvard-educated immigration attorney, was finally arrested for Huskins’ kidnapping after being implicated in a similar home invasion over his forgotten cell phone. (Solane County Sheriff’s Department)

Muller’s DNA was found on the straps he used to tie up one of the victims in one of the 2009 cases, the prosecutor’s office said.

Muller now faces two counts of sexual assault during the 2009 home invasion. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison, officials said.

“The details of this individual’s violent crime spree seem scripted for Hollywood, but they are tragically real,” said District Attorney Jeff Rosen. “Our goal is to make sure this defendant is held accountable and never hurts or terrorizes anyone again. We hope this nightmare is over.”

In the early morning hours of Sept. 29, 2009, officials said Muller broke into a Mountain View woman’s home, assaulted her, tied her up, forced her to drink a mixture of drugs and told her he was going to rape her. After the victim, who officials said was in her 30s, talked him out of it, he suggested the victim get a dog and then ran away.

Less than a month later, on Oct. 18, officials said Muller broke into a home in Palo Alto, where he performed the same routine and bound and gagged a woman in her 30s. He then forced her to drink Nyquil and began assaulting her, before being persuaded to stop. Muller gave the victim advice on how to prevent crime and then fled.

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Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn appear at a press conference with attorney Doug Rappaport (left) in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. Huskins and Quinn were the victims of a bizarre kidnapping case in Vallejo in March 2015. Matthew Muller pleaded guilty to kidnapping Huskin. (Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Both cases were investigated at the time and remained unsolved.

Muller gained national attention six years later as the subject of “American Nightmare,” a Netflix docuseries chronicling his “Gone Girl Hoax” 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins of Vallejo and her harrowing 48 hours in captivity.

On March 23, 2015, Muller broke into a house in Vallejo, where he did drugs, and tied up Huskins and her boyfriend. He kidnapped Huskins, brought her to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe and sexually assaulted her. Two days later, Muller drove his victim to Southern California and released her.

Vallejo police initially believed the invasion and kidnapping was a hoax orchestrated by her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, a twist that the media deemed “the real ‘Gone Girl,'” referring to Ben Affleck’s hit thriller and novel “Gone Girl,” in which a woman from a small town stages her own murder to take revenge on her cheating husband.

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Vallejo Police Department headquarters in Vallejo, Calif., on Tuesday, July 14, 2015. (Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Although they said at the press conference that they were treating the case as a kidnapping, KRON4 reported, the Vallejo Police Department suspected Quinn of killing his girlfriend and making up his account. He endured 18 hours of interrogation, according to the documents.

The couple sued the Vallejo Police Department for $2.5 million, but not before enduring months of public scrutiny.

Huskins and Quinn told the filmmakers that Misty Caraus, the rookie detective who solved the case, was their hero. On June 5, 2015, the couple woke up in the middle of the night to an almost identical home invasion.

After reaching out to Bay Area police departments, NBC Bay Area reported, Carausu learned that Muller was a suspect in a 2009 home invasion in Palo Alto. Also at the scene were duct tape-tinted swimming goggles with blonde hair attached.

While the wife hid in the bathroom and called the police, the husband managed to fight off the attacker. But he left key evidence behind: shoelaces, duct tape, a glove and a cell phone.

Caraus traced the phone to the stepfather of a man named Matthew Muller, a Harvard-educated immigration attorney and Marine Corps veteran.

At that moment Caraus contacted the FBIand Muller was arrested for a home invasion in Dublin, California on June 8.

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Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn are shown at a press conference. They both hired lawyers after being publicly accused of faking a home invasion and feared losing their jobs as physical therapists. (MIKE JORY/THE TIMES-HERALD via AP)

Evidence in his home, including Quinn’s laptop, finally linked him to Huskins’ kidnapping. Muller’s confession matched Quinn and Huskins’ stories perfectly, down to the audio recordings, tinted glasses and liquid sedatives.

Muller pleaded guilty in September 2016 to one count of federal kidnapping and was sentenced to 40 years behind bars. Muller also faced state charges of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and two forced rapes.

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The Vallejo Police Department publicly accused Denise and Aaron of staging their ordeal, welcoming a barrage of negative press before their assailant was arrested for a similar home invasion. (Associated Press)

But he was considered incapable of judge yourself for those charges in November 2020, according to the documentary. Muller reportedly suffered from “Gulf War sickness” after his military service, and his lawyer claimed he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, NBC News reported.

Muller was then sentenced to 31 years in state prison in 2022 after pleading no contest to two counts of involuntary rape of Huskins.

He is currently incarcerated in a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.

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Huskins and Quinn previously told People magazine that they had no idea why Muller targeted them.

“Like many victims, or many people who are went through a tragedyyou don’t get all the answers,” Quinn told the magazine. “And that can be a barrier to recovery. So for us, we don’t rely on finding those answers, but what we have to do is move forward into the unknown and focus on the things that are most important to us, like our family, our kids, our work. These are sustainable things. And having answers to why we were targeted doesn’t change what we’re doing moving forward.”

The couple married in 2018, published a book about their ordeal in 2021, and had daughters in 2020 and 2022.

Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Tips and story ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com





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