Rapist behind ‘Gone Girl’ kidnapping charged in more crimes — 15 years later

Author of the article:

Washington Post

Jonathan Edwards, The Washington Post

Published Dec 31, 2024  •  4 minute read

Matthew Muller, seen in a 2015 booking photo, was behind what became known as the "Gone Girl Hoax" kidnapping and is now charged in two similar crimes. MUST CREDIT: Dublin Police Department Photo by Uncredited /AP

Matthew Muller, a U.S. Marine turned Harvard University-educated lawyer, was still six years away from gaining national infamy for the abduction that would later become known as the “Gone Girl Hoax” kidnapping.

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But in 2009, he was already honing his craft as a kidnapper and rapist by breaking into women’s homes and drugging them, prosecutors now allege.

More than 15 years later, Muller has been charged with breaking into two women’s houses in the San Francisco Bay Area, tying them up, forcibly drugging them and threatening to rape them, prosecutors said Monday.

Muller, now 47 and incarcerated in Tucson, gained national attention in 2015 when he was accused of kidnapping and raping a physical therapist in an attack that Vallejo, California, police first called an elaborate hoax as they tried to get her boyfriend to admit that he had killed her and dumped her body somewhere.

Muller pleaded guilty in 2016 to kidnapping Denise Huskins and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He later was convicted of two counts of forcible rape, for which he was sentenced to 31 years.

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Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen on Monday addressed the 2009 attacks.

“The details of this person’s violent crime spree seem scripted for Hollywood, but they are tragically real,” Rosen said in a statement.

Muller’s lawyer, public defender Agustin Arias, declined to comment on the new charges.

On Monday, Muller was arraigned on two counts of committing sexual assault during a home invasion. Prosecutors accuse him of breaking into a woman’s home in Mountain View, California, early on Sept. 29, 2009, and forcing her to drink a cocktail of medications. He threatened to rape her, but she persuaded him not to, prosecutors said Monday in a statement. Instead, he allegedly suggested she get a dog before fleeing her home.

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Less than a month later, on Oct. 18, Muller broke into a different woman’s home in neighboring Palo Alto, California, prosecutors said. He allegedly bound and gagged the woman, who was in her 30s, forced her to drink NyQuil and then assaulted her. The woman persuaded him to stop, prompting Muller to give her crime prevention advice and then bolt, prosecutors allege.

Although police investigated both crimes, they went unsolved.

Six years later, on March 23, 2015, Huskins and her new boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were sleeping at Quinn’s house on Mare Island in Vallejo, California, when they were awakened by a crackling sound and bright light, Quinn said in “American Nightmare,” a Netflix documentary series about the case released this year.

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A voice that sounded like a man’s demanded they lie face down on the bed. Muller instructed Huskins to tie Quinn’s hands behind his back and bind his legs. Then, Muller covered Quinn’s eyes with blacked-out swim goggles and put headphones on his ears.

“The headphones were used to play a prerecorded message that provided instructions, indicated that the break-in was being performed by a professional group on-site to collect financial debts, and threatened that both victims would be hurt by electric shock or by cutting their faces if either of the two victims did not comply,” the FBI said.

Quinn was also forced to drink a cocktail of NyQuil and sedatives, an FBI agent wrote in a sworn affidavit. In the Netflix documentary series, Quinn said he heard their attacker put Huskins into the trunk of his Toyota Camry and drive off just before he passed out.

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After awaking from a drug-induced sleep and freeing himself, Quinn called police.

Detectives with the Vallejo Police Department questioned him for 18 hours. At first, investigator Mathew Mustard told Quinn that police believed he was a victim but then “aggressively interrogated” him, eventually accusing him of lying about the break-in and kidnapping to create a cover story to get away with killing Huskins and dumping her body.

Meanwhile, Muller drove Huskins about 150 miles to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, California, where he sexually assaulted her twice. Two days later, he transported her some 500 miles south to her childhood hometown, Huntington Beach, and released her.

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When Huskins appeared, Vallejo police changed their theory: Quinn hadn’t killed his girlfriend in a rage and then tried to cover it up; instead, the couple conspired to stage an elaborate kidnapping that investigators suggested was a hoax.

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But two months later, that theory also crumbled when police in Dublin, California, arrested Muller. Around 3:30 a.m. on June 5, a different couple awoke to a bright light shining in their faces, leading the woman to rush to the bathroom to call 911. As she did, Muller fought with the male victim, hitting him several times in the head with a flashlight before fleeing.

He left his cellphone behind, leading law enforcement officers to arrest him at his family’s South Lake Tahoe home, an FBI agent wrote in a sworn affidavit. More than two miles away, investigators discovered a stolen 2011 Ford Mustang containing Muller’s driver’s license and a pair of swim goggles with duct tape covering the eyes and a long strand of blond hair stuck to that tape, the agent said, noting that the victim in the March 23 abduction, Huskins, had long blond hair.

Vallejo police apologized for initially dismissing the couple’s account. In 2018, Huskins and Quinn, now married, reached a $2.5 million settlement with the city.

Rosen, the Santa Clara district attorney, said technological advances in DNA testing allowed investigators to reexamine the evidence in the 2009 cases. In doing so, they found Muller’s DNA on the straps he used to bind one of the victims.

“Our goal is to make sure this defendant is held accountable and will never hurt or terrorize anyone ever again,” Rosen said in his statement. “Our hope is that this nightmare is over.”

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