Kidnap victim describes ‘hell’; Man gets 40 years

A California woman who was drugged along with her boyfriend and then dragged from their home described the “hell that we have survived” in emotional testimony before her abductor was sentenced to 40 years in prison in a crime so elaborate and bizarre that police initially dismissed it as a hoax. “You treated me like an object, a toy, an animal,” Denise Huskins told her kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney who pleaded guilty in September.

Huskins described the two days of physical and psychological torture she endured after Muller snatched her from her and her boyfriend’s San Francisco Bay Area home two years ago. “I still have nightmares every night,” she said Thursday, fighting back tears. “Sleep is not rest for me. It is a trigger.” Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who was bound and drugged during the kidnapping, said he “cannot and will not ever be the same.” US District Judge Troy Nunley called the abduction a “heinous, atrocious, horrible crime” as he sentenced Muller, 39. He had faced up to life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

‘Sick with shame’

In court, Muller said he was “sick with shame” for the “pain and horror” he caused. Shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, he looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced. “He doesn’t have empathy. I don’t think he’s capable of it,” Quinn’s mother, Marianne Quinn, said after the sentencing. She said a life sentence would have been better “because they never would have to worry about him ever again, but again, he’s going to be in jail for a long, long, long time.” Defense attorney Thomas Johnson argued for a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment.

“They want him to be a monster to get to 40 years. Fine. Marginalize mental illness,” Johnson told the judge sardonically. — AP