Ex-lawyer gets 40 years for California abduction

CALIFORNIA: A Harvardeducated lawyer was sentenced on Thursday to 40 years in prison for a high-profile 2015 California kidnapping that drew comparisons to the film ‘Gone Girl', ending a bizarre abduction saga that police first dismissed as a hoax.

Matthew Muller, 39, pleaded guilty in September to kidnapping Denise Huskins in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco, after breaking into the home where she and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were sleeping, then tying up and drugging the couple.

Muller released Huskins, then a 30-year-old physical therapist, after holding her for two days and demanding ransom.

She reappeared unharmed nearly 644 km away in her hometown of Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, then went into seclusion and retained an attorney. The case drew national media attention as Vallejo police disputed Quinn's claim that Huskins was forcibly abducted, suggesting instead that the incident was ‘an orchestrated event'.

The odd circumstances drew comparisons to the plot of the 2014 ‘Gone Girl', which starred Ben Affleck as a writer whose wife fakes her own abduction.

Muller was indicted in the case only after being arrested for a different home invasion in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation found evidence linking him to Huskins' kidnapping.

Vallejo police later apologised to Huskins and Quinn, who sued city authorities in March 2016 for smearing their reputations and other damages stemming from police actions during and after the kidnapping. — Reuters