Kidnapping of California woman gets new attention
VALLEJO >> The ordeal of Denise Huskins, whose kidnapping from her boyfriend's Northern California home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement, is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, “American Nightmare.”
The kidnapping
On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into the home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied both of them up before forcefully taking Huskins in the middle of the night. Quinn also said the kidnappers were demanding an $8,500 ransom.
A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at times suggesting he may have been involved in Huskins' disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph test which an FBI agent told him he failed, the couple said later in a book about their ordeal.
Huskins, who was 29 at the time, turned up unharmed two days later outside her father's apartment in Huntington Beach, where she said she was dropped off. She reappeared just hours before the ransom was due.
Police call it a hoax
That same day, police in Vallejo announced in a news conference that they had found no evidence of a kidnapping and accused Huskins and Quinn of faking the abduction, which spurred a massive search.
Police said they became suspicious because Quinn waited hours to report the kidnapping. At the news conference, spokesman Kenny Park expressed disgust over the resources supposedly squandered, with 40 detectives assigned to the case, and the fear it caused among the community.
But Quinn and Huskins were adamant that it wasn't a hoax and insisted they were the victims. Quinn's attorney explained the delay in reporting to police by noting that his client had been bound and drugged.
A suspect is caught
The couple were proven right when Matthew Muller, a disbarred, Harvard-educated attorney, was caught and charged in Huskins' abduction.
Muller was arrested on June 8, 2015, in South Lake Tahoe for a home-invasion robbery that occurred in Dublin. Investigators found a laptop that resembled one that belonged to Quinn and had been taken.
A search of a stolen car connected to Muller turned up numerous other items, including a water pistol with a flashlight and laser pointer on it, and a pair of goggles similar to the ones Huskins and Quinn said they were forced to wear during the kidnapping. In the goggles was a strand of long blond hair, the same color as the victim's. Detectives also determined that the vehicle's navigation system history turned up a Huntington Beach address.
Muller pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and is serving a 40-year prison term.