‘Gone Girl’ Vallejo kidnapper charged with South Bay home invasions from 2009
SAN JOSE — Matthew Muller, who is serving multiple lengthy prison sentences for kidnapping and raping a Vallejo woman in a case that drew international infamy after police wrongly accused the victim of fabricating the ordeal, is now being charged with home invasions in Mountain View and Palo Alto reported several years earlier.
Muller, 47, was transferred last week from a federal prison facility in Arizona back to the Bay Area, where he is being held in the Santa Clara County Main Jail, records show. He was scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges Monday afternoon.
In the wake of the botched Vallejo police investigation that eventually gave way to Muller being prosecuted for the 2015 home invasion and kidnapping of Denise Huskins, the FBI alleged that in 2009, Muller broke into the homes of three women in Mountain View and Palo Alto, then drugged and interrogated them before fleeing.
Those allegations have now culminated in criminal charges in Santa Clara County, where the district attorney’s office announced Monday that DNA from Muller was found on crime scene evidence from two of the 2009 home invasions.
According to authorities, on March 23, 2015, Muller broke into the home of Huskins and her husband Aaron Quinn, bound them with zip ties and blindfolds, then drugged them. Muller left Quinn behind and put Huskins into the trunk of Quinn’s car and drove her to a family home in South Lake Tahoe.
At the Tahoe residence, Muller twice raped Huskins, and held her for two days before driving her to Huntington Beach in Southern California where he released her.
When Huskins and Quinn reported the kidnapping to Vallejo police, they accused the two of making up the abduction, which would eventually lead to police issuing a public apology and the city paying the couple of a $2.5 million settlement.
The kidnapping was compared by media at the time to the 2014 film “Gone Girl,” which involves a false kidnapping as a central plot point. Like in that film and the book that preceded it, Quinn was initially treated as a primary suspect in his wife’s disappearance.
Muller was arrested in June 2015 after evidence including a video of him and Huskins was recovered at the South Lake Tahoe home. Prior to that he had contacted a San Francisco Chronicle reporter to argue that the narrative of the hoax kidnapping was false and that the crime had actually happened.
The crime continues to capture the imagination of Hollywood and media, with a Netflix documentary “American Nightmare” released earlier this year and the victims authoring a book about their experiences in 2021.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.