VALLEJO, CA — Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, who were dismissed as hoaxers by police after reporting a bizarre 2015 kidnapping, have secured $2.5 million from the City of Vallejo after their attacker was caught and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The couple’s ordeal began March 23, 2015, when an intruder in a wetsuit broke into Quinn’s Vallejo home at 3 a.m., kidnapped Huskins for ransom, and sexually assaulted her before releasing her two days later. Vallejo police immediately suspected Quinn of murdering his girlfriend and publicly called the case a hoax when Huskins reappeared alive. The case gained national attention when media outlets dubbed it the “Gone Girl” kidnapping, comparing it to the fictional movie plot where a woman fakes her own abduction.
Detective Mathew Mustard of the Vallejo Police Department accused Quinn of killing Huskins during a 40-minute interrogation. “I don’t think she was kidnapped from your home. I think something bad happened in your house,” Mustard told Quinn, according to recorded interviews. “Denise is going to be found. And when I say she’s found, she’s dead. They did not come into your house and kidnap her and take her for ransom. That did not happen!” Quinn, who had given police permission to search everything and provided his clothes and phone as evidence, responded: “I have nothing to admit to. I didn’t do anything.”
The breakthrough came three months later when Matthew Muller, a 38-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer and former Marine, left his cell phone behind during a failed home invasion in Dublin, California. Police traced the phone to a Lake Tahoe cabin where they arrested Muller and discovered Quinn’s stolen laptop, GPS coordinates matching where Huskins was dropped off, and blacked-out swim goggles with a strand of Huskins’ blonde hair. “The only way they were vindicated was not by police work, it was by other people being harmed,” said CBS correspondent Julie Watts, who covered the case.
Muller ultimately pleaded guilty and received a 40-year sentence for both the Dublin attack and the Huskins-Quinn case. During the kidnapping, he had forced Huskins to tie up Quinn with zip ties, drugged both victims with sedatives, and transported Huskins in car trunks to a remote location where he held her blindfolded before sexually assaulting her. The attacker, whom the couple called “The Voice,” claimed to be part of a group and told Huskins they had committed similar crimes before, though no accomplices were ever charged.
Vallejo police never apologized directly to the couple, though the department issued a statement after the settlement acknowledging the case “was not publicly handled with the type of sensitivity a case of this nature should have been handled with.” Lieutenant Kenny Park had told reporters at the time that “Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins has plundered valuable resources away from our community.” The couple married and wrote a book about their experience, later participating in the Netflix series “American Nightmare,” which brought renewed attention to their case in 2024.
The case has continued generating new developments as law enforcement officials work to uncover additional crimes by Muller. Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges reached out to the couple after watching the Netflix series and began corresponding with Muller in prison. Through their letters, Muller confessed to two 2009 sexual assaults in Santa Clara County — crimes in Palo Alto and Mountain View where he had been a suspect but never charged. “They were full-blown confessions with specific details that only the suspect would know,” Borges said.
El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, whose jurisdiction included where Huskins was held captive, has also joined efforts to interview Muller about potential additional victims. Pierson plans to use “science-based interviewing” techniques, which avoid the judgmental approach that characterized the original Vallejo investigation. “They passed judgment and they sought to confirm, confirm, confirm,” Pierson said of the Vallejo detectives’ methods. “Every time he would say, no, that’s not what happened. They would cut him off, change the subject, go back to the theory that they had.”
Huskins and Quinn continue advocating for better treatment of crime victims, speaking at law enforcement events about their experience. “We’re not asking for a whole lot, you know, like just to be respected and listened to, and treated like we have value,” Huskins said. The couple believes Muller committed additional crimes and worry about his eventual release. “The idea that he’ll be too old when he gets out to do something like this again — I don’t think that’s true,” Huskins said of the 40-year sentence they had hoped would be life imprisonment.
The case remains under investigation as authorities work to identify other potential victims and crimes linked to Muller, who has indicated in prison correspondence that he committed additional offenses beyond those already prosecuted.
