Breaking: Suspect in Shocking California Woman’s Kidnapping Finally Captured

District Attorney Jeff Rosen commented on the new charges against Matthew Muller, describing the details of his violent actions as “seem[ing] scripted for Hollywood, but they are tragically real.” He emphasized that the goal of the prosecution is to ensure Muller is held accountable for his crimes and that he will never be able to harm or terrorize anyone again. Rosen expressed hope that the victims’ ordeal is now over, marking the end of a nightmare for those affected.

Muller’s attorney, public defender Agustin Arias, declined to offer any comments on the new charges brought against his client.

The new charges were made possible after evidence was reexamined in light of a “new lead,” according to prosecutors. District attorney criminalists discovered Muller’s DNA on the straps used to bind one of his victims, linking him to the crime.

Muller, who is a disbarred attorney and a Harvard graduate, previously pleaded guilty to the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins. In 2022, he was sentenced to 31 years in state prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape in connection with the same case.

Huskins had been abducted by a masked intruder who broke into her boyfriend Aaron Quinn’s home in Vallejo, California, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Quinn told detectives that he awoke to find a bright light shining in his face and realized that he and Huskins had been drugged, blindfolded, and tied up. The intruders then kidnapped Huskins in the middle of the night, while also demanding an $8,500 ransom for her release.

Following the kidnapping of Denise Huskins, a Vallejo police detective interrogated her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, for several hours. During the lengthy questioning, the detective even suggested that Quinn might have been involved in Huskins’ disappearance. In an effort to clear his name, Quinn underwent a polygraph test. However, according to the couple’s later account in a book about their ordeal, an FBI agent informed Quinn that he had failed the test, further complicating the situation.

Two days later, Huskins, who was 29 at the time, was found unharmed outside her father’s apartment in Huntington Beach, California, located in Southern California. She reported that she had been dropped off there by her captors, just hours before the ransom was set to be paid.

On the same day Huskins was found, the Vallejo police held a press conference in which they claimed to have found no evidence of a kidnapping. Instead, they accused Huskins and Quinn of fabricating the entire abduction, which led to a large-scale search for her. This baseless accusation added to the emotional turmoil of the situation.

After Huskins was released, the Vallejo police made the grave mistake of comparing her case to the plot of the book and movie Gone Girl. In the story, a woman fakes her own kidnapping, leading the police to unfairly assume that Huskins was similarly lying about her abduction when she reappeared. This comparison only fueled public confusion and further stigmatized Huskins and Quinn.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested by police in Dublin, California, for a similar home invasion. Authorities said they found a cellphone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Quinn, linking the disbarred attorney to the abduction.