A California man who is currently serving time behind bars for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman in what became widely known as the “Gone Girl” case has now been charged with two home invasion sexual assaults, dating back more than a decade.
On Monday, prosecutors announced that 47-year-old Matthew Muller has been charged with two felony counts of committing a sexual assault during a home invasion dating back to 2009.
Prosecutors allege Muller broke into a woman’s home in Mountain View, Calif., in September 2009, attacked her and then tied her up and forced her to drink medications. He then told the woman in her 30s that he was going to rape her, but she convinced him not to, prosecutors said. Muller left after recommending the woman get a dog.
The following month, prosecutors say he broke into a home in Palo Alto, Calif., bound and gagged a woman and forced her to drink Nyquil. He started assaulting the woman in her 30s, but she also convinced him to stop, prosecutors said.
While “following a new lead,” reports ABC News, investigators sent all the evidence from both scenes for further testing. Muller’s DNA was recovered from straps used to bind one of the victims, they said.
“The details of this person’s violent crime spree seem scripted for Hollywood, but they are tragically real,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Our goal is to make sure this defendant is held accountable and will never hurt or terrorize anyone ever again. Our hope is that this nightmare is over.”
Muller pleaded guilty in the 2015 kidnapping and sexual assault of Denise Huskins in a case that shocked the world for its real-life resemblance to the 2014 Hollywood blockbuster Gone Girl. He is currently serving a 40-year sentence in an Arizona federal prison for those crimes.
On March 23, 2015, Huskins vanished from her California home, where she lived with her boyfriend Aaron Quinn.
Quinn called police the next day to report her as missing, claiming a man in a wetsuit and other assailants broke into their home in the middle of the night, drugged them both, forced Huskins to tie Quinn up and kidnapped Huskins.
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Quinn told police the attackers said they were part of a well-organized, highly trained group that was seeking a US$8,500 ransom from Quinn for Huskins’ return.
He also told authorities the kidnappers said they would give him 48 hours to complete numerous tasks via email and phone, including calling in sick to work for both of them. He said he was ordered to pay the ransom and not call police. The assailants told him they had installed cameras in the home to make sure he didn’t try to contact the authorities.
Quinn immediately became the main suspect as media swarmed in to cover the case.
Things took a bizarre and perplexing turn 48 hours later, when Huskins was dropped outside her mother’s home in Huntington Beach, Calif., a seven-hour drive from where she was taken.
She told police she had been kidnapped and raped twice. Instead of believing her, police immediately pivoted and focused suspicion on Huskins.
“It was such an incredible story, we initially had a hard time believing it,” Vallejo police Lt. Kenny Park said at the time of the abduction report from Quinn. “Upon further investigation, we couldn’t substantiate any of the things he was saying.”
Police expressed disgust at the resources they believed the two squandered — more than 40 detectives had worked on the case — and the fear they instilled in the community over what was reported as random violence.
“Devoting all of our resources 24 hours a day in a wild goose chase, it’s a tremendous loss,” Park said. “It’s disappointing, it’s disheartening. The fact that we wasted all of these resources for nothing, it’s upsetting.”
Despite maintaining their innocence, Quinn and Huskins were accused by police and the media of creating a hoax — although no one could explain why they would make up such a tale.
A major twist
Just as the world was becoming convinced the pair had concocted the scheme, a person claiming to be the kidnapper contacted the San Francisco Chronicle, expressing their annoyance that the crime was being passed off as a hoax. To support his claims, he used an anonymous email address to send images of where Huskins had been held, as well as a recording of her voice to prove she was alive. He also claimed Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals practicing their tactics.
Police realized the couple were telling the truth after Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained lawyer, was implicated in another crime three months later and tied to the abduction.
Muller was arrested in an attempted robbery at a home about 65 kilometres from where Quinn and Huskins lived. Authorities said they found a cellphone they traced to Muller, and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Quinn, linking him to the abduction.
Muller, police learned, used a drone to spy on the couple before he broke into their home with a fake gun, tied them up and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said. They were blindfolded while Muller played a recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.
He put Huskins in the trunk of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days. Investigators said they found videos of Muller arranging cameras in a bedroom and then recording himself twice sexually assaulting Huskins.
—with a file from The Associated Press
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