In 2015, Denise Huskins survived an unspeakable horror, only to find out the authorities didn’t believe her. If Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, had been listened to by the police, another similar crime might have been prevented.
As told in the three-part Netflix documentary American Nightmare, set to premiere on Jan. 17, 2024, Huskins and Quinn were asleep late one night at their home in Vallejo, California, when two men in scuba suits woke them up, they said, telling them it was a robbery. The couple were then bound, drugged, and locked in a closet. Eventually, Huskins was taken to another location, where she was kept captive, drugged, sexually assaulted, and held for ransom.
Meanwhile, Quinn went to the police, although the two abductors warned him not to. Quinn told him what happened, but according to the police, it was all too similar to the popular thriller bestselling book and film Gone Girl, about a fake kidnapping. Law enforcement assumed, instead, that Huskins was dead and Quinn killed her, and the Huskins and Quinn ordeal became known as the Gone Girl kidnapping.
Huskins was released two days later
About two days after the Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn home invasion, Huskins was released. Rather than listen to Huskins, however, police believed she made it up and called it a hoax in a press conference. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle received mysterious emails from someone claiming to be the perpetrator of the crime, affirming Huskins’ and Quinn’s story. Before long, another home invasion happened elsewhere in California, and law enforcement noticed similarities to what Huskins and Quinn said happened to them.
A matter of months after Huskins was kidnapped, Matthew Muller was arrested and sentenced to 40 years in prison, convicted of federal kidnapping related to the case. He pleaded guilty. He has since then faced other charges. With Muller caught, in a private letter, Vallejo police apologized to Quinn and Huskins, and in 2016, the couple settled a $2.5 million civil suit against Vallejo police out of court. They married in 2018 and now have two daughters.
To this day, Quinn and Huskins say there were other men involved the night Huskins was taken, but as of this report, Muller is the only person convicted stemming from the crime. “There were things that happened that we saw, that we heard. It just would have been impossible to have been done by one guy. There are other people out there. That’s something that we’ve had to live with and somehow make peace with,” Huskins said (via ABC7 News San Francisco).
