Man who kidnapped California woman in what was initially called a hoax faces new charges

SANTA CLARA, California – A man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman in what became widely known as the “Gone Girl” kidnapping has been charged with two home invasion sexual assaults committed 15 years ago, it was announced prosecutors on Monday.

Prosecutors allege that Matthew Muller, 47, broke into a woman’s home in Mountain View, California, in September 2009, attacked her, tied her up and forced her to drink medication. 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, California, bound and gagged a woman and forced her to drink Nyquil. He began attacking the woman in her 30s, but she also convinced him to stop, prosecutors said.

Muller has been charged with two felonies for committing sexual assault during a home invasion. The charges carry a possible sentence of life in prison. He is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence for the 2015 kidnapping.

“The details of this person’s violent crime spree seem written in a Hollywood script, 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 never hurt or terrorized anyone again. Our hope is that this nightmare ends.”

Muller’s attorney, public defender Agustín Arias, did not immediately respond to a call or email from The Associated Press requesting comment.

The new charges came after testing evidence based on a “new lead,” according to prosecutors. The district attorney’s criminalists found Muller’s DNA on the straps he used to restrain one of the victims, authorities said.

Muller, a disbarred, Harvard-educated attorney, pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of Denise Huskins in 2015. He was also sentenced in 2022 to 31 years in state prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape of Huskins.

Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into her boyfriend’s home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives that he woke up to a bright light on his face and that the intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied them both up before kidnapping Huskins in the middle of the night. Quinn also said the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of $8,500.

A Vallejo police detective questioned Quinn for hours, at times suggesting he might have been involved in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph test and was told by an FBI agent that she had failed, the couple later said in a book about their ordeal.

Huskins, who was 29 at the time, appeared unharmed two days later outside her father’s apartment in Huntington Beach, a city in Southern California, where she said she was left. She reappeared just hours before the ransom was paid.

That same day, Vallejo police announced at a press conference that they had found no evidence of a kidnapping and accused Huskins and Quinn of faking the kidnapping, prompting a massive search.

After Huskins’ release, Vallejo police mistakenly compared her kidnapping to the book and movie “Gone Girl,” in which a woman disappears and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

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