A Harvard-trained lawyer with a history of violent crimes, featured in the Netflix documentary “American Nightmare,” has been charged in another home invasion case in the Bay Area, the latest set of allegations to arise in recent weeks.
Tracing his alleged connection to the decades-old crimes has been a long, strange trip.
A scattered and unlikely team of law enforcement officers assembled by the two victims highlighted in the documentary, Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, said that over the last 10 months they obtained clues about the crimes — and even confessions — from Matthew Muller before approaching local authorities with jurisdiction in the incidents.
In total, Muller, 47, is now suspected or convicted in at least six violent crimes, beginning when he was 16.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long,” Huskins said Tuesday. “I really believe this is the tip of the iceberg.”
In the infamous episode chronicled in “American Nightmare,” Muller broke into a Vallejo home in March 2015 and drugged and bound Huskins and Quinn, then her boyfriend. Muller put Huskins into Quinn’s car and drove off with her, eventually taking her to his family’s cabin in South Lake Tahoe. He held her there for two days and sexually assaulted her before driving across California and releasing her in Huntington Beach.
Vallejo police accused the couple of lying about the abduction and went public with assertions it was a hoax.
Nonetheless, months later, evidence gathered from a June 5, 2015, home invasion robbery in the Bay Area community of Dublin helped authorities link Muller to the kidnapping. Muller ultimately pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexual assault and is serving a 40-year sentence at a federal prison in Tucson.
Huskins and Quinn, who later married, sued the Vallejo Police Department for defamation and reached a $2.5-million settlement in 2018.
On Monday, Muller was charged in Contra Costa County with three counts of kidnapping for ransom in a separate 2015 incident that occurred two weeks after Muller kidnapped Huskins.
In the Contra Costa case, Muller allegedly cased and entered a residence multiple times, finally carrying a ladder two miles to the home of a San Ramon family early on an April morning, climbing in a second-story window and tying up the husband, wife and their son. That morning, authorities allege, Muller sent the mother to the bank to withdraw $30,000, threatening to harm her family if she sought help.
The woman complied, according to authorities, but the family never reported the crime, fearful of Muller’s threats.
The filing comes more than a week after Muller was charged in Santa Clara County in a pair of cold case home invasions and attempted rapes that allegedly occurred in 2009, and which were also uncovered by the team assembled by Huskins and Quinn. Superior Court Judge Hector Ramon ordered Muller to return to court Jan. 17 to enter a plea in that case, and he remains in Santa Clara County jail. No arraignment date has been set in the Contra Costa case.
“We knew there was more to this from the beginning, and clearly how things were handled from the beginning led to a lot of errors,” Huskins said in an interview Tuesday. “We didn’t really have anyone in law enforcement that we trusted and we felt were doing this case justice.”
For years, Huskins said, she had two questions that authorities seemed uninterested in answering: Did Muller act alone, and were there other victims out there? Huskins said that while she was held captive by Muller, he told her he worked with a “team” that would continue to monitor her after her release and harm her if she went to authorities.
“There were hallmarks of a serial predator in everything he said to me in captivity,” Huskins said. “Muller told me he had done this before.”
It was not until “American Nightmare” came out last January that Huskins and Quinn found the law enforcement help they had been searching for.
Nick Borges, the police chief in the Monterey Bay town of Seaside and a true-crime buff, felt compelled to reach out to Huskins after watching the show. Borges said he wanted her to know that she did have the backing of law enforcement, despite what her experience had been.
“Words can’t describe what it feels like to be supported in that way,” Huskins said at a news conference in Seaside on Tuesday.
That Borges had nothing to do with the case didn’t stop him from becoming involved. He’d grown up in Monterey, the “juvenile delinquent” son of a Portuguese immigrant who became a firefighter, he said, and had been on the wrong side of the law before deciding to wear a badge himself. That background gave him a belief that policing needs to focus on relationships and trust.
He invited Huskins and Quinn to speak to law enforcement in Seaside to share their belief that police interrogation methods that focused on Quinn’s guilt had sent the investigation down the wrong road. Borges also persuaded the detective ultimately responsible for Muller’s arrest, Misty Carausu, to come.
There, the four met El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson — and the seeds of a new investigation were planted.
California law enforcement is in the midst of a culture war, as experts inside and outside the system question a commonly used police interrogation method that they say can lead to false confessions and wrongful convictions.
In addition to having jurisdiction over the cabin where Huskins had been held in South Lake Tahoe, Pierson has long been on a quest to change how detectives are trained in California and across the country.
While old-school interrogation methods, popularized in TV shows such as “Law & Order,” glorify detectives who follow hunches and hound suspects, Pierson believes that investigators need to be trained in scientifically backed methods of interviewing that rely on gathering facts over demanding confessions.
California in recent years has moved toward training detectives in evidence-based models of interrogation, but a 2021 bill that would have required such training to be standard was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
At lunch after the conference, Huskins and Quinn told Borges about their frustrations, and a desire to reach out to Muller personally to seek answers. But the couple feared that could present risks. Borges offered to write Muller on their behalf.
With the help of Carausu, the four worked on an initial letter for weeks before Borges mailed it. Borges said he wrote that “there were pockets of humanity in [Muller’s] terror,” and that he believes “people are inherently good.”
Soon, a response came, with Muller swearing he had acted alone, Borges said. To bolster his credibility, according to Borges, Muller also started to give details of other crimes, claiming he had a newfound sense of religion.
Borges said that he wrote back and that more Muller letters followed — some allegedly containing legal declarations confessing to other crimes.
“He just started spilling the beans,” Carausu said. “Literally when I read some of the letters, I could not believe he was so forthcoming.”
Armed with the new information, Pierson, who had been working with the FBI and other agencies, in November traveled to Tucson to interview Muller in person. Over two days, according to Pierson, Muller shared more details, including information on a Northern California attack he claimed to have committed when he was 16. That case is still under investigation, Pierson said.
In the San Ramon case, Pierson said, Muller helped draw a map of the ravine where he had discarded the ladder he used to reach the second-story window. Pierson said his office contacted the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies searched the area, finding the ladder nine years after the crime.
“It is a very unusual, frankly, crazy set of facts,” Pierson said. “But investigations lead us where they do.”
Huskins, Quinn, Borges, Carausu and Pierson say they aren’t done investigating, contending there may be more unsolved crimes committed by Muller.
Forty years ago, Michael Anthony Cox was convicted of the murders of three girls in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Years later, the two main witnesses at his trial, also teenagers, recanted, saying police had pressured them into false stories. So why is Cox still on death row?
But they also have a different goal: helping Pierson in his push to change how detectives are trained to handle interrogations. Quinn and Huskins said they want to ensure that what they experienced at the hands of law enforcement doesn’t happen to others.
“The reality is they didn’t believe me from the start, and that led the whole investigation into the wrong path,” Quinn said.
Authorities questioned Quinn for days while Huskins was held captive, pressing their erroneous suspicion that he had harmed her and was trying to cover it up.
Later, after Muller released Huskins, police would accuse her of lying about her abduction.
“It feels good to finally have a team in place who does things differently,” Huskins said. “The overall message is how powerful it can be to really listen to victims and take what they have to say seriously, and how simple it can be to follow the facts and evidence.”
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