In 2015, Matthew Muller kidnapped Denise Huskins and brought her to a home in South Lake Tahoe. Now, Muller was charged with breaking into two women’s houses in California in 2009, drugging them and threatening to rape them, according to the Santa Clara County prosecutor’s office.
The 2015 case attracted national attention as it was dubbed a “Gone Girl” copycat crime. Law enforcement said at the time Huskins’ boyfriend at the time, Aaron Quinn, faked the abduction just like what transpired in the movie, Gone Girl.
In the case he is serving 40 years in an Arizona prison, Muller admitted to bringing Huskins to Tahoe where she was blindfolded and bound. While there, Muller sent Quinn two emails demanding ransom for a total of $17,000.
Muller released Ms. Huskins on March 25, 2015, in Huntington Beach, with no ransom ever being paid. He then returned to South Lake Tahoe.
The case remained unsolved until after June 8, 2015, when officers from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department arrested Muller with the help of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office at his family’s South Lake Tahoe home where they also conducted a search.
The officers had been investigating a home invasion burglary, which led them to Muller’s residence where they located and seized evidence related to the Vallejo kidnapping.
In the first attack on the new charges, on Sept. 29, 2009, Muller allegedly broke into a woman’s home in Mountain View, tied her up, forced her to drink a mix of medications, and told her he was going to rape her, prosecutors said. The woman “persuaded him against it,” and Muller then allegedly suggested she get a dog and fled the scene, they said.
Weeks later, on Oct. 18, 2009, Muller allegedly broke into a home in Palo Alto, bound and gagged a woman and forced her to drink NyQuil, prosecutors said. “He then began to assault her, before being persuaded to stop,” prosecutors said. “Muller gave the victim crime prevention advice, then fled.”
While “following a new lead,” investigators sent all the evidence from both scenes for further testing, and thanks to “advances in forensic DNA testing,” Muller’s DNA was recovered from straps used to bind one of the victims, prosecutors said Monday.
