Convicted ‘American Nightmare’ rapist pleads guilty to two more counts of home invasion

Matthew Muller, the notorious kidnapper whose infamous crime was described in the Netflix series “American Nightmare,” appeared in court Friday and pleaded guilty to two more charges.

Dressed in a brown Santa Clara County Jail uniform, Muller, 47, responded with a series of “yes” answers as Superior Court Judge Cynthia A. Sevely confirmed his guilty plea to two home invasions in 2009. In both cases, Muller broke. home in the morning, he tied up his female victims and tried to drug them and sexually abuse them.

In all, Muller has been accused or convicted of at least six violent crimes, which began when he was 16.

“This extremely dangerous individual left a trail of traumatized and terrified victims,” ​​Dist. He said. Jeff Rosen said. “It took the courage of his victims and the determination of the law enforcement officers to stop him. This nightmare is over.”

The Santa Clara charges against Muller came about thanks to the work of an unexpected team of police officers and two victims in the Vallejo case, Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn. In the past 10 months, the two said, they received clues about the crime – even a confession – from Muller before going to local authorities with jurisdiction over these incidents.

“We knew there was more to this from the beginning, and obviously the way things were handled from the beginning caused a lot of mistakes,” Huskins said in an interview last week. “We didn’t really have any law enforcement that we trusted and we felt that they were doing justice in this case.”

The first Santa Clara County incident occurred on September 29, 2009, when a 30-year-old Mountain View woman told police she woke up to find a man on top of her. According to the description of the case from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, Muller forced her to drink a drug-laced drink, then tied her up and threatened to rape her.

The woman was able to persuade him to stop assaulting her, according to the district attorney’s office. Before he left, Muller allegedly told him that he should get a dog to protect him.

About three weeks later, on Oct. 18, 2009, a woman in nearby Palo Alto woke up to find Muller on top of her, according to the district attorney’s office. He arrested the woman and forced her to drink Nyquil.

Again, the woman was able to persuade him to stop, according to prosecutors. And, before leaving, he gave the woman “crime prevention advice,” according to the district attorney’s office.

Last week, Muller was indicted in a new case, in the Contra Costa town of San Ramon, after authorities reviewed evidence from Huskins and Quinn’s investigative efforts.

After “American Nightmare” came out, Huskins and Quinn were contacted by an unlikely partner: the police chief of the Monterey Bay Seaside town, Nick Borges. He had seen the documentary and wanted to help.

The fact that Borges had nothing to do with the case did not stop him from being involved. He invited Huskins and Quinn to speak with Seaside law enforcement to share their belief that the police investigation’s focus on Quinn’s wrongdoing had sent the investigation down the wrong path.

Borges also pleaded with the investigator in charge of Muller’s arrest, Misty Carausu, to come.

The four met with El Dorado County Dist. He said. Vern Pierson, the district attorney where Huskins was arrested — and the seeds of a new investigation were planted.

At lunch after the legislative conference, Huskins and Quinn told Borges of their frustrations, and the desire to reach out to Mueller personally for answers. But the couple feared that could cause accidents. Borges asked Muller to write on their behalf.

Mueller responded, providing details of other crimes and even legal declarations and confessions.

Armed with new information, Pierson, who has worked with the FBI and other agencies, traveled to Tucson in November to interview Mueller in person. Over the course of two days, according to Pierson, Mueller shared more details, including details of an attack in Northern California that he said he carried out when he was 16. That case is still under investigation, Pierson said.

In Huskins’ case, on which the Netflix documentary is based, Muller broke into her Vallejo home in March 2015, drugged her and tied her up along with her then-boyfriend, Aaron Quinn. Muller covered their eyes with swimming goggles and gave them a drug to make them sleep. He put headphones on Quinn and played records designed to make Quinn think he was dealing with more than one kidnapper.

Muller then put Huskins in Quinn’s car and drove off with her, eventually driving her to his home in South Lake Tahoe. He held her there for two days and sexually abused her, before driving her to California and releasing her in Huntington Beach.

At first, Vallejo police dismissed Quinn’s story that his girlfriend had been upset by the kidnapper – or kidnappers – who put headphones on her and gave her a sedative. The police interrogated Quinn for hours, dismissing his story and revealing that he was responsible for her disappearance.

When Huskins showed up, the police became suspicious, asking how it was possible for a kidnapped victim to reappear hundreds of kilometers away wearing sunglasses and carrying a sleeping bag.

Huskins “didn’t act like a kidnapping victim,” retired Vallejo Police Capt. James O’Connell later said. he said in an affidavit.

Police tried to get Huskins and Quinn to turn themselves in and admit that there had never been a crime, offering a defense to whoever turned up first, according to statements from their family members.

Then, the police came out with that feeling. “There is no evidence to support the allegations that this was an abduction by a stranger or a kidnapping,” said Lt. Kenny Park of the police in a statement at the time. “Given the facts that have been presented so far, this event looks like a planned event and not a crime.”

However, less than three months later, evidence gathered from a June 5, 2015, home burglary in a Bay Area community in Dublin helped authorities link Muller to the kidnapping. That case led authorities and Carausu, a detective, to the Muller family home in South Lake Tahoe, where he foundamong other things, Quinn’s computer, glasses and tape with a strand of long blond hair.

Huskins and Quinn, who later married, sued the Vallejo Police Department for defamation and settled for $2.5 million in 2018.

Muller, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Marine, pleaded guilty in 2016 to kidnapping Huskins. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to other charges of sexual assault. Until he was transferred to Santa Clara County to face the new charges, he was serving his 40-year sentence in a state prison in Tucson.

Muller is scheduled to return to Santa Clara County Superior Court on February 21 for sentencing.