Prosecutors have announced new charges against a man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman in what was initially believed to be a hoax and was known as the “Gone Girl” kidnapping.
Matthew Mueller, 47, who kidnapped Dennis Haskins in Vallejo in 2015, is currently facing charges in two separate home invasions from 15 years ago.
According to the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office, Mueller entered women's homes in Palo Alto and Mountain View in 2009 with the intent to rape them.
Thanks to new leads and advances in forensic DNA testing, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, along with Palo Alto and Mountain View police, were able to identify Mueller in this case.
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Matthew Mueller, a Harvard-educated immigration lawyer, was ultimately arrested on suspicion of kidnapping Haskins after he was involved in a similar burglary involving a forgotten cell phone. (Solane County Sheriff's Department)
In one of the 2009 cases, DNA was found on a strap Mueller used to bind one of his victims, the prosecutor's office said.
Mueller currently faces two felony counts of sexual assault during a home invasion for a 2009 crime. If convicted, he could face life in prison, officials said.
“The details of this man's heinous crimes appear to have been scripted for Hollywood, but they are tragically real,” said District Attorney Jeff Rosen. “Our goal is to ensure this defendant is held accountable and never hurts or terrorizes anyone again. Our hope is for this nightmare to end.”
Authorities said Mueller entered a Mountain View woman's home in the early hours of September 29, 2009, attacked her, tied her up, drugged her and told her he intended to rape her. After the victim, who authorities say is in his 30s, persuaded him to disagree, he encouraged the victim to get a dog and then fled.
Less than a month later, on October 18, authorities said Mueller broke into a Palo Alto home and did the same thing there, binding and gagging a woman in her 30s. He then makes her drink Nikhil and begins assaulting her, but is persuaded to stop. Mueller fled after giving the victim some crime prevention advice.
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Dennis Haskins and Aaron Quinn attend a press conference with attorney Doug Rappaport (left) on Thursday, September 29, 2016 in San Francisco, California. Haskins and Quinn were victims of a bizarre Vallejo kidnapping in March 2015. Matthew Mueller pleaded guilty to kidnapping Haskins. (Paul Chin/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Both incidents were investigated at the time but remained unsolved.
Six years later, Mueller made headlines nationwide as the subject of the Netflix documentary series “American Nightmare,” which chronicled the 2015 “Gone Girl Hoax” in which she kidnapped Denise Haskins from Vallejo and chronicled her harrowing 48-hour captivity. attracted a lot of attention.
On March 23, 2015, Mueller broke into Vallejo's home, where he administered drugs and tied up Haskins and her boyfriend. He kidnapped Ms. Haskins, took her to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, and sexually assaulted her. Two days later, Mueller drove the victim to Southern California and released him.
Vallejo police initially believed the break-in and kidnapping was a hoax orchestrated by boyfriend Aaron Quinn, but media outlets cited Ben Affleck's hit thriller film and novel Gone Girl as saying, It was seen as a real-life “Gone Girl.'' In “, a small-town wife plots her own murder to get revenge on her cheating husband.
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Tuesday, July 14, 2015, at Vallejo Police Headquarters in Vallejo, California. (Paul Chin/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Although the press conference said they were treating the incident as a kidnapping, Vallejo police said they suspect Quinn of killing his girlfriend and her girlfriend, KRON4 reported. fake his account. According to the documentary, he endured 18 hours of interrogation.
The couple sued the Vallejo Police Department for $2.5 million, but did so before it could withstand months of public scrutiny.
Haskins and Quinn told the filmmakers that their hero was Misty Carous, the rookie detective who solved the case. On June 5, 2015, a couple noticed a nearly identical home invasion in the middle of the night.
NBC Bay Area reported that Karaus contacted Bay Area police departments and learned that Mueller was a suspect in a 2009 Palo Alto home invasion. Also at the scene were swim goggles painted black with duct tape and blonde hair attached to them.
The husband fought off the attacker while the wife hid in the bathroom and called the police. However, he left behind important evidence, including zip ties, duct tape, gloves, and a cell phone.
Karaus traced the call to the man's father-in-law, a Harvard-educated immigration lawyer and Marine Corps veteran named Matthew Mueller.
At that point, Karaus contacted the FBI, and Mueller was arrested on June 8 in Dublin, California, on suspicion of burglary.
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Photo of Dennis Haskins and Aaron Quinn attending a press conference. Both men hired attorneys for fear of losing their jobs as physical therapists after being publicly accused of fabricating a home invasion. (Mike Jolly/The Times Herald, via AP)
Evidence found in Quinn's home, including her laptop, ultimately linked her to Haskins' kidnapping. Mueller's confession matched Quinn and Haskins' story perfectly, right down to the audio recordings, pitch-black goggles, and liquid sedatives.
Mueller pleaded guilty in September 2016 to one federal kidnapping charge and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mr. Mueller also committed robbery, burglary, kidnapping, 2 counts of rape by force.
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The Vallejo Police Department publicly accused Dennis and Aaron of staging the ordeal, welcoming the barrage of negative press before the attackers were arrested for a similar home invasion. (Related news organizations)
But he was considered incompetent bring a lawsuit According to the documentary, he was indicted on these charges in November 2020. Mueller is said to have suffered from “Gulf War Illness” after the war. military service, According to NBC News, his lawyer claimed he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Mueller later pleaded no contest to two counts of forcible rape against the Haskins and was sentenced to 31 years in state prison in 2022.
He is currently incarcerated at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
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Mr. Haskins and Mr. Quinn previously told People magazine that they did not know why Mr. Mueller targeted them.
“Like many victims or victims, experienced a tragedywe don't have all the answers,'' Quinn told the magazine. “And that can be a roadblock to recovery. So for us, instead of relying on finding those answers, what we have to do is move forward in the unknown. , to focus on what's most important to us: family, children, work. And even if we do get an answer to why they targeted us. , our actions will not change as long as we move forward.”
The two married in 2018, published a book about their ordeal in 2021, and welcomed daughters in 2020 and 2022.
Fox News Digital's Christina Coulter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com.
