Matthew Muller, the man convicted in the high-profile “Gone Girl” kidnapping case, has been charged with multiple break-ins and assaults from years earlier. Muller, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexually assaulting Denise Huskins in 2015, now faces new charges related to two home invasions in 2009.
The first of these attacks took place in Mountain View on September 29, 2009, when Muller allegedly broke into a woman’s home, tied her up, and forced her to drink a mixture of medications while threatening to rape her. Fortunately, the woman managed to persuade him to stop, and Muller left after offering her advice on crime prevention.
Less than three weeks later, on October 18, 2009, Muller allegedly targeted another woman in Palo Alto, binding and gagging her before forcing her to drink NyQuil. Again, the woman managed to persuade Muller to halt his assault, and he left the scene after offering more crime prevention tips.
It wasn’t until years later, when investigators followed a new lead, that Muller’s DNA was found at the crime scenes, thanks to advances in forensic DNA testing. This led to the new charges. Muller, a former U.S. Marine and Harvard Law School graduate, is now facing two felony counts of sexual assault during a home invasion. He is currently serving a sentence in a federal prison in Arizona and is scheduled to be arraigned for the new charges.
Muller gained national attention after the March 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn. After drugging and tying them up, Muller took Huskins to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe where he sexually assaulted her. After two days of captivity, he drove her to Southern California and released her. The case became a media sensation when, initially, both victims were accused of staging a hoax, drawing comparisons to the plot of the popular book and film Gone Girl.
Despite these accusations, it was soon revealed that Muller was the perpetrator, and in 2016 he pleaded guilty to Huskins’ kidnapping. He later pleaded guilty to her sexual assault in 2022. The case also became the subject of the Netflix documentary American Nightmare, released earlier this year, shedding light on the chilling events that unfolded.
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