48 Hours, Part 2

0:28Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. This episode picks up from where 48 Hours Part 1 left off. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, you might want to go back and listen to them in order. This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Please use discretion. In March of 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were asleep in Vallejo, California when they were woken up around 3 a.m. by a strange man's voice. They were drugged, their hands were tied with zip ties, and they were given blacked-out swim goggles to wear. Denise Huskins was kidnapped.

1:14Aaron Quinn was positioned in front of a video camera and told he would be monitored at all times. He was told to wait for an instruction to go to the bank and withdraw money. If he called the police, he was told, his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, would be killed. But Aaron did call the police and agreed to go into the police station to provide information. He was questioned for many hours, and then he was told that his account was, quote, extraordinary, and that the police did not believe him. Denise Huskins had been put into the trunk of a car, driven hours away, and held prisoner. Her kidnapper had raped her twice.

2:02After about 48 hours, Denise was released. Before she was let go, her kidnapper threatened her. He said he knew she would talk to the police, but that there were two things she could not tell them. That he had served in the military, and that he had raped her. If she told police either of those two things, the man said his organization would come back for her and for her family. He said he'd be watching. She was told, we know where your family lives. And then she was let go, dropped off in her mother's neighborhood in Huntington Beach near Los Angeles. It was March 25, 2015. Denise spoke with Huntington Beach police officers.

2:49They asked if she needed medical attention. But then an officer asked Denise, quote, Did you ever ask him to let you go? She noticed that the officer was holding a recording device down at his side. She asked to speak to her mother and father. An officer said that would happen after she spoke with detectives. She was asked if she'd been sexually assaulted, and Denise said no. She kept asking to speak to her parents. She says she knew something wasn't right. A strange story involving a Vallejo woman. 29-year-old Denise Huskins turned up this morning at her mother's house in Huntington Beach after claiming she was kidnapped.

3:33Huskins' boyfriend, 30-year-old Aaron Quinn, told police Huskins was forcibly kidnapped from his home on Mare Island early Monday morning. Attorneys for Aaron Quinn maintain he is a victim, not the perpetrator of a hoax in the so-called kidnap for ransom of his girlfriend, Denise Huskins. Quinn is the one who called police Monday, claiming Huskins was taken in the middle of the night from his home.

3:59The Vallejo police issued a statement announcing that Denise had been located and read it out loud at a press conference that afternoon. Aaron, who was still in Vallejo, watched it on the news at his lawyer's office. The statement said, quote,

4:20Which I could tell that we were still suspects because everything should have changed. Denise is alive. I eventually go back to the station with my attorney. around 7 p.m. that night, and Detective Musser tells me, we're going to offer you a proffer of agreement, immunity, to say this thing was all made up. A proffer agreement invites someone to share everything they know about a crime with assurance that what they say won't be used against them. Denise was also offered a proffer agreement, told she could have immunity if she agreed to tell prosecutors what she knew about the kidnapping. Aaron and Denise were both offered the same deal.

5:09And either I take it or Denise takes it, but not both of us. And whoever takes it first will get it. And my response is immunity from what? So they're pretty much trying to pin us against each other. Denise, in Huntington Beach, was now with her aunt and her cousin. Her cousin was an attorney, and he'd spoken on the telephone with Detective Matt Mustard of the Vallejo Police Department. That's how she learned about the proffer agreement. Her cousin also told her that the FBI was sending a plane to John Wayne Airport to transport her back home to Vallejo. Denise's family hired a criminal defense attorney, a man named Doug Rapoport.

5:55Doug Rapoport told Denise not to take the FBI plane. He said he didn't want her to get on that plane for, quote, the same reason I wouldn't advise you to get in the mouth of a great white shark. Denise arranged to fly on a commercial flight to San Francisco at 8.30 p.m. The Vallejo Police Department issued a press release that read, given the facts that have been presented thus far, this appears to be an orchestrated event and not a kidnapping. And my brother calls, and he saw that the police were going to do a press conference. And when I watched a press conference, I wasn't surprised, but I was shocked by how angry they were.

6:41Here's Vallejo Police Department spokesperson, Lieutenant Kenny Park. Today, I'd like to go down kind of a laundry list of the facts in this case. So, it's confirmed that Mr. Aaron Quinn and Ms. Denise Hoskins are in a dating relationship. And from this point forward, I will not refer to them as a victim or a witness. Mr. Quinn was the first to report that his girlfriend, Ms. Huskins, was forcibly taken from his home in the early morning hours of Sunday by unknown strangers, and at some point they made a ransom demand. And we also know that the statement that Mr. Quinn provided was such an incredible story, we initially had a hard time believing it.

7:39And upon further investigation, we were not able to substantiate any of the things that he was saying. But I can tell you in the grand scheme of things, Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins has plundered valuable resources away from our community and has taken the focus away from the true victims of our community while instilling fear amongst our community members. So if anything, it is Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins that owes this community an apology. Is there any evidence that makes you know conclusively that this was a thing? Did something come out that made it without argument that this was all a thing? Well, I can tell you that our investigation has concluded that none of the claims has been substantiated.

8:29And I can go one step further to say this, that this was not a random act, and that the members of our community are safe and that they have nothing to fear.

8:43A reporter asked if criminal charges would be filed against Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, to which Lieutenant Park replied, that's a very good question. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

9:05I arrive in San Francisco right around the time that this press conference is airing. And by the time I get to my defense attorney's office, one of the first things he says to me is, look, like, the Vallejo police just threw you under the bus. They held a press conference saying that this was all a hoax. And I'm just sitting there in shock. You had just been released a few hours earlier. Yeah, I mean, 12, less than 12 hours before that. Yeah. And I mean, it just was from going from one nightmare to the next. And it just didn't make sense to me that the police would go after me so aggressively.

9:44And I'm playing back, you know, everything that happened and the evidence that happened. And I mean, I'm even considering, like, did I have a psychotic break? I mean, am I? And then I'm thinking about everything that was said to me in captivity and all the different threats. And, you know, if you say something to the police, we'll know. And the military style tactics that were used and their complete arrogance that they wouldn't get caught. And so then I'm wondering, too, like, how deep does this go? Is one of them involved in the police? And so, you know, I'm thinking of all the different possibilities of why this could happen, because it just made no sense.

10:24And even my defense attorney is like, you know, I have decades of experience, and I've never seen a police department go out this aggressively so soon. Denise's defense attorney asked her to tell him every single thing that the police could potentially learn about her past and try to use against her. She answered questions for hours. My defense attorney listened to me and he said, you know, I'm going to represent you and we'll fight this. And, you know, you don't have to speak to the police. But if you do, you absolutely do have to tell them about the assaults and about them being in the military.

11:00and I, I mean, I was sick, just ill, just trying to make that decision, thinking, you know, if, if I choose to do this, am I going to be putting a gun to one of my family members' head and, and killing them? I mean, so I just felt internally like being ripped apart. And my defense attorney tells me, you know, which helped me make that choice. He's like, look, you know, the whole world is watching you right now. And that's what people like this do. They want to have power and control over you for the rest of your lives. And you can't give that to them anymore. Ultimately, it's your decision. But the only way we have a chance of catching them is if, if you talk to the police.

11:47And so I agree in the middle of the night at like, I don't know, 2, 3 a.m. And he says, okay. And he just starts working to try to get in contact with someone from Vallejo. And I could hear Doug saying, you know, look, we need to get her to a hospital for a SART exam. We need to, that's the first step we need. Because you know that, you know, the best time to collect evidence was within 48 hours. And the longer we wait, the less likely we're going to get this evidence. So that's what we need to do. This would be for a rape exam, a sexual assault exam. Right, yeah. In short, it's SART, but it's a rape exam.

12:27And that officer on the phone goes, well, how do we know that she's raped? She won't even talk to us. And my defense attorney is saying, because I'm representing her and I'm speaking on her behalf and I'm telling you that she's gone through a horrible ordeal. She was threatened. We need to do this. And his response is, look, you know, we'll come to the station tomorrow. We'll talk to her, and then we'll see if it's worth setting up the exam. So I go in and I talk to them for six or so hours. I give them my clothes. I tell them everything that happened. I tell them why I initially denied the assaults to the Huntington Beach police because of those threats that were held against me.

13:17Denise remembers that Detective Matt Mustard asked her about her drug and alcohol use and about her mental health. He asked her, Did you ever think about fighting back or escaping? He said to her, Your dad told us you're a marathon runner. He said you're really tough. She also remembers that Detective Mustard asked her if she'd ever been in the trunk of a car before, even, quote, just messing around. She says he commented repeatedly on how calm she was.

14:15And I'm just thinking, you know, this whole time, like, is my body going to betray me? I didn't fight him off. And so because of that, are they even going to believe me? As early as March 26th, one day after the kidnapper had released Denise, reporters began to compare her to the fictional character in the 2012 crime novel by Gillian Flynn. The movie version was released in 2014 with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. In Gone Girl, a man is the primary suspect in the disappearance of his wife. It then comes out that the wife staged her own disappearance and made her husband look guilty in order to get back at him for cheating on her.

15:04It wasn't just a popular narrative in the press. At one point, an FBI agent asked Denise's lawyer, have you ever watched the movie Gone Girl? It'll explain a lot. Their conclusions were based off of fictional stories. they want to say our case was too strange to be believed. I think it's unbelievable that they're basing the same thing off a movie, a novel. That's shocking to me. People began saying horrible things about Denise and Aaron online. Denise received death threats. One person wrote, I wonder how many women were truly victimized while resources were being used to find a liar. People said Denise wanted her 15 minutes of fame Even people Denise thought were her friends were sharing stories on Facebook with headlines like Real Life Gone Girl Allegedly Staged Her Own Insane Fake Kidnapping There was someone insisting that Denise and Aaron were telling the truth They were sending emails to the San Francisco Chronicle taking responsibility for the kidnapping The kidnappers actually sent emails after the police press conference calling it a hoax, and they sent four, I think five emails, trying to clear our names and describing how they did the crime in great detail.

16:31The emails contained details that had not been made public, and the sender emphasized that Denise and Aaron were victims and that this was not a hoax. Denise and Aaron and their attorneys thought that the presence of details that no one else knew would be persuasive to the police And in fact, they used this as another joke I mean, people rolled their eyes and oh haha, kidnappers coming to their defense And dismissed it as if we wrote it, including law enforcement I mean, they even, I think, accused my attorney at one point of maybe helping me write something and that was pre-scheduled emails. And I mean, so it didn't matter what happened.

17:15You know, we were, it was decided, you know, there was no escaping it. All this time, the two of you were still, hadn't been reunited yet because you were both now suspects in a crime and your lawyers were saying, we've got to be really careful. Tell me a little bit about that, not being able to be reunited with each other right away and what that was like when you eventually were. Our lawyers were telling us if we get charged, we might not be able to talk for years. All I wanted to do was just hear her voice.

17:55It was at least three days until we actually got to see each other. Almost a full week after the kidnapping is when we first were reunited. And during that time, I was afraid that maybe Denise was blaming me because I was punishing myself, not just for her to kidnap me, but how I treated her before.

18:18And I thought she maybe just wanted to stay away from me and wipe the slate clean. But she didn't want to see me. We were able to meet up at a hotel, and we just collapsed in each other's arms and just sobbed and just fell down on the bed and just held each other for hours. It just felt like I could really let go. Kind of like it re-energized me and I felt like us being together made us both stronger. I mean, from that point on, especially the next couple months, we did not leave each other's side. And so there was a big sense of relief knowing that I wasn't just going to be by myself and I was going to have him by my side.

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20:14There was no escaping it. My face, my name was Gone Girl, you know, and Aaron too. We were hoaxters and liars, and I was going to start a new job at Kaiser because a residency was ending, and that didn't follow through. And Aaron was—they were trying to fire him, and there was even a couple friends that thought that the police were being honest about it being a hoax. And, you know, so every—you could hardly trust anyone or anything. We just had to kind of hide within ourselves. And it was a very small group. I mean, our families, for sure, were huge rocks in support. And our lifelong friends who stood by us and believed in us.

21:05But anything beyond that, you know, you didn't know what or who knew what or what they believed. And so it just felt—everything felt like a threat. The kidnappers are still out there. The police are attacking us. Not just the police, but the FBI. We're commuting to northern and southern California between our families and friends because we can't return to that house. I mean, we were just completely lost in those few months. This entire time, we were trying to get the police to actually investigate because we knew that there was dangerous individuals out there. and that despite what they're saying, their emails are most likely going to attack again.

21:48In June of 2015, a little more than two months after Denise and Aaron were attacked, someone broke into a house in the town of Dublin, California, about a 40-minute drive from Vallejo. A man in a mask stood over the bed of a couple in their 60s in the middle of the night. He tried to tie their hands with zip ties, but the husband began to fight, and the wife ran into the bathroom and called 911. The intruder ran away, leaving a cell phone behind. That cell phone was traced to a woman who said the phone belonged to her son, Matthew Muller. She told police he was staying at their family vacation house in South Lake Tahoe.

22:32The Alameda County Sheriff's Office assembled a team to search the house. I got a phone call from my sergeant of investigation saying that they were going to do a search warrant in South Lake Tahoe regarding the home invasion. And if I wanted to go, I needed to pack my bags and meet them at the station. This is Sergeant Misty Karusu. In 2015, she was brand new to the investigations unit of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. This was her first case with the unit. She says they arrived to the South Lake Tahoe home, broke down the door, and found Matthew Muller inside. They took him into custody.

23:17Misty Crusoe says the windows were covered with cardboard. There was garbage everywhere. It looked like he had already committed crimes and just took the evidence of those crimes and just threw them in boxes. So I started going through, and there were so many things in plain view, like license plates, a keymaker, laptop, cell phones, and other items that were in plain view, and I legally was able to collect those as evidence as well. There was a white Mustang parked near the house, which they determined was a stolen vehicle. When Misty opened the trunk, she found duct tape and zip ties, Nerf guns that had been painted black and had laser pointers attached to them with tape and a blow-up doll.

24:09And he was dressed in black. I say he because it was a male blow-up doll. And there was wire wrapped around him, really thick wire to make it look like he was either going to be propped to stand up or propped to sit. In the trunk of the car, Misty also found a pair of swim goggles with black duct tape covering the eyes and a strand of long blonde hair. And I knew in my heart that somebody else was a victim here and we needed to find out what happened. So I collected all of the evidence, which was a lot of evidence. We shoved it in all of our unmarked vehicles and drove it back to Dublin. I talked to the commander and told them that we needed to go back up to Littahoe and take the vehicle as one complete piece of evidence instead of just taking everything else that was inside of it.

25:10So they ultimately ended up going back up there and taking the vehicle. And then when I got back to the station, it was just going through tiny little bits of everything. The white Mustang had been stolen from a Toro University student on Mayer Island, where Aaron Quinn lived. When Misty spoke with the student, he told her about a man who'd been going around Mare Island looking into people's windows, sometimes standing on a retractable ladder. The student said Mare Island residents frequently called the Vallejo police about it, but no arrests had been made. He also told Misty that his car had been stolen very close to the time when a woman named Denise Huskins had been kidnapped, and that the Vallejo police had dismissed it as a Gone Girl hoax.

26:01I went online, I googled Gone Girl Vallejo Kidnapping, I saw Denise's video, the news conferences with her lawyers, and she had blonde hair. It all made sense to me. She called the Vallejo Police Department and said she had a person of interest that they might want to look at in connection with the kidnapping of Denise Huskins. She says that it took a number of phone calls before someone would speak to her, and then she was told that they weren't investigating the case any further. It was with the FBI. So Misty called the FBI. She said she thought they should look into Matthew Muller, and they came and took all of the evidence that had been collected from the white Mustang in the house in South Lake Tahoe, which included Aaron Quinn's laptop.

26:48It had been stolen from his house on the night of the home invasion.

26:56And then everything else, the white Mustang also had in the GPS the cross streets where I was dropped off, where I was released. And, you know, it was the same layout of the home that I had described. And so there was just overwhelming amounts of evidence that linked him to our case. Who was Matthew Muller? Who was this guy? I mean, we found out about him in news reports. Apparently, he was a Harvard-educated attorney. I mean, he was honest about a lot of what he told me. He was in the military. He was in the Marines. He at one point was married and gotten a divorce, and it seemed like there was a lot of things in his life that were falling apart leading up to this point.

27:54He had been linked to some prior break-ins about eight or so years before our case. He had been an attorney, immigration attorney, but apparently he was disbarred. In 2011, his employer accused him of stealing records from the office computer network at night, sleeping in a sleeping bag in the building to do it, and then using a computer program to try to hide what he'd done. Other employers had significant problems with his failure to represent his clients. The state bar got involved, and he was disbarred in 2015. But his credentials were a major component of how the press talked about him. He's very often referred to as a Harvard-educated lawyer.

28:50Now, the couple's attorneys say they plan to continue to rebuild their lives and move forward. They would like an apology from the Vallejo Police Department, But so far, Vallejo police aren't saying anything. They have not provided a comment.

29:20At this point, Denise and Aaron began to learn things they hadn't been told before. They learned that three phone calls were made from the kidnapper to Aaron's phone around 8.30 p.m. on March 23rd, the first night Denise was being held captive. The police had Aaron's phone and had told Aaron that there had been no communication from the kidnappers. They learned that the phone company was cooperating and could trace those calls to within 200 square meters of the caller's location in South Lake Tahoe. So, had police wanted to trace the calls and search the area, they could have done so the first night.