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Crime
‘American Nightmare’ kidnapper gets 2 life sentences for Bay Area home invasions, sexual assaults
By Annie Vainshtein,
Reporter
March 28, 2025

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Convicted kidnapper Matthew Muller was given two life sentences after he was convicted of two Bay Area home invasion sexual assaults.
Convicted kidnapper Matthew Muller was given two life sentences after he was convicted of two Bay Area home invasion sexual assaults.

Courtesy of Netflix

A Santa Clara County judge sentenced a convicted kidnapper who inspired a Netflix documentary series to two consecutive life sentences for a pair of home invasion sexual assaults in the Peninsula in 2009, spokespersons for the District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Matthew Muller, 48, was already serving a sentence of 40 years in prison for the 2015 kidnapping and rape of Vallejo woman Denise Huskins, which police initially believed was a hoax. The case, and the Chronicle’s involvement in the investigation, inspired the Netflix documentary series, “American Nightmare.”

While imprisoned for the Vallejo incident, Muller pleaded guilty in January to two felony counts of commiting a sexual assault during a home invasion. He committed those home invasions in the fall of 2009, in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

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Prosecutors said that on Sept. 29, 2009, Muller broke into a woman’s Mountain View home, attacked her, tied her up, and forced her to drink a mix of medications. He told her he was going to rape her. After the woman pleaded with him to leave, he told her she should get a dog, and fled the scene.

On Oct. 18, 2009, Muller broke into the home of a Palo Alto woman, bound and gagged her, and forced her to drink Nyquil. Muller assaulted her before she persuaded him to stop, prosecutors said. Upon his departure, Muller gave the victim “crime prevention advice,” they added.

Both cases remained unsolved for years.

“I am today so thankful for the bravery of these women,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “We marvel at the growing power of forensics, the never-say-die determination of investigators and prosecutors. But this case is about victims who never gave up.”

Muller is a former Marine and Harvard University-educated immigration lawyer who was disbarred in 2014, a year before the 2015 incident in Vallejo.

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The woman in the Mountain View incident told the court prior to the sentencing that Muller questioned her for hours about her personal life, including her finances, her social security number, even emailing her boss telling him she was sick and wouldn’t be coming to work. She was traumatized for years, left her home and said she still found it difficult to meet or trust new people.

“To this day I will move furniture in front of my bedroom door if I am alone in the house or a hotel room,” she said.

In her victim impact statement, the woman in the Palo Alto incident said it took every ounce of strength she said to fight Muller off while he tried to rape her. As she tried to talk him out of it, it became clear that “I was dealing with a very sick person, who was taking pleasure in terrifying me,” she wrote.

“Every single night for five years, as I lay down to go to sleep and closed my eyes, I would involuntarily relive the assault,” she wrote. “The assault rendered meaningless those little things we tell ourselves to keep going in life, like good things happen to good people, things happen for a reason, trust the universe.”

On March 23, 2015, Muller broke into a Mare Island home where he forced a couple to lie still while he bound, blindfolded and forced them to drink a sedative.

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Muller kidnapped the girlfriend, Denise Huskins, stashing her in the trunk of his car while he drove to his home in South Lake Tahoe. There, he raped her twice. While Huskins was being held captive, Muller sent an anonymous email to the Chronicle with an audio clip of her speaking that the newsroom sent to police.

Two days later, he drove her to her family’s home in Huntington Beach (Orange County). Hours after she was returned, Vallejo police said there was no “evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or an abduction at all.”

Police maintained the event was orchestrated for nearly four months, while someone claiming to be her abductor began sending The Chronicle details of the crime and demanded police apologize to the woman.

Muller was arrested in 2015 by police in Dublin for a similar home invasion, where he left his cell phone at the scene. Searching his car and residence turned up evidence related to the Huskins’ kidnapping, including the computer Muller stole from Huskins’ boyfriend.

Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were paid $2.5 million in a settlement with the city of Vallejo, which issued a public apology for the inadequate investigation.

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Brian King, the deputy District Attorney who prosecuted the Peninsula cases, said he wanted to recognize the important role that Huskins played in making sure that Muller’s other cases came to light.

“It’s been a long road for the victims of the Palo Alto and Mountain View crimes, but today the road is over,” said King.

Muller is currently serving his 40-year sentence at a federal correctional institute in Tucson, Ariz. His release date is in 2049, King said. After that, Muller will return to California to serve his life sentences at one of the state’s prisons, King said.

Reach Annie Vainshtein: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com

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March 28, 2025
Photo of Annie Vainshtein
Annie Vainshtein
Reporter
Annie is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously was a digital producer for The Chronicle’s Datebook section. She graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2017 with a degree in journalism. During her time there, she spearheaded a culture column, produced radio pieces for NPR-affiliate station KCBX, and was a DJ and writer for KCPR, the campus radio station. Before joining the Chronicle, she was an associate producer at SFGATE and interned at VICE and Flood Magazi