Matthew Mueller, the notorious kidnapper whose most infamous crimes were detailed in the Netflix documentary “American Nightmare,” appeared in court Friday and pleaded guilty to two additional charges.
Mueller, 47, wearing a brown Santa Clara County Jail uniform, remained silent as Superior Court Judge Cynthia A. Sebree acknowledged that he had pleaded guilty to two burglaries from 2009. I answered “Yes” after a series of “Yes”. In both incidents, Mueller was trespassing. They broke into the victim’s home in the early morning, tied her up, drugged her, and attempted to sexually assault her.
Mueller currently faces charges or convictions for at least six violent crimes dating back to when he was 16 years old.
“This extremely dangerous individual left behind a trail of traumatized and terrified victims,” Dist said. Atty. Jeff Rosen said. “It took the collective courage of the victims and the determination of law enforcement officers to stop him. This nightmare is over.”
The Santa Clara charges against Mueller came about as a result of the work of an unlikely team of law enforcement officers and Vallejo victims Dennis Haskins and Aaron Quinn. Over the past 10 months, the pair said they obtained clues about the crime and even a confession from Mueller before approaching local authorities with jurisdiction over the case.
“We knew from the beginning that there was more to this, and obviously the way things were handled from the beginning led to a lot of mistakes,” Haskins said in an interview last week. . “There was no one in our law enforcement agency that I could trust and feel was doing the right thing in this case.”
The first incident in Santa Clara County occurred on September 29, 2009, when a Mountain View woman in her 30s told police she woke up and found a man on top of her. . Mueller demanded that she drink a drugged drink, then tied her up and said he was going to rape her, according to a Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office case statement.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, the woman was able to persuade the man to stop the assault. Before leaving, Mueller said he told her she should get a dog for protection.
About three weeks later, on October 18, 2009, a woman woke up near Palo Alto to find Mueller on top of her, according to the District Attorney’s Office. He tied up the woman and forced Nikhil to drink.
According to prosecutors, in this case too, the woman was able to persuade the man to stop. He also gave the woman “crime prevention advice” before leaving, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Last week, Mueller was also charged in a separate new case in the Contra Costa town of San Ramon after authorities reviewed evidence uncovered through Haskins and Quinn’s investigative efforts.
After the release of American Nightmare, Haskins and Quinn were contacted by an unlikely ally, Nick Borges, the police chief of the Monterey Bay town of Seaside. He saw the documentary and wanted to help.
Even if Borges had nothing to do with this incident, that did not stop him from getting involved. He invited Haskins and Quinn to a Seaside law enforcement meeting and shared his belief that the police’s focus on Quinn’s guilt led the investigation in the wrong direction.
Borges also persuaded Detective Misty Caraus, who was ultimately responsible for Mueller’s arrest, to come.
The four met with El Dorado Township. Atty. The seeds of a new investigation were sown with Vern Pearson, who has jurisdiction over the county where Haskins was detained.
At lunch after the law enforcement meeting, Mr. Haskins and Mr. Quinn expressed their grievances to Mr. Borges and expressed their desire to contact Mr. Mueller personally for answers. But the couple feared it could pose a risk. Borges offered to write to Müller on their behalf.
In his reply letter, Mueller gave details of other crimes and even legal declarations with confessions.
Mr. Pearson, who had been working with the FBI and other agencies, traveled to Tucson in November with new information and interviewed Mr. Mueller in person. Pearson said Mueller shared more information over two days, including information about the Northern California attack he claims he committed when he was 16 years old. Pearson said the incident is still under investigation.
Attorney Anthony Douglas Rapaport (left) speaks with clients Dennis Haskins and Aaron Quinn during a 2016 press conference. The couple reached a $2.5 million settlement with the city of Vallejo after police falsely accused them of fabricating Haskins’ kidnapping.
(Suddin Thanawala/AP)
In Haskins’ case, on which the Netflix documentary is based, Mueller broke into her Vallejo home in March 2015, drugged her and her then-boyfriend Aaron Quinn, and detained her. Muller blindfolded them with underwater goggles and gave them drugs to make them sleepy. He put headphones on Quinn and played a recording designed to trick Quinn into thinking he was dealing with multiple kidnappers.
Mueller then put Haskin in Quinn’s car and drove with her, eventually taking her to the family’s cabin in South Lake Tahoe. He held her there for two days and sexually assaulted her before driving her across California and releasing her in Huntington Beach.
Initially, Vallejo police rejected Quinn’s testimony that his girlfriend had been spirited away by her kidnapper, who forced him to wear headphones and drink a drowsy substance. Officers questioned Quinn for hours, ignoring his story and deducing that he was behind her disappearance.
When Haskin appeared, police became suspicious and wondered how a kidnap victim could reappear hundreds of miles away wearing sunglasses and carrying an overnight bag.
Former Vallejo police Lt. James O’Connell later said in a sworn statement that Haskins “did not act like a kidnapping victim.”
Family members say police turned on Haskins and Quinn to each other, tried to get them to admit they had committed no crime and to give immunity to those who betrayed them first.
Police then made their feelings public. “There is no evidence to support the claim that this was an abduction by a stranger or even an abduction at all,” Lt. Kenny Park said in a statement at the time. “Given the facts that have been revealed to date, this appears to be an organized event and not a crime.”
But less than three months later, evidence collected from a home invasion robbery in the Bay Area area of Dublin on June 5, 2015, led authorities to link Mueller to the kidnapping. The case led authorities and Detective Caraus to the Mueller family’s South Lake Tahoe cabin, where they discovered Quinn’s computer, goggles, and tape wrapped around Quinn’s long blonde hair.
Haskins and Quinn, who have since married, sued the Vallejo Police Department for defamation and reached a $2.5 million settlement in 2018.
Mueller, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Marine, pleaded guilty in 2016 to kidnapping Haskins. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to an additional charge of sexually assaulting her. He was serving a 40-year sentence at a federal prison in Tucson before being transferred to Santa Clara County on new charges.
Mueller is scheduled to return to Santa Clara County Superior Court on February 21 for sentencing.
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