The notorious kidnapper whose 2015 crime and subsequent police bungled investigation became a Netflix documentary has been charged in two new cases that took place several years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Matthew Mueller, 47, appeared in Santa Clara County court Monday to face charges of two counts of home invasion and attempted rape that allegedly occurred in 2009. Superior Court Judge Hector Ramon ordered Mueller to return to court on January 17 to make an argument.
The first incident allegedly 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. The man, who authorities say was 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, Muller 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 a man on top of her, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The woman was detained and authorities say Muller forced her to drink Nikil.
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.
“While the details of this man’s heinous crimes appear to have been scripted for Hollywood, they are a tragic reality,” Santa Clara Township said in a statement. Atty. Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Our goal is to hold this defendant accountable and ensure he never hurts or terrorizes anyone again.”
Mueller was previously indicted and convicted in the infamous case that is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, “American Nightmare.”
In that case, Mueller entered a Vallejo home in March 2015, drugged and detained a couple, Aaron Quinn and Dennis Haskins. 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.
Vallejo police initially dismissed Quinn’s claims 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 so far, this appears to be an organized incident 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. Authorities, including the Alameda County Police Department, took the lead in this case. Misty Caruso returns to the Mueller family’s South Lake Tahoe cabin, where she discovers Quinn’s computer, goggles, and tape wrapped around her 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.
Many involved in the Vallejo incident have long feared there would be more victims.
This included El Dorado Township. Atty. Vern Pearson said he was following the case because Haskin was initially detained in South Lake Tahoe. Pearson became a vocal critic of police interrogation methods, in which detectives formulate case theories and aggressively pursue confessions from the prime suspect. He said he was disappointed that Quinn said he was treated as a suspect rather than a victim when Haskins was kidnapped.
Pearson invited Quinn and Haskins to speak at a symposium he held this year to teach science-based interview techniques that focus on gathering information rather than figuring out a suspect. He said he was contacted by a friend of the couple who encouraged him to look into further crimes that Mueller may have committed.
Pearson agreed to become involved and said he is cooperating with numerous law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. He added that the investigation is “still ongoing” and said additional facts will be revealed in the coming weeks.
The Santa Clara County Prosecutor’s Office has begun investigating the 2009 cold case “following new leads” and is working with the Palo Alto and Mountain View police departments to ensure all evidence in the two cases is submitted for further testing. It was announced that the case had been sent to the county crime lab. Mueller’s DNA was found on a strap used to bind one of the victims, county officials said.
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