Contra Costa County DA charges ‘American Nightmare’ Vallejo kidnapper in previously-unreported 2015 case

Contra Costa County prosecutors on Monday charged Matthew Muller — the imprisoned man featured in Netflix’s most recent season of “American Nightmare” — in a 2015 kidnapping and ransom case out of San Ramon, which had never previously been reported to authorities.

The announcement by Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton marks another stunning twist in the burgeoning number of alleged kidnappings, break-ins and rapes tied to Muller. He is already behind bars for kidnapping and raping a Vallejo woman nine years ago in a case that drew international infamy after police wrongly accused the victim of fabricating the ordeal.

Just last week, Santa Clara County prosecutors announced charges against Muller in two home invasions from late September 2009 — the first in Mountain View and the other a few weeks later in other in Palo Alto.

In all three new cases across Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, prosecutors were tipped off to Muller’s alleged involvement with letters he himself wrote to law enforcement, during which he confessed to the crimes, authorities said.

The Santa Clara County cases came to light in letters sent between Muller and the police chief of Seaside in Monterey County.

The most recent case out of San Ramon came via a tip from the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office.

In that case, two men and a woman were allegedly held ransom by Muller, who demanded that one of them pay tens of thousands of dollars to win their release, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office.

Once he got the money, Muller fled, the district attorney’s office said. The three people held ransom — who remain anonymous — never reported the alleged crime, because they feared retaliation for doing so, the DA’s office said.

Contra Costa County prosecutors filed three counts of kidnapping for ransom. No first court date has been announced for Muller, who was transferred last month from a federal prison in Arizona to a jail in Santa Clara County.

“The trauma of crime can have lasting effects that some people endure for their entire lives — whether the crime is reported or not,” said Becton, in a statement announcing the charges. “Muller committed serious offenses throughout Northern California, and my office will be resolute in seeking justice on behalf of the victims in Contra Costa County.”

Muller is already serving decades-long concurrent prison sentences in a 2015 case out of Vallejo that was briefly thought to emulate the fictional book and film “Gone Girl,” which feature a staged kidnapping.

On March 23, 2015, Muller broke into the home of Denise Huskins and her then-boyfriend, Aaron Quinn. Once there, he bound them with zip ties and blindfolds, then drugged them with a sleep-inducing substance. The victims had headphones placed over their ears and were played a recording that suggested more than one kidnapper was at work.

Muller left Quinn behind, put Huskins into the trunk of Quinn’s car and drove her to a family home in South Lake Tahoe. At the Tahoe residence, Muller twice raped Huskins and held her for two days before driving her to Huntington Beach in Southern California, where she was released.

When Huskins and Quinn reported the kidnapping to Vallejo police, authorities accused the two of making up the abduction, which would eventually lead to police issuing a public apology and the city paying the couple a $2.5 million settlement.

Muller, a former Marine and Harvard-educated attorney, was arrested in June 2015 in connection with a home invasion in Dublin; a subsequent investigation recovered evidence from the Vallejo case, including a video of him assaulting Huskins.

Muller later pleaded guilty to the Vallejo kidnapping and was handed a 40-year federal prison sentence. In 2022, he was sentenced concurrently to 31 years in state prison after pleading no contest to two felony rape charges that were prosecuted separately in Solano County. During the state case, he was held in Napa State Hospital and ordered to take antipsychotic medication until he was declared legally competent to participate in his defense.

The Vallejo scandal was most recently featured on the Netflix documentary, “American Nightmare,” which was released earlier this year. The documentary apparently played a role in the decision by Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges to start a letter-writing exchange with Muller — one that led to the charges in Santa Clara County.

In April and May, Borges reportedly received letters from Muller in which he volunteered information implicating himself in the 2009 home invasion assaults in Mountain View and Palo Alto. In those exchanges, Muller allegedly offered details that closely aligned with police reports and the victims’ accounts, which were not readily publicly available, authorities said.

In one letter, he reportedly described his coming forward as part “of a common goal of (protecting) victims and strengthening laws for future potential victims.”

Check back for updates to this developing story.