How the "American Nightmare" victims helped get kidnapper Matthew Muller to confess to more crimes
Two weeks after he drugged and kidnapped Denise Huskins from her Vallejo, California home in 2015, "American Nightmare" kidnapper Matthew Muller allegedly committed another crime in neighboring Contra Costa County.
This is just one of many alleged crimes dating back to the 1990s that would have gone unsolved if it weren't for two persistent victims: a small-coastal-town police chief and a rural Northern California county district attorney.
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn gained worldwide notoriety when their bizarre 2015 kidnapping was featured in what Netflix said was its highest-rated documentary of 2024, "American Nightmare."
In an exclusive interview with CBS News California, Huskins and Quinn detailed the timeline of Muller's cold-case crimes, which they helped solve. The survivors detailed how it took a decade, a documentary, a small-town police chief, and a rural district attorney to get anyone to listen.
The FBI issued a press release after Muller's 2015 arrest asking for information on additional crimes. Huskins and Quinn said they knew there were more victims but said the agents assigned to the case were not interested in working with them.
The FBI had been investigating the couple for faking Denise's kidnapping and faced public backlash after Muller struck again and was ultimately arrested by another agency.
Ten years later, Muller has now confessed to at least two other crimes in the month after Huskins' kidnapping, while law enforcement was publicly shaming her and Quinn instead of searching for Muller.
While investigating one of those subsequent crimes, Dublin Police Detective Misty Carausu and Alameda County sheriff's deputies tracked Muller to his mother's South Lake Tahoe cabin. There, Carausu found crucial evidence: a strand of Huskins' hair attached to a pair of blacked-out swim goggles used to blindfold her.
Detective Carausu's persistence in tracking down who that hair belonged to would eventually vindicate Huskins and Quinn, proving to the world that they had been telling the truth all along.
But it would be years before Huskins and Quinn would meet their "hero" in person. The three have become close since.
Then, after the Netflix documentary was released in 2024, City of Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges reached out to Huskins on Instagram, offering support to Huskins and Quinn, hoping to restore their faith in law enforcement. He invited them to speak to a law enforcement group about their experience.
That's where they met El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, who incidentally had jurisdiction in their case, which had since been turned over to the FBI, because Denise was held hostage and raped in South Lake Tahoe, which is in El Dorado County.
Together the five of them – Huskins, Quinn, Carausu, Borges, and Pierson – have pieced together a decades-long puzzle, solving cold case crimes linked to Muller dating back to 1993 when he allegedly committed his first kidnapping and rape at the age of 16.
First, Borgess began written correspondence with Muller, in which Muller confessed to several additional crimes. Then Pierson, who had jurisdiction, flew to Arizona to interview Muller in person along with an unnamed FBI interviewer. There, Muller allegedly confessed to additional crimes dating back to his teens in California and college years in Boston while he attended Harvard.
Charges have not been filed in the 1993 incident. However, district attorneys in both Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties have now filed charges based on recent confessions from Muller, which were later confirmed through DNA testing.
In addition to Denise's Vallejo kidnapping and the subsequent Dublin, California home invasion that led to his 2015 arrest, prosecutors say Muller has confessed to multiple crimes across Northern California.
The Santa Clara district attorney announced charges on December 30 related to two cold case home invasions and assaults in 2009. Muller was initially a suspect in those crimes, which was widely reported in 2015 when he was arrested.
However, it was not until Borgess and Pierson got the confession in 2024 that the Santa Clara DA finally connected Muller to the case by testing decades-old DNA evidence.
On Monday, the Contra Costa District Attorney's Office announced they filed charges against Muller for a previously unreported San Ramon-area kidnapping for ransom in 2015. That home invasion allegedly happened two weeks after Muller released Huskins, but the district attorney's office said it was so traumatic the family never reported it – fearing he, or other attackers, would come back.
"The amount of coverage that our case had …. But just two weeks later, he's willing to do a very similar thing," Quinn said. "[It] shows you how brazen and emboldened he was."
"I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg," Huskins added.
Muller has not commented on the new charges.
Over the coming weeks, CBS News California will investigate the systemic problems highlighted by this decades-long "American Nightmare."
Follow our continuing coverage:
"American Nightmare": Lessons learned
In an ongoing accountability and solutions-journalism series, CBS News California Investigates is working with Denise, Aaron, and experts from various fields to go beyond the sensational story and examine what we can learn from their 'American Nightmare.'
[This story was updated to include additional details.]
