In the pre-dawn hours of March 23, 2015, Aaron Quinn and his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, were jolted awake in their Vallejo, California home by a man wearing a wetsuit who announced, “This is a robbery. We are not here to hurt you, stay calm.” He never showed his face; he spoke for himself and others, and the couple later referred to him as “The Voice.”
The intruder bound them with zip ties, blindfolded them with blacked-out swim goggles and gave them a sedative. Aaron was forced to go to a bank to collect ransom money while a camera monitored him at home. Denise was placed in the trunk of Aaron’s car and driven away. The Voice threatened that Denise would be killed if Aaron contacted police.
Fearing for Denise’s life, Aaron eventually freed his hands and called 911. When Vallejo officers arrived, investigators grew skeptical. Lead detective Mathew Mustard told Aaron he did not believe a kidnapping had occurred and suggested Denise might be dead and Aaron responsible. Media coverage questioned the story; some compared it to the fictional “Gone Girl.” Denise was found hours later by Huntington Beach police and gave a consistent account, but she said she felt doubted. Vallejo delayed ordering a sexual-assault exam until after a lengthy interview, and the couple—despite handing over phones, clothes and search permissions—worried they would be charged with fabricating the crime even as they feared the real perpetrator remained free.
A breakthrough came in June 2015, when a home invasion in Dublin, California, left a cell phone behind. That device was traced to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, where investigators found 38-year-old Matthew Muller, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Marine. At Muller’s cabin police recovered Aaron’s laptop. A nearby stolen car held the blacked-out goggles with a blonde hair later confirmed to be Denise’s. GPS data placed the car where Denise said she had been dropped off. The physical evidence corroborated the couple’s account.
Muller was charged in the Vallejo case and in the Dublin attack. He pleaded and received a 40-year sentence for those convictions. Aaron and Denise sued the City of Vallejo for defamation and emotional distress and settled for $2.5 million; the city acknowledged the case had not been handled with the sensitivity it required, but many officers’ actions left the couple feeling far from fully vindicated. Some investigators later left the department.
Even after Muller’s conviction, Denise and Aaron worried he might have had accomplices. They kept advocating publicly—writing a book, participating in media projects, and pressing for answers. Their persistence drew the attention of people including Chief Nick Borges of Seaside, California, who apologized on behalf of law enforcement and invited the couple to speak. Borges began corresponding with Muller in prison; Muller’s letters included confessions and details pointing to crimes beyond those for which he had already been convicted.
El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, who had followed the Quinns’ case, assembled a different approach: science-based, nonjudgmental interviewing. In November 2024 Pierson and a highly trained FBI interviewer traveled to Arizona to speak with Muller in prison. Muller’s explanations—part confession, part professed religious transformation—spelled out a pattern of voyeurism, stalking and escalating sexual violence. Over recorded hours he described prowling at night, installing cameras, watching victims, and committing violent home invasions. He admitted using deception to create the illusion of accomplices during the Quinns’ attack—playing recorded whispers and pretending to speak to others—though he maintained he acted alone.
Muller also confessed to an unreported home invasion in Contra Costa County two weeks after the Quinns’ attack, describing the use of a ladder to enter a house, binding a family and forcing a mother to withdraw $30,000 in ransom money. Using details from the interview, investigators located the ravine and found the ladder Muller described. They identified a State Parks report from Aug. 7, 1993, about a campsite attack matching Muller’s description of an assault when he was 16. Investigators tracked down a surviving victim who asked to be called “Lynn.” She recounted being awakened in her tent, forced out at gunpoint and left on a footbridge until her boyfriend untied her; she said officers at the time did not take her seriously.
For decades Lynn carried fear and hypervigilance. When investigators re-engaged her after Muller’s confessions, she said she finally felt believed. The ladder, photographs of a gun from the 1993 response, Muller’s specific descriptions and other corroboration connected him to crimes long treated as cold or unreported.
Muller’s expanded confessions and the subsequent investigative work produced new charges in late 2024 and into 2025. While in custody he continued to write, at times attempting contact with Denise and Aaron, prompting prosecutors’ concern that he sought to manipulate victims. For their safety Denise and Aaron observed a filmed interview between Muller and prosecutors from another room while Pierson and the FBI interviewer pressed him about accomplices and motives. Denise and Aaron said confronting Muller, either directly or by witnessing these sessions, helped them reclaim power and make clear they would not be silenced by his deceptions.
By summer 2025 Muller had been convicted of the additional crimes unearthed after his confessions. At sentencing Lynn read a victim impact statement she had carried for decades, saying her voice had finally been heard and that Muller would now be silenced. He received four life sentences for those convictions.
Investigators also completed fuller testing of Denise’s 2015 rape kit, which Vallejo police had only preliminarily examined. Testing in 2025 revealed a mixture of DNA—including Muller’s—but remained inconclusive about the presence of additional assailants. Pierson interpreted the totality of the evidence and Muller’s own admissions as consistent with him acting alone and faking a group presence, though Chief Borges said he still suspected possible help and pledged to pursue any leads.
Aaron and Denise have gone on to build a life together: they married, started a family and used their platform to push for reform. They speak publicly about how being doubted by police compounded their trauma and emphasize the need for investigators to listen to victims, avoid premature judgments and follow evidence rather than assumptions. The couple now works with law enforcement and prosecutors to promote better interviewing practices and to encourage belief and thoroughness when victims come forward.
Officers who handled the original Vallejo investigation left the department in subsequent years; Denise and Aaron say the settlement with the city helped but did not erase the sting of being disbelieved. Still, Muller’s confessions, the follow-up investigations, the new prosecutions and the long-delayed accountability for crimes that had haunted survivors for decades provided a measure of reckoning and the “last word” many victims had been denied for years.