If the police had responded correctly to Aaron Quinn’s pleas to help find his kidnapped girlfriend, Denise Huskins, the California couple’s life could be very different than it is today.
The couple’s harrowing experience – and the failed police response to their calls for help – is the subject American nightmare, a new three-part true-crime documentary that premiered on Netflix this week. In 2015, Huskins and Quinn were suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by armed intruders who tied them up with shoelaces, blinded them with black-out swimming goggles and forced them into a closet. During the break-in, Huskins was kidnapped and Quinn later freed himself, soon calling the police for help.
The only problem? Police officers in Vallejo, California did not believe him. Investigators soon bring Quinn in for questioning, accusing him of foul play and suspecting that Huskins was not kidnapped, but killed by her boyfriend.
The police interrogated him for 18 hours, pressuring him to confess to a crime that not only did he not commit, but never happened.
“I didn’t do anything,” Quinn tells the investigator, in a tense moment caught on police security cameras and replayed in the documentary. The policeman quickly interrupts him: “Yes, you are.”
Meanwhile, Huskins was held captive for two days and raped twice by her captor.
Woman falsely accused of fraud in American nightmare Recalls trauma after public suspicion surrounding kidnapping (exclusive)
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn.
Mike Jory/The Times-Herald via AP
Miraculously, he would reappear two days later outside the family’s home in Orange County—a moment that in many cases would have been a time of relief. But her sudden reappearance at her mother’s house only made investigators more suspicious, and they began to publicly voice their suspicions.
“There is no evidence today to support the allegations that this was an abduction by persons unknown or a kidnapping at all,” Vallejo Police Lt. Kenny Park said at the time. San Francisco Chronicle the same day the kidnappers left Huskins. “Given the facts that have been presented so far, this event appears to be an orchestrated event and not a kidnapping.”
For three months, police continued to suspect Huskins and Quinn — public pressure that Quinn told PEOPLE this month had a serious impact on their efforts to get their lives back on track. The couple, both physical therapists in the Southern California area, struggled to return to work at all.
“Those months in between were unsustainable and we couldn’t go back to work,” Quinn said. “Partly because of the trauma, and partly because they didn’t let us. Who wants to hire a fraudster?”
Couple Featured in Netflix’s ‘American Nightmare’ Don’t Know Why They Were Targeted: ‘Sticking Point to Recovery’ (Exclusive)
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Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn.
Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty
Three months after Huskins returned, FBI investigators stepped in and solved the case, connecting evidence of a similar abduction at a home about 40 miles away in Vallejo. Authorities would eventually arrest Matthew Muller, a former Marine and Harvard-educated immigration attorney who accidentally confessed to the crime during a hot-mic incident while being interviewed by CBS.
Muller pleaded guilty in 2016 to one count of federal kidnapping, but in November 2020 he was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial on state charges of kidnapping, rape, robbery and burglary.
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Even today, the couple does not understand why they were targeted.
“Like many victims or many people who have gone through tragedy, you don’t get all the answers,” Quinn said. “And that can be a point on the road to recovery. So we don’t rely on finding those answers, but what we have to do is move forward into the unknown and focus on the things that are most important to us, like our family, our children, our job. These are sustainable things. And having answers to why we were targeted doesn’t change what we’re doing moving forward.”
The couple’s traumatic three months that managed the public’s perception of them are recounted on Netflix American nightmare series.
“My hope is that after people watch the film, they take away the fact that this is not a bizarre kidnapping,” Quinn said. “What’s quite bizarre is just the absolute lack of any investigation. All the evidence was there to catch Muller and the other perpetrators within the first 24 hours, but the police stuck their heads in the sand and said there was no heaven. So that’s the scary part. , that confirmation bias and tunnel vision will simply lead them to do nothing.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
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Source: HIS Education