[operator on phone] County emergency.
[woman] We have a break-in at North Terracina Drive in Dublin.
They are out there right now.
-[clicks] -[siren chirps]
[unsettling music playing]
[police siren wailing]
[woman] I'm hiding in the bathroom right now.
My husband is fighting with them.
They have our daughter.
-[dramatic music playing] -[siren wailing]
[operator] Listen. Talk to me, okay? How many people?
[woman] In the dark, we can't really see.
There was a laser light that was pointing at us.
Wanting us to turn around. We were in bed.
[operator] Okay.
[woman] My husband's calling me.
[man] He… He ran away already!
[woman] He ran away.
-[dog barking] -[indistinct radio chatter]
[Chris] I arrive on scene, and I know from the 911 call
that there's a family that lives here inside.
There's been a home invasion robbery.
-[tense music plays] -[camera clicking]
The husband is covered in blood, and he's holding a rag to his face.
[camera clicking]
He told me that the daughter is safe,
and the suspect has run out the back door.
[woman speaking indistinctly on radio]
[Chris] As we searched the back, we come across zip ties and duct tape.
And we make sure to bag that evidence.
[helicopter hovering]
We know that the suspect is wearing all black,
and he's possibly hopped over this fence.
The dog starts tracking back here on this trail,
but there's miles and miles of fields up here,
so it's gonna make him hard to detect.
Who is this suspect? Why is he here? Why did he choose this house?
What did he want inside this home?
[thrilling music playing]
And then the daughter comes up to me.
She says, "On the counter, there's a phone."
"I think he left it behind."
[music slows down]
[music fades]
[wind whooshing]
[elevator dings]
[dramatic music plays]
[phone ringing]
[man] When we locate the subscriber for the cell phone number…
[pensive music playing]
[speaking indistinctly]
…a female answers the phone.
And I ask her if she knows whose phone number this is,
and… and she says, "Oh yeah, I know. That's my son's phone number."
And she provided his name…
[dramatic sting]
Matthew Muller.
[mouse clicks]
[tense music playing]
He's a former Marine.
A Harvard Law graduate.
We did locate some previous reports
in which he was a suspect in some, uh, sexual batteries and attempted rapes.
[tense music continues]
So this leads me to suspect that in our Dublin incident,
his intentions were to tie up the parents in the house,
um, and to rape their 22-year-old daughter.
We tell his mom something very innocent.
"We just want to get the phone back to him. Do you know where he is?"
And she says, "He's… He's staying at my cabin in South Lake Tahoe."
[pensive music playing]
South Lake Tahoe is a vacation spot
which is about 140 miles north of our location.
[receiver clatters]
We can't be sure he's still there.
So we need to get to that cabin before he finds out we're coming
and has a chance to flee.
[dramatic music playing]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[woman] I get a call from my sergeant, and he says
we're going to go to South Lake Tahoe to make an arrest
on a home invasion that occurred in Dublin.
Do you want to join us?
It was going to be my first case as a detective.
And I said, "Hell yeah, I do. Sign me up."
[music fades]
[birds chirping]
[Miguel] It's gotta be the next one.
[Misty] I'm thinking to myself,
"What's gonna happen?"
Ambushes, barricades. Does he have, you know, guns?
[Miguel] We don't wanna make any noise. We wanna be sure we're silent.
We want to be sure we take him by surprise.
-[officer] Search warrant! Search warrant! -[Miguel] We got a search warrant!
[officers clamoring]
[Miguel] I got an open door on the left. I got an open door on the left.
Search warrant! Search warrant!
[Misty] Holding! Holding!
-[Miguel] Clear. -[Misty] Clear. Clear.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Miguel] Coming out the back. Look around the back.
-[officers clamoring] -They're in the back.
[Misty] And then…
[officer] Turn the fuck around!
[intriguing music playing]
[Miguel] We'll come back inside!
I see Muller being handcuffed.
[music ends]
[indistinct chatter]
He was very quiet, composed. No emotions.
[pensive music playing]
I tell him, "I'm going to take a photo of you."
[camera clicking]
[pensive music continues]
He looks relatively normal.
Like your average all-American white male adult.
[music fades]
[brooding music playing]
I go back in the house.
It was just a mess.
It smells kind of…
what would be a good word? Stale.
[Miguel] When we're searching everything,
we're finding things that tie him to our crime.
[suspenseful music playing]
We find zip ties and duct tape.
Just like he left at the Dublin house.
Toy guns that are painted.
One of them has a laser attached to it.
In Dublin, he awoke the victims with a laser shining on their face.
So this is all starting to fall together.
[pensive music playing]
[Misty] But as I'm standing in this house,
I noticed that the windows were covered.
I could feel that there was much more to it.
The bedroom was just very dirty.
And I get this sense that something else has happened here.
In the bathroom, we find a NyQuil bottle, a syringe.
Something inside you says,
"Oh, this is… this is weird, and this isn't right."
[foreboding music playing]
And then we find a stolen vehicle.
It's a white Mustang.
With Matthew Muller's ID inside of it.
The GPS is up and it has all of these different addresses.
Why was he driving to these different places?
And who was he with?
In the trunk,
I see what looks like a torso,
dressed in black.
[music continues]
It's a blow-up doll.
Made to look like…
he wants someone to mistake it for a human being.
I have no idea what he's using this for,
but it's… it's creepy.
[Misty] And then we find the nylon belt.
And in the pocket is a pair of goggles,
and the eyes are duct-taped.
As I'm pulling them out, I see a single strand of blond hair.
Oh my God.
[pensive music intensifies]
[Miguel] Who does this hair belong to?
I don't think it was someone who gave it up willingly.
[Misty] Are they alive? Are they dead?
We have to find out who this hair belonged to.
[music fades]
[Denise] By June 2015…
I just feel lost.
Afraid because the kidnappers are still out there.
We're still worried about whether or not
we're gonna be prosecuted and charged with committing a hoax.
[tense music playing]
Denise and I stay at our parents' house, or with friends…
We feel like fugitives, uh, like we're on the run.
[messages dinging]
[Denise] I open up my Facebook, and I'm just inundated with abuse.
And reading through it…
[keyboard clacking]
…is so frustrating.
I mean…
it was so insulting.
Having people believe that I'm this type of person
who would put my family through this.
That I would make this huge, elaborate lie for…
for what I don't… I don't know.
It was crushing.
[dramatic music plays]
[Aaron] Can't work.
Too traumatized to work. I don't know if they'll let us go back
if we wanted to, because we're the hoaxsters.
[pensive music playing]
[mouse clicking]
[Denise] Our attorneys are both working, like, tirelessly
to try to get the police and the FBI to actually look for the kidnappers.
But months have gone by,
and the only thing that they're doing is continuing to look at us.
And then, almost by accident, we find out that the lead case agent, David Sesma…
-This is David Sesma. -[David] Hi. I'm with the FBI.
…used to date my ex, Andrea,
who was the intended target of this whole thing.
[thrilling music playing]
[Doug] There's absolutely no way Sesma should be on this case.
It's a clear, unequivocal, black-and-white conflict of interest.
So I write to the office of Inspector General,
explain the situation.
Their response,
"The appropriate authorities found his conduct 'unproblematic.'"
Is this why the investigation's not being followed through?
Is this why evidence is being ignored?
Like, it's not paranoia anymore. It just… Now it feels personal.
We're just two people going against the FBI.
[pensive music playing]
[Denise] In the meantime, like, what do we do?
Do we just kind of live behind closed doors
for the rest of our lives?
We're not safe anywhere.
[music intensifies, ends]
[suspenseful music playing]
[phone ringing]
[Misty] When we get back to the station, I'm thinking,
"How and where do I begin searching for a victim with blond hair?"
Matthew Muller came up in several different incidents
that occurred in Northern California.
[suspenseful music playing]
The first one I look at was in 2009.
It happened 40 miles from the city of Dublin, in Palo Alto.
[music continues]
So I call Palo Alto PD,
explain to the detective we have Matthew Muller in custody.
He cuts me off and says,
"I have a photo on my desk, and I've been staring at him since 2009."
"He was a person of interest in our sexual assault case,
but I could never prove that it was him."
[reporter] Palo Alto PD have a home invasion case so terrifying,
locals are afraid to go to bed at night.
He actually physically restrained her, uh, blindfolded her.
[Misty] At approximately 3:30 in the morning,
a 32-year-old woman was woken up by a man who was dressed in all-black clothing.
He ties her up, forces her to drink NyQuil,
puts surgical tape over her eyes, and tells her that he's going to rape her.
She's pleading with the suspect telling him she'd been raped before.
He tells her that he doesn't want to victimize her again
and decides to leave her alone.
Three weeks prior, Matthew Muller was stopped by a Palo Alto police officer
because he had seen him jumping out of the bushes
nearby an apartment complex.
And so, Matthew Muller became a person of interest.
But there was no DNA or evidence tying Matthew Muller to this case,
and the case is still open now.
There's a lot of similarities between this case
and the items I found in South Lake Tahoe.
But there's no mention of goggles in the report.
So I know that there's another victim out there,
and I had to find out who she was.
[gentle music playing]
Prior to becoming a law enforcement officer,
one of my girlfriends was a victim of sexual assault.
She is the reason why I became a cop.
I wanted to be the one that was the voice for these victims
and prosecute the suspects
and send them to prison for a very long time.
I am working after hours,
and I'm getting more and more emotionally drawn to this case.
And then I read about another case in 2009.
Just eight miles from Palo Alto.
In a town called Mountain View.
[pensive music playing]
In 2009, I was in my thirties.
I was in a relationship, but, uh, living alone.
[crickets chirping]
That night, I woke up around 4:30 or five o'clock thinking,
"Oh good. I have a little bit extra time to sleep in."
Um, and then…
[dramatic music playing]
I felt this very heavy pressure on… on top of me.
[Tracey screaming]
I was screaming, and I just keep hearing,
"Tracey, Tracey, Tracey! It's okay, Tracey. Tracey!"
And he told me if I didn't stop screaming, he was going to gag me.
[tense music playing]
He restrained me with zip ties,
made me drink something that would make me sleepy.
And blindfolded me with a pair of swim goggles that had been blacked out.
He tells me,
"Well, now I have some bad news."
"Um…" [clicks tongue]
"Unfortunately, now I'm gonna have to rape you."
And…
And then the… then just the panic took over,
and I started just begging,
"You don't need to do this."
"Please don't do this. Please don't do this."
You know, "I gave you… I gave you everything you wanted. You did--"
You just start bargaining, right? You just start saying,
"Please, please, please, please, please don't do this." [inhales deeply]
And…
I remember him being very silent for a while.
And then I hear him sigh and he says,
[sighs] "I can't do this."
[suspenseful music playing]
"I'm sorry. I know this is really gonna mess you up for a long time."
"You might want to think about getting a dog."
"A dog would be good protection for you."
"Um, it might prevent something like this from happening again."
[Misty] He, all of a sudden, has this change of heart,
to try to look like the good guy.
He actually gives her, like, crime prevention advice
on how not to be a victim in the future.
But Tracey has long brown hair.
The goggles that I collected could not have been used on this woman.
When the police arrived, the officer asked me,
"Are you sure you just didn't have a bad dream?"
[inhales deeply]
And I… I just remember saying,
"Well, no, I… it wasn't a dream."
"How would I get these marks if it was a dream?"
"No. This is real. Like, look, this really happened to me."
They talked to my boyfriend.
Asked him was I an attention seeker?
Was I prone to making up stories?
Did he believe that this really could have happened?
I was flabbergasted, honestly.
I knew he existed.
I knew that this would most likely happen again,
and I was very frustrated
that the police weren't taking it seriously.
[pensive music playing]
[Denise] As time goes on, I'm just trying to hold on to hope.
[seagulls cawing]
All I want is for someone to believe me.
The first time…
when I was assaulted, I was 12.
I was just a child and it was unexpected
and I didn't know what to do and…
[sighs]
I blamed myself. I was ashamed.
And a couple of years later,
I found out that he molested another girl.
And I felt incredible guilt that I didn't say something sooner.
And I'm 19,
and it happens again.
I'm at a friend's house, a close friend.
We're with a small group of people.
We've been drinking.
I fall asleep on the couch, and I wake up. My pants are off.
And some guy's fingers are inside of me.
I thought, "Okay, this time I'm gonna report it."
"I'm going to say something."
I get to the police station, and in the parking lot,
I met with an officer who basically talks me out of it.
He says, "You know, really it's a 'he said, she said.'"
"There's not gonna be any proof."
And then, here I am…
literally taken in the middle of the night.
My body stolen and violated.
And it's still…
They don't believe me.
I don't know what needs to happen to me…
what needs to happen to any woman for them to be believed.
[waves crashing]
I mean, it just seems hopeless.
[seagulls cawing]
[pensive music playing]
[phones ringing]
[Misty] I can't give up searching for a victim with blond hair.
And that's all I really cared about.
[keyboard clacking]
And so, I decided to go back to the white Mustang.
[mouse clicks]
The vehicle was stolen seven months previously.
-[mouse clicks] -In the city of Vallejo.
I contact the registered owner,
tell him, you know, that we have the Mustang,
it was involved in a home invasion,
and he stops me and says,
"Hmm. Have you heard of the Mare Island creeper?"
And I thought to myself,
"Where is Mare Island? And who's the creeper?"
[suspenseful music playing]
Mare Island is connected by a tiny bridge to Vallejo.
It's a quiet neighborhood.
But in 2014,
there was a bunch of students that were being harassed by a male subject
who would basically peep into their windows,
take photos, and then would scurry away.
[dog barking]
Night after night after night, this man was terrorizing the neighborhood,
and the cops aren't doing anything.
So they decided to take matters into their own hands.
[crickets chirping]
A couple of students follow the man home
and realize that he, too, lives on Mare Island.
And they do a further search and find out that he's ex-military…
and a lawyer.
And in my brain, I'm thinking,
"The Mare Island creeper is Matthew Muller."
Holy shit.
[tense music playing]
They reported all of these incidents that occurred to the police,
but the investigation stopped.
How could the police have not followed up on this guy?
They had leads.
[birds chirping]
And then he tells me that in March of 2015,
the Mare Island creeper cases stop.
[brooding music playing]
He said, "You know, it was around the same time of the Gone Girl case."
"You know, the Gone Girl case?"
And I had no idea what he was talking about.
[music continues]
I google "Vallejo kidnapping Gone Girl case."
All of these articles pop up.
Kidnapping for ransom mystery involving a 30-year-old woman
taken forcibly in the night from a home on Mare Island.
[Misty] She was taken from an address on Kirkland Avenue
where the Mare Island creeper was committing his Peeping Tom crimes.
[reporter 1] The suspect restrained them with zip ties
and then covered their eyes with blacked-out swim goggles.
My heart is racing. My stomach is turning.
[reporter 2] That woman who claims she was kidnapped
has turned up safe and unharmed this morning in Huntington Beach.
[Misty] The GPS in the Mustang had Huntington Beach on it.
-[mouse clicks] -And then…
[dramatic sting]
I see this picture of a white woman
with long blond hair.
Oh my God. The blond hair that I have on those goggles
is hair that matches the hair that Denise has.
[reporter] Police are now saying it was all a wild goose chase.
It was all a hoax, an elaborate hoax.
[Misty] They're calling this woman a liar on national news,
but I just wanted to reach through the computer
and just give her a hug and say,
"I got you."
[music fades]
[line ringing]
So I call Vallejo PD.
I'm so excited and so amped up, like, "Let's get this solved right now!"
[line continues ringing]
And I get no answer.
But I am like the annoying ex-girlfriend that never goes away.
[line ringing]
So I continue to call them.
[intriguing music playing]
And call them.
[line continues ringing]
[ringing stops]
Finally, I get transferred to a detective and he says,
"The case was turned over to the FBI, so we're no longer investigating it."
"You might want to call them."
"Okay. Um, give me the phone number."
So he gives me the phone number to the FBI agent, David Sesma.
And I hang up the phone, like, "Okay, that was useless."
-[line rings] -And I call David Sesma.
And I tell him,
"We have a suspect in custody, um, very similar to the suspect
that was involved in the kidnapping of Denise Huskins."
"You guys deemed it a hoax."
He snapped back and said, "We never called it a hoax."
I said, "Well, anyways, I have this person in custody
that you may be interested in speaking to because the cases are so similar."
And he said,
"Okay, well, send me all the information that you have, and we'll look at it."
And I thought, "That's it?"
I was so disappointed.
-[suspenseful music playing] -[phones ringing]
[Miguel] We set up a meeting with the FBI
to go over the evidence that we found in South Lake Tahoe.
I show them the zip ties,
duct tape…
and they were curious.
But when they see the water gun that we had collected,
they told us that this was the exact same gun
that the kidnappers had photographed and emailed
to, uh, the San Francisco Chronicle.
[suspenseful music continues]
And then when I show them the photo of the goggles with the blond hair,
they look visibly shocked.
They realize that maybe they were wrong
and they need to further investigate the Vallejo incident.
[music intensifies, ends]
[phone ringing]
[receiver clatters]
[Doug] I get a call from the US attorney.
And he tells me, "Doug, I think we may have a break in the case."
[police siren wailing]
He says, "We have a man. We're holding him in custody right now."
"There is evidence that links him to the crime against Denise and Aaron."
[pensive music playing]
Can you imagine my shock?
[reporter 1] Breaking news at noon in the mysterious Vallejo kidnapping saga.
Major break in a strange kidnapping case in California.
A kidnapping case that was once compared to the movie Gone Girl.
There's been an arrest in the Denise Huskins kidnapping.
This was real all along.
Denise and Aaron were telling the truth.
I'm floored.
[reporter 2] Authorities initially said Huskins was lying about her kidnapping.
Now we've learned from the arrest warrant that Denise reported
she was sexually assaulted by her captor.
Oh God.
I mean, the news is just overwhelming.
There's millions of different questions running on… in our minds.
[reporter 3] A suspect has now been identified by the FBI.
Matthew Muller graduated from Harvard Law in 2006
and was a research assistant there for the next three years.
He told detectives he's bipolar and suffers from Gulf War Illness.
[reporter 3] Muller had been working as an immigration lawyer in San Francisco,
but was disbarred earlier this year.
[Denise] I'm looking at this man.
I'm, like, sick to my stomach.
I'm just trying to process…
the situation.
Because the man who held me captive and raped me,
I never knew what he looked like.
But then there's video footage.
[reporter] He's seen here in this story on Univision.
They had said, up until today, is that,
"No, we will not even let you have your day in court."
[gentle music playing]
The cadence of how he spoke, the rhythm.
I know it's him.
Hearing him, seeing him validated that this all was real.
And I felt that frustration and that anger of like,
"See? It wasn't that fucking crazy 'cause it happened."
"Why didn't you listen to us?"
"Why didn't you take what we said seriously?"
[Doug] After the arrest of Matthew Muller,
the only thing in this world that I want to see
is the affidavit.
An affidavit is a document that law enforcement puts together
that details every step of an investigation.
[intriguing music playing]
When I read it, it becomes patently obvious
that law enforcement did very little work
into the actual crime of kidnapping.
What they did focus their attention on was prosecuting Denise and Aaron.
They were blind to the fact that a real crime had been committed here.
So I read about the polygraph and it says,
"The exam was completed…
with unknown results."
Agent French told me I failed it miserably,
not even a question.
Aaron, there's no question in my mind that you failed this test.
So he's just lying to me.
Lying through his teeth to just break me down.
Then I see that there's a section in this affidavit
that goes over the SART exam.
A SART exam is a sexual assault examination
that's given at the hospital to victims of sexual assaults.
According to this affidavit,
there was no physical evidence of non-consensual sex.
[Doug] Denise spent hours and hours and hours
going over each detail about the sexual assault.
[Denise] And I played along…
'cause I didn't know what else to do.
Not every rape is going to be physically damaging.
I mean, this is the fucking FBI. Like, they should know better.
[intriguing music continues]
[Doug] Then I read that while Aaron was in the Vallejo Police Department,
he told the police that the kidnappers were going to contact him on his phone.
But what does law enforcement do?
They put it on airplane mode.
Law enforcement didn't turn Aaron's phone on
until that next evening,
when they discovered that two calls had come in.
These were traceable calls.
And they were traceable
within 200 meters…
[music intensifies, fades]
…of where Denise was being held.
Oh my God.
If they had actually monitored his phone…
they could have saved me from the second rape.
[exhales]
Yeah.
[somber music playing]
And then, as we were still going through all of this,
we get a call from the FBI.
[indistinct chatter]
[Denise] They tell us that they are sure that Muller acted alone
and they're not looking for anyone else.
These are the same investigators that said I killed Denise.
The same investigators that said it was a hoax.
And now the same investigators are saying he acted alone.
We know there's other people out there.
And the police are gonna let them skate through
because it's the easiest thing for them.
[reporter] Keep moving, guys! Keep it clear!
-[cameras clicking] -Clear, please!
[indistinct chatter]
Clear, please!
[Denise] The police refused to follow the evidence,
and the media all laughed along the way.
[cameras clicking]
I want to stand up there…
and look every damn one of them in the face
while they learn the truth.
[cameras clicking]
I'm sick of hiding.
I don't have anything to hide from.
Nearly four months ago, we told you that Denise Huskins was right.
That she was not only innocent of perpetrating a hoax,
but that she was a victim of a very serious and violent crime.
Seeing Denise and Aaron out in public, they're not saying anything,
but their emotions spoke volumes.
I regret my part in this because they went through hell.
We're thinking that we're covering this story,
the salacious story of a lifetime, and it all went horribly wrong.
Ms. Huskins and Mr. Quinn held their heads up high
in the face of public shame and humiliation.
I had this overwhelming sense of relief.
And to know that she was going to be validated was everything to me.
That she was not a liar.
And how dare we, as law enforcement, ever say something like that.
[mellow music playing]
[reporter 1] A man who has pled guilty to the kidnapping of Denise Huskins
will be sentenced today.
[reporter 2] This will be Huskins's and Quinn's first time coming face-to-face
with Matthew Muller.
[mellow music continues]
[Denise] In that entire time in captivity…
I was a body to him behind these goggles.
I never saw him, and he never saw me.
And I knew that standing up there,
I was going to turn to him and make him see me.
And I stared right at him, and I said his name,
"Matthew Muller…. [clears throat]
…now we meet face-to-face, eye-to-eye."
"I am Denise Huskins, the woman behind the blindfold."
[breathing shakily]
And, um…
I took myself back that day.
[pensive music playing]
[attorney] Okay.
Okay, good morning. We are on the record.
This is the recorded video deposition of Andrew Bidou.
[Doug] During the civil case, a tip came in,
and it's about the chief of police, Andrew Bidou.
According to the anonymous source,
before the Vallejo Police Department had a national press conference
in which they called Denise and Aaron liars,
Andrew Bidou told Officer Park to
"burn that bitch."
Ms. Huskins has plundered valuable resources away from our community
while instilling fear amongst our community members.
So if anything, it is Ms. Huskins that owes this community an apology.
[attorney] Do you recall anyone saying
any words to the effect of "burn that bitch"
in respect to Ms. Huskins on the day of March 25th?
I've never heard anybody say that.
[thrilling music playing]
And I start figuring out,
"Okay, how do I make it so you look like a monster?"
[music continues]
[music fades]
[Denise] The end of 2017…
we find out that Misty Carausu would like to talk to us.
[hopeful music playing]
[Misty] I wanted to meet them. I felt like it was time.
They walk in… Sorry.
They walk in and I see her, and she looks exactly the same
as she did on… on the news.
We just hugged and we just talked for a while.
It was very emotional.
And I tell her… [sighs] …how all I've wanted this whole time
was someone in law enforcement to call a hero
and that she's our hero.
[hopeful music continues]
[Aaron] If Misty didn't connect Muller to us,
I've no idea where we'd be.
We're lucky out of this.
[music fades]
["True Love Will Find You in the End" by Headless Heroes playing]
♪ True love will find you in the end ♪
[Denise] We got married.
We moved to the coast and started a new life.
And in March 2020, I gave birth to our daughter, Olivia.
[Aaron] And then we had another little girl, Naomi.
[song continues]
And so, uh, it feels like our family is complete.
[Denise] Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
♪ This is a promise with a catch ♪
[Denise] I want them to know their value
and to never let anyone
dictate that or determine that for them.
More than anything, I just hope that they grow up to be like their mom.
And if they do that, they'll be okay.
Yep.
[song ends]
[thrilling music playing]
[music fades]