Prosecutors announced new charges against a man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman, which was originally believed to be a hoax, and became known as… Kidnapping of the “missing girl”..
Matthew Mueller, 47, the man who kidnapped Dennis Hoskins in Vallejo in 2015, is now charged in two cases related to a home invasion 15 years ago.
Mueller broke into women's homes in Palo Alto and Mountain View in 2009, with the intent of raping them, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office.
Thanks to new evidence and advances in forensic DNA testing, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, along with Palo Alto and Mountain View police, were able to identify Mueller in these cases.
California couple in 'GONE GIRL' case cleared after staged kidnapping charges
Matthew Mueller, a Harvard-educated immigration lawyer, was finally arrested for Hoskins' kidnapping after being involved in a similar home invasion via his forgotten cell phone. (Solan County Police Department)
The prosecutor's office said Mueller's DNA was found on tapes he used to link one of the victims in one of the 2009 cases.
Mueller now faces two felony charges of sexual assault during a home invasion stemming from the 2009 crimes. If convicted, Officials said he faces life in prison.
“The details of this individual’s violent crime spree appear to be written in Hollywood, but they are tragically real,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Our goal is to make sure this defendant is held accountable and that he never hurts or terrorizes anyone again. Our hope is that this nightmare will end.”
In the early hours of Sept. 29, 2009, officials said Mueller broke into a woman's Mountain View home, assaulted her, tied her up, made her drink a cocktail of drugs and said he was going to rape her. After the victim, who officials said was in her 30s, convinced him not to do so, she suggested the victim get a dog, then fled.
Less than a month later, on October 18, officials said Mueller broke into a home in Palo Alto, where he performed the same routine and bound and gagged a woman in her 30s. He then made her drink Nikhil and began assaulting her before convincing her to stop. Mueller gave the victim crime prevention tips, then fled.
doctor. PHIL calls fake kidnapper 'GONE GIRL' for 'laughing' because she lied about prison
Dennis Hoskins and Aaron Quinn appear at a press conference with attorney Doug Rappaport (left) in San Francisco, California on Thursday, September 29, 2016. Hoskins and Quinn were victims in the strange kidnapping case in Vallejo in March 2015. Matthew Mueller has pleaded guilty to kidnapping Hoskins. (Paul Chen/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Both cases were investigated at the time and remained unsolved.
Mueller gained national attention six years later as the subject of “American Nightmare,” a Netflix docuseries that tells the story of his 2015 “Gone Girl Hoax” kidnapping of Vallejo’s Denise Hoskins and 48 harrowing hours in captivity.
On March 23, 2015, Mueller broke into Vallejo's home, Where he drugged him Hoskins and her boyfriend were restrained. He kidnapped Hoskins, brought her to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, and sexually assaulted her. Two days later, Mueller drove his victim to Southern California and released her.
Vallejo police initially believed the invasion and kidnapping were a hoax orchestrated by her boyfriend Aaron Quinn, a development deemed by the media to be the “real-life 'Gone Girl',” a reference to the Ben Affleck thriller and novel “Gone Girl.” “In which a small-town wife kills herself to take revenge on her cheating husband.
Vallejo Police Department headquarters in Vallejo, California on Tuesday, July 14, 2015. (Paul Chen/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Although they said at a press conference that they were treating the case as a kidnapping, the Vallejo Police Department suspected Quinn of killing his girlfriend and Fabricating his account. He endured 18 hours of interrogation, according to the docuseries.
The couple sued the Vallejo Police Department for $2.5 million, but not before months of public scrutiny.
Hoskins and Quinn told the filmmakers that Misty Carauso, the rookie detective who solved the case, was their hero. On June 5, 2015, a couple woke up in the middle of the night to an almost identical home invasion.
After contacting police departments in the Bay Area, NBC Bay Area reported, Carauso learned that Mueller was a suspect in a 2009 Palo Alto home invasion. Also at the scene was a pair of swimming goggles covered with duct tape and with blonde hair pinned up.
While the wife hid in the bathroom and called the police, her husband managed to fend off the attacker. But he left behind important evidence: zippers, duct tape, a glove and a cell phone.
Carauso traced the phone to the stepfather of a man named Matthew Mueller, a Harvard-educated immigration lawyer and Marine Corps veteran.
At that point, Carauso I called the FBIMueller was arrested for a home invasion in Dublin, California on June 8.
Dennis Hoskins and Aaron Quinn are pictured at a press conference. They both hired defense attorneys after they were publicly accused of faking a home invasion, and they feared losing their jobs as physical therapists. (Mike Jury/The Times Herald via AP)
Evidence found at his home, including Quinn's laptop, finally linked him to Hoskins' kidnapping. Mueller's confession matched Quinn and Haskins' stories perfectly, right down to the audio recordings, black-tinted goggles and liquid sedatives.
Mueller pleaded guilty to one count of federal kidnapping in September 2016 and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mueller also faced state charges of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and assault Two counts of rape by force.
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The Vallejo Police Department publicly accused Dennis and Aaron of orchestrating their ordeal, and welcomed a barrage of negative press before their attacker was arrested for a similar home invasion. (Associated Press)
But he was deemed ineligible His trial For those accusations in November 2020, according to the documentary. Mueller allegedly suffered from “Gulf War sickness” after being wounded military service, His lawyer claimed he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, NBC News reported.
Mueller was then sentenced in 2022 to 31 years in prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape of Haskins.
He is currently incarcerated in federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
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Hoskins and Quinn previously told People magazine that they had no idea why Mueller targeted them.
“Like many of the victims, or many of the people who did this She went through tragedy“You don't get all the answers,” Quinn told the magazine. “And that can be a sticking point in recovery. So, for us, we're not dependent 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 and our kids and our job. These are sustainable things.” “Getting answers to why they targeted us doesn't change what we do moving forward.”
The couple married in 2018, released a book about their ordeal in 2021 and welcomed daughters in 2020 and 2022.
Fox News Digital's Christina Coulter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stephenie Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Tips and story ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
