A person who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a northern California lady in what turned broadly generally known as the “Gone Lady” kidnapping has been charged with two 15-year-old residence invasion sexual assaults, prosecutors introduced on Monday.
Prosecutors allege Matthew Muller, 47, broke into a girl’s residence in Mountain View, California, in September 2009, attacked her, tied her up and made her drink medicines. He then instructed the lady in her 30s that he was going to rape her, however she satisfied him to not, prosecutors stated. Muller left after recommending the lady get a canine.
The next month, prosecutors say he broke into a house in Palo Alto, California, certain and gagged a girl and compelled her to drink Nyquil. He began assaulting the lady in her 30s, however she additionally satisfied him to cease, prosecutors stated.
Muller has been charged with two felony counts of committing a sexual assault throughout a house invasion. The fees carry a doable sentence of life in jail. He’s at present serving a 40-year jail time period for the 2015 kidnapping.
“The small print of this individual’s violent crime spree appear scripted for Hollywood, however they’re tragically actual,” the district legal professional, Jeff Rosen, stated in an announcement. “Our objective is to ensure this defendant is held accountable and can by no means damage or terrorize anybody ever once more. Our hope is that this nightmare is over.”
Muller’s lawyer, public defender Agustin Arias, had no remark in regards to the new costs.
The brand new costs got here after testing proof primarily based on a “new lead”, in keeping with prosecutors. District legal professional criminalists discovered Muller’s DNA on straps he used to bind one of many victims, officers stated.
Muller, a disbarred, Harvard-educated legal professional, pleaded responsible to the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins. He was additionally sentenced in 2022 to 31 years in state jail after pleading no contest to 2 counts of forcible rape of Huskins.
Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into her boyfriend’s residence in Vallejo, a metropolis within the San Francisco Bay Space. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, instructed detectives he woke as much as a brilliant mild on his face and that intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied each of them up earlier than kidnapping Huskins in the course of the evening. Quinn additionally stated the abductors had been demanding an $8,500 ransom.
A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at occasions suggesting he may need been concerned in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph take a look at which an FBI agent instructed him he failed, the couple stated later in a ebook about their ordeal.
Huskins, who was 29 on the time, turned up unhurt two days later exterior her father’s house in Huntington Seashore, a metropolis in southern California, the place she stated she was dropped off. She reappeared simply hours earlier than the ransom was due.
That very same day, police in Vallejo introduced in a information convention that they’d discovered no proof of a kidnapping and accused Huskins and Quinn of faking the kidnapping, which spurred an enormous search.
After Huskins’ launch, Vallejo police erroneously likened her kidnapping to the ebook and film Gone Lady, wherein a girl goes lacking after which lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.
Investigators dropped that concept after Muller was arrested by police in Dublin, California, for the same residence invasion. Authorities stated they discovered a cellphone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a automobile and residential turned up proof, together with a pc Muller stole from Quinn, linking the disbarred legal professional to the kidnapping.
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