SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — A person who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman in what grew to become broadly often known as the “Gone Woman” kidnapping has been charged with two 15-year-old residence invasion sexual assaults, prosecutors introduced Monday.
Prosecutors allege Matthew Muller, 47, broke into a lady’s residence in Mountain View, California, in September 2009, attacked her, tied her up and made her drink medicines. He then informed the girl in her 30s that he was going to rape her, however she satisfied him to not, prosecutors mentioned. Muller left after recommending the girl get a canine.
The next month, prosecutors say he broke into a house in Palo Alto, California, sure and gagged a lady and compelled her to drink Nyquil. He began assaulting the girl in her 30s, however she additionally satisfied him to cease, prosecutors mentioned.
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Muller has been charged with two felony counts of committing a sexual assault throughout a house invasion. The fees carry a potential sentence of life in jail. He’s at present serving a 40-year jail time period for the 2015 kidnapping.
“The main points of this individual’s violent crime spree appear scripted for Hollywood, however they’re tragically actual,” District Legal professional Jeff Rosen mentioned in a press release. “Our objective is to verify this defendant is held accountable and can by no means harm or terrorize anybody ever once more. Our hope is that this nightmare is over.”
Muller’s lawyer, public defender Agustin Arias, mentioned they don’t have any remark in regards to the new prices.
The brand new prices got here after testing proof based mostly on a “new lead,” in line with prosecutors. District legal professional criminalists discovered Muller’s DNA on straps he used to bind one of many victims, officers mentioned.
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 abducted 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, informed 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 mentioned the abductors have been demanding an $8,500 ransom.
A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at occasions suggesting he could have been concerned in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph check which an FBI agent informed him he failed, the couple mentioned later in a guide about their ordeal.
Huskins, who was 29 on the time, turned up unhurt two days later outdoors her father’s condo in Huntington Seashore, a metropolis in Southern California, the place she mentioned 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 that they had found no evidence 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 guide and film “Gone Woman,” wherein a lady 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 mentioned they discovered a cellphone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a automotive 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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