Matthew Muller

• 1. Introduction

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  Matthew Muller was once nominated as one of the American Bar Association's Techiest Lawyers. He held a Harvard law degree, an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps and a reputation for fighting deportations. Then, in 2015, he was arrested as a kidnapper and serial rapist. Years later he confessed to crimes reaching back more than two decades before that arrest. This documentary asks how a man with that record came to commit them. It asks what he believed he was doing, and what illness shaped those beliefs. It also asks why the police in one California city first insisted that his victims were lying.

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• 2. Early Years and Service

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  Fair Oaks, California, in the suburbs of Sacramento, is where Matthew Muller grew up. His mother, Joyce, taught middle school English. His father, Monty, was a school administrator who also coached wrestling. Muller had one younger brother, Kent. As a boy he was introverted and was bullied for being overweight. Even so, people knew him as someone who fought for the underdog.

  At his high school he played trumpet in the band and joined the computer club. He earned a grade point average above 3.8 in demanding coursework. He grew up to be fluent in English, Spanish, Russian and German. His parents divorced during his senior year, after his father began an extramarital affair. He graduated from Bella Vista High School in 1995.

  That same year he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He later said he wanted to get in shape and earn money for college. He played trumpet with the Marine Band on tours that took him to Australia, Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates. Stationed in Okinawa, Japan, he started a nonprofit to teach local people about the internet. He also worked at an off-base bilingual newspaper. Elsewhere he served with the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and took part in Operation Pacific Haven.

  In 1999 he was sent to the Middle East to train soldiers. There he became a decorated marine, earning three service medals and a ribbon and rising to sergeant. He also developed severe mental health problems, which he called Gulf War syndrome, although he had never been in combat. He asked for a discharge and received an honorable one after four years. He said he had watched fellow marines suffer discrimination and harassment because they were suspected of not being heterosexual.

  After the Marines he studied at a community college and then transferred to Pomona College. A summer abroad in Prague in 2001 stayed with him for a personal reason, because he met the woman he would marry there. At Pomona he double majored in economics and science, technology, and society, and he graduated summa cum laude. His senior thesis was titled Once Again Waiting: Implementation of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Outside class he helped homeless people obtain government services and organized Orientation Adventure trips. He also contributed to research on political campaign finance.

  In 2003 he moved to Boston to enroll at Harvard Law School. At Harvard's Legal Aid Bureau he worked with immigrants and with low-income tenants who had survived domestic violence. In October of his first year he spoke at a teach-in about the Solomon Amendment. He urged Harvard to change its policies on military recruiting, citing the school's own anti-discrimination rules. He earned his juris doctor in 2006, and the school then kept him on, in the care of a professor named Deborah Anker.

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• 3. Lawyer and Petition

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  Deborah Anker directed Harvard's Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, and Muller stayed on as a fellow and research assistant under her. He contributed to a chapter of a law book she wrote. When the program's director went on sabbatical, he stepped in to run it. His marks in the role were near perfect. People described him as caring and brilliant, and also as "unusually devoted" to his clients.

  Silicon Valley was his next stop, in 2009. He passed the bar exam and took a job at an immigration firm, but he did not register with the California bar. In 2011 he began volunteering with a legal nonprofit and finally registered. He then joined the San Francisco office of Reeves and Associates, but he quit within six months. He had been working excessive overtime and had been caught sleeping at the office. In 2012 he moved to Kerosky, Purves and Bogue, another immigration firm, and was fired the same year for reasons that were never disclosed. That year he also founded Immigrant Ability, a nonprofit offering free legal help to immigrants with mental illness.

  In June 2012 he took on a pro bono client named Blanca Medina. She was a mother with post-traumatic stress disorder who had fled El Salvador to escape sexual abuse. Medina faced imminent deportation after missing an immigration hearing in 2006. Immigration agents called her a fugitive, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fugitive Operation team arrested her in 2011. She was held as a flight risk at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, California.

  Muller filed to reopen her asylum case. He cited the repeated rapes she had suffered in her home country, including one by an influential gang member during her border crossing. He also cited her mental health as the reason she missed court. Immigration courts denied the request because it came too late. So Muller started a Change.org petition. It declared: "Under ICE rules, it is free to ignore even conclusive proof that a person would suffer slow death by torture if deported."

  The petition drew wide media coverage, and the case became a cause célèbre. Nearly 118,000 people signed it, and Muller delivered it to the ICE San Francisco field office. The case was reopened for a hearing, and Medina's deportation proceedings were halted. Muller argued that even missing a hearing for "no good reason" should not lead to deportation when a person faces persecution or torture. The episode drew attention to online petitions and to the pull of public opinion in immigration cases.

  His own license soon went the other way. California suspended it in 2013 for unpaid dues. In 2015 the state disbarred him over disciplinary action for repeatedly failing to appear in court and for failing to file green card paperwork for a paying client. Federal immigration courts disbarred him in 2017, after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping for ransom.

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• 4. The Night Intruder

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  At Harvard, Muller was diagnosed with major depression with signs of mania, after he contemplated suicide. When his symptoms kept worsening, doctors diagnosed bipolar disorder in 2008. He grew paranoid and came to believe the government had tapped his phone and hacked his computer. He blamed suspected terrorist ties among some of his immigration clients.

  On the 29th of September 2009, Muller put on a black spandex-like suit and a ski mask and broke into a 27-year-old woman's home in Mountain View, California. He tied her up and covered her eyes with blacked-out swim goggles. He made her drink NyQuil and told her he was stealing her identity to drain her money. He muttered as though accomplices were present, and he said he worked for an organized crime syndicate. He politely told her he would rape her. When she begged him not to, he apologized, told her to get a dog, and left.

  The Friday before, near midnight, a resident of College Terrace in Palo Alto had reported a suspicious man prowling apartment buildings near the Stanford Dish. Police stopped Muller there, and he invented a story that he was a visiting professor at Stanford seeing a friend. In 2022 he told Atavist Magazine he had been walking the trail near the Dish and did not want to admit he had been trespassing.

  On the 18th of October 2009, he broke into the College Terrace apartment of a 32-year-old Stanford student. The pattern repeated, with the same black suit, ski mask, tied hands, covered eyes and NyQuil. He gathered her personal information and said he would use it to take her money. She heard him whispering as if to someone, though she saw and heard no one else. This time he attempted a rape, and she fought back. He then made up a story about a past rape, warned her that her family would be harmed if she called 911, and claimed he had planted false evidence. Before leaving, he offered crime prevention advice.

  Police learned that Muller had lied to the officer who stopped him. They also learned that the victim had attended a policy panel he organized at Harvard in 2008. He became their prime suspect. But DNA profiling ruled him out, and they had nothing else to hold him.

  On the 29th of November 2012, a 26-year-old woman near the Stanford campus suffered a similar invasion and attempted rape. She also fought back. The intruder stole her laptop and left behind two bump keys. DNA on the keys did not match Muller's. A few weeks later, at a traffic stop, officers found burglary tools in his vehicle.

  In November 2012, Muller's workplace questioned him about the College Terrace break-in. He became convinced that the Palo Alto Police Department was working with the Chinese government and had tapped his law office and his car. He skipped a scheduled police interview and cut off contact with his wife. On a USB flash drive he left a note. It said: "I'm going completely off the grid, no phone, email, credit cards, etc., so please do not try to track me as it will only draw attention." It added: "I have problems beyond my mental health."

  He swapped vehicles with his mother and drove to Hurricane, Utah, near Zion National Park. There he hoped to escape what he called psychological warfare from the Chinese government. He ringed his camp with motion detectors and trip wires. After two days, fear of his surroundings drove him home to his mother's, and later to his father's. His wife filed for divorce in December of that year.

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• 5. Batman and Robin Hood

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  In 2011, Muller returned to psychiatric care. But after security caught him sleeping at his law office, his delusions came back. He copied thousands of company files, hunting for proof that his bosses were tracking him. The firm sued him, first assuming he wanted the data to launch his own practice, and later dropped the suit. His mother rented him an apartment in Sacramento, and he was later evicted from it.

  Mare Island, in 2014, was his next address, where he lived with a girlfriend and worked at an after-school academic program. She grew worried after learning that he took long walks around the peninsula dressed entirely in black. They broke up. That year he filed for bankruptcy, listing $500,000 in liabilities, but the case was dismissed after he missed a filing deadline.

  On Mare Island a new delusion took hold. Muller came to believe that a secret cabal of the world's richest people, a "scienced-up version of demons," caused all the evil in the world. He suspected his neighbor Aaron Quinn was a member, along with his ex-girlfriend Andrea Roberts. He stole a white Ford Mustang belonging to a neighbor who was out of town. He said he drove it recklessly and perhaps "saved a neighborhood kid or dog."

  Residents also talked about a prowler they called the "Mare Island Creeper," a Peeping Tom seen scaling homes with a ladder and crouching in yards. One student said she had seen the same man walking a husky puppy and a golden retriever. Those dogs belonged to Muller's neighbor, and he sometimes dog-sat them. In a manifesto sent to Henry Lee at the San Francisco Chronicle, Muller said he had chased the prowler off a roof and reported him anonymously to the police.

  Early in 2015, he moved into a South Lake Tahoe cabin owned by his mother and her husband. He withdrew from people, barely slept and watched the Batman films obsessively. By spring he believed his parents were spying on him, and a severe psychotic episode followed. He invented a nocturnal vigilante identity and wore a wetsuit. He built weapon-like tools from flashlights, laser pointers, dog collars, swim goggles, spray paint and toy guns, including a Nerf Super Soaker. Out of this came a Robin Hood plot. He would kidnap "evil wealthy people" for ransom and give the money to the poor, which in his psychosis he judged "morally justified."

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• 6. The Gone Girl Kidnapping

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  Around 3:00am on the 23rd of March 2015, Muller broke into Aaron Quinn's house carrying a water pistol disguised as a firearm. Quinn lived there with his girlfriend, Denise Huskins. Muller drugged them both and ordered Huskins to bind Quinn with zip ties. He whispered as though speaking to accomplices. He demanded two ransom payments of $8,500 each, and neither was ever paid.

  Muller had come to imagine himself in an elite three-person gang that began as an auto-theft ring, like "Ocean's Eleven gentleman criminals who only took stuff that was insured from people who could afford it." He later said he acted alone and called the gang part of his psychosis. Authorities also concluded he acted alone. In her memoir, Victim F, Huskins wrote that she and Quinn believed at the time that he had accomplices, and that officials were lying to them.

  During the ordeal he told them his real target had been his ex-girlfriend Andrea Roberts. He played a recording suggesting professionals were collecting a debt. It threatened electric shocks and demanded Quinn's financial details and passwords. Muller stole Quinn's car and laptop and led Quinn to think cameras were watching him, so Quinn hesitated to call for help. Muller put Huskins in the trunk of Quinn's car, moved her to the stolen Mustang, and held her at the Lake Tahoe cabin. There he raped her twice.

  Quinn eventually phoned his brother, an FBI agent, who told him to call 911. He reported the kidnapping at about 2:00pm that day. The Vallejo police did not believe an invasion had happened or that Huskins was abducted. They questioned Quinn as a murder suspect instead.

  While he held Huskins, Muller sent anonymous emails to the San Francisco Chronicle. They demanded ransom and described the kidnapping as a training mission for wealthier targets. He recorded a proof-of-life message and promised to return her in good health. The Vallejo police would not confirm it was her voice.

  On the 25th of March 2015, Muller drove Huskins about 400 miles from South Lake Tahoe to Huntington Beach. He left her near her family's home around 10:00am. She and her father went to the Huntington Beach police. At 9:30pm that same day, Vallejo officials told the public the whole thing was a hoax staged by Huskins. Police and media called it a real-life "Gone Girl," after the film adapted from Gillian Flynn's novel of the same name.

  The next day, Muller sent the Chronicle a 9,000-word email. It said the target had never been Huskins but Andrea Roberts, and it insisted the couple was telling the truth. He wrote that the operation had gone "terribly wrong" and that he felt deep remorse. He singled out his horror at the harm to Huskins. He admitted to several property crimes and compared the events to A Clockwork Orange "without the ultra-violence."

  Vallejo police would not corroborate the crimes he described. In further emails he raged at them and demanded an apology on behalf of his victims. He wrote to Kenny Park of the Vallejo police to prove the couple was innocent. He threatened that if Park and the department did not apologize "by noon Tuesday," the 30th of March 2015, he might hurt someone else.

  Nancy Grace declared on her show, "Everything about this 'kidnap' screams out hoax." Muller responded by planning another kidnapping. He meant to send photographs to Grace, with a note blaming her and a threat to "do it again" until the claims about Huskins being the Gone Girl were retracted.

  In 2018 came word that Vallejo police had held evidence that could have led them to Muller. Security cameras at a Target in Pleasant Hill, California, filmed him buying a TracFone. That phone was later used to call Quinn while Huskins was captive. The couple's experience became the Netflix docuseries American Nightmare. They sued the police department for defamation and were awarded $2.5 million.

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• 7. Capture

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  For the Dublin, California, break-in, Muller chose a street for its easy escape. He picked a family that, in his delusion, belonged to the same one-percent cabal. He later said his motive was to vindicate Huskins.

  At 3:30am on the 5th of June 2015, he entered the home and ordered the couple to lie face down on their bed. He said he had their daughter, that she was safe, and that he would tie their hands. The husband tackled him and shouted for his wife to fetch their gun. Muller struck the man in the head and ran, leaving a wound that needed staples. His wife locked herself in the bathroom with her phone and called for help. Their 22-year-old daughter had not been taken. In his flight, Muller left his cell phone behind, and it was traced to the Tahoe cabin.

  On the 8th of June 2015, Muller demanded that his mother pick him up from a Starbucks, and he took his brother's car without explaining why. The next day, the 9th of June, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office arrested him at the cabin in connection with the Dublin case. He surrendered without incident.

  Misty Carausu, then training to become a detective, processed the cabin and the white Mustang parked nearby. She found Muller's belongings and evidence matching both the Dublin and Vallejo crimes. A hair from Huskins clung to a pair of swim goggles, and Quinn's laptop was there. The Mustang's GPS still stored the Huntington Beach address where he had left Huskins. Carausu tied him to the Vallejo case and passed the information to the FBI. Meanwhile he sat in Santa Rita Jail, charged with battery, robbery and assault.

  The FBI obtained a warrant on the 29th of June 2015, and on the 1st of July agents seized drones, a wireless camera system, bed sheets and a stained mattress pad from a storage unit in his name. They announced kidnapping charges on the 13th of July.

  On the 16th of September 2015, Muller's attorney withdrew a motion to suppress the phone as evidence. The motion had argued that investigators conducted an illegal search when they bypassed the lock screen by dialing 911 to get the phone's number from dispatchers. Sergeant Chris Shepard testified that no warrant had been needed. Two days later Muller pleaded no contest to every charge in the Dublin case, and he fainted in the courtroom. He had also confessed to some crimes in an off-the-record talk with a reporter while in jail.

  He was arraigned on the 21st of September, and a federal grand jury indicted him for kidnapping on the 1st of October 2015. On the 29th of September 2016 he pleaded guilty to the Vallejo kidnapping. On the 16th of March 2017 a judge sentenced him to 40 years. He was sent to a high-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. A second prosecution, this time in Solano County, was already waiting.

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• 8. Courtrooms and Confessions

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  In January 2018, Solano County, California, charged Muller with two counts of rape, false imprisonment, kidnapping, burglary and robbery of a residence. Moved to the county jail, he defended himself. He declared he was not guilty and said he had not been mentally sound when he pleaded guilty in federal court. He told reporters he would plead guilty if Huskins and Quinn gave half of their settlement to charity. A motion to vacate his federal conviction, citing his lawyer's failings, prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations, was denied. He claimed he had been beaten and raped in prison and suffered PTSD symptoms. On the 24th of September 2018, the court appointed him a public defender.

  In October 2018, he described a delusion that prison officials were experimenting with his medication. He planned a temporary insanity defense. Experts gave it low odds, because such a plea requires an illness so severe that the defendant cannot tell right from wrong.

  In 2019 he fired his public defender, and a Solano County judge found him competent to represent himself. That meant he could cross-examine his victims, which their attorney protested, citing Proposition 115. Muller declined, saying he did not want to re-victimize them. He filed a 35-page speedy trial request citing his mental condition and assaults in custody. After receiving the evidence against him, he fell into another delusion, that Dublin police had framed him. He accused them of breaking into his cabin four days before his arrest to plant evidence, and of altering reports, photographs and forensic and court records. He wrote: "The government's case included evidence and allegations the Movant did not understand and could not remember. The Movant had believed this was a matter of mental illness.... However, it was federal authorities and not the Movant's mind that had altered reality."

  In November 2020, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He said his family had been replaced by imposters, that he was surrounded by "a bunch of actors... agents... even sort of demon-possessed people," and that a device had been implanted in his body. The judge, whom Muller called Lucifer, found him incompetent to stand trial. He went to Napa State Hospital in 2021, and in September a judge ordered him medicated against his will. By March 2022 he was deemed competent, and his attorney confirmed a no-contest plea to all state charges. The sentence was 31 years, to run concurrently with the federal term.

  In 2024, Muller signed affidavits confessing to earlier crimes and filed them with the police chief of Seaside, California. That chief had worked with Huskins and Quinn as crime victim advocates after American Nightmare. Together with the El Dorado County district attorney and Misty Carausu, they tied Muller to the cases and secured the confessions.

  The oldest was from 1993. At 16, Muller used a gun to force a teenage couple out of their tent at Folsom Lake. He tied up the young man and carried the young woman away to rape her. He pleaded guilty in Sacramento County in June 2025 and received 11 years to life.

  The next confessions concerned the two 2009 invasions in Palo Alto and Mountain View, for which he had once been a suspect. He pleaded guilty in January 2025, and DNA testing confirmed he was the culprit. Both victims said they woke to find him on top of them and that they talked him out of assaulting them. In March 2025 he received two life sentences.

  The third confession was the San Ramon kidnapping, two weeks after Huskins. Muller was charged in January 2025 with three counts of kidnapping for ransom. He had held three victims and extorted tens of thousands of dollars from them. DNA confirmed his confession. An assistant district attorney for Contra Costa County said the victims stayed silent in 2015 out of fear. Muller pleaded no contest in July 2025 and was sentenced to life.

  Today he is held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, serving four life sentences. His first wife had divorced him in 2012. He married again while jailed in Sacramento County.

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