Kidnapping victim speaks out at a press conference about Matthew Muller Tuesday; new felony charges added

SEASIDE, Calif. (KION-TV) -- In light of new details and uncovered information about an alleged serial kidnapper and rapist, 47-year-old Matthew Muller, Seaside Police held a press conference with one of Muller's former victims circa 2015 Tuesday afternoon.

Denise Huskins Quinn and Aaron Quinn took the podium to address the public and answer questions about a kidnapping case once deemed a hoax by Vallejo police.

"They are heroes," said Acting Chief of Police for the City of Seaside Nick Borges. "They lit the flame that started so many things in motion. It's about listening, working with victims and survivors."

As a direct result of the work that Denise and Aaron did with current law enforcement officials, Muller faces new charges of a previously unreported 2015 kidnapping and ransom case in unincorporated San Ramon. 

"Muller was 16 years old when he attacked his first victims. He was 38 by the time he got to us," said Denise. "It's something he's crafted over a long period of time."

According to police, Muller, a former U.S. Marine, broke into a Denise and Aaron's Vallejo home on March 23, 2015, and tied them up. 

They said he then took Denise to a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, where he sexually assaulted her. After two days, Muller drove Denise to Southern California and let her go, according to police.

"Muller attacked another family two weeks later and then weeks after that, another family," Denise said Tuesday. "I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and there's more to be found. Muller told me that he had done this to other victims. He gave a lot of details about how he had done this in the past."

A re-investigation of the case was inspired by Netflix's 2024 series called American Nightmare, detailing Denise's scary story.

"Indescribable...terrorized going through the worst experience in life and then people turn on you, society turns on you, social media turns on you," said Aaron. "To get out of that hole is almost impossible."

KTVU reported that new information about the case was released in the first week of January, detailing further sexual assaults linked back to Muller in the South Bay from 2009. Officials in Contra Costa County added that Muller also committed an East Bay home-invasion robbery in 2015.

"If investigators used interviewing techniques that D.A. Pierson had talked about, our story would have been solved," said Aaron. "The two other cases after ours should have been prevented and would have been prevented."

"Muller preplanned these attacks... he's incredibly smart, Harvard trained," said D.A. Pierson. "It took weeks if not months to plan [and] he knew intimate details about the families."

D.A. Pierson said that new and more effective ways to interview shed more light on the recent information that has surfaced.

"Having spent two days with a talented interviewer going into exhaustive past crimes that he had committed [and] exploring with him the reasons, in my view, there is no doubt in his ability to speak further with us," said D.A. Pierson.

Acting Chief Nick Borges engaged in a letter writing campaign to try and get Muller to talk about other cases, and he succeeded.

"I never expected the letters to lead to all of these new announcements," said Borges. "You never know what you'll find until you turn over rocks."

What was Borges' tactic?

"I just spoke to him as a human. Authentic, who I am, reaching out... that's really the interaction," he said about the letters he wrote to Muller mid-2024 with the permission of the Quinns. "I believe in some of the things that led to the criminal charges because they match in what we have."

In addition to this but independently, D.A. Pierson worked with FBI during a thorough interview. They said that during this time, Muller confessed to multiple crimes in Northern California, including what happened in San Ramon in 2015.

"Using the information provided by the El Dorado D.A.'s Office, detectives conducted an investigation that included multiple interviews and as well as the examination of evidence. They confirmed that Muller committed a home-invasion robbery in unincorporated San Ramon in early 2015. That incident was never reported to the sheriff's office," the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office news release said. "The trauma of crime can have lasting effects that some people endure for their entire lives."

These new cases have added new felony crimes against Muller, and an array of law enforcement from all over Northern California has come together as a result.

Lt. Misty Carausu, the El Dorado D.A.’s Vern Pierson, the Santa Clara County D.A.’s Office, Palo Alto Police, Mountain View Police, the Contra Costa D.A.’s Office and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office were all named as integral in gathering this new information.