Netflix documentary on bizarre kidnapping that ended in arrest in South Lake Tahoe

Netflix has released the three-episode documentary "American Nightmare" which focuses on the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins from the Vallejo, California home she shared with her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn.

On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who tied up Quinn and drugged him, then took her. The Vallejo Police Department focused on Quinn as being responsible for the kidnapping. After 18 hours of interrogation, Quinn asks for a lawyer as he sees the conversation going nowhere.

In the meantime, Huskins had been put in the trunk of a car and taken to a home on Genoa Avenue in South Lake Tahoe, a vacation home owned by her kidnapper's family.

She was released two days later in Huntington Beach.

The kidnapping came one year after the Ben Affleck movie "Gone, Girl" was released. Affleck's wife fakes her kidnapping in that movie to get back at Affleck's character.

The Vallejo Police came out to say the couple faked the whole incident. They said it was a hoax, a wild goose chase, and a waste of valuable police resources. They thought this case was a Gone, Girl situation and considered pressing criminal charges against Huskins.

Two lengthy anonymous emails were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle on March 26 and 28 in which the sender said the kidnapping was not a hoax, sought to clear Huskins' name, and expressed remorse. The author said it'd happen again unless they cleared her.

Ten weeks after Huskins was released, on June 5, 2015, Dublin Police Services of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, responded to a report of a home invasion robbery at the home of a couple and their daughter. At the home, a cell phone left by the culprit, Matthew Muller, was found.

They traced Muller to the same home in South Lake Tahoe and he was arrested on June 9 on charges stemming from the home evasion.

They found duct tape, zip ties, a laser attached to a toy gun, and blond hair on goggles. The windows were covered and a detective on the case felt something else had happened there. A stolen Mustang was found with GPS trips to Vallejo and Huntington Beach. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office detective started putting the case together with what they found at the South Lake Tahoe home.

The FBI cleared out a truck full of evidence from the home.

For unsealed warrant and arrest story, see here.

Muller, a Harvard graduate and a former Marine, was an attorney who had been disbarred for reasons that included failing to return an unearned $1,250 fee to a client and failing to cooperate in a State Bar investigation.

Muller was found guilty in the Huskins case and, in 2017, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Huskins and Quinn sued the City of Vallejo and the police department for defamation and won and were awarded $2.5 million. They have also since married and started a family.