A California man currently serving time behind bars for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman in what became widely known as the “Gone Girl” case has now been charged with two domestic sexual assaults, dating back more than a decade.
Prosecutors announced Monday that 47-year-old Matthew Mueller has been found He is charged with two felony counts of sexual assault during a home invasion Dating back to 2009.
Prosecutors allege Mueller He broke into a woman’s house In Mountain View, California, in September 2009, he attacked her, then tied her up and forced her to drink medication. He then told the woman in her 30s that he was going to rape her, but she convinced him not to, prosecutors said. Mueller left after recommending that the woman get a dog.
The next month, prosecutors said he broke into a home in Palo Alto, California, bound and gagged a woman and forced her to drink Nickel. Prosecutors said he began assaulting the woman in her 30s, but she also convinced him to stop.
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While they were “following a new lead,” ABC News reports, investigators sent all the evidence from both sites for further testing. Mueller’s DNA was recovered from the tapes They said it was used to tie up one of the victims.
“Details the violent crime spree committed by this individual It seems like it was written for HollywoodBut it is tragically real,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “Our goal is to make sure this defendant is held accountable and that he never hurts or terrorizes anyone again.” “Our hope is that this nightmare will end.”
Mueller pleaded guilty to the 2015 kidnapping and sexual assault of Denise Hoskins in a case that shocked the world due to its real-life similarities to the 2014 Hollywood blockbuster. Girl gone. He is currently serving a 40-year sentence in an Arizona federal prison for those crimes.
On March 23, 2015, Hoskins disappeared from her home in California, where she lived with her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn.
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Quinn called police the next day to report her missing, claiming that a man in a wetsuit and two other assailants broke into their home in the middle of the night, drugged them, forced Hoskins to tie Quinn up and kidnapped Hoskins.
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Quinn told police that the attackers said they were part of a well-organized and highly trained group that was seeking a $8,500 ransom from Quinn for Hoskins’ return.
He also told authorities that the kidnappers said they would give him 48 hours to complete several tasks via email and phone, including calling patients to work for them. He said he was ordered to pay the ransom and not to contact the police. The attackers told him that they had installed cameras in the house to make sure he did not try to contact the authorities.
Quinn immediately became the prime suspect as the media flocked to cover the case.
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Things took a strange and puzzling turn 48 hours later, when Hoskins was dropped off outside her mother’s home in Huntington Beach, California, a seven-hour drive from where she had been taken.
She told police that she had been kidnapped and raped twice. Instead of believing her, police immediately zeroed in on Haskins and focused suspicion on her.
“It was an amazing story, we had a hard time believing it at first,” Vallejo Police Lt. Kenny Park said at the time of Quinn’s report on the kidnapping. “After further investigation, we couldn’t prove any of the things he was saying.”
Police expressed disgust at the resources they believed the two wasted — more than 40 detectives worked the case — and the fear they sowed in the community over what was reported as random violence.
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“Devoting all our resources 24 hours a day to a wild goose chase is a huge loss,” Park said. “It’s disappointing, it’s frustrating. And the fact that we wasted all these resources for nothing, it’s upsetting.”
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Although they maintained their innocence, Quinn and Hoskins were accused by police and the media of concocting a hoax – although no one could explain why they would make up such a story.
Great development
As the world became convinced that the couple had concocted the scheme, someone claiming to be the kidnapper contacted the San Francisco Chronicle, expressing alarm that the crime had been passed off as a hoax. To support his claims, he used an anonymous email address to send photos of where Hoskins was being held, as well as a recording of her voice to prove she was alive. He also claimed that Hoskins had been kidnapped by a team of elite criminals practicing their tactics.
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Police realized the couple were telling the truth after Mueller, a Harvard-trained lawyer, was implicated in another crime three months later and linked to the kidnapping.
Mueller was arrested in an attempted home burglary about 65 kilometers from where Quinn and Hoskins lived. Authorities said they found a cellphone that they traced to Mueller, and a subsequent search of the car and home turned up evidence, including a computer that Mueller had stolen from Quinn, linking him to the kidnapping.
Police learned that Mueller used a drone to spy on the couple before he broke into their home with a fake gun, tied them up and made them drink a sleep aid, prosecutors said. They were blindfolded while Mueller played a recorded message that made it appear as if there was more than one kidnapper.
He put Hoskins in the trunk of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days. Investigators said they found videos of Mueller arranging cameras in the bedroom and then twice recording himself sexually assaulting Hoskins.
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—With file from The Associated Press
The documentary “American Nightmare” highlights the real life of “Gone Girl” Denise Huskins
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