Matthew Muller

Mental health decline and crimes

During his time at Harvard, Muller was diagnosed with major depression with signs of mania after contemplating suicide. Muller dressed in 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, covered her eyes with blacked-out swim goggles, forced her to drink NyQuil and informed her he was stealing her identity to steal her money. During the invasion, the victim said Muller spoke to himself as though he had accomplices. He informed the victim that he worked with an organized crime syndicate. He "politely" informed her he was going to rape her. After she begged him not to, he apologized, told her to get a dog, and left without sexually assaulting her. Muller fabricated a story that he was a visiting professor at Stanford University and seeing a friend. He later told Atavist Magazine in 2022 that he went walking at night on the trail near the dish and didn't want to tell the officer willingly he'd been trespassing. The victim, a 26-year-old woman, also fought back. The perpetrator had taken her laptop and left behind two bump keys. DNA on the bump keys did not match Muller's.

Quinn eventually called his brother, an FBI agent, who told Quinn to call 911. He reported the kidnapping at around 2:00pm on March 23, 2015. The Vallejo police did not believe that the invasion happened, or that Huskins had been abducted, instead interrogating Quinn as a murder suspect.

On March 25, 2015, At 9:30pm that same day,

In 2018, it was reported that the Vallejo police department had been in possession of evidence that would have led them to Muller. Muller had been filmed by security cameras while buying a TracFone at a Target in Pleasant Hill, California, and the phone was later used to call Quinn while Huskins was being held. The experience of Quinn and Huskins was detailed in the Netflix docuseries American Nightmare. They filed a defamation lawsuit against the police department and were awarded $2.5 million. that the intended target was not Huskins, but Andrea Roberts, and demanded the record be set straight maintaining he had kidnapped Huskins and that the couple was telling the truth. He also wrote that the operation went "terribly wrong," that he felt deep remorse and regret, and "in particular," that he was mortified of the impact he had on Huskins. The female victim grabbed her cell phone and locked herself in the bathroom to call for help. The couple's 22-year-old daughter was not taken. Muller left his cell phone behind, which was traced to the South Lake Tahoe cabin.

Misty Carausu, who was in the process of becoming a detective,

On June 29, 2015, the FBI obtained a search warrant for Muller's arrest for the Vallejo kidnapping. On July 1, 2015, they seized drones, a wireless camera system, bed sheets, and a stained mattress pad from a storage unit in Muller's name. The FBI announced charges of kidnapping on July 13, 2015.

On September 16, 2015, Muller's attorney withdrew a motion to suppress the cell phone as evidence. The motion alleged that authorities violated Muller's constitutional rights by carrying out an illegal search when they bypassed the lock screen by dialing 911 to retrieve the phone number from emergency dispatchers. Chris Shepard, the sergeant in the case, testified the situation did not require a search warrant. On September 18, 2015, He was sentenced to 40 years on March 16, 2017. He requested counsel and was appointed a public defender on September 24, 2018.

In October 2018, Muller described a delusion in which he became convinced the prison officials were experimenting with his medication. He said he planned a temporary insanity defense, though experts said he had low odds of winning, based on the fact that insanity pleas require mental illness so severe the defendant becomes unable to distinguish right from wrong.

In 2019, Muller fired his public defender. He was found competent to represent himself by a Solano County judge. Acting as his own attorney gave him the opportunity to cross-examine his victims, which their attorney protested, citing Proposition 115. and discovery was scheduled for late April.

After receiving legal discovery, Muller fell into a new delusion that the Dublin police had conspired to frame him. Muller alleged that four days before his arrest, Dublin police broke into his cabin to plant evidence, planted additional evidence during his arrest, altered police reports, made "Hollywood-grade edits" to evidence photos, and forged forensic records and judicial records. Due to details he could not remember Muller 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."

Cold case confessions In 2024, Muller confessed to several prior crimes in signed affidavits filed with the Seaside, California, police chief. The police chief worked with previous victims Huskins and Quinn after their appearance in American Nightmare as crime victim advocates. The police chief, Huskins, Quinn, El Dorado County, California district attorney, and Misty Carausu, the Alameda County Sheriff officer who captured Muller in 2015, worked together to link Muller to the cases and obtain the confessions. DNA testing confirmed Muller was the perpetrator of the crimes. He was sentenced in March 2025 to two life sentences for the cases.

San Ramon kidnapping (2015) In January 2025, Muller was charged with three counts of kidnapping for ransom stemming from an incident that occurred in 2015, two weeks after he kidnapped Huskins. Muller unlawfully detained the three victims and extorted them for tens of thousands of dollars. The confessions were confirmed through DNA testing.

Personal life Muller married a woman he met while studying abroad in Prague. She filed for divorce in December 2012. He remarried while incarcerated in Sacramento County Jail.