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A Santa Clara County judge sentenced notorious kidnapper and rapist Matthew Muller to life in prison on Friday. More than 15 years ago, he invaded the homes of Mountain View and Palo Alto women and sexually assaulted and threatened them.
Muller, 48, pleaded guilty in January to two felony counts of committing a sexual assault during a home invasion, and will begin serving his life sentence in California in 2049, once he finishes a 40-year sentence he is currently serving in Arizona for separate crimes.
Muller broke into the Mountain View woman’s home on Sept. 29, 2009, attacked her, tied her up, made her drink a concoction of medicines and threatened to inject her with ketamine if she did not comply. Muller then threatened to rape her, but the 30-year-old victim convinced him not to, before he fled.
Just weeks later, on Oct. 18, 2009, he broke into a Palo Alto home, where he tied up another woman in her 30s, suffocated her with a pillow, made her drink NyQuil then sexually assaulted her.
The two victims of the 2009 crimes attended the sentencing in San Jose on Friday to provide impact statements to the court, said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Brian King.
Standing less than 10 feet away from Miller, the woman assaulted in Mountain View, said that the attack forever changed her outlook on life and people.
“I was living in constant fear,” she said. “I started seeing a therapist and taking prescription medications to help me cope and have continued both, on and off, for the past 15 years. Ultimately, I had to move out of my house and sell it because I never felt safe there again.”
While she finds relief in Muller’s sentencing, she hopes he will never inflict pain on another person again, as his actions have led to her long-term pain. To this day, she said, she moves furniture in front of her bedroom door if sleeping somewhere alone.
King also read a statement provided by the woman who was assaulted in Palo Alto, describing the attack, which, she wrote, she still relives today.
“As I laid there he unzipped a bag and detailed to me all the things he was doing to throw law enforcement off his trail—planting evidence, wiping other peoples’ DNA on surfaces of my room,” she wrote
“The total unconcern Mr. Muller had for me as a human being, the premeditation he used to carry out the assault, the sick excitement he seemed to derive from hurting and terrifying me, all shattered my fundamental sense that things would be OK in my life.”
Muller did not respond to their comments in court.
During the assault, Muller forced both of the victims to give him their financial information, social security numbers, passwords and personal information for close family members, whom he said he would harm, if the victims contacted the police, according to their statements in court. Before fleeing the scene, Muller also gave both of the victims crime prevention advice, like getting a dog or changing their locks.
The attacks went unsolved for years before Muller struck again on March 23, 2015, when he broke into a young couple’s home in Vallejo, drugged them, kidnapped the woman, Denise Huskins, and sexually assaulted her at a cabin in South Lake Tahoe, according to the statement. He released her in Southern California two days later.
About two months later in June 2015, Muller broke into another home in Dublin, but was interrupted before leaving his cellphone at the scene, according to King in a former interview with this publication.
That piece of evidence allowed former Dublin detective Misty Carausu to trace Muller to a Lake Tahoe location, where authorities found evidence linking him to Huskin’s kidnapping, King said in the interview.
Muller was arrested for kidnapping and assaulting Huskins and for his crimes in Dublin in June 2015, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, which he is currently serving in a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Netflix later created a docuseries based off of the kidnapping called “American Nightmare,” which shows how authorities falsely suspected Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn of conspiring to commit the kidnapping, inspired by the novel and movie “Gone Girl.”
After her assault and conflict with police, Huskins and her now-husband Quinn went on to train Vallejo police on how to avoid situations like hers, King said, and it was this work that eventually helped link Muller to the Palo Alto and Mountain View crimes.
Following a training session, Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges reached out to Muller to rediscuss the case, when Muller admitted to his connections to the 2009 crimes in Palo Alto and Mountain View, King said.
This confession reopened the Peninsula home invasion cases, and police were able to find Muller’s DNA on the straps he used to tie up one of his 2009 victims – leading to his most recent sentencing on Tuesday.
“I am today so thankful for the bravery of these women,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen wrote in a county statement. “We marvel at the growing power of forensics, the never-say-die determination of investigators and prosecutors. But this case is about victims who never gave up.”
It’s a shame you don’t name the disgraced Vallejo law enforcement officers (ahem, Det. Matt Mustard and Lt. Kenny Park) who completely bungled the case and blamed the VICTIMS of planning this kidnapping/assault as a hoax – can you imagine the horror this poor couple must’ve felt?! And then Detective Mustard went on to win “Officer of The Year” – a nightmare, indeed! Det. Misty Copeland for the WIN!!