Convicted kidnapper at center of Netflix's 'American Nightmare' faces new charges in separate 2015 kidnapping

The man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Northern California woman in what became widely known as the “Gone Girl” kidnapping faces new charges connected to a home invasion robbery in 2015.

The DA's office has filed three felony charges of kidnapping for ransom against Convicted kidnapper Matthew Muller in Contra Costa Superior Court. Muller, who was highlighted in the Netflix series "American Nightmare," is believed to have carried out a kidnapping for ransom in unincorporated San Ramon in early 2015.

That Spring Muller allegedly held two men and a woman for ransom, demanding that one of the captives withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from their bank account in order for him to release the others, according to the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office.

• California woman 'said she was Russian police' before 'trying to kidnap girl, 8'

• Horror moment Florida boy kidnapped while playing outside after stranger's haunting 6-word question

Once he had the money, he fled the residence. The crime had never been reported because the victims were so afraid of retribution, the DA's office said. Muller had confessed to the crime, which sparked an investigation, the DA's office said.

The sheriff's office also indicated a home invasion was involved. The DA's office has filed three felony charges of kidnapping for ransom against Muller in Contra Costa Superior Court, they said they plan to file additional unrelated charges.

Muller is set to return to court for a plea hearing for the 2008 and 2009 burglaries on Jan. 17. Prosecutors allege Muller broke into a woman’s home in Mountain View, California, in September 2009, attacked her, tied her up and made her drink medications. He then told the woman in her 30s that he was going to rape her, but she convinced him not to, prosecutors said. Muller left after recommending the woman get a dog.

The following month, prosecutors say he broke into a home in Palo Alto, California, bound and gagged a woman and forced her to drink Nyquil. He started assaulting the woman in her 30s, but she also convinced him to stop, prosecutors said.

Muller was charged with two felony counts of committing a sexual assault during a home invasion. The charges carry a possible sentence of life in prison. He is currently serving a 40-year prison term for the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins.

He was also sentenced in 2022 to 31 years in state prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape of Huskins. Huskins was abducted by a masked intruder who broke into her boyfriend’s home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied both of them up before kidnapping Huskins in the middle of the night. Quinn also said the kidnappers were demanding an $8,500 ransom.

A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at times suggesting he may have been involved in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph test which an FBI agent told him he failed, the couple said later in a book about their ordeal.

Huskins, who was 29 at the time, turned up unharmed two days later outside her father’s apartment in Huntington Beach, a city in Southern California, where she said she was dropped off. She reappeared just hours before the ransom was due.

That same day, police in Vallejo announced in a news conference that they had found no evidence of a kidnapping and accused Huskins and Quinn of faking the abduction, which spurred a massive search.

After Huskins’ release, Vallejo police erroneously likened her kidnapping to the book and movie “Gone Girl,” in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested by police in Dublin, California, for a similar home invasion. Authorities said they found a cellphone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Quinn, linking the disbarred attorney to the abduction.