SHE was cruelly branded the 'Gone Girl hoaxer' after police cast doubt over the story of her harrowing ordeal.
Now Denise Huskins, who was kidnapped from her home, drugged and raped, has revealed the terrifying details about her 48-hour “fight for survival” in the new Netflix docuseries American Nightmare.
The physiotherapist was blindfolded and abducted from her home in Vallejo, in Solano County, California, back in 2015, by stranger Matthew Muller, a former US Marine and Harvard Law graduate.
She and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were drugged with sedatives during the home invasion and he was told if he didn’t pay a $15,000 (£11,800) ransom Denise would be hurt.
Police investigators initially doubted Aaron’s story, suspecting him of killing her and disposing of her body due to small bloodstains found on the couple’s bed.
Later when it emerged the couple had argued the night before the kidnapping, they suspected Denise had concocted a kidnap-ransom scheme to “get revenge” on her boyfriend.
Two days after Denise was taken, she was released by Muller in an alleyway near her parents’ home, which led to a “media frenzy” where the incident was compared to the film Gone Girl.
In the famous 2014 movie, which starred Ben Affleck, a woman fakes her kidnapping after discovering her husband had cheated on her.
When Denise spoke to police they doubted her testimony too and in public revealed plans to charge the couple with wasting police time and resources.
It took an unsuccessful kidnapping 10 weeks later for the couple to finally be believed. At the scene, police found Muller’s mobile phone and discovered evidence that proved what happened to Denise was real.
Muller was sentenced to a total of 71 years imprisonment for kidnapping for ransom, two counts of forcible rape, robbery, burglary, and false imprisonment.
Denise and Aaron, who were awarded $2.5million in a defamation settlement against the City of Vallejo, now share unheard details about the horrifying ordeal in a new Netflix three-parter, available from Wednesday.
In the early hours of March 23, Aaron and Denise were asleep in their beds when Muller broke into their home with a fake gun and flashlight.
Aaron recalled: “There was this white bright light blinding us, I see three laser dots crossing us, there’s a taser that goes off and the man says, ‘Aaron, lie face down’.
“He then asked me to tie my hands behind my back. I feel Denise on top of me and then feel her pulling on the zip ties.”
After being made to restrain themselves, the attacker put blacked-out swimming goggles over the terrified couples' eyes and forced them to drink a sedative – believed to be a mixture of diazepam and the cold medicine NyQuil.
Muller made them believe there were several kidnappers in the property by playing a recording of multiple voices and bizarrely claimed they were “wearing wetsuits”.
He took Denise into another room before returning to tell Aaron to tell him: “We have a problem. This was intended for Andrea.”
Andrea was Aaron’s ex, who he had broken up with months earlier but was still living in the house.
To this day, the couple do not understand why she was the intended target. They believe he knew their names because he had been watching the house and even stalking them with a remote control drone.
Aaron continued: “He said they were going to take Denise because I could pay him enough money to make it worth their while. He said that would be about $15,000.”
Moments before passing out, Aaron was taken to the living room where a camera had been installed and was told they would be watching him – if he didn’t comply they were “going to hurt Denise”.
For Denise, the ordeal was only just beginning as she was bundled into the boot of a car. She recalls: “I’m trying not to panic. Are they going to rape me? Torture me? I’m absolutely terrified.”
After arriving at a remote cabin – later revealed to be 400 miles away in South Lake Tahoe – she was led blindfolded into a room and told to “finish getting ready”.
Denise says: “I’m just thinking, ‘Ready for what?’ I can hear him scrubbing. I can hear what sounds like duct tape and every horror film I’ve ever seen flashes in my mind.
“I’m terrified that’s how it’s going to end for me and that’s what my last moments are going to be like.”
Muller told Denise he was part of a “black market company that kidnaps people for money” and she would be released unharmed if Aaron paid the $15,000 ransom.
Hours later, he said they “have a problem”. Muller told her she must be filmed “having sex” with him as “collateral” to stop her from speaking to the police – if she did, "they" would “release it on the internet”.
Denise recalls: “I feel like I’ve been punched in the face…
“He climbs on top of me and starts kissing me. Every instinct I have in that moment is to kick and scream and do anything to push him off me or say what I want to say but I know it will just make things worse and could make things more violent.
“I want it to end and for it to be done and move on to the next thing. You hear people describe an out-of-body experience, it’s hard to know until you really experience it.”
After being raped, Denise was taken to the bathroom and told she could temporarily take her blindfold off when Muller left the room. It was the first time she had been able to see since her abduction.
“I look in the mirror and I’m so detached, I don’t know who it is that is in front of me,” she says.
Back in the room where Denise was being held, she saw that the windows were barricaded, the door locked and there were no weapons she could use to defend herself.
When Muller returned she was made to put the blindfold on once again and told to record a ‘proof of life’ video that would be sent to authorities.
Denise, who had been held hostage for 28 hours was hopeful she would soon be freed but, shortly after, her kidnapper returned with another sickening demand.
She recalls: “He says the footage from yesterday isn’t good enough. We’ll have to record us having sex again and this time it needs to look consensual. It needs to look like we’re in a relationship, like we’ve been having an affair.
“I’m trying to figure out what that means but it seems this time I’m no longer going to be able to be separate and detached from it. I’m going to need to be present and perform and I don't know how the hell I’m going to do it.”
Muller left the room and after taking her blindfold off, Denise noticed two glasses of wine and a couple of small bottles of alcohol, which she glugged to “numb” herself before the ordeal.
“What does he think this is, a date?” she says. “I chug the bottles of booze and one glass of wine… He [returns] and makes a joke like, ‘Oh, you started without me.’
“I thought, ‘You’re not going to break me, you’re not going to see me cower and crumble so let's get this f***ing over with.”
In the middle of the night, Denise was woken and shown a video of her father’s plea to the kidnappers. Only then, after 40 hours of hell, she was told: “It’s time to go.”
Forced to drink more sedatives, Denise later woke in a car, where Muller told her he would be dropping her at her parents’ house.
Before being released, Muller told her: “There are two things you cannot say to them - one is that any one of us was in the military and the second, and even more important, you cannot say that we had sex.
“We will always be watching you so if we find out you have been saying anything it’s not just you but it’s your family that we can come after.”
Unbeknown to Denise, while she was battling for survival, her boyfriend was being questioned as a suspect in her disappearance by Vallejo police, who believed he had killed her.
In one interview, detective Mat Mustard told Aaron his story was “very elaborate and… farfetched” adding: “Come on man, it doesn’t make any freaking sense.”
Officers were particularly suspicious after discovering Aaron and Denise argued the night before she was kidnapped over text messages he sent to his ex, Andrea, asking for them to give their relationship another go.
The FBI made him take a lie detector test, which they falsely claimed he had failed.
Special Agent Peter French told Aaron: “So was it an accident or are you a calculated monster who got p***ed off because there was a break-up and you just decided she wasn’t going to be with anybody else and so you were just going to kill her and dump her?”
After Denise was released by Muller, police accused the couple of lying about what happened and suggested she staged the kidnap-ransom in an “act of revenge” inspired by the film Gone Girl.
The night before Denise was interviewed by cops, Lieutenant Kenny Parks told the media that they were “not able to substantiate any of the things” they were told by Aaron and that they had a “hard time believing” him.
He added: “I can go one step further, Mr Quinn and Miss Huskins have plundered valuable resources away from our community while instilling fear among our community members.”
In the police station, Denise was treated with hostility by investigators despite trying to “give every possible detail” to help find her attacker.
She says: “I go through one disgusting, humiliating detail after the other and pull myself back into the place that I was trying so desperately to detach from at the time.”
Even when the report from her medical exams confirmed she had intercourse during the time she was kidnapped, they still had their doubts.
She told the doc: “For the last 48 hours I had been living moment to moment trying to survive, the last f***ing thing I could be thinking about is if I do survive I’ve really got to make sure that all of this is believable.”
Denise recalls being “shellshocked” when an FBI agent said there were “a lot of inconsistencies” with her story, asked if she wanted to change any details and warned her it was “a federal crime to lie to a federal agent”.
She added: “My body was stolen and violated and they still don’t believe me. I don’t know what needs to happen to me or any woman for them to be believed. It just seems hopeless.”
It would take another attempted kidnapping 10 weeks later, in June 2015, for the couple to finally be exonerated.
In a near-identical attack, Muller broke into a couple’s home and tried to take their daughter – fortunately, they managed to fight him off.
While searching the scene, police found a mobile phone on the counter that they were able to connect to Muller and arrested him at a remote cabin in South Lake Tahoe.
Inside they found bloodstained zip ties, a syringe, NyQuil and painted toy guns including one with a laser and a blow-up doll.
Most damningly they discovered a pair of blacked-out goggles with a single strand of blonde hair that was a DNA match for Denise.
In March 2017, Muller was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal kidnapping charges.
He was later sentenced to an additional 31 years for two counts of forcibly raping Denise, as well as robbery, residential burglary and false imprisonment.
In 2018, Denise and Aaron were awarded $2.5million (£1.96m) in an out-of-court settlement after suing the City of Vallejo for defamation. No police officers were disciplined and as part of the agreement, the force took no blame.
It took another three years before police apologised.
In a 2021 statement to ABC News, they said: "The Huskins Quinn case was not publicly handled with the type of sensitivity a case of this nature should have been handled with, and for that, the City extends an apology to Ms. Huskins and Mr. Quinn."
Denise and Aaron, who moved to the coast after their ordeal, married in 2016 and now have two daughters.
American Nightmare is available to stream on Netflix from January 17.
