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Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty stepping in
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as host today to talk with CBS News correspondent Tracy Smith on the West Coast about the high-profile case of
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Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn. In March 2015, Denise was abducted by an intruder at
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her boyfriend Aaron's home in Vallejo, California. The couple told detectives that both of them had been drugged,
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blindfolded, and tied up, but they felt the police didn't believe their stories. Since then, they've
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gotten married, continued to fight for justice for other victims of their attacker, Matthew Muller.
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Tracy, thanks for joining me and sharing many more details about this very strange case. Thanks so much for having
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me, Erin. You know, I love the phrase be your own hero. I tell my kids that sometimes. Denise and Aaron Quinn are
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examples of that. Be your own hero. They were determined to find out what other crimes Muller had committed. And thanks
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in part to their work, Muller admitted to a list of crimes going all the way back to 1993,
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and that's how we got in touch with a woman who Muller says was his very first victim. She felt that law enforcement
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didn't believe her back in 1993. She went three decades with no answers. And thanks to Denise and Aaron and the team
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that they worked with, she finally found some justice. Tracy, this is such a strange story with a very strange
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defendant, and I am anxious to get into these details. But before we get into our conversation, just a quick reminder.
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If you haven't watched or listened to this episode, and it's called Denise and Aaron Quinn get the last word, go check
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it out now, and then come back for our conversation. So, Tracy, a lot of our listeners may
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have heard about this case from watching the Netflix docuseries American Nightmare. In that series, Denise and
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Aaron shared details about their March 2015 attack and Denise's kidnapping. She was held captive for two days and raped
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before her attacker drove her to Huntington Beach and then released her near her childhood home.
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But when they reported this attack to the police, the couple said they were accused of making the whole thing up
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until nearly 3 months later when another California home invasion led investigators to arrest their attacker.
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He was 38-year-old Matthew Muller. So, what did you learn about Muller through your reporting, Tracy?
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Well, you know, a lot was made at the time that Muller was arrested of how he was a Harvard-educated lawyer and a
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former Marine. He'd also been an immigration attorney. He didn't have an extensive criminal history at the time
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of his arrest in 2015, um which was for the second California home invasion, and then soon after he
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was connected to Aaron and Denise Quinn's attack. Uh but Denise and Aaron were convinced that he had done this
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before. He had told Denise when he had her in captivity that he had done this before. And sure enough, they were
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right. So, what's new then in our 48 Hours report? Well, we tell the truly remarkable story about what has happened
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since American Nightmare was released in 2024. Denise and Aaron told their story
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back then, but they didn't want to stop there. They didn't want to move on. They
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knew that there were other victims out there. So, they teamed up with Police Chief Nick Borges from Seaside,
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California and a DA named Burn Pearson, who's the District Attorney of Eldorado County, um to uncover additional crimes
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that Muller committed. And they really became this super team that found other victims and gave them some closure. Part
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of the reason that they wanted to investigate further is that not only did Denise and Aaron think there were other
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victims out there, they thought he wasn't working alone, and that those people could still be out there. When
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Muller attacked them, he drugged them. He gave them blacked-out goggles, but they thought they heard several voices.
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He told them that he wasn't working alone. So, in your report, we also hear from Police Chief Nick Borges, you
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mentioned him, about how he wanted to help Denise and Aaron get answers, even though he wasn't even involved in the
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original investigation. So, how did he get involved? He was watching Netflix and was, you know,
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just stunned by what happened to them. And so, he reached out to Denise to apologize on behalf of all of law
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enforcement. >> as your show also indicated, there was a real problem with the initial
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investigation. After Denise was abducted and Aaron had no idea what had happened to her, he
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went to the police, but to Aaron's horror, the police appeared not to believe him and even
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seemed to accuse him of killing Denise. In the hour we see the interview with the lead detective that he conducted
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with Aaron. And uh we have a portion of it. This is an edited portion of it, but
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I just want to play this for you cuz you'll get the tone. Denise is going to be found.
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And when I say she's found, she's dead. They did not come into your house and kidnap her and take her for ransom. That
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did not happen. It didn't. No, it did not. Oh my god, it even gets worse. Two days
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after being kidnapped, Denise was released, as we mentioned, in Huntington Beach, and so she spoke to the police
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there. She sensed she wasn't being believed either, even though her story matched Aaron's account, and they hadn't
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been able to communicate since the attack. I was also shocked that Denise says that
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even though her attorney told the Vallejo police that she had been raped, they wouldn't set up a sexual assault
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exam until she spoke directly with them. And we know that with these rape kits, time is of the essence. You have to do
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it right away. Oh, yeah. Denise says that the Vallejo police told her that since she'd only talked to the
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Huntington Beach police and not to them, they wouldn't let her get this rape kit
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until after she talked to them. So, she says they interviewed her for 6 hours before they set up the test. And uh she
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actually told Chief Borges that not being believed and going through that was actually more traumatic than the
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assault itself. I mean, one thing that Denise and Aaron hope that law enforcement learns from this
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case is that there's no typical way for a victim to react, and they really felt like everything they did was seen
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through this lens of, well, they're guilty. They're lying. I mean, Aaron was saying that if we were too stoic, then
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we're psychopaths. And if we're emotional, then we're playing for the cameras. He said, you know, you're
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damned if you do and damned if you don't. There were allegations of additional issues with the original
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investigation, too, right, Tracy? Oh, yeah. Um Denise and Aaron learned uh later that
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the Vallejo police actually put Aaron's phone, which is the way that he was supposed to communicate with the
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kidnappers, uh on airplane mode. So, they missed at least two calls from Muller while Aaron
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was there at the police department being interviewed. Muller also sent anonymous
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emails to the San Francisco Chronicle and the Vallejo PD saying this isn't a hoax, and he even included a photo of
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where Denise was held captive. And Aaron says that even after Muller was arrested
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and connected to their crime, that he felt like the police were still trying to tie the three of them together
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saying, "Oh, well, then all three of them must have been in on it." Your investigation also shows that the media
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has to be held accountable, too, because reporters also played a role in shaping
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the story. I remember seeing headlines back in 2015 calling the kidnapping a hoax. Yes, this
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is a bizarre case, so of course the media latched onto it and definitely played up this idea that it was a hoax.
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And I think it does require some reflection on all of our parts, you know, even if we weren't covering that
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case at the time. In fact, Julie Watts, who's the investigative correspondent for CBS News California, who we
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interviewed for this hour, she didn't report on it back in 2015, but she's since done a lot of coverage of Denise
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and Aaron's story. And she said it changed how she reports stories that now she thinks, "Okay, what if investigators
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have this wrong, and the suspect is is innocent? You know, let me think about how this will affect not just the
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victim, but the suspect if the story changes." I mean, it is a reminder that reporters
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have to question the prosecutors and investigators, too, because they can get it wrong.
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Um Matthew Muller took a plea deal, and in 2017, he received a sentence of 40 years, and
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that was total for both a home invasion in Dublin, California and Denise and Aaron's attack. Denise and Aaron filed a
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civil lawsuit against the city of Vallejo, and eventually settled for $2.5 million.
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Yeah, that's right. Um the Vallejo Police Department did release a statement after the settlement, and
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here's a portion of what they said. The Huskins-Quinn case was not publicly handled with the type of sensitivity a
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case of this nature should have been handled with. So, they did release that statement. The police chief did
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apologize for the department's comments in a letter that he sent to the Quinns. Uh we reached out to the Vallejo PD, and
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they did not respond to our request for a comment. I would have liked to have heard what they had to say. Me, too. So,
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fast forward to 2024. After Chief Borges saw the Netflix documentary and connected with Denise
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and Aaron, he did something kind of interesting. He decided to write to Muller in prison in
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an effort to get answers. And Muller wrote back. Yes, Muller wrote back. Chief Borges
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actually jokes that the two of them became pen pals. Um So, he writes to Muller. Muller sends
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this package of letters. And we have a clip where Borges talks about being alone in the police station when he gets
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this package of letters. So, I was at my desk and there was the mail and I went, "Oh, he wrote another
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letter." And I remember feeling the weight to it. I thought, I I don't know what's in here, but it is a
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lot. There's a lot of pages. And I started to read these things. I'm by myself. And to understand my world, I'm
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the police chief, the police officers are out on the street, and I'm reading these declarations. He was
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giving details that I knew were accurate. I felt like this is this guy's confessing and I was bouncing off my
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walls. I couldn't There was no one to talk to, but I was just bouncing off my walls like, "I can't believe this guy
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just sent this." You know, I really like the police chief. I mean, he just seems like he
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really was trying to get to the bottom of it. And it does seem that Muller was ready to come clean. So, what did he
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actually tell Chief Borges? I have an excerpt from one of his declarations where he actually confesses to another
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crime from 2009. So, he says, "The idea to raid a home and rape a woman developed in August or
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September of 2009. I was in a manic state at the time due to bipolar disorder, though I do not believe I was
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psychotic. In other words, it seems my decision-making was impaired and warped, but I did not believe reality to be
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other than it would seem to another healthy person. Since I could not sleep at night, I began taking long walks in
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the vicinity of my Menlo Park apartment. At some point, out of boredom or curiosity, I began watching people in
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their homes first from the curb or driveway, but soon from outside their windows."
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Okay, this gives me the creeps. This really makes me want to pull down shades all the time.
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And this case also reminds me a little of the Golden State Killer who had once worked as a police officer. Both of
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these cases, neither man on the surface seems like a violent criminal. And the crimes escalate in both of those
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cases. And they also went for years without being caught. Um In the In the declaration, Muller confessed to two
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crimes in Santa Clara County in 2009. So, that's 6 years before Denise and Aaron's attack. And he wrote that in
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those cases he cased the neighborhood. He was researching which residences would be easy to get into. He tried the
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locks. And he also hinted that there were more crimes, but he kind of just teased the details in those [music]
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letters that he wrote to Borges. Welcome back. So, in 2024, El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson
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was also looking into Matthew Muller even though, like Chief Borges, he wasn't involved in the original
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investigation. He wanted to speak with Muller directly and thought the best way to get him to
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open up more was to use a strategy called science-based interviewing. Tracy, I've never heard about this. So,
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can you talk about how science-based interviewing is different from other law enforcement interrogation techniques?
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Sure, it Oh, it's fascinating to me. So, in science-based interviewing, you don't
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have an established point of view going in. It's almost like you're Instead of playing know-it-all like, "Well, we know
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what happened here." You're playing naive. And the idea is to just make somebody comfortable so that they're
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willing to give you this information that you can then go investigate to see what's true and what's not. And And Vern
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Pierson is a leading advocate for this type of investigating. And he says the goal here is a little different than
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old-school law enforcement interviewing in that you're not trying to get a confession, you're just trying to get
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information. I feel that we as journalists take a similar approach when we're talking to people who are accused
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or convicted because we want them to talk. We want them just to tell us their side of the story without accusing them
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or going into the interview overly aggressive. Yes, I I think this totally applies to what you and I do. Um I was
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asking Pierson actually after the interview like, "What books should I get? And how can I find out more
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information about science-based interviewing?" cuz it's just so interesting to me. I mean, I think
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personally it made me think about how there's a performative aspect to what we do where sometimes I feel like to be
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honest, I'm asking a question because it's good TV and not because it's going to elicit the information that I might
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need. So, it really made me think about, you know, when I ask a question like, "How could you murder the mother of your
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children?" Am I really expecting to get information there? And also you you do so much research. I do so
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much research when we do these cases. I do also feel like sometimes I just want to show how much I know in a question
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instead of playing naive like Pierson is talking about and just letting the information come out.
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Well, and I'm guilty as charged in that. Sometimes I go into that prosecutor mode, but I also sometimes do it to see
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how they react. Maybe they'll get mad at me and show some kind of their personality. But in this case, DA Vern
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Pierson was trying to get information. So, he brought in a highly skilled FBI interviewer, and that was in November
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2024 to meet personally with Matthew Muller. He was serving his sentence at an Arizona prison. Pierson was anxious to
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see what else Muller might confess to. So, Tracy, what did he think the FBI interviewer would get Muller to reveal?
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DA Pierson believes that Muller is very manipulative. So, he really wanted to bring in the best of the best, and that
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was this FBI interviewer. Now, the FBI interviewer has to remain anonymous, which is why we blurred his face in the
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hour. But he specializes in this science-based technique. And the goal was to see if Muller would confess to
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more crimes, reveal his motivation, reveal whether he had accomplices. But boy, did this require patience because
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Muller would talk for hours. He would go off on unrelatable tangents. I mean, I think the first interview was 8 hours.
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So, can you imagine just sitting there trying to stay focused? I mean, just your rear end hurts after that time.
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That's a long time to sit there in an interview, but they hung in. I And I think when we do two or three
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hours, that's really long. I have to hand it to them. It My big question now was, did it sound like Muller was
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telling the truth? Cuz it also sounds like he wants attention. He has these police officers and FBI agent listening
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to him. Was he bragging? Well, he said that he had a religious transformation in prison, and so he wanted to be
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upfront about the crimes that he'd committed. And you know, as we know now, some of what he was saying was indeed
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the truth when they followed up on it. This is incredible, really. Muller told a story about attacking a
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young couple at a campsite and then sexually assaulting the woman. He claimed that that was his first victim.
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You happen to meet that incredibly brave woman in the hour when you sat down with
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her. She had asked us to call her Lynn. That is not her real name and asked us not to show her face.
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This was the first time that she was speaking publicly about something that had happened to her 30 or so years ago.
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What was that interview like, Tracy? Oh my goodness. I mean, you know how this is.
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I'm sitting down across from this person asking her to tell me about the most horrible moment of her life, a complete
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stranger with cameras rolling. So, it was incredibly emotional, but she was so strong. I I wish you could see her face
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because she was just remarkably composed and strong. Her husband was sitting right off camera. This is the guy who
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was there when she was attacked. They've since gotten married. And you could tell
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that they've leaned on each other through these years. And you also could see the the trauma
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that's weighed on her for three decades. I mean, think about this. She would go home at night and she would draw the
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shades. She couldn't have the windows open. She loved camping when she was a kid. She wouldn't go camping in a tent
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because of what happened. She wouldn't wear sandals or flip-flops in case she had to run from an attacker. So, for her
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to be able to share that with us was incredible. And we're so grateful that she sat with us to do that.
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You know, Tracy, this hour really shows the impact on victims when they're not believed or listened to.
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Matthew Muller was flown back to California to face charges for the two attempted rapes. There in January 2025,
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Muller wrote another letter to Chief Borges indicating he had additional information, but this time he wanted to
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provide it to Denise and Aaron. And Denise and Aaron wanted to speak with Muller in person, too, but investigators
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advised them to sit in another room and listen. Muller and his attorney met with
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DA Pierson, the FBI interviewer, and also Police Chief Borges. I'm curious. Why did Denise and Aaron
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want to face Muller after everything they had gone through with him? I asked Denise the same thing. Why would you
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want to sit with this guy? And she explained it really clearly. She said, she felt like he had the power,
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obviously, when he had her in captivity and even afterward because of the way that the police, the media handled it,
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she felt like he controlled the narrative, this Harvard-trained lawyer. Where did he go wrong? So, she wanted to
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take that back. Um investigators thought that Muller may have wanted to further manipulate Denise and Aaron by getting
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them in a room with him. And meanwhile, Denise and Aaron really wanted to get to
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the bottom of whether he was acting alone and whether there were other victims out there. So, I totally saw
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once I asked her from her perspective why she wanted to do that. >> I know, but I think she probably would
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have been disappointed because he might have withheld that. I mean, I think the police were smart on this.
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And as you just point out, Denise and Aaron were convinced that they heard other people with Muller the night of
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the attack. And I really believed Aaron when I was listening to him talk. And while Denise was being held in
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captivity, she thought she heard people, too. Is there any evidence that Muller was
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working with more people? So, Chief Burgess won't rule it out. Um and you know, Aaron, like you said, he said,
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"Well, this guy is not Inspector Gadget. Like, how can he be three places at once?" But, Pearson told us, as of now,
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there's no solid evidence of other people. And we do have to remember that both Denise and Aaron were drugged and
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wearing blacked-out goggles. You know, Muller claims that he was able to make it sound like he was in several
00:21:04
different places. He used a bunch of techniques to do that. Um the important thing that I thought DA Pearson said is
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that because of the way that the initial investigation was handled, we may never
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know. Oh, that is so worrisome. Although, I don't know why Muller would withhold information, but it is
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worrisome. So, finally, by the summer of 2025, Matthew Muller was convicted of all the
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charges brought as a result of the investigation spurred on by Denise and Aaron, including his first victim,
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Lynn's case. We see at the end of the hour that Denise and Aaron continue to speak to
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law enforcement, and they're trying to change how officers interview victims and suspects.
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Can you tell me more about their advocacy? Sure. I mean, this is incredible. Denise and Aaron are working
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with law enforcement. They're using this traumatic experience to help change the
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way that officers treat both victims and suspects. So, they're collaborating with
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DA Vern Pearson. They're educating law enforcement about the science-based interviewing that Pearson so believes
00:22:09
in. And Denise made a point of saying, you know, this is not just victims, but suspects that this aggressive
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interviewing can result in false confessions, even as you know, Aaron, convictions.
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And I asked Denise and Aaron, "What's the most important thing that they want law enforcement to learn from their
00:22:28
story?" We were hoping that by sharing our experience that whoever listened could take that with them. And if they
00:22:36
confronted a situation that seemed out of the ordinary or something that's a little like, "I don't know if I believe
00:22:42
this," that they could pause, not rush to judgment, and keep an open mind. We um are fortunate we're here together and
00:22:50
we were able to talk about it, but there are people who have been falsely arrested or
00:22:54
wrongfully convicted, and their lives are basically forever changed. And we have
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opportunity to show and hopefully educate a headline or um a tweet or something does not give you the whole
00:23:06
story. Another big piece is is acknowledging bias and taking accountability. There's going to be
00:23:14
mistakes that are made. It's just it it's it's inevitable. Uh and what matters is if you make a
00:23:20
mistake, you acknowledge, accept it, and then try to learn from it and do something different. I mean, it's just
00:23:27
remarkable. Now, Denise and Aaron are both physical therapists by training, so it kind of makes sense that they want to
00:23:33
help people, but still, after this experience, to say we want to change the system, I I just find so powerful. How
00:23:40
is Lynn doing today? Lynn is great. At Muller's sentencing, she read a victim impact statement, and she carries that
00:23:49
in her purse still to this day, which just touched me so much. But, she's doing great. You know, she and her
00:23:54
husband uh play disc golf, and it actually makes perfect sense because she was scared to go outside after this
00:24:01
happened. So, they found this sport where they can be in a contained environment, but still outside, and it's
00:24:07
perfect for them. And she's actually able to go camping again. She's able to wear sandals again. All these little
00:24:13
things, you know, that she wasn't able to do for 30 years. I had never heard of disc golf. That's the first time I'd
00:24:20
ever seen it in your show. Also, it's amazing that Lynn and her husband stayed together as a couple after the attack.
00:24:27
And the same is true with Denise and Aaron. Were you surprised by that? You hear about people who go through trauma
00:24:34
like this, and it can it can either drive you apart or keep you together. And clearly, in this case, they leaned
00:24:39
on each other. I also think that in both of these cases, they weren't believed, and yet the person next to them never
00:24:46
stopped believing them. So, of course, that would create some sort of bond. Thanks for doing this story, Tracy, and
00:24:53
thank you for talking about it today. Thanks. And thank you all for listening. If you
00:24:58
like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.