The man whose decade-spanning string of violent crimes shocked Northern California and became the subject of the Netflix documentary American Nightmare has received yet another life sentence—this time in Contra Costa County for a previously unreported 2015 kidnapping. The latest development adds to a mounting list of convictions for 48-year-old Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard-educated attorney whose criminal past includes a 1993 assault near Folsom Lake.
Last week Muller appeared in a Martinez courtroom, where he pleaded no contest to kidnapping a family during a home invasion in San Ramon. He was sentenced to seven years to life in prison by Judge David Goldstein. That term will be served consecutively with multiple life sentences already imposed for other home invasions, sexual assaults, and kidnappings in Santa Clara, Sacramento, and Solano counties, as well as a 40-year federal sentence for the 2015 abduction of Denise Huskins in Vallejo.
Muller first captured national attention following the Vallejo case, where he broke into the home of Huskins and her partner, Aaron Quinn, drugged and restrained them, then kidnapped Huskins and held her captive for two days in South Lake Tahoe before releasing her near her family’s home. The bizarre case, initially dismissed by law enforcement as a hoax, was later confirmed to be horrifyingly real—and was the centerpiece of the 2024 Netflix documentary that reignited interest in Muller’s other crimes…