American Nightmare: How did Matthew Muller eventually get caught? (and where is he now?)

Netflix subscribers who are interested in documentaries, particularly true crime, are probably intrigued by the latest docuseries to stream on the service. American Nightmare is a three-parter that highlights the mishandling of Denise Huskins' kidnapping and assault case by the Vallejo police force.

In 2015, Denise and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were terrorized by a wetsuit-wearing assailant who broke into Aaron's home and forced both of them to wear blacked-out goggles (to blindfold them) and take a sleep aid mixture. Later, police learned that the assailant, Matthew Muller, had actually been intending to kidnap Aaron's ex, a woman named Andrea.

Despite the mix-up, he kidnapped Denise anyway and her story quickly became national news after Aaron reported his girlfriend's kidnapping to the police. The investigators in charge of the case botched it, neglecting to investigate key elements of the case and ultimately believing that Aaron had either killed his girlfriend or made it all up.

When Denise was later returned alive, the police began to suspect that she had orchestrated the whole thing in a Gone Girl-esque masterplan to get media attention. She was humiliated on national television. But the good news is that Matthew Muller was eventually caught and imprisoned. Here's how it happened.

Matthew Muller was linked to several other home invasions

The horrific thing about this whole case is that Muller could have gotten it away with it if it weren't for him making one big mistake. Denise was not his first victim, nor was she his last. He got caught because he had attempted another home invasion in Dublin, California and dropped his phone at the scene of the crime a few months after Denise's kidnapping, per SFist.

He was arrested shortly after that and ultimately confessed to his crimes. In addition to those two home invasions, it came out that Muller was also linked to other strange cases that shared striking similarities in the same general area.

American Nightmare sheds more details on exactly how Muller was caught, revealing that an officer named Misty Carausu was on the scene during the Dublin home invasion when she found goggles and blonde hair, which she was able to use to link to Denise and Aaron's home invasion.

In 2022, Muller was sentenced to a 31 year sentence for false imprisonment and rape, in addition to 40 years for kidnapping Denise, per The Independent. He is currently serving time in the FCI Tucson in Arizona.

Denise and Aaron would later go on to sue the Vallejo police for their mishandling of the case.