A man pleaded guilty Thursday (Jan. 16) to home invasions in Mountain View and Palo Alto where he tied two women up, forced them to drink medication and threatened to rape them.
The home invasions happened in September and October of 2009, but the cases went unsolved until investigators got a DNA match on a Velcro strap that a woman was bound with in the College Terrace neighborhood, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said.
Matthew Muller, 47, was the subject of “American Nightmare,” a Netflix documentary series that chronicles his 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins from Vallejo.
Muller took Huskins to a Tahoe cabin, sexually assaulted her for two days, asked for ransom and then freed her in Huntington Beach.
Vallejo police initially believed the invasion and kidnapping was a hoax perpetrated by Huskins’ boyfriend, leading to the case to be referred to as the “Gone Girl” case, in reference to the novel and movie.
Muller was arrested in June 2015 for both the Vallejo kidnapping and a violent Dublin home invasion. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in March 2017 and has been held in a high-security prison in Tucson ever since.
In his first appearance in San Jose yesterday, Muller admitted to two counts of “assault with intent to rape in commission of burglary.”
Muller entered the plea over the advice of his public defender, court records show.
Muller will be sentenced Feb. 21 at 9 a.m. He faces life in prison for each offense.
“This extremely dangerous person left a trail of traumatized and terrified victims,” Rosen said. “It took the collective courage of his victims and determined law enforcement officers to stop him. This nightmare is over.”
As part of the renewed investigation, Muller also faces kidnapping for ransom charges in Contra Costa County, Rosen said.
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