Post Mortem | Denise and Aaron Quinn Get the Last Word

I'm 48 hours correspondent, Erin Moriarty, stepping in as host today to talk with CBS News

“correspondent Tracy Smith on the West Coast about the high profile case of Denise Huskins”

and Erin Quinn. In March 2015, Denise was abducted by an intruder at her boyfriend Erin Tom in Falejo, California. The couple told detectives that both of them had been drugged, blindfolded, and tied up, but they thought that police didn't believe their stories. Since then, they've gotten married, continued to fight for justice, for other victims of

their attacker, Matthew Mueller. You see, thanks for joining me and sharing many more details about this very strange case. Thanks so much for having me, Erin. I love the phrase, "Be your own hero." I tell my kids that sometimes, Denise and Erin Quinn are examples of that "Be your

own hero." They were determined to find out what other crimes Mueller had committed. And thanks in part to their work, Mueller admitted to a list of crimes going all the way

“back to 1993, and that's how we got in touch with a woman who Mueller says was his very”

first victim. She felt that law enforcement didn't believe her back in 1993. She went three decades with no answers and thanks to Denise and Erin and the team that

they worked with, she finally found some justice.

Tracy, this is such a strange story with a very strange defendant, and I am anxious to get into these details. But before we get into our conversation, just a quick reminder. If you haven't watched or listened to this episode and it's called Denise and Erin Quinn get the last word, go check it out now and then come back for our conversation.

So Tracy, a lot of our listeners may have heard about this case from watching the Netflix Docu series, American Nightmare. In that series, Denise and Erin shared details about their March 2015 attack and Denise's kidnapping. She was held captive for two days and raped before her attacker drove her to Huntington

Beach and then released her near her childhood home. But when they reported this attack to the police, the couple said they were accused of making the whole thing up until nearly three months later, when another California home invasion led investigators to arrest their attacker, he was 38-year-old Matthew Muller.

“So what did you learn about Muller through your reporting, Tracy?”

Well, you know, a lot was made at the time that Muller was arrested of how he was a Harvard educated lawyer and a former Marine. He'd also been an immigration attorney. He didn't have an extensive criminal history at the time of his arrest in 2015, which

was for the second California home invasion, and then soon after he was connected to Erin

and Denise Quinn's attack. But Denise and Erin were convinced that he had done this before. He had told Denise when he had her in captivity that he had done this before. And sure enough, they were right. So what's new then in our 48 hours from Ford?

Well, we tell the truly remarkable story about what has happened since American Nightmare was released in 2024. Denise and Erin told their story back then, but they didn't want to stop there. They didn't want to move on. They knew that there were other victims out there.

So they teamed up with police chief, Nick Borges from C-side, California, and a DA named Bern Pearson, who's the District Attorney of El Dorado County, to uncover additional crimes that Muller committed. And they really became this super team that found other victims and gave them some closure. Part of the reason that they wanted to investigate further is that not only did Denise and Erin

think there were other victims out there, they thought he wasn't working alone and that those people could still be out there when Muller attacked them. He drugged them, he gave them blacked out goggles, but they thought they heard several voices. He told them that he wasn't working alone.

So in your report, we also hear from police chief Nick Borges, you mentioned him about how he wanted to help Denise and Erin get answers. Even though he wasn't even involved in the original investigation. So how did he get involved? He was watching Netflix and was just stunned by what happened to them.

And so he reached out to Denise to apologize on behalf of all of law enforcement. I mean, as your show also indicated, there was a real problem with the initial investigation. After Denise was abducted, and Erin had no idea what had happened to her.

even seemed to accuse him of killing Denise.

“In the hour, we see the interview with the lead detective that he conducted with Erin, and”

we have a portion of it. This is an edited portion of it, but I just want to play this for you because you'll get the tone. Denise is going to be found. And when I said she's found, she's dead.

They did not come into your house and kidnap her and take her for random. That did not happen. You didn't know it did not. Oh my god, it even gets worse. Two days after being kidnapped, Denise was released as we mentioned in Huntington Beach.

And so she spoke to the police there.

She sent she wasn't being believed to either, even though her story matched Erin's account,

and they hadn't been able to communicate since the attack. I was also shocked that Denise says that even though her attorney told the valet help, police that she had been raped, they wouldn't set up a sexual assault exam until she spoke directly with them. And we know that with these rape kits, time is of the essence.

You have to do it right away. Oh yeah. Denise says that the valet, who police told her that since she'd only talked to the Huntington Beach police and not to them, they wouldn't let her get this rape kid until after she talked to them.

So she says they interviewed her for six hours before they set up the test. And she actually told Chief Forges that not being believed and going through that was actually

more traumatic than the assault itself.

I mean, one thing that Denise and Erin hope that law enforcement learns from this case is that there's no typical way for a victim to react, and they really felt like everything they did was seen through this lens of, well, their guilty, their lying. I mean, Erin was saying that if we were to stoic, then we're psychopaths. And if we're emotional, then we're playing for the cameras.

He said, you know, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

“There were allegations of additional issues with the original investigation, too, right?”

Tracy. Oh yeah. Denise and Erin learned later that the valet help police actually put Erin's phone, which is the way that he was supposed to communicate with the kidnappers on airplane mode.

So they missed at least two calls from Mueller, while Erin was there at the police department being interviewed. Mueller also sent anonymous emails to the San Francisco Chronicle and the valet hope PD saying this isn't a hoax, and he even included a photo of where Denise was held captive. And Erin says that even after Mueller was arrested and connected to their crime that he felt

like the police were still trying to tie the three of them together, saying, oh, well, then all three of them must have been in on it. Your investigation also shows that the media has to be held accountable, too, because reporters also played a role in shaping the story. I remember seeing headlines back in 2015 calling the kidnapping a hoax.

Yes, this is a bizarre case. So of course, the media latched onto it and definitely played up this idea that it was a hoax.

“And I think it does require some reflection on all of our parts.”

You know, even if we weren't covering that case at the time, in fact, Julie Watts, who's the investigative correspondent for CBS News, California, who we interviewed for this hour. She didn't report on it back in 2015, but she's since done a lot of coverage of Denise and Erin's story.

And she said, it changed how she reports stories that now she thinks, okay, what if investigators have this wrong? And the suspect is innocent, you know, let me think about how this will affect not just the victim, but the suspect, if the story changes. I mean, it is a reminder that reporters have to question the prosecutors and investigators

too, because they can get it wrong. Matthew Mueller took a plea deal. And in 2017, he received a sentence of 40 years and that was total for both a home invasion in a doubling California, and Denise and Erin's attack. Denise and Erin filed a civil lawsuit against the city of Vallejo, and eventually settled

for $2.5 million. Yeah, that's right. The Vallejo police department did release a statement after the settlement. And here's a portion of what 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. So they did release that statement, the police chief did apologize for the department's comments in a letter that he sent to the Quinn's. We reached out to the Vallejo PD, and 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 fast forward to 2024 after chief board saw the Netflix documentary and connected with Denise

He did something kind of interesting.

He decided to write to Mueller in prison in an effort to get answers and Mueller wrote back. Yes. Mueller wrote back. Chief board just actually jokes that the two of them became pen pals.

So he writes to Mueller, Mueller sends this package of letters. And we have a clip where board just talks about being alone in the police station when he gets this package of letters. So I was at my desk, and there was the mail that I went, oh, he wrote another letter.

“I remember feeling to wait to it, I don't know what's in here, but it's a lot of pages.”

And I started to read these things. I'm by myself, and to understand my world on the police chief, the police officers are

out on the street, and I'm reading these declarations.

He was giving details that I knew were accurate. I felt like this is this guy's confessing and I was bouncing off my walls. I couldn't. There was no one to talk to, but I was just bouncing off my walls. I can't believe this guy just sent this.

Yeah, I really like the police chief. I mean, he just seems like he really was trying to get to the bottom of it. And it does seem that Mueller was ready to come clean. So what did he actually tell Chief board just? I have an excerpt from one of his declarations where he actually confesses to another crime

from 2009. So he says the idea to raid a home and rape a woman developed an Auguster September of 2009. I was in a manic state at the time due to bipolar disorder, though I do not believe I was psychotic. In other words, it seems my decision making was impaired and warped.

But I did not believe reality to be other than it would seem to another healthy person. Since I could not sleep at night, I began taking long walks in the vicinity of my men low park apartment. At some point out of boredom or curiosity, I began watching people in their homes. Or from the curb or driveway, but soon from outside their windows.

Okay. This gives me the creeps. This really makes me want to pull down shades all the time. And this case also reminds me a little of the Golden St. Killer who had once worked as a police officer.

Both of these cases neither man on the service seems like a violent criminal. And the crimes escalate in both of those cases. And they also went for years without being caught in the--in that declaration, Mueller confessed to two crimes in Santa Clara County in 2009, so that six years before Denise and Aaron's attack.

And he wrote that in those cases, he case the neighborhood. He was researching which residences would be easy to get into, he tried the locks. And he also hinted that there were more crimes, but he kind of just teased the details in those letters that he wrote to porches. Welcome back.

So in 2024, El Dorado County District Attorney Verne Pearson was also looking into Matthew Mueller, even though, like Chief Borgers, he wasn't involved in the original investigation. He wanted to speak with Mueller directly.

“He thought the best way to get him to open up more was to use a strategy called science-based”

interviewing.

Tracy, I've never heard about this.

So can you talk about how science-based interviewing is different from other law enforcement interrogation techniques? Sure. Oh, it's fascinating to me. So in science-based interviewing, you don't have an established point of view going in.

It's almost like you're instead of playing, know it all, like, well, we know what happened here. You're playing naive. And the idea is to just make somebody comfortable so that they're willing to give you this information that you can then go investigate to see what's true and what's not. And Vern Pearson is a leading advocate for this type of investigating.

And he says the goal here is a little different than old school law enforcement interviewing in that you're not trying to get a confession you're just trying to get information. I feel that we as journalists take a similar approach when we're talking to people who are accused are convicted because we want them to talk. We want them just to tell us their side of the story without accusing them or going into

the interview overly aggressive.

“Yes, I think this totally applies to what you and I do.”

I was asking Pearson actually after the interview, like, what book should I get? And how can I find out more information about science-based interviewing? Because it's just so interesting to me. I mean, I think personally it made me think about how there's a performative aspect to what we do where sometimes I feel like to be honest.

I'm asking a question because it's good TV and not because it's going to elicit the information that I might need. So it really made me think about, you know, when I ask a question like, how could you murder the mother of your children am I really expecting to get information there?

I do so 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 instead of playing naive like Pearson is talking about and just letting the information come out. Well, and I'm guilty as charged in that. Sometimes I go into that prosecutor mode, but I also sometimes do it to see how they react.

Maybe they'll get mad at me and show some kind of their personality. But in this case, DA burn Pearson was trying to get information. So he brought in a highly skilled FBI interviewer and that was in November 2024 to meet personally with Matthew Mueller. He was serving his sentence at an Arizona prison.

Pearson was anxious to see what else Mueller might confess to.

“So Traci, what did he think the FBI interviewer would get Mueller to reveal?”

DA Pearson believes that Mueller is very manipulative. So he really wanted to bring in the best of the best. And that was this FBI interviewer. Now the FBI interviewer has to remain anonymous, which is why we blurred his face in the hour.

But he specializes in this science-based technique. And the goal was to see if Mueller would confess to more crimes revealed his motivation and reveal whether he had accomplices, avoided this required patience because Mueller would talk for hours. He would go off on unrelatable tangents.

I mean, I think the first interview was eight hours.

So can you imagine just sitting there trying to stay focused? I mean, just your rear end hurts after that time. That's a long time to sit there in an interview, but they hung in. And I think when we do two or three hours, that's really long. I have to hand it to them.

“So my big question now was, did it sound like Mueller was telling the truth?”

Because it also sounds like he wants attention. He has these police officers at FBI agent listening to him. Was he bragging? Well, he said that he had a religious transformation in prison. And so he wanted to be upfront about the crimes that he'd committed.

And as we know now, some of what he was saying was indeed the truth when they followed up on it.

This incredible, really Mueller told a story about attacking a young couple at a campsite.

And then sexually assaulting the woman, he claimed that that was his first victim. You happened to meet that incredibly brave woman in the hour when you sat down with her. She had asked us to call her Lynn, that is not a real name. And asked us not to show her face. This was the first time that she was speaking publicly about something that had happened

to her three years. So years ago, what was that interview like Traci? Oh my goodness. I mean, you know how this is. I'm sitting down across from this person asking her to tell me about the most horrible moment

of her life, a complete stranger with cameras rolling. So it was incredibly emotional. But she was so strong. I wish you could see her face because she was just remarkably composed and strong. Her husband was sitting right off camera.

This is the guy who was there when she was attacked. They've since gotten married. And you could tell that they've leaned on each other through these years. And you also could see the trauma that's weighed on her for three decades. I mean, think about this.

She would go home at night and she would draw the shades. She couldn't have the windows open. She loved camping when she was a kid. She wouldn't go camping in a tent because of what happened. She wouldn't wear sandals or flip flops in case she had to run from an attacker.

So for her to be able to share that with us was incredible.

And we're so grateful that she sat with us to do that. You know, Tracy, this hour really shows the impact on victims when they're not believed or listened to Matthew Muller was flown back to California to face charges for the two attempted raves there in January 2025. Muller wrote another letter to Chief Borges indicating he had additional information.

At this time, he wanted to provide it to Denise and Erin and Denise and Erin want to speak with Muller in person too, but investigators advise them to sit in another room and listen, Muller and his attorney met with D.A. Pearson, the FBI interviewer and also police chief forges. I'm curious.

Why did Denise and Erin want to face Muller after everything they had gone through with him?

“I asked Denise the same thing, why would you want to sit with this guy?”

And she explained it really clearly. She said she felt like he had the power, obviously, when he had her in captivity and even afterward because of the way that the police, the media handled it, she felt like he controlled the narrative. This Harvard trained lawyer, where did he go wrong?

So she wanted to take that back, investigators thought that Muller may have wanted to further

And meanwhile, Denise and Erin really wanted to get to the bottom of whether he was acting alone and whether there were other victims out there. So I totally saw once I asked her from her perspective why she wanted to do that. I know, but I think she probably would have been disappointed because he might have withheld that.

I mean, I think the police were smart on this. And as you just point out, Denise and Erin were convinced that they heard other people with Muller the night of the attack.

And I really believed Darren would always listen to him talk.

And while Denise was being held in captivity, she thought she heard people too. Is there any evidence that Muller was working with more people? So Chief Board just won't rule it out. And Erin, like you said, he said, well, this guy is not Inspector Gadget, like how can he be three places at once, but Pearson told us, as of now, there's no solid evidence

of other people.

“And we do have to remember that both Denise and Erin were drugged and wearing black”

out goggles. You know, Muller claims that he was able to make it sound like he was in several different places. He used a bunch of techniques to do that. The important thing that I thought, D.A. Pearson said, is that because of the way that

the initial investigation was handled, we may never know. Oh, that is so worrisome, although I don't know why Muller would withhold that information, but it is worrisome. So finally, by the summer of 2025, Matthew Muller was convicted of all the charges brought as a result of the investigations spurred on by Denise and Erin, including his first victim,

Lynn's case. We see at the end of the hour that Denise and Erin continue to speak to law enforcement and they're trying to change how officers interview victims and suspects. Can you tell me more about their advocacy? Sure.

I mean, this is incredible. Denise and Erin are working with law enforcement. They're using this traumatic experience to help change the way that officers treat both victims and suspects. So they're collaborating with D.A.

We're in Pearson, they're educating law enforcement about the science-based interviewing that Pearson believes in. And Denise made a point of saying, you know, this is not just victims, but suspects that this aggressive interviewing can result in false confessions even as you know Erin convictions.

And I asked Denise and Erin, what's the most important thing that they want law enforcement

to learn from their story? We were hoping that by sharing our experience that whoever listened could take that with them. If they confronted a situation that seemed out of the ordinary or something that's a little like, I don't know if I believe this, that they could pause not rush to judgment and keep

an open mind. We are fortunate that we're here together and we were able to talk about, but there are people who have been falsely arrested or wrongfully convicted and their lives are basically for ever change. And we have opportunity to show and hopefully educate the headline or a tweet or something

does not give you the whole story. Another big piece is acknowledging bias and taking accountability. There's going to be mistakes that are made. It's just, it's, it's inevitable.

“And what matters is if you make a mistake, you acknowledge accept it and then try to learn”

from it and do something different. I mean, it's just remarkable. Now, Denise and Erin are both physical therapists by training, so it kind of makes sense that they want to help people, but still after this experience to say, we want to change the system.

I just find so powerful. How is Lynn doing today? Lynn is great at Mueller's sentencing. She read a victim impact statement and she carries that in her purse still to this day, which just touched me so much.

But she's doing great. She and her husband played disc golf and it actually makes perfect sense because she was scared to go outside after this happened, so they found this sport where they can be in a contained environment, but still outside and it's perfect for them. And she's actually able to go camping again.

She's able to wear sandals again, all these little things that she wasn't able to do for 30 years.

I had never heard of disc golf.

That's the first time I'd ever seen it in your show. Also, it's amazing that Lynn and our husband stayed together as a couple after the attack.

“And the same as Trough with Denise and Aaron were you surprised by that?”

You hear about people who go through trauma like this and it can either drive you a part or keep you together and clearly in this case, they leaned on each other. I also think that in both of these cases, they weren't believed and yet the person next to them never stopped believing them. So of course that would create some sort of bond.

Thanks for doing this story, Trisey, and thank you for talking about it today.

And thank you all for listening.

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