Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn gained worldwide notoriety when their 2015 home invasion and Huskins’ kidnapping were chronicled in Netflix’s highest-rated docuseries of 2024, “American Nightmare.”
The couple survived a harrowing experience, only to be publicly defamed by law enforcement, who falsely accused them of making the whole thing up. Meanwhile, Huskins’ kidnapper, Matthew Muller, continued terrorizing other families.
Critics blame antiquated interrogation training for what the couple was forced to endure. A decade later, Huskins and Quinn are now working with law enforcement and using their traumatic experience to help change the way officers are trained to interrogate suspects.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News California, the couple took us through Quinn’s interrogation, showing us step-by-step how traditional confession-driven interrogation methods led to their “American Nightmare.”
“It’s terrifying to me to think of how many victims there might still be out there that are living in fear and wondering if they’re going to be attacked again and that their perpetrators are still out there,” Huskins told CBS News California.
In collaboration with El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, the couple is working to educate law enforcement from around the world on science-based interviewing, which proponents call a “more effective and ethical method” of interrogation.
Follow our continuing coverage:
“American Nightmare”: Lessons learned
In an ongoing accountability and solutions-journalism series, CBS News California Investigates is working with Denise, Aaron, and experts from various fields to go beyond the sensational story and examine what we can learn from their ‘American Nightmare.’
Lessons from Quinn’s confession-driven interrogation
On March 23, 2015, Muller broke into Quinn’s Vallejo home while the couple was asleep. He tied them up and drugged them before kidnapping Huskins.
Muller put Huskins in the trunk of Quinn’s car and then drove her to his South Lake Tahoe home, where he held her for ransom for two days and repeatedly raped her.
During that time, Muller sent ransom requests to Quinn’s phone, but instead of tracing those calls, investigators tried to convince Quinn to confess to killing Huskins — who was very much alive but in a living hell.
“I would have been rescued, and two families would have been saved,” Huskins said, pondering the alternate outcomes if police had investigated the crime instead of presuming Quinn’s guilt.
Quinn shared a series of excerpts from his 18-hour interrogation, which is now being used to help retrain officers. In it, his interrogators repeatedly insist, “She’s dead.”
“His primary goal is to get a confession because he knows confessions get convictions,” Aaron believes of one of his interrogators, who repeatedly accused Quinn of killing Huskins and making up the elaborate kidnapping story.
“(Vallejo PD) Detective (Mat) Mustard thinks he’s a human lie detector, and the training that he got makes him believe that is so.”
The traditional method of law enforcement interrogation dates back to the 1940s and was developed to replace the use of physical torture.
In Quinn’s case, Mustard created a story about what he thought happened, telling Quinn, “Whatever happened, it happened in that bedroom. It happened in bed.”
Then, interrogators are trained to create a high-pressure environment, often by isolating and lying to the suspect.
“I’ve asked for my family. They tell me they don’t know where they are,” Quinn explained. “My family was in the police station. The only truthful thing [the detectives] said to me is, ‘I don’t believe you.’ ”
He also points to FBI polygraph expert Special Agent Peter French, who he alleges also created a hostile environment and lied to Quinn, falsely claiming he failed the lie detector test.
Next, interrogators are trained to minimize the seriousness of the crime. In Quinn’s case, both interrogators repeatedly tell him they “know it was an accident.”
Finally, they attempt to make a confession seem like the best option for the suspect. For example, Vallejo Detective Mat Mustard explained to Quinn, “So now I get out my puzzle pieces, and I start figuring out, ‘OK, how do I make it so you look like a monster?'”
Special Agent French warned that without a confession, he would be “painted as a cold, ruthless killer.”
“That’s a choice you’re going through,” Quinn explained, watching back his interrogations. “If I say it was an accident, then maybe I’ll get some leniency.”
“What happened to me is not unique,” Quinn added. “This is widely trained. Honestly, what’s unique is that I didn’t confess.”
Nationwide, nearly a third of all wrongful convictions — later exonerated by DNA — have been linked to false confessions.
“The difference in my case is that I know Denise is alive, or I believe she’s alive,” Quinn explained. “If I piss them off, are they going to not look for her because of getting mad at me? I am desperately trying to save her. That is what I’m focused on.”
Traditional interrogation vs. science-based interviewing
“Bad interview training played out in real life in this situation,” Pierson said as he reviewed Quinn’s interrogation videos with us. “These people are basically being victimized by the system simply for telling the truth.”
Pierson said he doesn’t fault the detectives for doing what they were “trained to do” but called the technique “flawed.”
“There’s ample evidence that we need to do better. There is a problem, but there is also a solution,” Pierson said. “We can train detectives to use a more effective methodology that is also ethical.”
This methodology is called science-based interviewing. It was derived from research conducted by members of U.S. intelligence agencies supporting the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Science-based interviewing has been shown to be more effective and reliable than traditional methods.
Pierson has been spearheading a national effort to train law enforcement and prosecutors on this method of interviewing, which is based on scientific research and designed to improve communication with suspects, victims, and witnesses.
Pierson reviewed Quinn’s interrogation to demonstrate how, in his opinion, it could have been more effective with a science-based approach.
For instance, when Detective Mustard tells Quinn, “I’m going to go tell them that I’m not looking for a live Denise. I’m looking for dead Denise,” Pierson points out, “There is no evidence to support that conclusion, and that is part of the training.
Pierson explained that a science-based interview aims to get detailed information instead of focusing on a confession.
“You take a detailed statement, and you compare that to other known facts,” Pierson said.
According to Pierson, science-based interviewers focus on communication, with an emphasis on open-ended questions and building rapport with the suspect. This is in contrast to confession-driven interrogations, in which the interviewer remains in control and may rely on guilt-presumptive questions.
“He’ll stop my denials. He won’t let me speak,” Quinn noted, watching back his interrogation with FBI Special Agent French, who interrupts Quinn’s denials, saying, “I don’t want you to say a word. I need you to listen to me.”
“The goal is to not let me ask for an attorney and make me feel isolated and alone.”
“The public shaming was even more traumatizing and devastating for us than the kidnaping itself,” — Denise Huskins
Guilt-presumptive behavior
Quinn said he believes that the detectives had already decided he was guilty when they walked into the room.
“That is a problem with the training. It leads to these guilt-presumptive assumptions. It leads towards tunnel vision, leads towards confirmation bias,” he said.
The guilt-presumptive behavior continued when the kidnapper released Huskins. Before Vallejo police even had a chance to interview Huskins, they held a press conference accusing the couple of orchestrating a hoax.
Meanwhile, their attacker continued to terrorize other families, and Huskins and Quinn lived in fear that he would come back for them or their families. They also faced widespread backlash and death threats from members of the public who believed the police.
“For us, the public shaming was even more traumatizing and devastating for us than the kidnapping itself,” Huskins said.
“It’s reasonable to know that there are bad people out there and that you could be targeted and attacked, but you hope, as a human, if something bad happens, you turn to your community and fellow humans for help, support, love, and care. And instead, we were just ripped apart and judged and shamed and every which way — how we held ourselves, what we said, what we didn’t say.”
It wasn’t until several months later that the truth finally came to light, thanks to a rookie police detective investigating her very first case.
Dublin Police Detective Misty Carausu was investigating a similar home invasion when she ultimately found the evidence, a strand of Huskins’ hair attached to a pair of blacked-out swim goggles in Muller’s home, that ultimately proved Huskins and Quinn were telling the truth.
Yet it took a rookie detective to find evidence that veteran investigators and FBI special agents couldn’t.
“They could have prevented two other families from being attacked, and God knows if there are others. It’s really sad,” Huskins said.
Muller was eventually convicted in both the Vallejo and Dublin crimes. He would later confess to at least one more home invasion during the period that the world was accusing Huskins and Quinn of orchestrating a hoax.
Still, the Vallejo police detectives and the FBI agents who investigated their case refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
“They continued to blame us and say we couldn’t have come up with any other conclusion based on what was presented to us,” Huskins added. “And what else are we supposed to think when the victims acted this way or did this or didn’t do this?”
None of the agents who handled the couple’s case were ever reprimanded; instead, “the agents handling our case have been promoted,” Quinn said.
“The fact that no one’s been held accountable or [there haven’t been] any policy changes are the reasons why things like this keep happening.”
“American Nightmare”: The next chapter
Released in January 2024, the Netflix documentary “American Nightmare” highlighted Huskins and Quinn’s sensational story. It led Nick Borgess, a police chief in the small coastal town of Seaside, California, to reach out to the couple, hoping to restore their faith in law enforcement.
Borgess was the first to invite them to speak in front of law enforcement. That’s where they met Pierson, whose jurisdiction includes South Lake Tahoe, where Muller kept Huskins captive. Pierson has now incorporated the couple into his science-based interviewing training.
“We were kind of ignored, disregarded, treated as a nuisance,” Huskins said. “So we’ve spent a decade really just shouting, trying to get our voice back, trying to reclaim our trauma and really share the truth of what happened to us.”
Working with Huskins and Quinn and using science-based interviewing, Borgess and Pierson got Muller to confess to even more crimes from behind bars. Muller’s timeline of confessed crimes now dates back to 1993, when he was just 16 years old.
“The reality is this case was a catastrophic failure by the FBI. They didn’t actually do a single thing to catch Muller. They spent their time going after us.” Quinn said. “Now, we know there are (at least) two other families that Mueller terrorized and attacked because these investigators had blinders on.”
A decade after their “American Nightmare,” Huskins and Quinn are back in front of the media, but this time, they have law enforcement on their side.
“We are so grateful to have found a team and law enforcement who respects us, who values us as victims and is willing to work with us and collaborate with us,” Huskins said at a recent press conference. “This can be and should be a really good learning opportunity.”
The science-based interviewing approach is now the standard interrogation training for new detectives in California. However, Pierson sponsored a bill in 2021 that would have required all California officers to be trained in science-based interviewing, including veterans in law enforcement who are still using the traditional approach.
The bill unanimously passed the State Senate and Assembly, but Governor Newsom vetoed the bill, citing the estimated cost of implementing the training.
Pierson argues that each wrongful conviction costs taxpayers much more than the cost of implementing the training. He is hoping to try again and reintroduce the bill, this time with Huskins and Quinn by his side.
Not everyone is a fan of shifting away from traditional interrogation techniques.
“If you’ve been trained to do something a particular way and it’s worked for you, there is going to be some real resistance to changing that,” Pierson explains. “But I also know this is a better way that is more effective.”
We first interviewed Pierson back in 2022 after DNA evidence revealed his office wrongly convicted a man based on a false confession from an interrogation.
“Ten years ago, if you would have asked me, would someone confess to a murder they had nothing to do with it, I would not have been able to believe that just based on my experience of training,” Pierson explained.
He believes that all law enforcement will eventually understand the benefit of science-based interviewing.
Most in law enforcement associate traditional methods of interrogation with the Reid Technique, created in the 1940s by a polygraph expert and former Chicago police officer, John E. Reid.
“The Reid Technique teaches investigators not to make promises of leniency, not to threaten the subject with physical harm or inevitable consequences, not to conduct excessively long interrogations, not deny the subject any of their rights, Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associates, explained.
He argues proper training of the Reid Technique includes science-based training, adding that coercive behaviors are not part of the official traditional technique.
“In almost every false confession case you find, you can point out coercive behaviors that were utilized in the interrogation, Buckley said. “I think, in many cases, the coercive behaviors are due to the pressure to solve the crime, and, in some instances, due to the frustration of the investigator.”
Buckley added that “numerous false confessions occur after unacceptably lengthy interrogations. We recommend that if, at the 3 or 4-hour mark, the subject remains adamant in their denials, the investigator should re-evaluate the situation.”
Quinn’s interrogation lasted 18 hours.
Law enforcement response
Neither the Vallejo Police Department nor (retired) Detective Mat Mustard responded to our requests for comment on this story.
We specifically asked both Vallejo police and the FBI about their current interrogation training methods and what, if any, policies have changed since Quinn’s interrogations.
The FBI and Special Agent French did not address our specific questions. However, the agency but did provide a previously issued response:
“The FBI provides support to our law enforcement partners and conducts thorough investigations to protect the people we serve. All investigations are conducted in a manner that is respectful to victims’ right to privacy and court records detail the efforts of the personnel who investigate our cases.
This investigation involved a number of FBI personnel who were committed to uncovering the truth by leveraging many techniques and exploring all possibilities of this case. And despite what has been publicly alleged by some, the FBI determined that no conflict of interest existed. Ultimately, the investigation resulted in the successful conviction of Matthew Muller for federal kidnapping and a sentence of 40 years for the crime and a separate conviction and sentence for state charges.”
The agency stated it needed more time to respond to our specific questions.
