Stranger Than Fiction

[Awsi Dooger]

Ho-hum. Yet another case featuring bumbling overmatched disgraceful law enforcement, when the story from the victims is bizarre.

Same familiar attachments: We can't find any evidence of perpetrators. Therefore they didn't exist. You are guilty. We don't like the way you are acting. It doesn't seem normal. Therefore it never happened. You are guilty.

There's little doubt the boyfriend would have been charged and convicted, if the perpetrator hadn't released the girlfriend unharmed instead of killing her and remaining silent. Instead, the kidnapper(s) apparently developed a fondness and sympathy for the young attractive woman, eventually dropping her off not far from her parents' home. Naturally that aspect was further fuel for the keystone detectives. Nobody drops off the victim like that. It was all a hoax. You have wasted department resources. We may charge you criminally. In the meantime we'll publicly drag you through the mud.

I'm referring to a case from Vallejo, California, north of San Francisco. I missed the original airing on 20/20 last summer. But Investigation Discovery replayed it the other night.

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/art...NEWS/150719919

The basics, if you can call it that: A young attractive couple working in the medical field reported a light flashed in their face as they slept. There was a man wearing a wet suit. Spy gadgets of all sorts. The two were tied up, electrically shocked, and drugged in a closet while asked to wear swim goggles and a headset describing the kidnapper's demands. The girlfriend was taken from the premises while the boyfriend awoke hours later only to find a red line on the floor around his person. He was scared that he might trigger a device if he violated the red line, so he stayed there for nearly half a day before contacting authorities.

I'm sure I forgot something, or 20/20 left it out. The names are Aaron Quinn and Denise Huskins.

The ransom demand was very low, two shares of $8500 apiece. That was more proof to our heroes in Vallejo law enforcement that it was all a scam. Denise was allowed to make a phone call in which she proved she was still alive by detailing a major international story from only hours earlier. The call traced to South Lake Tahoe. Authorities basically ignored it and didn't contact Lake Tahoe police.

Once Denise was released 400 miles south near her father's home in Huntington Beach a couple of days after the kidnapping, she was calm and merely asked a stranger for a cell phone. At that point Vallejo police started making public pronouncements that the kidnapping never happened, that Quinn and Huskins were determined to get publicity and perhaps a reality TV show, and threatened them with criminal charges for the hoax.

Those charges undoubtedly would have been made if not for the insulted perpetrator. He was livid that his grand scheme was doubted. He unleashed a lengthy letter with tons of detail, including positive words regarding his victim Denise. But even at that point the Vallejo authorities didn't buy it. Not until a very similar crime occurred in a different city, and the male victim fought back to the point the perpetrator dropped and left his cell phone -- of all things -- at the scene, were the two episodes linked and the kidnapper identified. He was a Harvard-educated guy named Matthew Mueller.

Major kudos to 20/20 for airing this case. But once again it is a la carte instead of tied together with similar cases to present valuable themes. Law enforcement simply isn't trained to deal with cases like this. If it doesn't pass the Igor test of a gruff perpetrator marching forward with a crude club in his hand while barking profanity, then it didn't happen. We can tell who was here, and how many. Look at that undisturbed rug.

Of all victims I feel the most sorry for those who get caught up in a very unusual set of circumstances that law enforcement rejects. So brutally sad. Now they require a fluke to get out of it. Fortunately it happened here.

There's also a Forensic Files case currently airing that is not similar other than the story is strange and doubted by authorities. An intellectually challenged seaman named Alvin was charged with murder after an incident at sea in which his boss was found dead in the water. Alvin asserted innocence but his story was belittled and finally after 7 or 8 hours of grilling in the back room he surrendered and made a "confession," with force fed details. Luckily a very sharp defense lawyer saw the full tape of the disgraceful back room interrogation and got experts who were able to support Alvin's story, based on the details and state of the body when it was found.