Arrest warrant issued in Vallejo kidnap case previously deemed a hoax

VALLEJO, Calif. (KABC) -- A Harvard Law School graduate and former U.S. Marine has been linked with the mysterious "Gone Girl" kidnapping case in Vallejo, which was previously deemed a hoax.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Matthew Muller, 38, in connection to the bizarre abduction case.

Denise Huskins had been reported kidnapped from a Vallejo home on March 23 for a ransom. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told police at the time that someone broke into the Vallejo home, where the couple was sleeping.

Quinn told authorities he had been bound, drugged and forced to wear tape-covered goggles and headphones, before being given an extensive list of instructions to follow. Quinn fell asleep and woke up to find Huskins missing.

Two days later, Huskins was found safe in her hometown of Huntington Beach. She showed up just hours before the ransom was due.

At the time, police in Vallejo said that they found "no evidence to support the claims" that an abduction occurred, but both Huskins and Quinn denied any involvement in a hoax.

On June 29, the FBI obtained a warrant to arrest Muller, of Orangevale, for the alleged kidnapping. Muller was already in custody for a home-invasion robbery in Dublin, California.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Muller recently worked as an immigrants' rights attorney at a San Francisco law firm, but was disbarred in 2015 after failing to file immigration paperwork for a client, lying to the client about it, then refusing to refund his client $1,250. He also failed to respond to the State Bar about his alleged misconduct.

From 1995 to 1999, Muller served in the Marines primarily as a trumpet player. He left the Marines a sergeant.

A sworn affidavit with the allegations against Muller was unsealed on Monday by the FBI, and it states that Muller may have committed similar crimes elsewhere. Investigators in other Bay Area cities say he is also a suspect in two other similar 2009 cases in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

"One of our detectives actually did a timeline on Muller and showed he was in different cities in the Bay Area. She contacted those agencies and said, 'Hey, this is what we have, do you have anything similar?'" Dublin Police Lt. Herb Walters said.

Huskins' father Mike Huskins says it's a relief authorities have found the suspect, but that Vallejo Police Department owes his family an apology.

I'd like to see "a public apology, but I'm not going to get it," he said. "They're not going to come out and say they made a mistake."

The couple's attorneys say they believe there could be other suspects. Something FBI investigators will not comment on.

Anyone with information is urged to contact agents with the FBI's Sacramento Field Office by calling (800) CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324).

The Associated Press and sister station KGO-TV contributed to this report.