[A man, Matthew Muller, 47, has been charged with two 15-year-old home invasion sexual assaults, which occurred in Mountain View and Palo Alto, California. The charges carry a possible sentence of life in prison. Muller is currently serving a 40-year prison term for the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins.
Prosecutors allege that Muller broke into the Mountain View woman’s home in September 2009, tied her up, and made her drink medications. He then told her that he was going to rape her, but she convinced him not to. Muller also broke into a home in Palo Alto in October 2009, bound and gagged a woman, and forced her to drink Nyquil. However, she was able to convince him to stop.
Muller has been charged with two felony counts of committing a sexual assault during a home invasion. His lawyer, public defender Agustin Arias, has declined to comment on the new charges.
The new charges came after testing evidence based on a “new lead,” according to prosecutors. District attorney criminalists found Muller’s DNA on the straps used to bind one of the victims.
Muller, a disbarred, Harvard-educated attorney, pleaded guilty to the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins, and was sentenced to 31 years in state prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape of Huskins. Huskins was abducted by a masked intruder who broke into her boyfriend’s home in Vallejo, and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, was interrogated for hours by police, who initially suspected him of being involved in her disappearance.
Muller’s case has been compared to the 2014 book and movie “Gone Girl,” but investigators have dropped that theory after Muller’s arrest in Dublin, California, and the subsequent discovery of evidence linking him to the abduction.
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