'American Nightmare' couple now: What happened to Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn?

Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, the stars of Netflix's new true-crime docuseries "American Nightmare," survived a nightmarish ordeal together when they were victims of a home break-in in Vallejo, California, in March 2015.

Prior to Matthew Muller's arrest and eventual conviction for Huskins' kidnapping, the Vallejo Police Department called the kidnapping a hoax. TODAY.com reached out to the Vallejo PD for comment and has not heard back at the time of publication.

Huskins and Quinn share the details of their ordeal in “American Nightmare.” The series, helmed by filmmakers Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, premiered Jan. 17 on Netflix.

Read on to learn what happened to the couple and where they are today.

What happened to Huskins and Quinn?

Huskins and Quinn were the victims of a home break-in in Vallejo, California, on March 23, 2015.

The intruder drugged the couple, forced them to wear blackened goggles, then kidnapped Huskins and then issued a ransom for her return, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.

When Quinn turned to Vallejo Police for help, he became a suspect in his girlfriend’s disappearance.

Two days after the break-in, Huskins turned up near her parents’ house in Huntington Beach, about 400 miles away with no ransom ever being paid, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

After Huskins was found, Vallejo Police dropped the investigation, announcing publicly they believed the couple fabricated the crime.

“Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins have plundered valuable resources away from our community, and have taken focus away from the true victims of our community while instilling fear amongst our community members,” Lt. Kenny Park said at the time, said, according to ABC7.

Park left the Vallejo Police department in 2020, per the Vallejo Sun.

The media dubbed the case the “Gone Girl Kidnapping,” a reference to Gillian Flynn’s bestselling 2012 novel “Gone Girl,” which tells the story of a vengeful wife who stages her own kidnapping to frame her cheating husband.

Was the kidnapper ever arrested?

After police in Dublin, California, arrested Muller, a disbarred lawyer and ex-Marine, following a similar home invasion and attempted kidnapping in June 2015, then-Dublin detective (now lieutenant, per Golden Gate Media) Misty Carausu noticed an eerie piece of evidence in Muller’s South Lake Tahoe cabin: a blonde hair attached to a pair of goggles.

Carausu connected the evidence to the case in Vallejo and notified the FBI. The FBI arrested Muller in relation to Huskins’ kidnapping on June 29, per a copy of the arrest warrant.

After pleading guilty — and detailing in court how he committed the bizarre crime — Muller was sentenced to 40 years in prison in March 2018.

“The sentence imposed today reflects the egregiousness of Muller’s conduct in this case. Muller had advantages in life that most people only dream of, yet he used his considerable intelligence to plan and execute the physical assault and psychological torture of two innocent strangers,” U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley said during the sentencing hearing.

Muller‘s defense attorney Thomas Johnson declined to comment to the Associated Press after the sentencing hearing.

Four years later, Muller was sentenced to 31 years in a state prison after pleading no contest to two counts of forcible rape in the case.

He also pleaded guilty to robbery of an inhabited dwelling, residential burglary and false imprisonment.

Muller remains in prison, where he is serving the state sentence concurrently with the federal sentence. His release date is scheduled for 2049 per the Bureau of Prisons.

What happened to Huskins and Quinn after Muller's arrest?

Huskins and Quinn filed a claim against the city of Vallejo in September 2015 for “violating” the couple’s “constitutional rights” and “unfairly (destroying) their reputations through an outrageous, completely unprofessional and wholly unfounded campaign of disparagement,” per the filing.

“While the Vallejo Police Department focused on two unsubstantiated theories, that Aaron killed Denise or that Denise somehow faked her own kidnapping, Denise endured unimaginable terror and a violent assault,” the claim read.

“The (Vallejo) police took the all too common approach of blaming the victims,” Jim Wagstaffe, a lawyer for the couple, said at a press conference at the time. Wagstaffe argues that the couples’ lives had been “turned upside down” since the incident and their reputations “destroyed,” according to the team.

In 2018, the couple settled with the city for $2.5 million.

They published a book “Victim F: From Crime Victims to Suspects to Survivors,” in 2021. The same year, the Vallejo Police Department released a statement of apology.

“The Huskins Quinn case was not publicly handled with the type of sensitivity a case of this nature should have been handled with, and for that, the City extends an apology to Ms. Huskins and Mr. Quinn,” the city of Vallejo and the Vallejo Police Department said in a statement sent to KGO-TV.

Are Huskins and Quinn still together?

As the final episode of “American Nightmare” reveals, the couple survived the ordeal and stayed together. They later married and welcomed two daughters, a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old.

The couple answered, in press notes provided by Netflix, whether they think they would have stayed together had this not happened.

“I think we would have stayed together, and I think that’s why we were able to stay together,” Huskins said.

“When you go through traumatic experiences, it does strip away some of the noise. You start realizing what’s really important: our relationship with each other, and our relationship with our families and close friends. The level of exposure from this series will probably be quite a lot. But I know that when I come home, I’ll be with Denise and our girls. We have a solid bedrock, and places to go where people love us for who we are,” Quinn said.

The couple said they felt a responsibility to share their story, though trusting the media was a “leap of faith,” per Quinn.

“We think it’s necessary. Our specific kidnapping situation was uncommon, but the re-victimization that we faced — from law enforcement, the media, the public — is something that’s all too common. We continue to hear from victims who share similar experiences. That motivates us,” Huskins said.

She went on to say that she and Quinn think of themselves as the “lucky ones.”

“Despite all the crazy things that we’ve gone through, we are the lucky ones. That’s a major reason why we continue to put ourselves out there. We are the ones that had the ability to hire attorneys who stayed by our side to help ensure that we were protected as victims. We were fortunate to have an understanding of a system that’s really confusing in the first place. So now we can take that and use it to our advantage to reach as many other people as possible.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com