A good-looking dark-haired man calls the cops one nondescript afternoon to report that his attractive blonde girlfriend was kidnapped the night before. Specifically, he says that he was awakened from sleep by intruders who restrained him with zip ties, put swim goggles over his eyes, placed headphones over his ears, drugged him with NyQuil and Diazepam, and then departed with his paramour. This stuns everyone, from parents to cops to journalists, and things become stranger still when the girlfriend reappears 400 miles away at her father’s home, claiming she’d been abducted and violated—and admitting that, prior to this ordeal, she’d been having problems with her boyfriend due to his lingering feelings for his former fiancée.
It was, in short, a startling story, and all the more astonishing for taking place in March 2015, a few short months after the debut of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, with which it shared many similarities. The truth, however, would turn out to be more amazing than a simple case of life imitating art—and would shine a spotlight on the reprehensible treatment afforded to female victims of sexual abuse.
Written, produced, and directed by Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, American Nightmare (Jan. 17) is a three-part Netflix docuseries that elicits skepticism and shock in equal measure. In doing so, it underlines the potential difficulty—and yet vital necessity—of taking allegations of rape seriously, even when the narratives are outlandish and the evidence is scant.
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Its tale begins on March 23, 2015, when 30-year-old physical therapist Aaron Quinn called Vallejo, California, police from his home on nearby Mare Island, a quiet and well-off enclave where he lived. In a flat voice, he reported that his girlfriend, 29-year-old Denise Huskins, had been snatched from their bedroom the previous evening, and that he’d been delayed in reporting it due to the sedatives that the perpetrators (who were wearing wetsuits and blinded him with laser pointers) had forced him to ingest. He also said he’d hesitated in alerting authorities because the intruders were watching him via a camera they’d installed in his home.
During police interrogations conducted by Vallejo PD Detective Mat Mustard—many of which are seen in American Nightmare, which boasts a wealth of archival material—Aaron stuck to his story. Yet law enforcement, including the FBI agent who administered a polygraph test, swiftly decided that Aaron was lying. Given the outlandishness of this scenario, it’s easy to comprehend why they initially viewed him with a wary eye. Nonetheless, their assumptions (and outright accusations) were soon complicated by an email sent to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Henry Lee that contained a proof-of-life audio file from Denise in which she asserted that she’d been abducted. A short time later, Denise materialized at her dad’s home in Huntington Beach, California, and immediately reported a version of events that dovetailed almost completely with what Aaron had consistently maintained, with the added details that her captor had claimed to be a military veteran who suffered from insomnia and PTSD.
Twelve hours later, before anyone had touched base again with Aaron or his lawyers, Vallejo police department lieutenant Kenny Park stood at a press conference podium and stated, “Ms. Huskins has plundered valuable resources away from our community while instilling fear amongst our community members. So if anything, it is Ms. Huskins that owes this community an apology.” It was now clear: the powers that be believed that the abduction had been a hoax, thereby tarring Denise—with the aid of local and national media—as a Gone Girl-inspired villain who’d staged her own victimization in order to get back at Aaron for attempting to rekindle things with his ex Andrea.
(L-R) Aaron Quinn and Denise Huskins in American Nightmare.
NetflixThis quickly became headline news, with Denise and Aaron’s reputations left in tatters. American Nightmare recounts it first from Aaron, and subsequently Denise’s, perspective, the latter giving a blow-by-blow account of her dreadful suffering at the hands of an unknown assailant who, after spiriting her away in the trunk of a white Mustang, repeatedly raped her on camera while she remained blindfolded and half-drugged. Upon her release, Denise was surprised to learn that she was, in fact, a prime suspect being slandered left and right as a fraud, and in the ensuing months, detectives did almost no snooping into her kidnapping. On the contrary, they trained their sights squarely on Aaron and Denise, with the latter’s attorney Doug Rappaport relaying how FBI special agent David Sesma—even after ordering a sexual assault exam that confirmed Denise’s contentions—asked him, “Haven’t you seen the movie Gone Girl?” The confirmation bias, it appears, was off the charts.
Much of American Nightmare’s first two episodes hinge on the sheer strangeness of Aaron and Denise’s accounts; the notion that masked strangers had broken into their residence, doped them, incapacitated them, and taken Denise for a ransom that they promptly forgot about, sounds like make-believe. In its finale, however, it delivers a twist that undoubtedly rocked the Vallejo PD. Thanks to another home invasion and attempted sexual assault on June 5, 2015 in Dublin, California, that was foiled by the intended victim’s father, officers obtained a cellphone that led them to Matthew Muller, a PTSD-afflicted ex-Marine. When they arrived at the South Lake Tahoe cabin at which he was staying, they found not only him, but a wealth of evidence that indicated he was a serial predator—and, as Sgt. Misty Carausu shrewdly deduced, the individual who had terrorized Denise.
Complementing its testimonials (led by Denise and Aaron’s anguished recollections) with home movies, photographs, and police-interrogation and body-cam footage, American Nightmare paints a horrifying picture of an unthinkable crime and a law enforcement system that scoffed at and demonized a rape victim. In that regard, Morris and Higgins’ docuseries isn’t just a jaw-dropping mystery that in some respects resembles a Ben Affleck thriller, but a caustic exposé about ingrained misogyny and the way in which women invariably must look out for each other. Moreover, it’s a reminder that the world is a terrifying place, full of monstrousness that often proves to be stranger than fiction.
