Matthew Daniel Muller (born March 27, 1977) is an American serial rapist and kidnapper, former immigration attorney, and Marine veteran.
Muller is a serial sex offender who has committed at least six violent crimes. From at least 2009 until his apprehension in 2015 he invaded homes, held his victims for ransom, kidnapped his victims, and raped or attempted to rape the female victims. In 2015 he kidnapped Denise Huskins while she was with her boyfriend Aaron Quinn, whose account police originally treated as a hoax. The Huskins case was referred to in the media as the "Gone Girl" kidnapping, and was depicted in the Netflix docuseries American Nightmare. In 2024, he confessed to perpetrating several cold cases beginning as early as 1993.
Muller is a decorated United States Marine Corps veteran. He was honorably discharged after developing mental health issues in the Middle East. He was a Harvard-educated immigration lawyer who gained prominence after he halted a deportation by using an online petition. He was voted one of the American Bar Association's "Techiest Lawyers." He was disbarred in 2015 after a decline in his mental health; he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features and schizophrenia.
Muller developed a delusion that he should kidnap "evil wealthy people" for ransom to give to the poor. He was caught on June 9, 2015, after leaving his cell phone and other evidence at the site of the unsuccessful third home invasion. He is being held in Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, where he is serving four life sentences.
Early life Muller grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento. His mother Joyce was a middle school English teacher, and his father, Monty, was a school administrator who served as a wrestling coach. He has one younger brother, Kent. His parents divorced during his senior year of high school after his father began an extramarital affair. Muller was introverted and bullied for being overweight growing up. He was also known as someone who "fought for the underdog".
He played the trumpet in his Fair Oaks, California, high school band, participated in computer club, and earned over a 3.8 GPA taking high achiever coursework. Muller is fluent in English, Spanish, Russian and German.
In 1993, when Muller was 16, he kidnapped and raped his first victim, a teenager who was tent camping with her boyfriend at Folsom Lake State Recreation Area. Muller held the teens at gunpoint, tied the male victim up, then abducted the female victim from the campsite to sexually assault her. He confessed to this cold case crime in 2024 in a signed affidavit .
Muller graduated from Bella Vista High School in 1995.
Military service and education
In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to get in shape and to earn money to attend college. He played trumpet in the United States Marine Band across the world, including Australia, Abu Dhabi, and the United Arab Emirates. While stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Muller started a nonprofit organization to teach locals about the internet and worked at an off-base bilingual newspaper. He also served in the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro and took part in Operation Pacific Haven.
In 1999, he was deployed to train soldiers in the Middle East where he became a decorated marine. He earned three service medals, one ribbon, and was promoted to a sergeant. Muller developed severe mental health issues he referred to as Gulf War syndrome, despite never having been in combat. He requested a discharge, which was granted, honorably. While serving, Muller said he witnessed discrimination and harassment against fellow marines who were suspected of not being heterosexual. He served for four years.
Muller attended a community college and transferred to Pomona College. In 2001, he participated in an academic summer abroad in Prague. He graduated with summa cum laude honors as a double major in economics and science, technology, and society within the Public Policy Analysis program. His undergraduate senior thesis in the program was titled Once Again Waiting: Implementation of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. While at Pomona, he volunteered helping homeless people obtain government services, organized Orientation Adventure trips, and contributed to political campaign finance research.
After graduating in 2003, he moved to Boston and enrolled in Harvard Law School. While in law school, he volunteered at Harvard's Legal Aid Bureau, where he began to work with immigrants and low-income rental tenants who had been victims of domestic violence. In October of his first year, he spoke at a teach-in about the implications of the Solomon Amendment and advocated for Harvard to change its policies around military recruitment in accordance with its anti-discrimination policies. He obtained a juris doctor in 2006.
Law career Muller remained at Harvard as a fellow and research assistant in the law school's Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, working under Deborah Anker. He contributed to a chapter in a law book authored by Anker. When the director went on sabbatical, he stepped in to manage the program. In his role at Harvard, he earned near-perfect marks. Muller was known as an incredibly caring and intelligent student, professor, and legal advocate, but was also described as being "unusually devoted" to his clients.
In 2009, Muller relocated to Silicon Valley. He passed the bar exam and worked at an immigration law firm, but did not register with the California bar. In 2011, Muller started volunteering with a legal non-profit. He then registered with the state bar and began practicing law at the San Francisco office of Reeves and Associates. He quit within six months after working excessive overtime and getting caught sleeping at the office. In 2012, Muller found work at Kerosky, Purves and Bogue, another immigration law firm. He was fired the same year for undisclosed reasons. In 2012, he founded a non-profit called Immigrant Ability, which provided pro bono services for immigrants with mental illness.
Successful Change.org immigration petition In June 2012, Muller took on a pro bono client named Blanca Medina, a mother with post-traumatic stress disorder who fled El Salvador to escape sexual abuse. Medina was imminently scheduled to be deported after missing an immigration hearing in 2006. Immigration agents referred to Medina as a fugitive, and she was arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Fugitive Operation team in 2011 and held as a flight risk in West County Detention Facility in Richmond, California.
Muller filed paperwork to reopen her asylum case, citing the multiple rapes she faced in her home country, including one by an influential gang member during her border crossing, and mental health reasons for missing court. It was denied by immigration courts because the request was not timely. Muller started a Change.org petition stating that, "Under ICE rules, it is free to ignore even conclusive proof that a person would suffer slow death by torture if deported." The petition was widely covered by media and the case became a cause célèbre.
After earning nearly 118,000 signatures, Muller delivered the petition to the ICE San Francisco field office. The case was successfully reopened for hearing and Medina's deportation proceedings were halted. The popularity of the case drew attention to the use of online petitions and the influence of public opinion in immigration cases. Muller argued that even missing an immigration hearing for "no good reason" should not result in deportation if there is a risk of persecution or torture. The case earned him a nomination as one of the American Bar Association's "Techiest Lawyers" in 2012.
Disbarment Muller's law license was suspended in 2013 for non-payment of dues. He was disbarred in the state of California in 2015 over disciplinary action from failing to show up for court several times and failing to file green card paperwork on behalf of a paying client. He was disbarred from federal practice in the Immigration Courts in 2017 after pleading guilty to charges of kidnapping for ransom.
Mental health decline and crimes
During his time at Harvard, Muller was diagnosed with major depression with signs of mania after contemplating suicide. After his symptoms continued to worsen, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2008. He developed paranoid delusions that the government had wiretapped his phone and hacked his computer due to suspected ties of some of his immigration clients to terrorists.
2009 Santa Clara County home invasions On September 29, 2009, Muller dressed in a black spandex-like suit and a ski mask and broke into a 27-year-old woman's home in Mountain View, California. He tied her up, covered her eyes with blacked-out swim goggles, forced her to drink NyQuil and informed her he was stealing her identity to steal her money. During the invasion, the victim said Muller spoke to himself as though he had accomplices. He informed the victim that he worked with an organized crime syndicate. He "politely" informed her he was going to rape her. After she begged him not to, he apologized, told her to get a dog, and left without sexually assaulting her.
The Friday before the invasion, Muller had been stopped by police in a residential neighborhood in College Terrace, Palo Alto, California, near the Stanford Dish around midnight. A resident reported a "suspicious" man prowling apartment buildings. Muller fabricated a story that he was a visiting professor at Stanford University and seeing a friend. He later told Atavist Magazine in 2022 that he went walking at night on the trail near the dish and didn't want to tell the officer willingly he'd been trespassing. Although Muller initially denied involvement in a legal filing, he confessed to the crime in 2024..
A few weeks later, on October 18, 2009, Muller broke into the apartment of a 32-year old Stanford student in College Terrace. Like the Mountain View home invasion, he was dressed in black spandex-like suit and a ski mask, tied her up, covered her eyes, and drugged her with NyQuil. He also gathered her personal information and informed her he was going to use it to take her money. The victim said she heard him whispering as if speaking to someone, but she didn't actually hear or see anyone else. Muller attempted to rape her, but she fought back. After making up a story about a prior rape, Muller left, telling her if she called 911 he would harm her family and claimed he planted fake evidence to mislead authorities. Muller also gave her crime prevention advice before leaving.
When the police determined that Muller had lied to the police and the victim had attended a policy panel organized by Muller at Harvard in 2008, he became their prime suspect in the College Terrace incident. At the time, he was ruled out via DNA profiling and police did not have any evidence to point to Muller. He also denied involvement in a 2015 legal filing but in 2024, he confessed to the crime .
He was later suspected of being involved in other incidents, including a similar home invasion and attempted rape near the Stanford campus on November 29, 2012. The victim, a 26-year-old woman, also fought back. The perpetrator had taken her laptop and left behind two bump keys. DNA on the bump keys did not match Muller's. During a traffic stop a few weeks later, police officers found burglary tools in Muller's vehicle.