SACRAMENTO (KRON) — A Harvard graduate and the disbarred attorney accused of kidnapping a Vallejo woman appeared in a Sacramento courtroom Monday.
Matthew Muller was formally arraigned in a federal court in Sacramento. The 38-year-old is accused in the bizarre kidnap of a 29-year-old Vallejo woman in March. Local police at first dismissed the story as a hoax.
A not guilty plea was entered on Muller’s behalf. He was advised of his rights, and his attorney argued that he should not be forced to be in shackles at future court appearances.
Muller’s defense attorney, Thomas Johnson, said he expected federal prosecutors to seek an indictment.
Johnson said, “I don’t anticipate” a plea bargain in the federal case.
Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn have claimed they were both victims of muller. And they claimed Muller broke into their home, held them at gunpoint, and forcibly drugged them.
Huskins was taken from the home and released two days later in Huntington Beach. Their story was taken seriously after the FBI got involved.
Muller could face life in prison if convicted of the charges against him.
On Friday, Muller pleaded no contest to charges of attempted robbery, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon in a similar home invasion of a Dublin residence early in the morning on June 5.
According to an FBI affidavit filed with the federal complaint, Muller entered the house at about 3:30 a.m. and was in the process of tying up the homeowners with zip ties when the husband fought back and the wife escaped to a locked bathroom and called 911 on her cellphone.
The intruder fled, but left behind a cellphone that eventually led investigators to Muller and to evidence allegedly linking him to the Vallejo kidnapping.
Vallejo police initially said they believed Huskins’ and Quinn’s account of the kidnapping was a hoax and that the couple had led police on a “wild goose chase.”
Police Chief Andrew Bidou sent them a letter of apology in July, the couple’s lawyers said last week. Huskins and Quinn on Thursday filed a claim of reputation damage and emotional distress against the Vallejo Police Department, in a possible precursor to a lawsuit.
Johnson said Muller served in the Marines for three years between 1995 and 1998 before attending college. Muller graduated from Pomona College and Harvard Law School. He worked for a time as an immigration attorney but was suspended by the State Bar of California in 2013 and disbarred earlier this year.