It’s easy to understand how investigators and the media in 2015 were so quick to draw parallels between the story of Denise Huskins and the framework of David Fincher’s 2014 thriller “Gone Girl,” which was based on the 2012 Gillian Flynn novel of the same name.
In “Gone Girl,” Rosamund Pike’s Amy is married to Ben Affleck’s Nick, who is having an affair with a student. When there’s a break-in at their home and Amy disappears, Nick immediately becomes the prime suspect as the media swarms to cover the case. Spoiler alert: Amy resurfaces at their home, telling a horrific tale about being kidnapped and raped, and the police are suspicious of her tale to say the least.
In March 2015 — just six months after the release of “Gone Girl” — 30-year-old Aaron Quinn calls Vallejo, California, police to report that his 29-year-old girlfriend, Huskins, has been kidnapped. Quinn immediately becomes the prime suspect, as the media swarms to cover the case. After Huskins suddenly resurfaces, telling a horrific tale about being kidnapped and raped, the police immediately pivot and focus their suspicions on her.
You might remember something about the so-called “Real Life Gone Girl” case, but the three-part Netflix series “American Nightmare” from filmmakers Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins (“The Tinder Swindler”) still packs a sharp punch and feels like a fresh and comprehensive retelling of the story. The success of the docuseries comes in great part because Huskins and Quinn sat down for extensive interviews and are admirably forthcoming in their recollections of the ordeal they endured — first at the hands of Huskin’s captor, and then when they were vilified by investigators, judged by the media and subjected to online abuse.
We get the obligatory handful of shadowy (and thankfully, restrained) reenactments, but “American Nightmare” mostly relies on news clips, audio recordings, footage of local police and FBI aggressively interrogating first Quinn and then Huskins, and interviews with the victims, their families and their attorneys.
In “Part One, The Boyfriend,” we hear Quinn’s 911 call, with the dispatcher almost immediately expressing skepticism:
“My girlfriend got kidnapped last night.”
“What do you mean she got kidnapped. … And you didn’t call last night when this occurred?”
“I was tied up.”
“What time did you get untied, sir?”
At the police department, Quinn tells investigators of a person or persons breaking in wearing wetsuits, telling Quinn by name to lie face down, putting swim goggles over his head, plying him with sedatives and kidnapping Huskins. Admittedly, one can see how police were skeptical of this story, especially after Quinn tells them about a love triangle of sorts, as he still had feelings for his ex-girlfriend — and all three of them worked together.
“We’re looking at suspicion falling on the boyfriend,” says crime reporter Henry Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle. In the interrogation room, detective Mat Mustard tells Quinn: “Your story’s very … far-fetched. I don’t think she was kidnapped from your home. … What did they swim in wearing their wetsuits? Come on man, it doesn’t make any sense. … I’m going to presume that she wasn’t alive and kicking when she left the house … And you carted her ass out of there, and you dripped her blood going down the stairs.”
You want to scream at Quinn: “Lawyer up!” but he meekly says, “I did not do that,” to which Mustard retorts, “Yeah, you did.”
FBI Special Agent Peter French administers a polygraph, tells Quinn he failed and says, “She’s gone … and you know she’s gone.”
But after the kidnapper sends an audio message to the Chronicle’s Lee on which Huskins says she’s been kidnapped and she’s fine, and after she shows up in her hometown of Huntington, California, some 400 miles south of Vallejo, authorities almost immediately leap to the conclusion the whole thing was a hoax.
At a press conference, Vallejo Police Department Lt. Kenny Park says, “Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins have plundered valuable resources away from our community … while instilling fear among our community members. … If anything, it is Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins that owes this community an apology.”
The media piles on with the “Gone Girl” comparisons. Apparently no one thought to ask what Huskins and Quinn had to gain by staging such an elaborate hoax. What was the payoff?
In Part Two, titled “Gone Girl,” we see Huskins giving her statements to police and giving interviews in present day in which she bravely recounts being bound and raped twice by her captor. Still, investigators eschewed any valid effort to locate the kidnapper in favor of telling Huskins it was a federal crime to lie to federal agents.
In Part Three, “The Others,” we meet Misty Carausu, a former detective with the Dublin, California, police department, who was in on the arrest of one Matthew Muller for a similar home invasion. Carausu recognized similarities to the kidnapping of Huskins, and tells us, “They’re calling this woman a liar on national news, but I just wanted to reach through the computer screen, give her a hug and say, ‘I got you.’”
We’re told the city of Vallejo reached a $2.5 million settlement in the lawsuit filed by Huskins and Quinn. Having witnessed what they went through, that amount seems low.
