In 2015, Denise Huskins was kidnapped and held captive for two days. She was accused of making up the story. Then the FBI nabbed a suspect four months later. Huskins and her husband Aaron Quinn are speaking out ahead of their upcoming book's release.
The woman once dubbed the real-life "Gone Girl" is speaking out for the first time, six years after being kidnapped and then accused by police of making the whole thing up.
Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were ambushed at his house in Vallejo, California and tied up. Then Huskins was taken to another location and held hostage for two days before being released.
The story made national headlines after Huskins was accused of concocting the kidnapping, just like in the movie “Gone Girl.”
Local police never believed their story. “Our investigation has concluded that none of the claims has been substantiated,” a spokesman for Vallejo Police Department said in 2015.
Four months later came a stunning vindication, when the FBI arrested Matthew Muller, a former U.S. Marine and Harvard Law School graduate. He pleaded guilty to the kidnapping.
Now, Huskins and Quinn are sharing their story with ABC’s “20/20” ahead of the release of their book “Victim F: From Crime Victims to Suspects to Survivors," which is billed as "the shocking true story of a bizarre kidnapping and the victims' re-victimization by the justice system."
“Every moment in captivity, I kept picturing [Quinn], what that feeling must be like to finally feel safe in his arms,” Huskins says in the interview.
Never-before-seen video shows a detective interrogating Quinn as if he were a suspect.
“The story you're telling here — I ain't buying it at all,” the detective said.
Huskins says she remembers being stuffed into a car trunk for hours before being taken to a house by her kidnapper.
“I told myself, no matter what they do, no matter what they put me through, I'm not gonna beg and scream,” Huskins said.
Huskins was dropped off two days later in Huntington Beach, 400 miles away from home.
“I was by myself in this alley. I grabbed my bags and I started walking and I looked at the corner street name and I saw Utica, which is the street that I grew up on. I thought, oh my god,” Huskins said.
Inside Edition spoke to 20/20’s Amy Robach about the case.
“You couldn’t write a script that actually was as outlandish, as crazy, as insane as this story. This young couple — what they went through, with a kidnapper and an attacker. And then, how they weren't believed, how an entire community turned against them, how the police turned against them. And then how they ultimately found justice,” Robach said.
Despite the couple going through a real-life nightmare, their story does have a very happy ending. The two got married in 2018 and now have a baby daughter.
The full interview airs tonight on ABC’s “20/20.”
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