"It really was"

The police were so reluctant to investigate the abduction that the rapist itself stood up for the victim

In the spring of 2015, unknown people penetrated the house of Denise Hasksins and her boyfriend Aaron Kuinna. Aaron was tied up, and Deniz was kidnapped. She was released two days later. Once at large, she informed the authorities about what happened, but the police did not believe her. They decided that Haskins set up everything, threatened her with a criminal case and did not even try to find the kidnapper. As a result, he himself got in touch with reporters. "Cold" tells how the case was investigated by Denise Hasks, who was compared with the heroine of the film and called "real disappeared ."

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On March 25, 2015, 29-year-old Denise Haskins stood on the street and did not see anything in front of her. There were sunglasses on it, and under them the eyes were sealed with reinforced tape. Denise was frightened and slowly counted up to 10 - as the man who dropped her out of the car ordered to do so that he had time to hide. Realizing that the kidnapper had left, Haskins took off her glasses and ripped off the adhesive tape.

Denise looked around. It turned out that she was dropped south of Los Angeles, in the city of Huntington-Beach, not far from the place where her parents lived. At first, Haskins decided to go to her mother, but she was not at home. Denise asked the passerby phone and called her father - he did not pick up the phone. Without finding him at home (he lived separately from the mother of Denise), Haskin asked his neighbors and called the police.

Police arrived, accompanied by journalists, by that time Denise was already known throughout the state. Two days ago she was kidnapped. Despite the requirement of ransom, the police suspected that she was dead, but Deniz returned. For two days in imprisonment, she dreamed of surviving and getting home. And I could not even imagine what kind of humiliation it would encounter after returning.

Abduction

Three days before, on March 22, Denise was at home at her boyfriend Aaron Kuinna in the city of Valiero. The evening was ordinary: at a dinner ate pizza, drank a little. And the young people quarreled - Deniz found a message on the former bride of Andrea on Aaron’s phone, in which he wrote that he wanted to “establish relations with her”. Haskins considered it emotional treason and asked her boyfriend to communicate with the former exclusively on working issues. All three worked in one rehabilitation department of the local medical center and regularly intersected.

At three in the morning, Aaron woke up from the fact that a bright light shone in his face. An unknown man made his way into the house and ordered him to lie in the pillow, and Denise - to tie his brigpoint his arms behind his back with ties. The man put on Aaron swimming glasses glued with tape, and headphones and turned on the record with the “ringing of bells in the wind”. The unknown warned that Aaron would measure the pressure and give him a sedative. When Kuinn asked him to cover him with a blanket, because he froze, the man replied: “I'm sorry, I didn’t think how cold it was here-we are in the wizzymes.”

Because of the headphones, the “bells” and points to Aaron it was difficult to understand how many people penetrated his house, but he remembered that the attacker was saying aloud, as if he had turned to someone. Later Aaron and Denise said that they did not hear other votes.

While Aaron was lying on the bed, Denise was put on the sofa. Through the “bells”, Aaron heard how the unknown said: “We have a problem. This is not Andrea. " The former bride moved from Aaron back in September 2014. Despite the fact that, as it turned out, they did not come for her, Deniz was still abducted. Before leaving, the same voice announced to Aaron that he was counting on a ransom of 15 thousand dollars. And so that Aaron does not run to the police, he will install a camera in his room, and if he disobeyed, his girlfriend will not be greeted. The last thing Aaron remembered before falling asleep under the influence of sedatives was how the engine of his car starts up and the kidnappers leave with Deniz.

Aaron came to his senses six hours later. The carpet on the floor was glued to the edges with red tape - he was forbidden to leave this zone. A video camera looked at him from the corner of the room. A message came to the phone: 17 thousand dollars of ransom were already demanded from him. Aaron did not have that kind of money. He replied that he could give only $ 3,500. After this, there were no more messages.

After a few hours of waiting, worrying Deniz for life, Aaron still turned to the police. “I say to myself:“ I do not believe these bastards [abductors]. ” And it seems to me that the only way out is to seek help, despite the fact that this is a huge risk. But I trust the police, ”Aaron later recalled the events of that morning.

The police nearly sent himself to the bars.

Changed and killed

During the interrogation, Aaron spoke about all the circumstances of the abduction: about the wetsuit, headphones, the "caring" of the abductors who covered him with a blanket. And also that only one voice heard, but he believes that there were several abductors. Aaron also spoke about them with Deniz's quarrel because of the former bride. It was the police who seemed to be the most interesting by the police. Moreover, Andrea herself later told them that after their separation, Aaron tried to kiss her at work more than once.

The rest of the details from Kuinn's story seemed as police officers far -fetched, and they came to the conclusion that Deniz killed Deniz during a quarrel, and now he was trying to give out her disappearance for abduction.

Aaron spent 18 hours in the police department. All this time he was convinced to admit the murder of his girlfriend. Quinn agreed to take a test on a lie detector, but, according to the FBI agent who had conducted him, he failed the test. Then Aaron still asked to call him a lawyer. The video interrogation of that day shows how he cries, curled up on chairs in the interrogation.

The suspicions that Aaron is a cold -blooded killer, disappeared on Tuesday afternoon, on March 24, when an audio file sent a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicles. On the record, the woman said in a calm measured vocational voice: “My name is Denise Haskins. I was kidnapped. And so I'm fine. " To confirm that the record was recently recorded, Denise read the fresh news that the plane had fallen in the Alps, and to verify herself, she said that her first concert was the performance of the Blink-182 group.

The "caring" rapist

On the night of March 23, the connected Deniz lay in the trunk of the car of her boyfriend, on which the abductors left. Like Aaron during the abduction, there were swimming glasses on it, glued with tape.

After some time, her threats were forced to climb into the trunk of another car - according to the sound of the engine, Haskins suggested that it was Mustang. She tried to remember other sounds in order to at least somehow navigate, but she was also given sleeping pills, and she turned off.

Deniz woke up already when the car stopped, according to its sensations, somewhere in a pine forest. The kidnapper led her into the house, put her on the bed and said: “You are here by chance. According to the plan, there should be Andrea. ” The man explained that he is a member of an illegal organization that kidnap people for money. He told Haskin that she would be released after 48 hours and Aaron had already received instructions what needs to be done to free Deniz.

Glasses from Denise were not removed, but her caretaker behaved humanely and, as Deniz later recalled, even “caring”. “He regularly drove me to the toilet, holding hands, talked about how he fought with insomnia and PTSR, about his service in the army,” Deniz told about the first day in captivity. But closer to the evening, the kidnapper entered the room where Haskins lay and said: "There is a problem."

“We have no guarantee that you will not talk to the police [when we let you go],” he said Deniz. “So one of us will have sex with you and we will take it on camera.” And then, if we suspect that you went to the police, we will publish a video on the Internet. ” He added that it was he who would take sex with Denise, and promised that "he would be gentle."

The next day, the kidnapper warned that his accomplices would come to the house soon and asked Deniz to pretend to be sleeping and not to enter into a dialogue with them, because "they are not as pleasant as him." Haskins heard a car approaching the house, someone's steps in the house and how someone was talking with the kidnapper. After that, the caretaker who returned to her decided to record “proof of life” - an audio community in which Deniz calls his name and says that she was abducted. Deniz later recalled that before the recording she was again drunk with sleeping pills, so the voice on the recording turned out to be indifferent and monotonous.

The record of “evidence of life” was not limited. The man said that his accomplices did not like the first sex video made the day before, so you need to remove one more. But this time, everything should look as if sex is going on by mutual agreement.

A few hours after the second rape , the kidnapper announced that Deniz was time to return home. He put her on the front seat, again forced her sleeping pills and said that he would not return her to Valiero, because there are a lot of police now. Instead, he will drop her into Huntington Beach, where her parents live (he is more than 600 kilometers from Vallejo).

The criminal said that he would let her go under two conditions: she would not tell anyone that he and his accomplices served in the army and that he and Denise had sex. If she does not hold back the word, he will kill not only her, but her whole family.

Going out of the car to Huntington Beach, despite the adhesive tape in her eyes, Denise was still able to see that the car on which she was brought was white.

"Did you not look at the" disappeared? ""

When the police came to the neighbor of the parents, where after the release, the police came, she told them about everything except rape . After that, she was told that the prosecutor from Valiero invites her to make a deal in exchange for immunity. Haskins realized: she was considered not a victim , but by a criminal - and hired a lawyer.

While she was flying to a lawyer in another city, Valiero police gathered a press conference at which they stated that Denise and Aaron themselves staged an abduction. “If we understand that the evidence is enough, we will make criminal charges,” said Kenny Park Lieutenant Kenny.

After that, in the media about the case they began to write exclusively as “adaptable abduction”. “I was not ready,” Deniz said later. “The last thing you think about is that, after being experienced, try to convince everyone of the veracity of his story.”

The lawyer convinced her to tell about rape and undergo an examination - the results were confirmed by the words of Deniz, but this did not convince the investigators. At another interrogation, the FBI agent directly told Haskin that there were many inconsistencies in its history and warned that to lie to federal agents is a crime.

“I take them [agents who conducted an interrogation] to the side and say:“ There is not a single inconsistency in her story. How can you not believe her? ” - said the lawyer Haskins Dag Rappoport. - And they answer me: “Did you not watch the film“ Disappeared? ””

This film was released six months before what happened to Deniz. According to the plot, the heroine reaches her own abduction in order to punish her husband for treason. Many saw the coincidences between the film and the story in Deniz: shortly before the abduction, she also convicted her boyfriend in treason. Deniz threatened up to 18 months of prison for deception.

However, a few days later the journalists received several letters signed by the abductors themselves. It had a photo of pistols and rooms, where, according to them, Deniz was held. In Imila, they introduced themselves to three acquaintances, two of whom graduated from college. In one of the letters, criminals threatened: if Valiero police do not apologize to Denise Haskin and Aaron Quinn, then they organize another abduction.

White "Mustang"

Journalist Henry Lee, to whom the criminals sent letters, tells that he immediately sent their police Valiero, but did not receive a single answer. Lawyers of Haskins and Kuinna were convinced that the police had already decided on the version, found someone to hang guilt and were not going to look for real criminals.

Mother Denise Haskins recalled that when officer Mat Mastard, who was doing the case from the first day and convinced Aaron to admit the murder, found out that her daughter was alive, she began to ask how many guys had, how long she met with them and whether she was often drinking alcohol.

“I remembered that Deniz was raped in childhood,” she said in an interview for a documentary. - Then Detective Mastard said that women who have been sexually abused, pretend to be experiencing it again to feel excitement. I was just horrified. "

By June 2015, the investigation did not particularly advance: Denise and Aaron were waiting for whether they would be charged. Despite the quarrel before the abduction, they decided to stay together and supported each other. Denise said that she lived in constant fear, because the kidnappers were still free, and they constantly lived with her parents with her boyfriend, then with friends, trying not to stay in one place for a long time.

It was unsafe online: on Facebook, she was written hundreds of messages with insults and wishes of death. Then Aaron and Denise accidentally learned that one of the detectives in the case, the FBI agent David Sesm, met with the former bride Aaron - Andrea. The FBI decided that this did not harm the investigation.

In July, the federal prosecutor called the lawyer Deniz Dagu Dagu Rappoport and said that now, under arrest, there is a person involved in the abduction of Haskins. He was detained when he broke into the house at the other end of the country and tried to rape a 22-year-old resident of New Gampshire. After a fight with the girl’s father, the offender disappeared, but forgot his phone on the nightstand next to the victim’s bed.

It turned out that he belongs to Matthew Müller, the former Marine Marvard Law Faculty. He was detained in the house of his parents in Salt Lake Tahoe, California. A white Mustang was parked nearby, and among his things they found glasses for swimming with tape with tape lenses, chambers, drone and isolet. A long blond hair was glued on one of the strips of adhesive tape. To whom he belonged to the police at that time did not know - they did not hear anything about Denise Haskin. But the detention of Müller was attended by a police officer Misty Karaus - it was thanks to her that the case of abduction in Valiero was revealed.

Haskins Misty learned about the case by accident: another potential victims of Müller told her about the “real disappeared”. In 2014, the residents of the island of the mayor complained about a strange man who looked at their windows, took a photo and ran away. The police did not respond to complaints, so the residents decided to conduct their investigation. Following the man, they found out that he is a lawyer and a former military man who also lives nearby. All this coincided with the description of Müller.

In the history of the white “Mustang” navigator, Muller Misty Karausu found the coordinates of the hometown of Deniz-Huntington Beach. She immediately contacted the police Valiero and the FBI.

“When I showed them a photo of glasses with a blond hair, they looked shocked,” said Sergeant Miguel Campos, a colleague of Misty. “They realized that perhaps they were mistaken and that the investigation should be continued.” After new evidence appeared in the case, the FBI officially announced that Müller is the main suspect in the case of the abduction of Haskin.

No this, fuck, is not delirious

Denise identified Müller as her kidnapper, seeing on TV an excerpt from an old interview with him: for some time the criminal was a lawyer for immigrant affairs, but he was deprived of a license for the deception of his clients. She recognized his manner and pace of speech.

“Having heard him, seeing him, I realized that all this was true. I felt disappointment and anger. See? This is, fucking, not nonsense, it really was. Why didn't you listen to us? Why didn't they take us seriously? " - Deniz was angry.

After the arrest of Müller, Denise and Aaron were able to receive Affinvit in their hands - a document that describes all the stages of the investigation in detail - and got even more angry. To begin with, it turned out that the FBI agent lied when he said that Aaron had failed a polygraph test: the document spoke of "unknown results." But the most important thing: the police in theory could find Denise a day after the disappearance and prevent the second rape.

Before the interrogation, Aaron said that the kidnappers should contact him, but the police simply transferred his phone to the aircraft mode and turned it on only the evening of the next day. There were two missing calls on the phone. They were tracked only later: the kidnappers called Aaron, being 200 meters from the place where Deniz was held.

In 2017, Matthew Muller was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the abduction and rape of Denise Haskins. He found himself guilty and made a deal with the investigation, which allowed him not to testify in court. At the meeting, he only said that he was ashamed of the pain and horror that he had caused.

“All the time I did not see him captive, but he was me. And I knew that there [in court], I would turn to him and make me look at myself, ”Deniz recalled. “That day I returned myself.”

All the time that the “real” investigation was underway, the investigation insisted that Müller alone turned the abduction: he followed Haskin and Quinna’s house with the help of a drone, and after the abduction he sent Imila from the group of the kidnappers.

Müller's mother, Joyce Zerbek, told reporters that after arrest she asked her son about whether he acted alone. По ее словам, он просто кивнул и предупредил, что все разговоры в тюрьме записываются. Больше она его об этом не спрашивала. В июле 2015 года Мюллер дал в тюрьме интервью местному репортеру и подтвердил, что он был единственным похитителем и никакой банды не существует.

Дениз и Аарон не верят в эту версию: они убеждены, что у Мюллера были сообщники, которые до сих пор на свободе. Причины нападения следствию выяснить тоже не удалось, как и то, была ли в деле замешана бывшая девушка Аарона — Андреа.

В 2016 году Дениз и Аарон подали в суд на город и полицейских за распространение сведений порочащих репутацию. Они пошли на мировое соглашение за 2,5 миллиона долларов.

Несмотря на провал в работе, шеф полиции Вальехо Эндрю Биду доработал до 2019 года. А детектив Мастард, расследовавший дело Хаскинс, в 2015 году получил звание «Офицер года». Аарон и Дениз считают настоящим «полицейским года» и своей героиней Мисти Караусу — благодаря которой и удалось раскрыть их дело.

В 2018 году Дениз и Аарон поженились. Сейчас они воспитывают двух дочерей.