Why the case in Netflix series 'American Nightmare' is being called the 'real-life Gone Girl'
New true-crime series American Nightmares is making waves on Netflix as it tells the story of a case the police and media dubbed as a "real-life Gone Girl."
The documentary, currently the Top 3 show on Netflix Philippines, follows the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins who told Vallejo police she was taken and raped but they didn't believe her.
Huskins turned up 48 hours later outside her mother's home in Huntington Beach, California before the ransom was due, and because of story inconsistencies and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn waited hours to report the kidnapping, police slammed them for wasting time and resources.
"It was such an incredible story, we initially had a hard time believing it, and upon further investigation, we couldn't substantiate any of the things he was saying," spokesman Kenny Park said at the news conference when the missing woman was found.
"Haven't you seen the movie, Gone Girl?" an FBI agent asked Huskins after she was found, her lawyer Doug Rappaport said in the Netflix documentary.
The film Gone Girl, based on a 2012 novel by Gillian Flynn, was released a year before the case unfolded. tells the story of a woman staging her own disappearance to frame her husband.
In the movie, Amy (played by Rosamund Pike) stages her own disappearance to frame her husband (played by Ben Affleck). She makes an elaborate plan of faking a pregnancy, planting seeds in her neighbor's mind about Nick's temper, and generating sympathy from the public to make people believe he killed her.
The kidnapping
Huskins was abducted from the home she shared with Quinn on March 23, 2015 while her boyfriend was left drugged by the intruders. When Quinn called the police, he was believed to be involved in his girlfriend's disappearance.
A $8,500 ransom from Quinn was demanded but 48 hours later before the deadline, the abducted Huskins resurfaced about 400 miles from her home.
The Vallejo police and media accused the couple of creating a hoax as they went to law enforcement, but they were later proven to be telling the truth as a suspect, disbarred attorney Matthew Mueller, was found.
Since the case, ex-police chief Shawny Williams apologized to the couple in 2021 for calling them liars.
All three episodes of American Nightmare with interviews with Huskins and Quinn, exploring how the local police botched the investigation.