Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Thinks He's Batman - The Matthew Muller Story

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Matthew Muller was a former Marine and Harvard-educated lawyer whose life spiraled into a series of bizarre crimes. In 2015, he broke into the Vallejo, California home of Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, abducting Denise and demanding ransom in what police initially dismissed as a hoax inspired by Gone Girl. Muller, who suffered from mental illness and believed he was a kind of vigilante, held Huskins captive for two days before releasing her. 

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and he's a really smart guy, like he graduated from Harvard Law and everything. However, Matthew's also kind of a psychopath, like he has a bunch of mental health issues going on. So one day, around 2009, I guess he decides he's going to terrorize some people. So at like 5 a.m. in the morning, he puts on a ski mask, and he breaks in a ski mask, and he breaks into a random woman's house. And he ties her up and he makes her wear these blacked out swim goggles so that she can't really see anything.

Then he forces her to drink a lot of NyQuil to make her feel drowsy. And while she's feeling all zonked out on that NyQuil, he starts snooping around her place to gather personal information on her. Then he tells her he's going to essay her, but then luckily he

decides he's not going to for some reason. I guess he chickens out. And if that isn't weird enough, then he starts giving her crime prevention advice. Like he tells her to get a dog so that that will prevent future break-ins from happening. And then he leaves. And about a month later, he does the same thing again. He breaks into a random woman's apartment. He ties her up, he drugs her, and then he threatens her. Now, police investigate these weird home invasions and eventually Matthew becomes a suspect. And they come to the law office where he works and they question him and who knows what he tells. He

them. But unfortunately, police, they don't really have enough evidence to just indict him, so, you know, this doesn't go anywhere. However, just them questioning him makes Matthew super paranoid. Like, he starts believing all kinds of crazy stuff, like if the police are conspiring with the Chinese government to take him down and that they're setting up spy equipment in his office at the law firm that he works at in order to spy on him. So in 2011, he gets a new job. But then he gets all over. paranoid again about that place. He starts believing that they are spying on him and trying to track his movements. So after working there for only six months, he straight up quits. And a few years after

that, he turns into a real creep. Like he moves to a new neighborhood and he kind of becomes like the neighborhood peeping Tom. Like he's climbing on rooftops and spying on women through their windows and like taking pictures of them. This guy is just all over the place. But it's in this new neighborhood that he starts getting his wildest delusions yet. He starts thinking that the world's wealthiest people, the 1% are part of some secret cabal and that they're actually demons, like legitimate demons. So then the next year in 2015, he moves again to a remote cabin in Lake Tahoe. And there, he isolates himself from everyone and he doesn't sleep much. And instead, he obsessively watches the Christopher Nolan Batman movies over and over again. And he ends up creating a nocturnal

vigilante identity for himself. He gets a wetsuit and he creates kind of these crude weapons from items like flashlights and laser pointers and dog collars and swim goggles, stuff like that. Because this guy is convinced that he is a Robin Hood style superhero vigilante like Batman and that he's going to fight evil, the evil being the wealthy 1% demon person. people, I guess. And so as this new vigilante, he selects his first target, a random couple living about 50 miles away, Denise and Aaron. And Denise and Aaron, they're this boyfriend, girlfriend, couple, and they've been dating for a while, and Matthew thinks that they're privileged elite. But in reality, they're just normal middle class people. So one night, he puts on his homemade

vigilante Batman outfit, and here is where shit gets really crazy. While Denise and Aaron are asleep in their home, he breaks in. Then, boom, he wakes them up with a pistol pointed at them. And the pistol, it's actually a water gun, but, you know, they don't know that. So he ties them up and he makes them drink a bunch of NyQuil to make them all sleepy, and he forces them into the bedroom closet. Then he covers Aaron's eyes with blacked out swim goggles so that he can't see, and he places headphones over his ears, and he forces him to listen to a pre-recorded message that says that the break-ins are being performed by professionals to collect debts. I guess that must be part of this Robin Hood delusion. I don't know. But then he places Aaron on the couch and Aaron

passes out because, you know, he's all drugged up on NyQuil. But while he's asleep, Matthew steals Aaron's laptop for some reason. And that laptop will be important later. He also puts tied up Denise in the trunk of Aaron's car and he steals it and he drives away. and he drives all the way to his remote cabin in Lake Tahoe. And there he holds her captive and he assays her. Meanwhile, back at Aaron and Denise's house, Aaron finally wakes up and he sees that he has a voicemail message and it's from Matthew and it's demanding a ransom of $8,500 for Denise's release.

So Aaron later ends up contacting police. While Matthew, he sends an email. email to a reporter at a local newspaper. Because I guess he wants the attention. I don't know. But in that email, he says that Denise will be returned safely tomorrow. That reporter then contacts police. Two days later, Matthew decides to let Denise go. But he drives her all the way down to Huntington Beach, where her hometown is and he drops her off there, which is like several hours from where she was first kidnapped. But whatever, she's finally free to go. And this whole experience has been bizarre and super dramatic, I'm sure.

So then Denise and Aaron, they report all of this to police again. But here's the crazy thing though. The craziest part about this whole thing is that police don't actually believe Denise. They think this whole thing is a hoax and that she and Aaron just made it all up. Police even go on the news and they announce that it was all a hoax. I can tell you that our investigation has concluded that none of the claims has been substantiated. And because of that, the local news starts reporting on it as if it may have been a hoax.

So now, in the public eye, Denise and Aaron are just a couple of liars who, for some reason, fake this whole elaborate kidnapping story. And police, they're not even looking at Matthew as a suspect at this point. So he's probably going to get away with this whole thing. Until. A few months later, Matthew, the fake Batman vigilante, decides to strike again. And he breaks into another random couple's home in a different city. And there, he wakes them up by shining a flashlight in their eyes,

and then boom, he hits the husband on the head with the flashlight, and a struggle ends up ensuing. While the wife, she grabs her phone and she runs to the bathroom, and she calls 911. And while the husband is struggling with Matthew, he yells out, honey, get the gun, get the gun. Even though they don't actually own a gun. But this bluff works, and Matthew, he gets scared and he flees the house. Here's the thing, though.

During that fight with the husband, Matthew's phone had fallen out of his pocket. I guess his fake bat suit just doesn't have very good pockets. So the couple finds it and they hand it over to the police. And police, they're able to trace this phone. back to Matthew's cabin in Lake Tahoe. And so, bam, they arrest Matthew. Here's his mugshot. And so police, they search his cabin

and they find evidence that he was involved in other home break-ins that we had talked about. And they also find Aaron's laptop that Matthew had stolen from them, which connects Matthew to their story and it shows police and everyone else that it wasn't actually a hoax. Aaron and Denise didn't make it all up.

She really was kidnapped. And so therefore, Aaron and Denise end up filing a huge lawsuit against the police department. And police end up settling with them out of court for $2.5 million. Good for them. Anyway, Matthew, he ends up confessing to the kidnapping and a bunch of other crimes. And he gets sentenced to 40 years in prison.