When Huskins’ boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, reported her kidnapping, authorities cast doubts on his story as it seemed to get stranger and stranger
A home invasion and abduction gets stranger and stranger in the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming docuseries, American Nightmare. The three-part film, which premieres Jan. 17, reexamines the unusual 2015 disappearance of Denise Huskins and the testimony of her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, which police doubted at the time.
“My girlfriend, Denise, got kidnapped last night,” Quinn tells a 911 operator at the beginning of the series’ trailer.
“And you didn’t call last night when this occurred?” the receptionist says.
“I was tied up.”
The preview shows police questioning Quinn, who describes a scene in which men in wet suits blinded and tased Huskins and him. “Did they swim in?” a cop asks him. He describes being bound and protests accusations of being involved in the abduction. Then, two days later, when Huskins returns — ostensibly delivered home by her captors — the investigation becomes a cause célèbre. People, including Nancy Grace, begin questioning the couple’s story, alleging that Huskins was a “Gone Girl” like the titular antihero in author Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel. By the end of the trailer, police are reporting having found zip ties, toy guns, and a blowup doll, which only makes the incident more curious.
Filmmakers Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, who previously worked on The Tinder Swindler, promise to separate fact from fiction with interrogation footage and new interviews in the film.
A few years ago, Huskins and Quinn, told their own story — and what it was like for the police not to believe them — in the book, Victim F: From Crime Victims, to Suspects, to Survivors. “You can go through any kind of trauma to where it leaves you devastated and in a place where you just think, ‘This is impossible to move forward from. What do I do next?’” Huskins told ABC News in 2021. “I think ours is an example of that. There is hope. It might take time, and it might be a lot of hard work, but there is hope.”
