Vallejo kidnapping suspect’s plea interrupted by fainting spell
Drama unfolded in an East Bay courtroom Friday when a Harvard Law School graduate suspected in a bizarre Vallejo kidnapping fainted just as he was expected to plead no contest to a Dublin home invasion.
Matthew Muller, dressed in a red jail jumpsuit and restraints, passed out shortly after he was led into the Hayward courtroom holding area, which is surrounded by Plexiglas and paneling.
Hurley delayed the hearing, considering other cases while medics checked Muller’s vital signs and his attorney asked if he was capable of proceeding with the hearing.
About a half hour later, after extensive questioning from the judge about medications he was on and how he was feeling, Muller entered the series of no-contest pleas to the Dublin home invasion, which occurred in June.
[...] under terms of an agreement hashed out in court Friday, he’ll be allowed to serve the sentence concurrently if he is found guilty or strikes another plea deal to the federal charges stemming from the Vallejo kidnapping.
According to FBI documents, Muller claimed he suffered a “psychotic break” because of an unspecified vaccination.
The plea came a day after Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, filed a legal claim against the city of Vallejo, charging police there destroyed their “lives and reputations” by calling the kidnapping a hoax.
Attorneys for Huskins and Quinn, both 30, said in the claim — which signals an intent to sue — that the city of Vallejo and three officers tarred the couple “through an outrageous, completely unprofessional and wholly unfounded campaign of disparagement.”
Vallejo Police Chief Andrew Bidou has since admitted the department was wrong when it dismissed the report that a masked intruder forcibly took Huskins in the incident that made national headlines and drew comparisons to the movie “Gone Girl.”
In them, an anonymous author claimed to be the leader of an “Ocean’s Eleven” group of gentlemen criminals who had started out by stealing cars and graduated to something much more sinister — a kidnapping “training mission.”