After an incident with an eerie resemblance to bestselling novel turned blockbuster movie Gone Girl, police thought that Denise Huskins made up her own kidnapping in March 2015. Huskins really was held at gunpoint, drugged and kidnapped, but according to People, there are still people who are convinced that she was lying. They're mostly strangers on the internet, and they're not shy at all about telling Huskins what they think about her.
Huskins was kidnapped from the home where she and her husband, Aaron Quinn, lived on March 23, 2015. Quinn called the police the next day and claimed he had been drugged by the kidnappers, and that they demanded $8,500 for ransom. But only a couple of days later, Huskins was returned safely to her father's house. People were confused as to why Quinn took so long to call the police, and wondered why Huskins was returned so quickly and without being hurt. Police eventually said that “this event appears to be an orchestrated event and not a kidnapping."
But then things took a strange turn. On July 13, 2015, the FBI arrested a lawyer named Matthew Muller for home invasion and kidnapping after his suspected involvement in a kidnapping case similar to Huskins’. He pled guilty, after which Huskins’ family demanded that the police apologize. Even weirder, two possible suspects later emailed a San Francisco reporter, saying that they kidnapped Huskins by mistake, and that they had actually meant to kidnap someone else. They even said they really liked Huskins and thought she displayed a lot of bravery during the kidnapping. Could this get any more bizarre? Both Huskins and Quinn have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Vallejo, California, and Vallejo’s police department.
But there are still people who think that Huskins is lying about her kidnapping, and feel the need to tell her so by sending her messages on Facebook. Huskins posted a message she received on her Facebook page, which said, “Are you that horrible lying woman who faked her own kidnapping? Oh wow you are such a horrible person.” The author also called Huskins an "ignorant slut" and a "filthy whore" among other mysogynistic insults.
“All I did was survive, and I was criminalized for it,” Huskins wrote, saying that the message caused her to have a PTSD attack.
After speaking out, Huskins received supportive messages, which she thanked senders for with another Facebook post on Monday.
The online attacks on Huskins are similar to those endured by the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, which were chronicled in a recent New York Magazine story. For some reason, people feel compelled to force conspiracy thories on the victims of crimes. Here's an idea: If you're into conspiracy theories, just talk to other online enthusiasts about them—it's much healthier and less harmful.