As predicted, attorneys for a couple abducted from their home in Vallejo this spring filed a claim against the city of Vallejo and its police department, claiming those officials waged a "waged a vicious and shocking attack on two victims of a terrifying home invasion, kidnapping and rape" by not believing them and telling the public their tale was a hoax. Jodi Hernandez reports. (Published Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015) 
 
 As predicted, attorneys for a couple abducted from their home in Vallejo this spring filed a claim against the city of Vallejo and its police department, claiming those officials waged a "waged a vicious and shocking attack on two victims of a terrifying home invasion, kidnapping and rape" by not believing them and telling the public their tale was a hoax. 
 
 The claim also asserts that Vallejo police bungled the case so badly, that they lost a sex assault medical test to prove that the woman who was kidnapped had been raped twice. 
 
 A claim is a precursor to a lawsuit, and the 26-page document was filed Thursdayby the San Francisco law firm, Kerr and Wagstaffe, on behalf of Denise Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who were kidnapped on March 23 and later set free by their captor or captors. The claim also targets specific officers: Detective Matthew Mustard, Lt. Kenny Park and Officer Garcia, whose first name was not known. 
 
 The story was so wild that Vallejo police said the bizarre events were made up. In fact, the claim uses a March 25 statement made by Park at a news conference when he stated: "Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins have plundered valuable resources away from our community, and has taken the focus away from the true victims of our community, while instilling fear amongst our community members. So, if anything, it is Mr. Quinn and Ms. Huskins that owes this community an apology.” 
 
 In July however, the FBI arrested Matthew Muller as the key suspect in the couple’s abduction, though he has not been formally charged in that case. He is being held in a separate matter following a home invasion in Dublin. 
 
 Neither the Vallejo police nor the mayor have publicly apologized to Huskins and Quinn. But the Chief of Police Andrew Bidou did write Quinn and Huskins a letter on July 20, which was submitted as evidence, to "apologize" for the comments made by police, which proved to be "unnecessarily harsh and offensive." Bidou wrote that once Muller has been charged in the Vallejo case, he hopes that the “VPD will make our apology to you public.” 
 
 Park deferred his comments on Thursday to the city of Vallejo. "We have not been served with a lawsuit,” said Joanna Altman, spokesperson for the city of Vallejo. “But it sounds like there's a possibility of pending litigation, so we can't comment.” 
 
 In general, the claim asserts that the police and the city engaged in "malicious and unlawful conduct," "violated the constitutional rights and unfairly destroyed" the couple's reputations through an "outrageous, completely unprofessional and wholly unfounded campaign of disparagement." 
 
 And instead of finding true perpetrator, later identified as Muller, the attorneys said that Huskins, Quinn and the "citizens of Vallejo" deserve justice for the "inexcusable conduct." Some of that conduct, the claim asserts, is that police had incorrectly assumed that Huskins was dead and Quinn killed her, and spent hours interrogating him, when they could have been looking for his girlfriend who was "in the hands of a violent kidnapper." 
 
 Police didn't let Quinn use his phone, which he told them, correctly, would be receiving emails and communications from the kidnappers, the claim asserts. The kidnapper did email and even call Quinn, the claim asserts, but police had put the phone on airplane mode, and the police "missed an opportunity to trace the phone to its South Lake Tahoe locations." As police were "dithering," the claim asserts, Huskins was "sexually assaulted, yet again." The claim asserts that Huskins was raped twice. At a news conference, attorney Jim Wagstaffe said that it is an "unbelievable Gone Girl conspiracy" that Huskins was accused of not telling the truth about her rape, and that it is awful that innocent people were "painted as if they were part of a hoax." 
 
 Muller has not been charged with rape, although the FBI affidavit state that Huskins reported she was sexually assaulted. 
 
 But on page 16, the claim asserts that Vallejo police bungled much of the investigation, including losing Huskins' Sexual Assault Response Team kit. Park said he was told he could not comment on a "pending litigious case." 
 
 The claim also states police failed to return several items back to the couple, including their cars and laptops. Then, in June, the claim asserts that Quinn's home was burglarized of about $5,000, but Vallejo police have "refused to pursue the robbery." 
 
 NBC Bay Area's Jodi Hernandez contributed to this report. 

 Claim: Vallejo cops told kidnapped woman’s lawyer to watch ‘Gone Girl’ 
 
 FILE - In this July 13, 2015, file photo, Denise Huskins, left, and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn listen as their attorneys speak at a news conference in Vallejo, Calif. Attorneys for Huskins plan to file a claim against the city whose police initially dismissed her kidnapping as a hoax. Law firm Kerr and Wagstaffe has announced that its attorneys intend to file the claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, against Vallejo on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015. (Mike Jory/Vallejo Times-Herald via AP, File) less FILE - In this July 13, 2015, file photo, Denise Huskins, left, and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn listen as their attorneys speak at a news conference in Vallejo, Calif. Attorneys for Huskins plan to file a claim ... more Photo: Mike Jory, Associated Press Photo: Mike Jory, Associated Press Image 1 of / 57 Caption Close Claim: Vallejo cops told kidnapped woman’s lawyer to watch ‘Gone Girl’ 1 / 57 Back to Gallery 
 
 At a time when they should have been tracking down a violent kidnapper and rapist, Vallejo police “destroyed the lives and reputations” of two innocent victims of an abduction on Mare Island by calling the episode a hoax, according to a legal claim filed Thursday by lawyers for the couple. 
 
 The attorneys for Denise Huskins and Aaron 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 from her boyfriend’s home in March and then asked for a ransom, an incident that made national headlines. 
 
 In a July 20 letter to the couple, the chief wrote that the incident was “not a hoax or orchestrated event” and that his department’s “conclusions were incorrect.” 
 
 “We apologize for and regret comments made by representatives of the Vallejo Police Department during the initial kidnapping investigation,” Bidou wrote. “We understand that these contributed to the difficulty and personal ordeal that you have experienced.” 
 
 Those letters were too little, too late, according to three attorneys for the couple, who held a Thursday news conference announcing the claim that seeks unspecified damages. They said Vallejo police “rubbed salt in the wounds” of Huskins and Quinn. 
 
 The department admitted its error after federal authorities tracked down 38-year-old Matthew Muller — a Harvard graduate and disbarred immigration attorney — and named him as the intruder who held Huskins. 
 
 Labeled a hoax 
 
 Vallejo police had publicly called the kidnap-for-ransom a hoax during a March news conference after Huskins turned up in Southern California and hired an attorney. “There is no evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or any abduction at all,” police Lt. Kenny Park said at the time. 
 
 From the beginning, Vallejo police didn’t believe Quinn’s story, said his attorney, Kevin Clune. 
 
 “Rather than recognizing that Aaron was telling the truth and that Denise — and the public — were at extreme danger from a violent predator, the Vallejo police immediately and recklessly assumed, based on nothing but speculation, that Denise was already dead and that Aaron had killed her,” Clune wrote in the claim. 
 
 Upon Huskins’ safe return, police shifted to a theory that the couple devised an elaborate scheme of deception, the lawyers said. 
 
 Request ‘demeaned’ 
 
 Huskins’ attorney at the time requested that she be examined for evidence of a sexual assault, but police “demeaned the exam request, responded that the sexual assault exam could wait, and told her attorney that Denise should ‘keep her clothes on,’” Clune wrote. “A law enforcement official on the case told Denise’s attorney to watch ‘Gone Girl,’” in which a woman fakes her own kidnapping. 
 
 Before she was freed, Huskins’ mother confided to police that her daughter had been molested when he was 12, her attorney said. 
 
 That’s when an officer told the mother that, “in his experience, women who have already been sexually assaulted often pretend that it is happening again in order to gain attention and relive the excitement of that experience,” Clune wrote. 
 
 What’s more, in the months after the hoax accusations, but before Muller was arrested, robbers looted Quinn’s Vallejo home, where he no longer was staying, according to the claim. 
 
 Robbers stole $5,000 in tools, appliances and other hardware and electronics but Vallejo police “refused to pursue the robbery,” his attorney said. 
 
 Proof of life 
 
 Huskins was taken March 23 after Muller broke into the couple’s home, drugged Quinn and stuffed Huskins into the trunk of a car, according to an FBI affidavit. The kidnapper later demanded two payments of $8,500 from Quinn, while twice sexually assaulting Huskins over two days. She was released two days later near her parents’ home in Huntington Beach (Orange County). 
 
 Amid the abduction, Huskins’ captor sent The Chronicle a “proof of life” recording of Huskins, showing she was alive, which was forwarded to Vallejo police. 
 
 Muller was identified as the suspect in June, when a cell phone left at the scene of a bungled home robbery in Dublin was allegedly traced back to him. He has been accused of burglary, attempted robbery and assault in the Dublin case, and named in a federal complaint in Huskins’ kidnapping. 
 
 E-mails to Chronicle 
 
 Included in the evidence against Muller are two e-mails sent to The Chronicle on March 26 and 28. 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.” 
 
 The e-mails are alternately boastful of the group’s exploits, apologetic for the crime and dismissive of Vallejo police. The FBI says Muller wrote the e-mails. 
 
 Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSeronffsky
– The California couple whose assault and kidnapping was publicly labeled a hoax by police filed a legal claim against the city of Vallejo and three police officers today alleging they "waged a vicious and shocking attack on two victims of a terrifying home invasion, kidnapping, and rape," NBC Bay Area reports. The bizarre case made national news in March when an intruder broke into Aaron Quinn's home and kidnapped his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Huskins was reportedly sexually assaulted before being found two days later. Regardless, police chided the couple and said they owed the community an apology during a press conference in March, NBC reports. “There is no evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or any abduction at all,“ the Chronicle reports one officer saying at the time. NBC reports the claim, which signals an intent to sue, states police completely bungled the entire investigation. Among the claims: Police put Quinn's cellphone on airplane mode, missing calls and emails from the kidnapper; lost Huskins' sexual assault test kit; and wasted time interrogating Quinn instead of looking for Huskins. According to the Chronicle, the claim also alleges law enforcement officials said Huskins should "keep her clothes on" after she asked to be examined for sexual assault and told her attorney to watch Gone Girl, which depicts a fake kidnapping. Vallejo police sent a letter of apology to the couple after a Harvard-educated lawyer was arrested in July in connection with the kidnapping and other similar crimes.