Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
In 2015, Mare Island resident Aaron Quinn called 911 to report his girlfriend had been kidnapped after his home was invaded by unknown men. But Aaron made the call ten hours after the attack took place, raising suspicions over what really happened to his girlfriend Denise Huskins.
The 2024 three-part Netflix documentary “American Nightmare” covers Denise Huskins’ disappearance that soon came to be known as the “Gone Girl” case in popular media. Titled “The Boyfriend,” part one opens with a brief home video of Aaron and Denise enjoying time at the beach. Soon, the screen goes black, and a date stamp of “March 23, 2015” appears – the audio recording of Aaron Quinn’s call to 911 plays, where he reports that someone broke into his house and forcibly took away Denise for ransom money.
From original video clippings of Aaron’s interrogation to television news snippets of the media coverage the case garnered, “American Nightmare” has plenty of material for comprehensive coverage of the case, complemented by a whole host of interviews. This includes Aaron and Denise’s testimonies, along with family members, lawyers, journalists, and police officers who worked on the case. So, unlike a few Netflix documentaries, this one presents as many sides of the story as possible, managing to avoid a lopsided narrative.
“It’s always the boyfriend…” – the cops were sure Aaron had something to do with Denise’s disappearance, believing he most likely murdered her and concocted a cock-and-bull story about the kidnapping. But when Denise was freed by her kidnapper after a harrowing ordeal of being drugged, raped, and traumatized, the police accused her of staging all of it. Was she really kidnapped and then courteously dropped off a few steps away from her home without any ransom money, or was it an elaborate ‘gone girl’ like hoax? For those who don’t know anything about the case, this documentary is a compelling look at how criminal investigations are often distorted by biases, narratives, and media coverage.
“American Nightmare” deftly demonstrates how confirmation bias works and also exposes corruption within the criminal justice system. More often than not, officers are more enthused to close their cases than get to the truth. While it might be understandable for true-crime enthusiasts and the general public to be swayed by postulations based on past precedents, it becomes absolutely dangerous and results in a grave miscarriage of justice when investigators let bias color their judgement. The third part of the documentary wraps up the tale on an emotionally triumphant note, where the truth of what really transpired is finally cracked with the help of hero cop Misty Carausu.
Stream “American Nightmare” on Netflix.
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