A Real-Life 'Gone Girl' Couple Gets Vindication
Imagine being woken in the middle of the night by armed men wearing wetsuits and pointing laser sights from their guns at your forehead.
One hands you a zip-tie and instructs you to bind your boyfriend. Then he tells him to do the same to you. They require you to don dark goggles and headphones. A robotic voice tells you that you're being kidnapped for ransom by a professional cartel.
You're both forced to drinks a concoction of Nyquil and a tranquilizer. Minutes later, one of you is in the trunk of a car heading God knows where, while the other lies face down on the floor, terrorized with fear. He's been warned that cameras are tracking his every action. Should he call the police, the kidnappers will kill his girlfriend on the spot.
It sounds like a horrible Steven Segal film, but this happened to actual Bay area couple Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, who are my guest on this week's Write About Now Podcast.
Photo by Austin Einhorn
Miraculously, Denise and Austin both survived the ordeal only to face another traumatic experience: Nobody believed their story—not the cops, not the media, not the Twitterverse.
The crime was labeled a real-life "Gone Girl," and Denise and Austin went from being victims to suspects.
What happened next? I don't want to give it away. But let's say that if I pitched this to a studio executive, she'd laugh me out of the room.
Let me know what you think in the comments.