Former lawyer's alleged confession to reporter is secretly taped by FBI
An FBI affidavit says the government recorded a disbarred lawyer’s confession to a television news reporter who visited him in jail.
Former lawyer Matthew Muller, a Harvard law grad, is accused of a June home invasion in Dublin, California, and a March kidnapping in nearby Vallejo in a case once thought to be a hoax. Muller’s lawyer is challenging items found as a result of a search of his cellphone, left behind at the Dublin home, but there is additional evidence, Wired reports.
The FBI document says the government recorded Muller confessing to the Vallejo kidnapping when he met with a reporter from KPIX-TV who visited him in jail. In reporter Juliette Goodrich’s report on the meeting, which wasn’t on camera, she disclosed that Muller didn’t deny a role in the kidnapping. She told viewers, however, that certain parts of the conversation couldn’t be revealed because they were “off the record and for background only.”
According to an FBI summary of Muller’s remarks, he confessed and told Goodrich he was acting alone, despite anonymous emails sent to police describing involvement of a three-person gang.
The government is citing Muller’s remarks in a bid to obtain a search warrant to search a hard drive in Muller’s car, as well as laptops and cellphones from a home where he is believed to have held kidnapping victim Denise Huskins.
In April 2012, Muller was featured in an ABA Journal photo gallery about some of the country’s “techiest lawyers.”
