Matthew Muller, the man convicted in the 2015 kidnapping and rape of a Vallejo woman that became a national story in part because of the cops' mishandling of it, was sentenced Friday to two more life terms for two home invasions that occurred in the South Bay years earlier.

Muller, who had his 48th birthday behind bars Thursday, has been undergoing sentencing this month in Santa Clara County for a pair of home invasions that took place in Palo Alto and Mountain View, one month apart, in 2009. These cases were part of the lore about Muller, and his history of breaking into the homes of women, tying them up, and assaulting them, back when he was under investigation in the Denise Huskins case — the Vallejo kidnapping and rape for which he was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, and another 30 in a state case.

Police had not been able to charge Muller for the Peninsula cases until late last year, when, with Huskins's help and some correspondence from a police chief in Seaside, California, Muller ended up confessing to the home invasions and assaults. He further confessed to committing his first kidnapping and rape at age 16, in 1993. In January, against legal advice, he pleaded guilty to the two 2009 cases.

On Friday, as KTVU reports, Santa Clara County Judge Cynthia A. Sevley sentenced Muller to two additional consecutive life terms. Judge Sevley, having heard harrowing victim statements from the two women who were assaulted, reportedly called Muller's crimes "violent and vicious," and said he was a danger to society. Muller reportedly showed no visible reaction.

This intensely researched 2022 piece for Atavist Magazine describes Muller's bizarre trajectory from Harvard-trained lawyer to a man undergoing a frightening mental health collapse — one that included delusions, paranoia, and an apparent need to attack and control women for his pleasure. Muller had already been engaged to a woman, and had moved back from Boston to the Bay Area — he grew up in Sacramento and attended Pomona College for undergrad — when he began catching the attention of law enforcement in Palo Alto in 2009. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder the year before, and had been suspiciously lurking around the College Terrace neighborhood in Palo Alto at night, which led to him being questioned by police.

In September and October of 2009, he became a person of interest in two home invasions and sexual assaults, one in Mountain View and one in Palo Alto, and police were never able to definitively link him to the crimes.

Muller moved to Mare Island, in Vallejo, with a girlfriend in 2014, and he was suspected of being a black-clad Peeping Tom figure who was being called the "Mare Island Creeper." Through a new set of delusions about an international cabal, a group of "scienced-up version[s] of demons" who lurked among the world's wealthiest people, Muller developed some sort of obsession with Aaron Quinn and his then girlfriend Andrea Roberts, who were his neighbors.

He believed they were part of this cabal, and, reportedly, when he was going through some sort of manic episode months later, in 2015, after breaking up with his girlfriend and moving to his mother's cabin in South Lake Tahoe, he returned to Mare Island to kidnap Quinn and who he thought was Roberts — but, it turned out, Quinn had recently started dating Huskins, who had moved in.

The subsequent tale grew more complex and bizarre — and tragic — when Muller kidnapped Huskins, and Vallejo police, and Nancy Grace, proceeded to disbelieve that she was really kidnapped. Comparing the case to the movie Gone Girl, police and the media accused Quinn and Huskins of fabricating the kidnapping for attention, and continued questioning them even after Muller freed Huskins. It was months later, in June 2015, when Muller would finally be caught by police after a botched home invasion in Dublin — and after a young detective there started putting the pieces together with the Vallejo case.

All of this was detailed in last year's Netflix series, American Nightmare, bringing new national attention to the Huskins case.

Muller, who will likely never leave prison now, still faces yet another prosecution in Contra Costa County — he really spread his chaos thoroughly across the Bay. Previously unknown to law enforcement or the public was a 2015 kidnapping of three people in San Ramon for ransom. The three family members had apparently paid the ransom and never went to police out of fear for their safety, but Muller confessed to the crime in his correspondence with the Seaside police chief.

And, it seems, this may have been the kidnapping Muller had publicly threatened to commit in 2015 emails to former TV personality Nancy Grace and to Vallejo police. Outraged that the police and media were not believing Huskins's story — or his own outrageous description of the crime to a Chronicle reporter in which he compared himself to Oceans 11 — Muller had threatened in the spring of 2015 to offend again, in order to prove his own existence to authorities. And perhaps when the San Ramon family stayed quiet, the Dublin home invasion was his next step at getting attention.

One way or another, he did manage to prove that he was no hoax.

Previously: Matthew Muller, Convicted of Denise Huskins Kidnapping, Pleads Guilty to 2009 Home Invasions