Vallejo, Ca., police had ruled the kidnapping and ransoming of 29-year-old Denise Huskins last week an "orchestrated event" by the woman and her boyfriend in a supposed Gone Girl-style fakeout. But now people claiming to be her captors have emailed detailed messages to California news outlets demanding credit for the supposed crime and that Huskins' good name be cleared.

Denise Huskins was allegedly taken against her will from her boyfriend Aaron Quinn's home in Vallejo on March 23 between midnight and 5 a.m. and was supposedly being held for $8,500 ransom. According to his attorneys, Quinn had been drugged and tied up by the kidnappers, and only was able to report Huskins missing seven hours later, after presumably breaking free. Quinn, 30, also claims he was given a drug test by police and interrogated for 17 hours. Huskins turned up—apparently freed by her kidnappers—two days later in Huntington Beach.

But after Quinn skipped a flight to speak with investigators about the supposed abduction, police ruled the entire incident a hoax.

Then another twist came in the already bizarre story: Emails, claiming to be authored by Huskins' kidnappers, containing "numerous details about the alleged kidnapping and referred to auto thefts and home burglaries," were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times.

In an email sent to the Chronicle on Monday, the supposed kidnappers threatened Lt. Kenny Park, a spokesman for the Vallejo police department, offering a noon local time deadline for a public apology: "I/we may be the direct agent of harm. But it will be made crystal clear that the Vallejo Police Department, and you, Mr. Park, had every opportunity to stop it."

That message followed a much longer email from the alleged kidnappers sent to the paper this past Saturday, in which they claimed to be an Oceans Eleven-type group:

Then on Saturday, The Chronicle received a 9,000-word e-mail with numerous details of the supposed kidnapping, along with assertions that the abductors ran an elaborate car-theft operation on Mare Island for months and had burglarized several homes, taking car keys and personal information stored on home computers.

The e-mails have been sent from what appear to be dummy accounts, with names like huskinskidnapping@hotmail.com.

In one e-mail, the sender identified the group as "sort of Ocean's Eleven, gentlemen criminals." The writer said they had turned to kidnapping for ransom because they "did not want to stay thieves or criminals forever. What we really wanted was to complete one or two big jobs and then to do whatever we felt like for the rest of our lives."

The sender said his gang was made up of three core members, two with college educations.

They also described the elaborate means by which they allegedly kidnapped Huskins from her boyfriend's home:

The night of the alleged abduction, the writer said, the team drilled holes in a window pane to release a lock to enter Quinn's home. The sender said the team used plastic squirt guns with "strobe flashlights and laser pointers" duct-taped on them to mimic firearms.

During the alleged crime, Huskins and Quinn were given headphones playing "calming music and some spoken instructions" while the crew went to work with plans to monitor Quinn electronically so he would not go to authorities, the sender wrote. Then they put Huskins into the trunk of Quinn's car and drove off, the e-mail said.

But the alleged abduction was a mistake, apparently: The "kidnappers" claim to have snatched the wrong woman from Quinn's home, and released Huskins "because we were horrified at what we had done."

The Los Angeles Times reports receiving an email from the self-proclaimed kidnappers as well, in which they write, "The Mare Island kidnapping was a training mission to test means and methods that would be used on higher net worth targets."

Huskins' attorney, Douglas Rappaport, told the Chronicle that the emails "contain details that only Denise, Aaron, and kidnappers would know." One of Quinn's lawyers, Amy Morton, also told the paper that her client can also confirm details noted in the emails, including that the couple was given headphones by the alleged captors and holes drilled into a window frame of his home.

Vallejo police have declined to comment on the emails to both the Chronicle and the Times.

[Image via Vallejo Police Dept.]


Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .