Purported kidnapper drops ultimatum to Vallejo police

A Vallejo police department officer sits in front of the home of Denise Huskins, the apparent kidnap victim, on Kirkland Avenue on Mare Island Tuesday March 24, 2015. The Vallejo, Calif. police department says Denise Huskins, a Kaiser physical therapist, is the apparent victim of a kidnapping for ransom. less A Vallejo police department officer sits in front of the home of Denise Huskins, the apparent kidnap victim, on Kirkland Avenue on Mare Island Tuesday March 24, 2015. The Vallejo, Calif. police department says ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Purported kidnapper drops ultimatum to Vallejo police 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

A person claiming to be the ringleader of a group that kidnapped a 29-year-old Vallejo woman backed away Tuesday from an ultimatum for police to apologize for calling the incident a hoax.

The apparent change of heart was spelled out in an e-mail sent to the attorneys for 30-year-old Aaron Quinn and his girlfriend Denise Huskins, the woman who went missing from Quinn’s Mare Island home early March 23.

Police initially investigated the case as a kidnapping for ransom. But after Huskins turned up safe at her father’s home in Huntington Beach (Orange County) on March 25, a Vallejo police spokesman called the incident “an orchestrated event” and suggested that the couple — both physical therapists with Kaiser Permanente — could face criminal charges.

Over the past several days, a person claiming to be one of Huskins’ kidnappers sent The Chronicle a series of e-mails saying the incident was real, and that if police did not publicly apologize to Huskins and Quinn by noon Tuesday, the abductor would be a “direct agent of harm.”

Ultimatum 'wrong’

But early Tuesday, Huskins’ attorney, Douglas Rappaport, and Quinn’s attorneys, Dan Russo and Amy Morton, received an e-mail from the purported kidnapper calling the ultimatum “wrong” and saying, “We will not attempt any further damage or harm.”

The sender added that “police do not deserve to be targeted, even ones who make poor calls about how to treat victims. And certainly innocent civilians do not deserve to be in harm’s way, nor to have their property harmed, nor even to have their sense of security eroded.”

Authorities have not commented on the case since March 25. Police and the FBI have not said whether they think the messages are from a kidnapper, part of an elaborate hoax involving Huskins or Quinn, or from someone not connected to the case.

The sender said Tuesday’s message would be the last for “at least several months.”

'Not some game’

The author said the ultimatum was lifted because “to do otherwise would disregard and dishonor the one positive thing we learned from this, that it is not some game and real humans are involved.”

In earlier e-mails, including one that was 9,000 words long, the sender described the abductors as car thieves who had also committed several home burglaries on Mare Island, and had turned to kidnapping-for-ransom as a more lucrative endeavor. The e-mails, none of them signed, were written in a similar style.

The gang was made up of college-educated men with an in-depth knowledge of computers and electronics who fancied themselves Ocean’s Eleven-style “gentleman criminals,” the sender wrote in one e-mail to The Chronicle.

Pricey drone

The purported ringleader also claimed to be using “a multi-thousand dollar custom drone, not a kid’s toy,” with a thermal imaging camera, to help in the crimes. In Tuesday’s e-mail, the sender stressed that the drone was “not weaponized,” and said that in general “something should be done about drones” and they “ought to be regulated.”

Russo said he had forwarded the e-mail to the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento, which he said is the lead investigating agency in the case. The office did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Neither did Vallejo police, who said last week they were looking at whether Huskins and Quinn should face charges. “There is no evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or an abduction at all,” Lt. Kenny Park said at a news conference after Huskins reappeared.

Attorneys for the couple insist the kidnapping was genuine. They pointed out that Quinn was the target of an $8,500 ransom demand, which they said should eliminate him as a suspect.

'This is real’

Details of the alleged kidnapping contained in the e-mails could have been known only by the perpetrators, the attorneys said.

“This is not just a continuation of a hoax that has already played out. This is real,” Rappaport said Tuesday. “Denise is an innocent individual who has now lost her dignity and her reputation, not to mention the physical and emotional trauma that she suffered.”

He added that “the Vallejo Police Department was too quick to judge. There is a lot here, and this is a very complicated situation. We’re hopeful that further investigation will show these are very sophisticated criminals.”

In Tuesday’s message, the sender offered to surrender if the other purported kidnappers were given immunity from prosecution. An alternative plan, the sender wrote, would be to “go overseas and teach English,” or perhaps to “live off the grid and read books for the rest of my life.”

“For what it’s worth, what could have ended up as a prolific and dangerous criminal group has disbanded,” the sender wrote. “And you have Denise Huskins to thank for that.”

The writer closes by saying that if police find him, “I might have another spray-painted squirt gun. Or maybe it will be a real gun, empty. Or maybe not empty. Don’t think too hard about that, just aim true and get it done.”

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky