Purported Vallejo kidnappers demand apology from 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 / 25 Caption Close Purported Vallejo kidnappers demand apology from police 1 / 25 Back to Gallery

In the days since Vallejo police declared that the reported kidnapping of a woman was a hoax, The Chronicle has received a series of e-mails from someone claiming to be one of her abductors, saying her ordeal was real and they wanted to clear her name.

The e-mails included numerous details about the alleged kidnapping and referred to auto thefts and home burglaries that the sender said his group had committed on Vallejo’s Mare Island, where 29-year-old Denise Huskins was reported missing from her boyfriend’s home March 23.

Vallejo police and the FBI declined to speculate on whether the e-mails indicate that there was an abduction, whether they are part of an ongoing hoax, or whether the sender has no connection to the case.

On Monday, The Chronicle received yet another e-mail — this time demanding that Vallejo police apologize to Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, 30, for calling the alleged kidnapping “an orchestrated event” and saying the couple could face criminal charges if they were involved.

The message included a veiled threat: If Vallejo police — and specifically Lt. Kenny Park, a spokesman for the department — did not apologize by noon Tuesday, “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.”

Police decline comment

Park and other police officials declined to comment Monday on any of the e-mails, including whether they or FBI officials were trying to learn who is sending them.

None of the e-mails has been signed, but all were written in a similar style and contained apologies for what the writer called a case of mistaken identity in the alleged abduction of Huskins, a Kaiser Permanente physical therapist.

The first e-mail was sent to The Chronicle on March 24, before Huskins turned up in Orange County, and contained a digital file with a “proof of life” message from a woman who said she was Huskins. She said she had been kidnapped but was “otherwise fine.”

After Huskins showed up at her father’s home in Huntington Beach on Wednesday, The Chronicle received a longer e-mail from someone purporting to be one of the kidnappers, and it described a sophisticated group of criminals who were sorry for their actions.

Lengthy e-mail

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.

Describing break-in

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.

It was all a case of mistaken identity, the sender wrote. They thought someone besides Huskins would be in the house.

In an earlier e-mail to The Chronicle, the sender said, “We dropped Ms. Huskins off at her home in Huntington Beach because it was more or less equidistant to the Bay Area and because we were horrified at what we had done.”

Explaining ransom

Police have said the kidnappers were demanding a seemingly paltry ransom of $8,500, which Quinn’s attorney says was directed at the Vallejo man. The e-mail writer said, “We chose $8,500 because it was below the $10,000 reporting threshold, and far enough below that it likely would not be flagged as part of a structured transaction under that prong of the reporting law.”

Under banking laws, all cash withdrawals of more than $10,000 must be reported to the federal government.

Police have not talked publicly about the case since Wednesday night, when Park said the couple had wasted police resources. Huskins and Quinn have not commented.

Attorneys representing Huskins and Quinn said Monday that they believe the messages are legitimate and clear their clients of any wrongdoing.

“All the facts that our client experienced are absolutely reflected in this e-mail,” Quinn’s lawyer, Daniel Russo, said after reading the longest of the messages. “I think the bottom line is that the story was too unbelievable (for police) to imagine. So they started out from a place that (Huskins and Quinn) were lying.”

Left behind

Russo’s law partner, Amy Morton, said Quinn had confirmed several aspects of the e-mails, including the laser-pointer guns and the headphones that he and Huskins were allegedly forced to wear.

Morton sent a photo to The Chronicle showing holes bored in a window frame that she said was at Quinn’s home. She also said the kidnappers had left a phone charger and battery at the home, supposedly to keep an open line of communication at all times, and that “the police neglected to pick it up and it was still at the home” after officers questioned Quinn.

Huskins’ attorney, Douglas Rappaport, said the e-mail “contains details that only Denise, Aaron and kidnappers would know.”

He said he believes police declared the incident a hoax because “they were dealing with a group of criminals that was far more sophisticated and with computer skills that go well beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of police officers or FBI agents.”

Henry K. Lee and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: hlee@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @henryklee, @EvanSernoffsky