One of many revelations in the Netflix true crime documentary American Nightmare is the involvement of FBI agent David Sesma. Here’s everything we know about what happened to him.
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn appear in American Nightmare to share their accounts of the traumatic events that unfolded in 2015. Sounding like a plot ripped straight from a movie, their home was invaded and they were made to follow a truly bizarre set of instructions. Then, Huskins was kidnapped and assaulted, only to be returned two days later.
During this time, the Vallejo PD detectives on the case treated Quinn as the key suspect before turning on them both. Despite significant evidence showing they had been the victims of an attack, both the authorities and the media accused them of being time wasters, dubbing the incident the “Gone Girl hoax.”
When the true crime documentary series released in January, Vallejo PD, including Detective Mat Mustard, faced intense scrutiny for how they handled the case. The same goes for FBI agent David Sesma — but who is he and what happened to him?
American Nightmare: What happened to David Sesma?
David Sesma was the lead FBI agent on Huskin and Quinn’s case. What transpired during the couple’s civil case against the city of Vallejo was that Sesma used to date Andrea Roberts — Quinn’s ex-fiancée and the woman who perpetrator Matthew Muller said was the intended target of the abduction.
According to The US Sun, Sesma still works as an FBI agent, although it’s not known where he currently resides. His involvement in the case sparked numerous theories following the release of American Nightmare, in which Quinn and Huskins describe how the kidnapper said they had the wrong woman. Apparently, they had meant to abduct Quinn’s ex Roberts, but Muller, who was later arrested for the crime, never revealed why.
It’s later revealed that Roberts dated Sesma, who overtook Huskins’ case and refused to believe the couple’s account of events. “Almost by accident, we find out that the lead case agent, David Sesma, used to date my ex, Andrea, who was the intended target for this whole thing,” says Quinn.
Defense attorney Doug Rappaport explains: “There’s absolutely no way Sesma should be on this case. It’s a clear, unequivocal, black-and-white conflict of interest. So I write to the office of Inspector General, explain the situation. Their response: ‘The appropriate authorities found this conduct ‘unproblematic.’”
Another unexplained detail is that Huskins and Quinn were convinced there was more than one perpetrator, having seen the feet of numerous men when their home was invaded — but Muller was the only person who was arrested. These unusual circumstances spawned multiple theories among viewers.
One wrote on Reddit: “I have a theory that FBI agent David Sesma hired Matthew Muller to abduct Denise. He had a prior relationship with Andrea just before she started seeing Aaron. He knew Muller was local peeping Tom and hired him to commit the act. Had the power to turn the investigation on Aaron and Denise and the ability to dismiss the ‘associates’ saying Muller acted alone.”
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“I wouldn’t be surprised at all if your theory holds water,” replied another. “Imagine how much information was held back during this gong show and what both Mustard and Sesma, the f*ckwaffles, motives were in all of this. Clearly, they both had agendas.”
Even though it’s unlikely Sesma was in cahoots with Muller, his link to those involved is certainly a conflict of interest. “Sesma had nothing to do with it, they just included that to show us how grossly mishandled the case was,” added another commenter.
Following the Netflix doc, there was a call for Sesma to face consequences for his involvement in the case — one person has even launched a petition asking to “remove David Sesma from the FBI for Obstruction of Justice.” They wrote: “David Sesma’s actions are particularly disturbing because they obstruct justice for women, making him unfit to serve in an institution meant to uphold law and order.”
American Nightmare creators Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins explained to Variety that they did try to contact all of the FBI agents who were involved with Huskins’ case, but they didn’t hear back.
“We reached out to all the police and FBI involved. We would have loved to have interviewed them. There’s a real missed opportunity here for law enforcement to be humble, and admit that they made mistakes and share with us how they’re trying to remedy these kinds of errors so that they don’t happen again. Unfortunately, they didn’t take that opportunity,” said Huggins.
“They turned their back on us, and just shut down. We’re really lucky that the police interrogation tapes do the work for us. That is all the evidence we need, really, but in terms of the Andrea and David Sesman connection, Denise’s lawyer wrote to the United States Attorney and said, ‘This is outrageous. This guy should not be on the case.’
“There was this lull in between Denise being released and Matthew Muller being caught, their attorney tried to get David Sesma off the case. Aaron and Denise, were obviously, at this point, feeling like, ‘What the hell is going on? Every time we think that it can’t get any worse, it does.’ So it starts to feel personal. Anyone who’s grown up watching any kind of police shows knows that if you have a connection to the case, you’re not supposed to be working on it.”
However, Higgins went on to state: “But there’s no reason to believe that David or Andrea had anything to do with anything that happened. That was an unfortunate set of coincidences, but nonetheless, there should be a bar when it comes to integrity and that clearly was not reached on many, many occasions during this investigation.”
American Nightmare is available to watch on Netflix now. For more true crime, check out all the documentaries heading to streaming this month, as well as all of the best serial killer documentaries and where to watch them.
