Hi everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander and I am here with Josh Mankiewicz. Hi, Josh.

Hello.

And today we are Talking Dateline. Today's episode is called Twisted Tale. It's a story so bizarre, so full of twists that police didn't just doubt the victims.

They in fact accused them of faking the entire thing. It all started with a

2015 home invasion in Vallejo, California, where Denise Huskins was kidnapped and her boyfriend

Aaron Quinn was left behind with a strange story that nobody believed. When similar stories started to

come out and a suspect was eventually apprehended, it became clear that someone

dangerous had, in fact, been terrorizing the community. If you haven't heard the episode yet,

it's the one right below this one on the list of podcasts, so go ahead, listen to it, and then come

back here, or of course, you can go watch it on Peacock. And when you come back, Josh has an extra clip from his interview with a reporter who

covered the case, and later we'll talk about how Denise and Aaron are doing today.

So make sure you stick around for that.

All right, guys, Josh, let's talk Dateline, my friend.

Let's talk Dateline.

Okay, first of all, we should have some kind of, like, listener competition as to how many times the word twisted has been used in a dateline title for an episode because the answer is a lot.

A lot, but this, okay, so twisted tail, let me tell you, this one threw me for a loop. I was riding an emotional roller coaster all over this story. And every five minutes, I thought that I had it solved. I said, oh, okay, these people are faking. They're kidnapping. Fine. So where do we go for the rest of the episode? Oh, maybe there. It just was, I did not know which way to go until close to the end. This one was good.

Well, I mean, it's not every day that you get a story like this one, in which the true story

is so hard to believe that police brand it phony. I mean, that's kind of, as a storyteller,

that's the cops sort of doing your job for you.

And then, of course, it turns out the actual story was exactly what Denise and Aaron said it was.

And it was horrifying. And they went through hell. And then they sort of went through hell again

because people didn't believe

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