If you were living in the Bay Area in 2015, you’ll likely remember the “Gone Girl” kidnapping, when a Mare Island woman was abducted, mysteriously reappeared in Southern California two days later, and was accused by Vallejo police of staging a fake kidnapping with her boyfriend just like the Ben Affleck 2014 movie “Gone Girl.”

• Behind the scenes: The Chronicle’s role in the ‘American Nightmare’ kidnapping

Later, the victim, Denise Huskins, and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were cleared of wrongdoing thanks to a series of emails sent to then-Chronicle reporter Henry K. Lee by the perpetrator, Matthew Muller, and dogged investigation by the Dublin Police Department.

Now the case is back in the news thanks to the three-part Netflix docuseries “American Nightmare.” 

Directors Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, who also directed Netflix’s Emmy-nominated “The Tinder Swindler” (2022), do an excellent job of highlighting how the investigation was bungled by the Vallejo Police Department and the FBI thanks to pages from the old-school police playbook: confirmation bias and the default of treating women’s accounts of sexual assault less than seriously.

The case may be approaching its ninth anniversary, but the issues it raises are perhaps even more relevant today.

Lee, now a reporter for KTVU, represents the media side of the story (the Chronicle was not involved in the making of “American Nightmare”), and it’s not pretty. 

Vallejo police controlled the narrative as the case became a national news story, wreaking havoc on the lives of Huskins and Quinn. It was Vallejo police who noted the similarities to “Gone Girl,” a film directed by David Fincher, released just months before about a woman (Rosamund Pike) who seeks to gain revenge on her cheating husband (Affleck) by faking her own disappearance to set him up. And the media went with it.

Morris and Higgins show restraint and sensitivity handling sensational material while still telling a riveting story — imagine NBC’s “Dateline,” but less cop-friendly. Huskins and Quinn, who sit for their cameras, clearly trust them.

It also tells the inspiring story of a female cop, Detective Misty Carausu of the Dublin police, working her first big case. Now a sergeant with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, Carausu followed the evidence and believed Huskins.

What a concept.

Reach G. Allen Johnson: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com