The Girl in the Leaves (10 page)

Another reporter asked, “Just so we get this right. You are not saying at this point
that you think these four are dead?”

Barber replied, “Not at this time, no.”

Someone wanted to know if there had been any activity on any of the missing people’s
credit cards. Barber said there hadn’t been, and added, “We’re checking those kinds
of things. Bank accounts, cell phones, text messages. We are utilizing the FBI in
doing a lot of analysis for us. We’ve also joined forces with the Central Ohio Child
Abduction Response Team, which includes Franklin and Delaware County detectives. They
were here most of yesterday.”

One reporter wanted to know more about the blood that had been found in the residence,
how much of it there was and where exactly it had been located.

Sheriff Barber declined to go into specifics, citing investigative reasons, but noted
that “there was an unusual amount of blood in that house. The one thing I can say
is, it was not from someone stubbing their toe or cutting their finger while peeling
an apple.”

“It’s not like an ax murder or anything like that, right?” the reporter asked.

“No,” Barber said.

Though in truth, that wasn’t a far-off description of events.

“How long will it be for BCI&I to analyze the blood?” another reporter asked, and
Barber responded that BCI&I was making it a priority case, but that it would take
more than just a few days to do the analysis.

In response to “Any persons of interest surface at this time?” Barber said there were
none as yet.

“You’ve talked to Greg, the boyfriend?” a reporter pressed.

“Yes, certainly.”

“And he is not a suspect?”

“No, he is not.”

A journalist commented, “Stephanie had three children, I believe. Do you know what
is going on with them?”

Barber said, “Detectives have interviewed those family members. And they, like the
rest of us, are brainstorming to try and figure out where Stephanie went.”

“Are Stephanie’s children in any kind of custody, like human services?”

“No. I think her youngest is nine, and there is a twenty-year-old son and seventeen-year-old
daughter. They are not in custody of children’s services or anything like that.”

“You’re getting a lot of help from the FBI and other agencies—can you tell us what
the functions of your office is right now?”

Sheriff Barber responded, “We are the primary investigating agency. Obviously when
you have a situation of this magnitude—I mean it’s very unusual you would have four
people go missing at the same time. We did ask for assistance. As far as the analysis
of evidence and computer analysis, the FBI has those kinds of resources.” Barber added,
“I’ve never been afraid to ask for help. You know that the Knox County Sheriff’s Office
will participate with anyone it takes to get the case done.”

* * *

The WBNS television station out of Columbus, Ohio, spoke with Larry Maynard again
for a short time that day. Larry told a reporter, “Tina was searching for a new place
to live.” He added that Sarah and Kody had told him things that did not put Greg in
the best light.

Greg Borders, who said of his relationship with Tina, “We were fairly civil. I mean,
as civil as you can be living in the same house when you are split up. There were
arguments every once in a while and disagreements, but I was still watching her kids
at night when she went to work. I do think that something bad happened.”

As to that part, Larry Maynard told the reporter, “I’m expecting the worst, but hoping
for the best.”

By now, some of Sarah’s and Kody’s friends had gotten involved. One of their friends,
Morgan McCarthy, created a page on Facebook to coordinate volunteer search activities
in the region. McCarthy told a reporter, “I’m hoping that they find them and they
are safe and Kody and Sarah are back in school soon.” By that night, more than six
hundred people had joined the group page, which became a repository for messages and
prayers. One of them was from Rebecca Cook, who wrote, “I’m hoping that someone will
see the missing people at a gas station where they might be on vacation or something,
and they say, ‘Hey, people are looking for you.’”

Though Larry Maynard hoped that would happen, deep down he knew it was a very slim
possibility.

FIFTEEN

A Huge Break

On November 13, 2010, Captain David Shaffer contacted Walmart in Mount Vernon to cross-reference
purchases of the tarps and fifty-five-gallon heavy-duty trash bags found in Tina Herrmann’s
garage. A woman from customer service was able to locate the purchase of a tarp with
the same bar code and a purchase date and bar code on the trash bags. The purchase
had occurred just after midnight on November 11, 2010. The only problem was that the
person who had bought the items had done so with cash, not a credit or debit card.

To try and identify the person who had bought the items, BCI&I Special Agent Joe Dietz
and Detective David Light went to Walmart to request that the store provide them with
a video of purchases made around the given time frame. They spoke with Jared Scoles
of the store’s security department, telling him that they needed the video immediately.

Dietz noted in his own report that he obtained a copy of the receipt for the transaction,
and by comparing the product codes on the receipt with items on the shelf, and relaying
that information to Special Agent Daniel Winterich at the crime scene, was able to
determine that the items recovered at the crime scene exactly matched the items purchased
at Walmart. Dietz noted that in addition to the garbage bags listed on the receipt,
tarps, a turkey sandwich and T-shirt had also been purchased during the same transaction.

Scoles provided a video for the two investigators. One person on the footage soon
caught their attention: a white male who exited the store with a purchased tarp and
garbage bags. He looked to be between twenty-five and forty years of age, and was
wearing eyeglasses and a camouflage shirt. He had brown hair with a partially receding
hairline. They could see on the security cameras that the man crossed the parking
lot and got into a small silver-colored car, then drove out of the parking lot eastward
in the direction of Apple Valley.

Scoles told the officers that he thought the car looked like a Toyota Yaris. The officers
uploaded photos of a Toyota Yaris from the Internet and agreed that the silver car
in the video matched that description.

This was a huge break. Officers began researching all male owners of Toyota Yaris’s
in Knox County. Special Agent Dietz and Lieutenant Gary Rohler checked the Ohio Law
Enforcement Gateway system for owners of silver Toyota Yaris vehicles in Knox County.
Rohler quickly pulled up one image that looked a great deal like the man on the videotape.
The man was named Matthew J. Hoffman, and he had renewed his driver’s license on October
26, only sixteen days previously. Incredibly, when Hoffman had his driver’s license
photo taken, he was wearing the same kind of camouflage shirt as the man on the Walmart
videotape. While the new driver’s license photo did not show Matthew Hoffman with
glasses, earlier driver’s license photos did.

Agent Dietz checked the Knox County Auditor website, looking for Hoffman’s current
address. He found two possibilities: the first listed was the 3000 block of Apple
Valley Drive, within walking distance of King Beach Road, and the other location was
49 Columbus Road in Mount Vernon.

* * *

Over at Matthew Hoffman’s house, Sarah lay alone on her bed of leaves. After forcing
her to do things that disgusted her, he left her alone. It was dark, cold and damp
down there, and her sense of time had almost evaporated by now. In fact, it was so
dark down there, she could not tell night from day. She had no idea of all the frenzied
police activity going on all around the area.

At least the man wasn’t with her now. She had done what he wanted, and he’d left for
some other part of the house. She was always cold, even though she was bundled up
and covered with blankets. She even had gloves on her hands, which he’d put on her.
It didn’t matter, though; she still shivered from the frigid temperatures down in
the basement.

Her stomach growled from hunger. All she’d had to eat since being kidnapped was a
few mouthfuls of cereal with spoiled milk. She constantly thought of food, but was
determined not to eat the squirrels he had offered her. She thought of daylight. But
most of all, she thought of freedom.

At one point, the man gave her a dictionary and told her to look up the word “ransom.”
She did so and found out what it meant. Then he told her he might let her go by Christmas.
He never explained exactly what he meant, but she didn’t believe him in this regard
anyway.

Sarah said later, “Even after he told me about the ransom, sometimes I thought he
would kill me anyway, just so that it would be over with. It was scary.”

He also told her now and again that he had someone watching the house. She was pretty
sure he said “someone” as in one more person, rather than persons.

* * *

Things just kept getting better for the detectives. Lieutenant Rohler stated later,
“As we were gathering additional information on Mr. Hoffman, we spoke with Deputy
Aaron Phillips. Deputy Phillips was the officer who had located Tina Herrmann’s F-150
pickup truck at the bike path in Gambier. Deputy Phillips indicated that he had confronted
a white male sitting in a silver vehicle near the bike path at the same time that
the F-150 truck was located. Deputy Phillips approached the white male and requested
identification. Deputy Phillips ran the information through LEADS [Law Enforcement
Agencies Data System] and the information returned to Matthew Hoffman.”

Detective Sergeant Roger Brown looked up Matthew Hoffman in the KCSO computer system.
The records showed that on Thursday, November 11 at around 6:55
PM
, Deputy Aaron Phillips had made contact with Hoffman at the river access parking
lot on Laymon Road, and that Hoffman had been sitting in a silver Yaris. Phillips
was in the area because minutes earlier he’d noticed Tina Herrmann’s Ford F-150 pickup
parked at the Kokosing Gap Trail lot. The two parking lots were only two hundred yards
apart.

And for the first time, Detective Sergeant Brown learned that Matthew Hoffman had
told Phillips the reason he was sitting in his car was that he was waiting for his
girlfriend,
Sarah,
to get off work at the Kenyon Inn. Brown also learned that Hoffman said he did not
know Sarah’s last name because they had just started dating. Phillips had told Hoffman
the parking lot was closed after dark, and he had moved on.

Now Special Agent Dietz also discovered that Matthew Hoffman had been involved in
a domestic violence issue with his then live-in girlfriend only a few weeks earlier,
on October 24, 2010. This had occurred at the 49 Columbus Road location.

* * *

Because of all the information coming in, KCSO decided it was time to request a search
warrant on Matthew Hoffman’s residence at 49 Columbus Road. In the request, Detective
David Light stated all the early facts about the search and seizure of items at King
Beach Drive. He detailed how the record of the trash-bag purchase at Walmart had lead
back to a video of a man exiting the store with a tarp and trash bags and getting
into a silver Toyota Yaris in the store parking lot. Light stated that not only did
the man in the video resemble the photo on Matthew Hoffman’s driver’s license, but
he was also wearing the same kind of camouflage shirt as pictured in the driver’s
license photo.

Detective Light included the description of Deputy Aaron Phillips’s interaction with
a man in a silver Yaris parked near Tina Herrmann’s pickup truck at the closed lot.
During the encounter, Deputy Phillips had observed that the Yaris had a noticeable
dent in it; so did the Yaris that had been videotaped leaving the Walmart parking
lot.

Deputy Phillips would later say of these hectic minutes, “When the detectives got
that information [about Matthew Hoffman], it was like [Ohio State University] just
scored the winning touchdown. Guys were yelling and jumping up and down. Grabbing
gear and sprinting out the door.”

For all of these reasons, Detective Light wrote, “Your affiant has probable cause
to believe that Matthew J. Hoffman purchased the trash bags and tarps at Wal-Mart,
on November 11, 2010, and that he was in Tina Herrmann’s residence where he left the
trash bags and tarps and during the time of the criminal offenses alleged herein.
Affiant has good cause to believe that Matthew J. Hoffman is dangerous and presents
a risk of serious physical harm to law enforcement officers who will execute the search
warrant.”

Now Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher became involved. He was contacted even though
it was in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 14. Thatcher agreed there was
enough probable cause for a warrant to be issued. He quickly set things in motion,
despite the early hour. He said later, “I knew this was it. We had to go. I was already
up and decided to come into the office instead of turning around and going back to
bed until later that morning.”

Thatcher said later that he knew time was of the essence. At least one of the missing
people had walked in the garage area of the house on King Beach Road and might yet
be alive. In fact, there was still a possibility that all four were still alive. Getting
a search warrant as soon as possible was of grave importance.

Thatcher contacted Judge Paul Spurgeon, who read the request for the search warrant
and signed it at 6:00
AM
, November 14, 2010.

SIXTEEN

“A Dynamic Entry”

Very early on Sunday morning, November 14, 2010, Lieutenant Gary Rohler and Detective
Sergeant Roger Brown began surveillance of Matthew Hoffman’s residence at 49 Columbus
Road. At that time, they discerned no activity in the residence or vehicles coming
to or leaving the house.

Also early on November 14, Detective Craig Feeney of the Mount Vernon Police Department
(MVPD) was contacted by Captain David Shaffer of KCSO. Shaffer told Feeney that KCSO
wanted a Mount Vernon Police SWAT team to assist their office. Feeney passed this
message on to Captain George Hartz of the MVPD, and a short time later Hartz told
Feeney to start activating the SWAT team.

As the team was being put together, Feeney told all the members to congregate at the
Mount Vernon Police Department headquarters. One of these members was Sergeant Troy
Glazier. As Glazier said later, “All available team members met at the police department
and prepared our gear . . . Information at that time was that KCSO had developed leads
to a possible suspect in the case of four missing persons. We geared up and went to
the KCSO office for a briefing on the case. During the briefing, two locations were
discussed where the suspect might be . . . We staged at Richert Trucking on Columbus
Road until it could be determined the whereabouts of the suspect.”

Around that same time, Detective Sergeant Roger Brown, Special Agent Joe Dietz, MVPD
Captain George Hartz and KCSO Sergeant Jeff Jacobs went to the residence where Matt
Hoffman’s recent ex-girlfriend now lived. After brief questioning, she confirmed that
Hoffman was living at the house on Columbus Road and not at his mother’s home in Apple
Valley. According to Detective Sergeant Brown, she also told them that Hoffman “normally
did not park his vehicle at the residence due to the fear of it being repossessed.”

Detective Feeney recalled, “Captain Shaffer went with our team and updated us on all
current information coming in. Just prior to executing the warrant, Captain Shaffer
received information that it was likely the suspect we were looking for was in the
residence.”

Glazier related, “With fresh information just developed that the suspect was most
likely at the Columbus Road location, we headed that way. A marked KCSO unit was given
a head start to get to the rear of the residence. The MVPD ESU van then proceeded
to go do a ‘dynamic’ entry of the residence.” A dynamic entry was one where a battering
ram had to be used to break down a door.

“The ESU van pulled up to the front of the house, and we exited and stacked up at
the front door. We were executing a no-knock search warrant, so we did not immediately
announce our presence. Patrolman DeChant used a door ram to force entry, and I deployed
a flashbang distraction device inside the residence in the middle of the living room
area. As soon as the distraction devices activated, the team entered the residence.”
“Entered” was hardly the right word—they stormed in like a hurricane.

“Patrolman Weiser and Detective Feeney encountered a male asleep on the couch in the
living room. They began to give him verbal commands to show his hands, and he was
not immediately compliant.” (Whether Hoffman was being deliberately uncooperative
or was merely groggy from lack of sleep was unclear).

Feeney stated, “We secured the male on the floor and identified him as the suspect.
I escorted the male outside and re-entered the residence.”

Glazier added, “Patrolman DeChant and I began to clear the area and located a stairway
to the upper half of the house. Once we were comfortable that the downstairs area
was cleared, we proceeded upstairs.

“The first door I came to upstairs was locked and I kicked the door in but did not
locate any other persons upstairs. But we did locate what appeared to be a marijuana
growing operation in one bedroom that was not active. We gave the all-clear upstairs
and I had that team do a slowed-down secondary search of the upstairs. Patrolman DeChant
and I located a hole that had been cut through the ceiling of a bedroom closet to
gain access to the attic.” The officers wanted to make sure no one was in the attic.

Glazier continued, “Patrolman [Tim] Arnold [of the Mount Vernon Police Department]
located a door to the basement that was blocked by some kind of cabinet.” Patrolman
Arnold moved the obstruction from the door, and Glazier was the first one to go down
the stairs into the basement. At the bottom of the basement stairs there was a doorway
to the right; Glazier looked that way and suddenly observed a person lying on a sleeping
bag on top of a pile of leaves. He pointed his weapon and flashlight at the person
and yelled at them to show their hands. A young female sat up, and Glazier saw that
she was bound in various places with duct tape and her hands and feet were bound with
yellow rope. She sat up and looked directly at Glazier.

The female that Glazier had just yelled at was thirteen-year-old kidnap victim Sarah
Maynard.