The Girl in the Leaves (17 page)

Most other opinions, however, especially in law enforcement, agreed that Matthew Hoffman
had been the sole killer of Tina, Kody and Stephanie. They knew he had a penchant
for breaking into people’s residences, as his Colorado crime had shown.

And they also knew that Hoffman had plenty of upper-body strength and that he worked
out. There was even an unexpected connection between Hoffman and Stephanie Sprang
in that regard: police learned from Steve Mullins, owner of Body Basics gym in Mount
Vernon, that Matthew Hoffman had been a member there and Stephanie Sprang had been
on the cleaning crew. Mullins noted that Hoffman would generally come in shortly before
closing time, and Stephanie and the cleaning crew would come in after hours when the
gym was already closed. Mullins didn’t know whether the two had ever crossed paths,
but the information renewed speculation that Matthew Hoffman might have met, or at
least seen, Stephanie before the crimes were committed on November 10.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Matt Hoffman’s Statement

The formal written confession by Matthew Hoffman came on Saturday, November 20, 2010.
Detective David Light said, “Hoffman’s attorneys typed his confession and he signed
it as well as making several corrections.” Matthew Hoffman had to write a statement
about what he had done in connection with Tina, Sarah, Kody and Stephanie. When it
was finished, the authorities believed it was a combination of the truth, half truths
and downright lies.

Hoffman began by saying that he had parked his car in Howard (Apple Valley) and walked
to the area of Tina’s residence. He then went into a patch of woods across the street
shortly after midnight on November 10. He had a sleeping bag with him and slept in
it during the nighttime hours.

Hoffman related that there were two vehicles parked near the house, and he said he
woke up when one of them, the gray car (probably Greg Borders’s), left during the
early morning hours. Hoffman said that he then went back to sleep until around nine
in the morning. He added that he stayed in the woods until the woman of the residence
left in the pickup truck.

Since there were no more vehicles at the house, Hoffman walked across the street and
tried entering the front door, but it was locked. He then went to the garage door
and found it was not closed all the way. He slid under the door and entered the garage,
then kicked in the door from the garage to the interior of the house. By that time
it was around 10:30
AM
as far as he could tell. The investigators believed this was probably true, since
Tina Herrmann was known to be out of the house at that point.

Hoffman’s statement continued, “I looked around the house to make sure that no one
else was there. Even if I did not take anything, there was a certain amount of excitement
in being in someone else’s home without them being there.”

Hoffman wrote that he was looking for anything of value that he could easily carry
out of the house, items like jewelry and money. He searched around the house for about
an hour and stated that he didn’t “find anything of real value.”

Hoffman said he was getting ready to leave when he heard a vehicle pull up in the
driveway. If this is correct, he stayed in the house almost two hours before anyone
came home, which is unusual in a burglary. Hoffman said he was in a back bedroom and
couldn’t exit the house without breaking a window and jumping out. He added, “I brought
my knife for a certain amount of intimidation in case I ran into someone and needed
to make an escape.”

When Tina Herrmann made her way to the back bedroom, Hoffman confronted her and made
her lie down on the bed, facedown. He said he had a blackjack and was going to try
and knock her out. He hit her in the back of the head a couple of times, but it did
not knock her out; he claimed that then he started panicking and before he knew it,
the woman’s friend came into the bedroom. This second woman yelled at him and his
sense of panic increased.

Hoffman grabbed his knife, which he said he’d put down on the nightstand until that
moment, and stabbed the woman on the bed (Tina) through her back twice. Then he chased
down the other woman (Stephanie Sprang), who had run into Sarah’s room, and stabbed
her a couple of times in the chest. Hoffman believed this was a girl’s bedroom, based
on the room’s contents. In many ways, Hoffman’s claim that Stephanie ran to Sarah’s
bedroom didn’t make sense, since Stephanie knew that house, and knew that Sarah’s
bedroom would be a trap with no exit. It’s quite possible he was lying about this,
and had actually dragged Stephanie into that bedroom to kill her. The only reason
she may have run into Sarah’s bedroom was that she panicked and fled to that area
of the house.

Hoffman said he made sure the woman who had yelled at him was dead, and then returned
to the bedroom where the first woman was still lying facedown. He stabbed her again
and again until he was sure she was dead as well.

Hoffman claimed that by then, he was in a total state of shock. He wandered around
the house “slowly coming to a realization of what I had done and how bad it was.”
There was a dog in the house that would not stop barking, so he killed it too. Eventually,
Hoffman said, he decided to dispose of the bodies and burn the house down.

At first he considered loading the women’s bodies into the Jeep parked in the garage
and driving them to a Foundation Park pond. He said he planned to drive the Jeep into
the pond and then swim away as the vehicle sank. But then, he wrote, he realized that
the water would be very cold and he might not be able to make it to shore. Hoffman
continued, “I decided to process the bodies and dispose of them inside of a tree that
I knew was hollow.” By “process the bodies,” he meant dismember them into small sizes
that he could put into trash bags.

Hoffman claimed that he dragged the women’s bodies into the bathroom, where he began
“processing” them. He said he used garbage bags he found in the house and placed the
body parts inside of them. Once he had finished cutting up the bodies, he moved the
Jeep into the garage from the driveway where it had been parked, to load up the body
bags. From the time he killed Tina and Stephanie until the kids got home from school,
was at least an hour and a half. He still had a couple of bags left to load when he
heard children come into the house. He knew there was a small amount of blood on the
floor at the front door due to his having placed a bag there before he decided how
best to load all the bags into the Jeep.

Hoffman said he was in the hallway when the children first came into the house, and
quickly decided he had to do something. He ran to the front door, and the girl slipped
past him and ran into a bedroom. Hoffman related, “I immediately stabbed the boy in
the chest a couple of times.” That would indicate that Kody hadn’t turned around toward
the door before he was killed. Sarah thought that he had turned and was making his
way toward the door. Evidence, seemed to prove that Sarah was correct. The fatal stab
wound to Kody was in the back of his head and there was another stab wound to his
back.

Hoffman then ran to the bedroom where the girl had gone to make sure she wasn’t calling
for help and added, “I saw the girl was not on the phone and I could not bring myself
to kill her.” This was in direct contradiction to Sarah, who said that she was on
the phone but he grabbed her before she could use it.

Hoffman wrote that the girl said she thought he was going to kill her, but he told
her he wouldn’t and “everything was fine.” She was suspicious about blood in her bedroom,
but Hoffman had already dumped motor oil on those blood spots to try and change their
appearance. Or that was at least his version now. He told her they were not blood
spots but rather something else. Sarah did not believe him about the blood. Then he
said he lied and told her that he had “tasered” her brother, who was still alive.
Sarah did not believe him about this, and in fact, he may have not mentioned this
tasering at all to her during the actual events of November 10th. More likely he was
just inserting this now, since Sarah did not mention the taser comment at all.

Hoffman’s statement continued with him saying that he had already found duct tape
in the house and so he used that to bind Sarah’s hands together and put a pillowcase
over her head. Sarah did not say where the duct tape came from, and other individuals
commented that Hoffman often had duct tape in his car.

Then he said he led her to the garage where he looked for rope to tie her up more
securely. Sarah denied this and related that he took her to the basement, cut off
some rope from a sled and tied her up with that. Hoffman agreed that he did find some
rope and used this to bind her hands and feet. After that was done, he carried her
back to the kitchen and laid her on the floor. Sarah said that it was at that point
that the pillowcase that he had placed over her head fell off.

He claimed, “I did not want to harm the little girl, and I do not believe she saw
anything. At some point in time I learned her name was Sarah from a baseball card
on the fridge.”

After Sarah was laid on the kitchen floor, Hoffman said he “processed” the boy. The
boy was taken to the same bathroom where Hoffman had dismembered the bodies of the
two women. After he was done with the boy, Hoffman took all the bags to the Jeep and
placed them on the backseat. He then gathered up a pile of blankets and placed them
in the car as well. Finally he picked up Sarah from the kitchen and put her in the
backseat of the Jeep under the blankets and next to the trash bags filled with body
parts.

Hoffman said he drove to the baseball field on Pipesville Road, parked the Jeep there
with Sarah inside, locked the car and walked back to where his own car was. He then
drove his car back to the ball field and waited until dark to transfer Sarah from
the Jeep into his car.

Matt said that he drove Sarah to his house on Columbus Road, where he claimed, “I
felt that she [Sarah] was still sufficiently subdued, and I drove to McDonald’s. I
brought back food, removed her bonds and we ate. I tried to comfort her and told her
everything would be fine.” Sarah adamantly denied all of this story later, insisting
that he hadn’t left her alone, hadn’t removed her bindings, that the only food he’d
given her—the cereal with the sour milk—had been after she’d had to beg for something
to eat, nor had he comforted her in any way.

In Hoffman’s version of events, he said that after they ate, he tied Sarah back up
and claimed, “I made her a bed out of leaves, covered it with blankets and placed
her on the bed.” He also boasted, “She liked that bed, it was extremely comfy.” Sarah’s
account differed here; she said that at this point she had been left not on the bed
of leaves but on the floor of a cold dark bathroom.

By now it was 9:00 or 10:00
PM
on Thursday, November 10, and Hoffman said he was so exhausted he fell asleep for
a couple of hours. He set his alarm clock for midnight and then drove his car up to
the hunting preserve where he knew about the hollow tree. He said he drove there with
his climbing gear first to scout out the area, and so that if he was pulled over,
there wouldn’t be bags of body parts found inside his vehicle.

Hoffman dropped off his climbing gear at the hollow tree, then he drove the Toyota
to Walmart in Mount Vernon where he purchased the large garbage bags and two tarps.
He explained that he’d wanted heavier garbage bags because he said there were too
many small bags in the Jeep and they were not very strong.

After these purchases, Hoffman said he drove to a parking lot near the river, then
walked to where he’d left the Jeep at the ballpark and drove it to the hunting preserve
and the hollow tree. By then it was around 2:30
AM
, November 11. It took him awhile to get all the body bags inside the hollow of the
tree, so it was almost daylight by the time he finished. Then he drove the Jeep back
to Tina’s residence and parked it in the garage. He located gas cans in the garage
and loaded them into Tina’s pickup truck.

Hoffman drove off in the pickup truck with plans to buy gasoline, return to the house
and set the whole place on fire. However, he said, the pickup truck was not acting
right and would not stay in gear. Deciding the trip was taking too long, Hoffman abandoned
the pickup truck at a parking lot near Kenyon College and walked back to his Toyota
Yaris on the Gap Trail. It was a greater distance than he supposed, and he did not
reach his car until sometime between 9:00 and 10:00
AM
.

Hoffman then drove back to his residence on Columbus Road and, as he put it, “took
care of Sarah.” He said she had wet herself and that she did so every time she fell
asleep. Hoffman said he let her shower and get into some of his clothes. He said he
apologized to her for all of this and then made her breakfast. Sarah denied he ever
let her shower and said he certainly didn’t make her breakfast, other than the bowl
of cereal with sour milk.

Hoffman stated that she asked him a lot of questions at this time and he kept telling
her everything was fine. He also said he was extremely tired from all his exertions.
Hoffman stated that he set up some movies on a DVD player and they watched
Iron Man
and
Iron Man 2
(something Sarah also refuted). He added he wanted to sleep but was afraid to do
so, fearing that Sarah might escape. Then he added a line that Sarah would adamantly
deny: “I slept a little with my arms around her, and did this [to] ensure she would
not leave, while at the same time, not having to tie her up.”

Hoffman wrote that he then did her laundry, because she wanted to wear her own clothes.
He said he had to do this a lot, because every time she fell asleep she would wet
her clothes. He would let her shower every time this happened, he claimed, and that
he made her bed of leaves very comfortable. He also claimed, “She really did like
to be in that bed.” Once again, Sarah denied all of this.

At around 6:30
PM
on November 11, Hoffman drove back to where he had left Tina’s pickup truck, intending
to collect the gas cans from the truck and finish his plan to burn down Tina’s residence.
But then a deputy came walking over to his vehicle, demanding to know who he was and
why he was there. Hoffman handed over his driver’s license and told the deputy that
he was waiting for his girlfriend, Sarah, to get off work. The deputy let him go,
but not before Hoffman became suspicious that law enforcement already knew about the
crimes at the house on King Beach Drive.

Hoffman said at that point he knew he could not go and burn the house down as planned,
so instead he drove back to his own residence where he built a campfire in the backyard,
drank a bottle of wine and burned his shoes. He said he then slept for a couple of
hours and woke around midnight. After that he went down to the basement and said that
he let Sarah use the bathroom. He related that he hoped this would prevent her from
having any more “accidents.”