The Girl in the Leaves (6 page)

TEN

A Chance Encounter

David Barber had been the sheriff of Knox County, Ohio, for eighteen years by November
2010. He was one of those guys who had come up through the ranks. Before becoming
sheriff, he’d been a uniformed deputy sheriff, a detective, a detective sergeant and
the lieutenant in charge of the detective division at the KCSO.

He’d won numerous awards over the years, including Ohio’s Distinguished Law Enforcement
Service Award in 1999. He was very proud of his office having received CALEA accreditation
in July 2007. CALEA stood for Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies,
which had been created in 1979 as a credentialing authority through the joint efforts
of law enforcement’s major executive associations. CALEA’s goals were to “strengthen
crime prevention and control capabilities, formalize essential management procedures,
and establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices.” It was also to “solidify
interagency cooperation and coordination and increase community and staff confidence
in the agency.” In layman’s terms, being accredited by CALEA helped KCSO work more
smoothly with other law enforcement agencies in cases of an emergency where a lot
of police presence was needed.

Sheriff Barber had no idea on the morning of November 11, 2010, that in a very short
amount of time he and his office were going to need all the benefits CALEA accreditation
had to offer. All he knew then was that KCSO was the smallest sheriff’s office to
ever achieve CALEA standards.

Despite the sheriff’s rightful pride in the accreditation, he did not regularly need
to go outside his own department for help. Crime in Knox County was simply not prevalent.
In the preceding year there had been only one confirmed robbery, one stabbing, one
kidnapping case, and one homicide. Even the number of vehicle thefts had totaled only
thirty for the whole year.

* * *

Because of Valerie Haythorn’s initial phone call to KCSO, the first officer to have
had any contact with the King Beach Drive residence was Deputy Charles Statler of
KCSO’s Patrol Division.

The Patrol Division, headed by Captain David Shaffer and comprised of three sergeants
and eighteen deputies, was responsible for protecting the sixty thousand people in
the county, spread out over 525 square miles. Cities like Mount Vernon had their own
police departments, but all the rural areas, including Apple Valley, where Tina, Sarah,
Kody and Stephanie lived, were patrolled by KCSO units.

Because of the disturbing circumstances at the home on King Beach Drive, the matter
was taken on by the KCSO Detective Division. This division was headed by Lieutenant
Gary Rohler, and included Detective Sergeant Roger Brown, and Detectives Thomas Bumpus,
David Light and Doug Turpen. Prior to that November, almost all the deaths investigated
by the KCOS detectives were the result of accidents.

On November 11, 2010, the detectives weren’t quite sure what they had on their hands
at King Beach Drive. It became case number 10-2071, and one of the lead investigators
was Detective David Light. He noted early on, “Deputy Chuck Statler tried to contact
the residence but was unable to contact anyone. On Thursday, November 11, 2010, officers
were again unable to make contact and also found that Tina [Herrmann]’s children,
Sarah and Kody Maynard, did not go to school November 11th.”

After Valerie Haythorn’s discovery of the blood in the house on King Beach Drive,
Sergeants Tom Durbin and Al Dexter of KCSO were sent to Tina’s house to investigate.
The sergeants entered the house looking for someone who might be injured, but what
they found was extensive amounts of blood on the front room carpet and what appeared
to be bloody drag marks to the bathroom. There was also blood in the basement and
a Jeep that did not belong to Tina in the garage.

The sergeants immediately called for KCSO detectives. Detective Light responded, as
did Detective Sergeant Roger Brown. Brown noted that he arrived at Tina’s house at
4:36
PM
on November 11, and met with Sergeants Durbin and Dexter in the yard. The area around
Tina’s house was soon secured with crime scene tape.

Detective Light called Stephanie’s house, and by that time someone was home. Light
noted that Tina’s friend, Stephanie Sprang, was also missing. Stephanie’s live-in
boyfriend, Ron Metcalf, told detectives that neither he nor Stephanie’s children had
seen or heard from her since 12:30
PM
on Wednesday, November 10, when Ron had last spoken to her by phone. Ron told Detective
Sergeant Brown that Stephanie had not been home when he arrived there later on November
10. Ron added that he’d made several attempts to reach Stephanie via her cell phone,
but had only gotten her voice mail.

Ron also informed Detective Sergeant Brown that Tina and Stephanie had had plans to
look at apartments the day before, because “Tina was going to leave Greg and move
out.” Tina and Stephanie were supposedly going to look at an apartment complex owned
by a man named Tony, though when Brown contacted Tony, he claimed he had never heard
from either woman about renting an apartment.

After the discoveries at the house, Detective Sergeant Brown contacted Knox County
Prosecutor John Thatcher and requested that he prepare a search warrant. Thatcher
replied that if Brown could find Tina’s boyfriend, Greg Borders, he could get permission
to search from him.

As it turned out, Brown didn’t have to go looking for Greg Borders. Greg arrived at
the house on King Beach Drive at 5:30
PM
. Greg explained to the detectives that a family member had told him about the police
activity at his house and he’d hurried home to find out what was going on. Apparently
Greg hadn’t had his cell phone on earlier, and had been unaware of the police presence
until he’d gotten word about it from an uncle.

Greg explained to the officers that he’d left the residence on November 10 at 3:00
AM
to go to work. Greg said that he worked throughout the day and then stayed with a
friend that night. Greg added that he and his friend had been golfing all day on November
11, and he hadn’t seen Tina since he went to bed on November 9.

Detective Sergeant Brown read a KCSO Permission to Search form, and Greg said that
he understood it and signed the document. Brown then instructed Greg to remain on
the back porch, and he and Lieutenant Gary Rohler entered the house by an unlocked
back door. Whether Valerie Haythorn had unlocked that door on her way out, or an assailant
had, the detectives didn’t know at that point. Brown later documented what he saw:
“As I looked into the kitchen and living room areas, I observed what appeared to be
blood and drag marks on the living room carpet and what appeared to be blood on the
linoleum at the top of the basement stairs. At this time, Lt. Rohler and I exited
the residence to await BCI&I Crime Scene Agents.” BCI&I was Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal
Identification and Investigation.

Brown next received verbal consent from Greg Borders to examine his arms, hands and
torso for scratches and injuries. After the examination, Brown noted that Greg did
not appear to have any injuries on him.

The actual affiant for the search warrant, the person responsible for detailing the
warrant’s purpose, was KCSO Detective David Light. Even though Greg Borders had given
a verbal okay to search the residence, it was best to have a written search warrant
signed by a judge. Detective Light began by stating that he had been with KCSO since
1993 and had been a detective since 2008. In his time with the sheriff’s office, he’d
investigated twelve cases involving felonious assault, one kidnapping and twenty deaths.

The main part of Light’s search-warrant request included the lines, “At approximately
4:15
PM
on November 11, 2010, Sergeant Tom Durbin and Sergeant Dexter responded to Ms. Haythorn’s
call, entered Ms. Herrmann’s residence where they observed bloodstains on the living
room and hallway carpet, apparent drag marks in the bloodstains on the hallway carpet
going in the direction of the bathroom and a large amount of blood around the tub
and toilet area. And they observed a gallon jug of what appeared to be [motor] oil
in the hallway with a ten inch trail of liquid leading from the hallway to a bedroom.”
In fact, the motor oil had been dripped on the rugs in several portions of the house.

Light added that Sergeants Durbin and Dexter had also observed bloodstains going down
the stairs to a lower-level garage where a light gray or green 1996 Jeep Cherokee
with Ohio plates was parked.

The Jeep Cherokee was known to be driven by Stephanie Sprang, but the registration
listed a man named Jeremy Biggs as the owner. Just how Biggs fit into all this, the
investigators did not yet know.

KCSO deputies spread throughout the neighborhood, questioning neighbors about the
missing individuals. Investigators noted immediately that no houses were right next
door to the King Beach Drive address—it was fairly isolated, with a patch of woods
across the street and farmland across Magers Drive.

* * *

Even before the search team began processing Tina Herrmann’s house, miles away Matt
Hoffman was deciding to put into action his plan to burn down the house on King Beach
Drive.

After first making sure that Sarah Maynard was completely restrained and could not
get away, sometime after 6:00
PM
on Thursday, November 11, Hoffman drove his Toyota Yaris back to Gambier near Kenyon
College and the parking lot where he had left Tina’s blue pickup truck. He was going
to collect the gas cans from the truck, fill them up with gasoline and then go to
the residence. But before he could access the pickup, fate intervened.

Hoffman had abandoned the pickup at the Kokosing Gap Trail parking lot off of Laymon
Road and State Route 229, an area used as a launching spot for canoes on the Kokosing
River. At 6:55
PM
, KCSO Deputy Aaron Phillips was driving around on his routine patrol when he spotted
the blue pickup truck. Deputy Phillips already knew that Deputy Charles Statler had
spotted a similar pickup truck in Tina Herrmann’s driveway at around 11:15
PM
on November 10. What was it doing here now?

Then Deputy Phillips spotted something else unusual. There was a silver car parked
near the edge of another nearby lot, even though the lot was now closed for the night,
and a man was sitting in the car behind the steering wheel.

Deputy Phillips approached the vehicle and asked the man what he was doing there and
asked to see his driver’s license. The man cooperated and handed over his license.
Deputy Phillips checked it and noted that the driver was Matthew Hoffman who lived
on the 3000 block of Apple Valley Drive, and that his driver’s license had just been
renewed on October 26. Phillips asked Hoffman if the Apple Valley Drive address was
close to King Beach Drive, and Hoffman said that his mother lived there, but added
that he now lived at 49 Columbus Road in Mount Vernon. Asked once again what he was
doing there, Hoffman said that he was waiting for his girlfriend, Sarah.

The name Sarah didn’t mean anything to Deputy Phillips at that point, and he told
the young man the parking lot was closed after dark. Hoffman said okay and left.

* * *

The incident with Deputy Phillips had effectively thwarted Hoffman’s plan to retrieve
the gas cans from the pickup truck. Hoffman felt as if he’d dodged a bullet at the
parking lot, though, at least law enforcement officers weren’t looking for him—yet.
But time was ticking away and he still had to burn down the house and all the incriminating
evidence inside.

Since Hoffman didn’t want to drive his Yaris directly to the house on King Beach Drive,
he returned home to think over what his next move would be. Not only was there a problem
with his entering that house, but he’d also left several items in the woods across
the street from the house. What if officers decided to look in the woods? He had to
retrieve those things, or they could lead directly back to him. Matthew Hoffman had
a lot more work to do before all of this was over.

ELEVEN

A Footprint in Blood and Oil

Because Tina’s pickup truck had been found so close to Kenyon College in the town
of Gambier, the school was put into a state of lockdown. At 10:15
PM
November 11, e-mails and phone calls were sent out to students and faculty. All of
the messages warned people to stay in place, which meant no wandering around the campus
grounds. Students not already in their dormitories were escorted there by campus security
officers. Students residing at the Brown Family Environmental Center, near where Tina’s
pickup had been found, were transported to Weaver Cottage on the Kenyon campus.

Additional campus security officers were brought in to help secure the campus, and
the sixteen hundred students cooperated during the lockdown. Mark Ellis, communications
director for Kenyon College, later said, “We were contacted by the Knox County Sheriff’s
Office, who [informed us] of a crime at Apple Valley and the possibility that a dangerous
person might be on campus.” This lockdown was taken seriously by students and faculty.

Back at the Kokosing Gap Trail parking lot, investigators were busy taking multiple
photos of Tina Herrmann’s pickup truck and scouring the surrounding area for evidence.
Once they finished the onsite investigation, they loaded the pickup onto a car carrier
and took it to a police impound yard. There it would be searched in a more thorough
manner under very controlled conditions. Of vital interest to the investigators was
whether any blood could be found in the pickup, as well as any fingerprints that did
not match those of Tina, Sarah, Kody or Stephanie. Meanwhile, Hoffman moved Sarah
down into his dark basement and onto a bed of leaves that he had constructed for her,
and removed her blindfold. She recalled later, “I was really afraid when I was first
taken there. It was so dark, you couldn’t see anything. There were no windows, so
you couldn’t tell if it was day or night.

“He would come down there sometimes and just stand there and stare at me. He didn’t
say a word, just stared. And then he would go back upstairs. I don’t know which was
worse—him not saying anything or him saying something. I couldn’t figure out what
he wanted when he didn’t say anything. It was hard to tell what he was thinking that
way. Mostly I just laid alone in the dark. And even though there were blankets and
stuff that he put there, it was always cold. At least it was better than lying on
the floor [of the bathroom] where he first kept me. That was not only cold, it was
hard too.

Even though it was almost impossible to keep her thoughts from conjuring up frightening
images of what might happen next, she later said that she tried to suppress these
thoughts as best she could. Her plan was to only deal with whatever was happening
at the moment. Especially when it came to interacting with her captor.

While Hoffman was planning his next move, BCI&I Special Agents Edward Lulla and Edward
Carlini arrived at Tina Herrmann’s residence on King Beach Drive. It was 9:45
PM
on Thursday, November 11. Outside the house, they were briefed by KCSO Sheriff David
Barber and several KCSO detectives, who gave the BCI&I agents all the background on
the incidents that had led up to the request that they be there: the report by Valerie
Haythorn, the blood in the house and the missing individuals.

Sheriff Barber added that a KCSO patrol deputy had spotted the pickup truck that Tina
usually drove, in a parking lot of the Kokosing Gap Trail. The pickup truck had been
towed to a storage yard for analysis.

After the briefing, Agents Lulla and Carlini and Detective Sergeant Roger Brown pulled
on protective footwear over their shoes and entered the residence. During their initial
run-through, they noticed that the garage door was off its track. They did not know
whether this was something new or had been that way for a while.

Given that it looked to be a very complex crime scene, Agents Lulla and Carlini requested
that BCI&I Special Agent Gary Wilgus join them to do any blood-spatter analysis. Wilgus,
however, told them he couldn’t make it there until the next day, so the two other
agents decided to start doing some of the processing before he arrived.

In the initial walk-through, Agents Lulla and Carlini noted “a remarkable amount of
blood in three separate areas of the house, each [of] which led to the main bathroom
of the house. In the bathroom were large stains and a bathtub and shower wall covered
in suspected blood.”

Both Agent Lulla and Carlini worked until 4:00
AM
, November 12. Because of the very late hour, it was decided that the residence would
be secured by KCSO, and the BCI&I agents would return again later in the day.

* * *

When he returned to his house following the incident with Deputy Aaron Phillips at
the Kokosing Gap Trail parking lot, Matt Hoffman made sure that the girl was tied
up on the bed of leaves in the basement and then decided to drink a bottle of wine
and burn some incriminating evidence. He started a bonfire in his backyard and threw
his shoes into the flames. This didn’t seem to concern his neighbors, since they were
used to him doing odd things at all hours of the day and night. Hoffman made sure
that the shoes burned down to ash. He wasn’t worried about the girl in his house—she
was tied up and gagged. He then slept for a couple of hours and woke around midnight.
Before he left, he went down to the basement and looked at the girl again. He didn’t
say anything, just stared at her.

In the early hours of Friday, November 12, Hoffman decided to go back to the woods
near Tina’s house, the same woods where he had spent the night of November 9. He’d
left items there he now needed to collect before the police found them. He also wanted
to see what kind of police activity was going on at the residence on King Beach Drive.

Hoffman drove to a parking lot at Millwood and then rode his bike to a hill near Apple
Valley Lake. From there he left his bike and slowly made his way on foot to the woods
near Tina’s residence. It was miles away, and once again this took a lot of time.

When he arrived, in the darkness of the early morning hours, Hoffman noticed the crime
scene tape around the house and the police working, both inside and out. Hoffman spent
awhile in the woods, watching. In some ways he liked this—seeing what they were doing
and not being seen. The police seemed to have no idea he was down there spying on
them. Hoffman got a kick spying on people—he had often done so from up in the branches
of a tree on his property,

After quite a while of watching, Hoffman gathered up a few of his things before making
his way back, on foot, to his bike and then backtracking to his car. Authorities would
learn later just what he took from the woods—a baseball cap and a knife—and what he
left behind. And as with much of what Hoffman did, none of it would make much sense
to other people. The walk to his bicycle took quite a long time, and it was about
9:00
AM
when he got home, once again exhausted from all his nocturnal activities.

* * *

Sarah, left in her cold dark dungeon on the bed of leaves, was fairly certain that
her captor was gone once again. But he had told her that someone else would be watching
the house whenever he wasn’t there. And besides, what could she do? She was tied to
the primitive frame of the bed of leaves.

Sarah believed Hoffman was telling the truth about an accomplice. How else could he
have moved so many vehicles around by himself? And how had he gotten to her house
in the first place, if someone had not dropped him off there? Obviously he had driven
Stephanie’s Jeep away from the house, with her in it, and she had even seen the silver
car he’d approached, parked at the Pipesville Road baseball fields.

Sarah decided not to cause any waves. If someone was indeed watching the place, she
didn’t want anything bad reported back to her assailant. It was best to do just what
he said. It was her best insurance of survival.