The Girl in the Leaves

by Robert Scott

  HOPE FADES AS TIMES PASSES

  The reporter noted that even Sheriff David Barber sounded more pessimistic than before, and his Wednesday news conference lasted only ten minutes.

  “A lot of sightings and information have been received by the sheriff’s office and continue to be followed up by not only our investigators, but by BCI&I, the FBI and other outside agencies. These tips and leads have yielded some information that is helpful to the investigation. A lot of it has just been citizens being very conscientious and trying to be helpful, which we appreciate, and we want them to continue giving us information and leads.

  “I told you yesterday that we were going to have photographs of the last known clothing that Tina, Kody and Stephanie were wearing. Unfortunately when you look at the video—we could tell what it was, but they didn’t reproduce well. So I’m just going to give you what clothing descriptions we have. We know for sure what Tina Herrmann was wearing last Wednesday. It was a white baseball cap, a tan hoodie, dark-colored sweatpants and tennis shoes.

  “As far as Kody Maynard goes, [he] was wearing black shoes, jeans, a gray T-shirt and a blue zip-up hoodie. We’re still trying to find information about what Stephanie was wearing.

  “We did get some responses about the photos of the vehicles that were put out, which will add a little more detail to our timeline. Other than that, the investigation is progressing, and unfortunately the reality that these folks may not be alive is becoming more and more prevalent, simply because there’s been no word from these folks. There’s been no credit card activity, no cell phone activity [or] anything like that since this event occurred.

  “Evidence is being submitted to BCI&I for evaluation and analysis. We have been assured that the submissions in this investigation are priorities for BCI&I. I will take just a few questions since there are a lot of things going on.”

  A reporter asked what Sarah had said about Matthew Hoffman and what his relationship might have been with the missing people. Barber answered, “It’s inappropriate for me to discuss anything Sarah has said to us.”

  Another media person wanted to know if Hoffman had had a preset plan to kidnap or attack any of these four people. Barber replied, “We follow the investigation where it leads us, and that’s yet to be determined.”

  Turning the focus from the victims to the investigators, one person queried, “What has been the emotional toll on you and your staff as you go through this ordeal?”

  Barber responded, “It’s been a challenge because we have been blessed in this county—we’ve never had to respond to something this major and this involved. I cannot say enough about the overwhelming support we’ve had with all our partners in this investigation. As the sheriff of Knox County, I am not territorial, I don’t think that I’m so big and know it all that I would ever try to handle an event and investigation this big by myself. I’m proud to ask for help. All of this has definitely been a challenge for us and our families.”

  * * *

  Another headline also captured the mood of the day:

  CITIZENS GETTING FRUSTRATED AS THEY HUNT FOR A MIRACLE

  The reporter had spoken to several search volunteers. One of these volunteers, Cindy McBride, told the reporter, “It’s not that I don’t want to have hope. But it’s been seven days now, and it’s scary.”

  A woman named Debbie Henthorn was just one of many people spreading the word online about the case and its impact on the region. She noted that she had moved to Mount Vernon almost thirty years earlier, and enjoyed its small-town feeling. She described it as the kind of place where you knew your neighbors and the person who bagged your groceries at the local market.

  Debbie said that she, like many in the community, had held her breath when there was live coverage of a car being pulled out of a pond at Foundation Park. When it was determined that the car was unconnected to the case, “a sigh of relief went up [in my office] only to be deflated once again knowing that Tina, Kody and Stephanie were still missing.”

  Debbie also noted that in a recent football game, the Blue Devils of Danville were going up against their rival, the East Knox Bulldogs. Both Sarah and Kody were students in the East Knox School System. Despite the usually heated rivalry, even the Danville players were wearing the color purple, to honor Sarah and Kody.

  Debbie wrote, “This is how small towns react in the face of tragedy. They help in any way they can. Strangers console one another. They pray alone or together. We give each other hope, no matter how dark things seem. And I can’t imagine living in any different type of community.”

  * * *

  Knox County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director Brian Hess was doing all he could to coordinate the search volunteers. He encouraged the volunteers to meet at the parking lot of the Premiere Theatres in Mount Vernon. A Red Cross unit there would then give the different teams instructions.

  Volunteers had found two sweatshirts, one blue and one purple, that were being processed by authorities. They were a boy’s size, and Kody had been seen wearing a blue sweatshirt when he came home on the day he and Sarah were attacked.

  Near the town of Gambier, volunteer Jim Fletcher wore an orange hunting vest and overalls, and was bundled up against the chilly rain. For over six hours he scoured woods, fields and fence lines astride his all-terrain vehicle. He said, “We’re looking everywhere we can think of. We want to find them, but we’re running out of places to look.”

  Volunteers were also using a Facebook page, “Pray for the Maynard Kids,” to coordinate search efforts. Jennifer Kessler, who knew Tina, Kody and Sarah, was using the page to coordinate efforts in the Apple Valley area. On the previous evening, the page had seventy-seven hundred followers. Many of them had changed their own profile photo to one that symbolized the missing three individuals—three lighted candles. One posting stated, “Okay, Lord, we need a miracle now.”

  More tipsters contacted investigators:

  Beth B contacted KCSO saying that they might want to check out a hollow tree in the woods off of Maplewood Avenue.

  Carl P stated that he was a friend of Hoffman’s and knew that Hoffman would sometimes go to the drainage ponds that were between Walmart and Staples.

  Debbie M said she had been working at a residence across the street from Hoffman’s place on Columbus Road in the previous week. She thought she saw him take a baby carrier into his house.

  Mike H said he’d been out around 6:45 AM on Tuesday, November 9. He thought he’d seen a car like Hoffman’s silver Yaris parked close to a lot near a business called Noff’s.

  Charles W, meanwhile, was sure that on the previous Tuesday he’d seen Hoffman in a Lowe’s parking lot with a woman who had long blond hair.

  Another tipster, Nora G, related, “On November 3, I was at Kmart around 4:45 PM and parked beside a small silver car with a dent. The car had trash bags piled up in the backseat and a blue tarp. In the store, there was a male who looked like Matt Hoffman. He was with another male about six-foot-one who had dark hair, and was of medium build.”

  Thomas C left a message that on Sunday or Monday, November 7 or 8, he’d seen a black van drive by Tina Herrmann’s house very slowly. Someone knocked on the door, but when Tina went to answer, the person ran into the woods. Around the same time, Thomas said, “Stephanie heard footsteps in the garage of Tina’s house.” Supposedly Thomas knew Stephanie and she had told him this. Whether it was true or not, the investigators were not able to verify this. If it was true, it indicated that Hoffmann, or someone else might have been casing Tina’s house before the crimes of November 10th.

  Bobbi H contacted KCSO and related that “Stephanie had a tracking device on her phone,” meaning that if Matt Hoffman had taken her phone and used it, the area where he used it could be traced.

  James B told KCSO, “Driving by the Kokosing Dam at two in the morning on Wednesday
[November 10], I saw a man leaving the woods with a dog. He was using a flashlight.”

  And yet another man who would not give his name declared, “I just thought the coverage of the Elizabeth Smart trial in Utah might set Hoffman off, and get him to talk.” This trial concerned a deranged man and his accomplice kidnapping a young blond girl in Utah. Elizabeth Smart, like Sarah, survived and eventually regained her freedom.

  Louis R believed the bodies were “in an old barn somewhere.” The only problem with that tip was, there were a lot of old barns in that part of Ohio.

  * * *

  Despite their weakening hope, volunteers were still pouring in. Between three hundred and four hundred people congregated at the KCSO headquarters at the request of the sheriff’s office, where EMA Director Brian Hess was in charge of coordinating the various teams. Each team was assigned a specific location, with most of the teams being sent out to the Apple Valley and Gambier portions of the county. All of this activity occurred during November 17th.

  Hess put into action a grid-pattern searching system, a much more effective search method than the random one used in the earlier volunteer efforts. The search teams would now search in a grid pattern, which would ensure they didn’t overlook some areas or search the same areas twice. Hess told one reporter, “Today’s turnout is a great testament of the people of Knox County.”

  The miles of rivers, creeks and ponds in the Apple Valley area made the searches difficult at best. A pair of kayakers volunteered to row down one of the rivers looking for anything that might be pertinent to the case. Others thrashed through undergrowth and brambles.

  In an effort to provide a broader perspective on cases like the one unfolding in Apple Valley, the Mount Vernon News contacted Jack Levin, codirector of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston. Levin, an expert on such situations, said that Sarah Maynard was “very, very lucky to be alive. When a stranger abducts a girl, the kidnapper almost always acts alone.” He also said that while there were about 58,000 child abductions in the United States per year, almost all of those were by parents or relatives of the children. There had been only 115 stranger kidnappings of children in the previous year. “Sometimes a group will attack a family in a random act of violence, but those cases are rare, and the situation in Knox County doesn’t seem to fit that pattern.”

  Levin also said that in most violent cases that involved families, the bodies were generally left at the scene of the crime. He did note that in crimes where an individual acted alone, the assailant was generally someone who had lost their job and broken up in a relationship not long before the crime.

  In Matthew Hoffman’s case, both were true.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Hollow Tree

  Aside from his strange bathroom conference with BCI&I Special Agent Joe Dietz, Matthew Hoffman had been as silent as a sphinx since his arrest on the morning of November 14, 2010. But there were changes in the air by the end of the day on November 17. Behind the scenes, even as tips continued to come in and searchers fanned out throughout the community, Prosecutor John Thatcher had started working out a deal with Matthew Hoffman and his attorney.

  Hoffman had told Special Agent Dietz on November 15 that he wanted to die; he wanted Dietz to arrange a situation where Hoffman could appear to attempt an escape and then be shot dead. By late November 17, however, Hoffman seemed to have lost his interest in dying. In fact, in exchange for the prosecutor’s taking the death penalty off the table, he agreed to tell authorities where he’d hidden the bodies of Tina Herrmann, Kody Maynard and Stephanie Sprang.

  Before any legal documents could be signed with Hoffman and his attorneys, Prosecutor Thatcher met with the victims’ closest relatives. Even though the final judgment was his, Thatcher wanted them to know what was happening and allow them to give their input.

  Several people were initially against Matthew Hoffman being allowed to escape the death penalty. But Thatcher convinced them that making this deal was their only real means of finding their loved ones’ remains. Otherwise, Tina, Kody and Stephanie might not be found for years, if ever. Eventually all agreed that this was the best they could hope for.

  After the meeting, Thatcher began writing up the all-important agreement for Hoffman and his attorneys to sign. The first stipulation on the list was that the prosecutor’s office would not seek the death penalty if “all conditions were met.” Second was that Hoffman would lead investigators to the remains of Tina, Kody and Stephanie within twenty-four hours of the acceptance of the agreement. Third was that all remains would be found, except for those that might have been moved by “animal activity.”

  The fourth point was that Hoffman had to give the Knox County Sheriff’s Office a full written statement, dictated to his attorneys, including written responses to questions submitted by KCSO. Fifth was that Hoffman would plead guilty to the charges of aggravated murder, burglary, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, kidnapping and sexual assault. Sixth on the list was that the State of Ohio and the defense would jointly recommend to the judge a prison sentence of life without parole.

  After consultation among all the would-be signatories, the document was signed by Prosecutor John Thatcher, Matthew Hoffman, Sheriff David Barber, and Hoffman’s public defenders, who now included not only Bruce Malek but also assistant public defenders Brandon Crunkilton and Fred Mayhew.

  Detective David Light later noted, “On Thursday, November 18, 2010, Matthew Hoffman and his attorneys reached an agreement with Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher, to reveal where the bodies of Tina Herrmann, Kody Maynard and Stephanie Sprang were located. Hoffman disclosed the location through his attorneys.”

  In essence, Matthew Hoffman wasn’t going to accompany investigators to the location, but would give them directions to the spot.

  * * *

  Unaware that Hoffman had struck a deal with the prosecutor, volunteer searchers continued to comb woods, fields and stream banks. Even if they had known, perhaps they would have continued anyway; there was always the possibility that Hoffman could’ve been lying.

  About three hundred volunteers gathered at the Premier Theatres parking lot on Thursday morning, November 18, to be assigned their tasks for the day ahead. This was the third day of coordinated searching. It was a very cold, blustery day. Many volunteers had accepted the likelihood that the missing trio would not be found alive. Still, they persisted in the search. As volunteer Charles Christopher, a student at Central Ohio Technical College put it, “I came out to help no matter what.” Many of the volunteers were off-duty police officers, firefighters, EMT workers and even a mounted search team from surrounding counties and communities. For some of them it was the second or third day of volunteering. At the KCSO headquarters, eighty canine officers with their dogs were briefed by Deputy EMA Director Matt Sturgeon.

  Volunteers were warned that the weather would be very cold and that in some places they’d be working in rough terrain. They were also told to take their time and be careful. And once again, they were instructed that if they found anything that looked like it might be related to the case, not to touch it but to call KCSO so an officer could come out and collect the item.

  Doug McLaman, operations manager of the Knox County Park District, commented about the volunteers, “This is what makes Knox County unique, is that we have so many people willing to come out when the weather’s like this.”

  To assist and support the searchers, various area restaurants were donating coffee and snacks, and other volunteers supplied homemade sandwiches. Among the latter group was Brittany Peck of Mount Vernon, who said, “We came to help out all these searchers that are freezing. Many of them have come out to help someone they don’t even know.”

  * * *

  Before noon on November 18, the news of the plea deal’s imminent signing reached investigators. Detective
Sergeant Roger Brown recalled, “I was advised that Matthew Hoffman agreed to disclose the location of the bodies of Tina Herrmann, Kody Maynard and Stephanie Sprang. Lt. Kohler and I followed Knox County Assistant Public Defender Brandon Crunkilton, Knox County Public Defender’s Office Investigator Avery Dyer and Special Agent Dietz to the Kokosing Wildlife Area on Yankee Street, Fredericktown, Ohio.” This was about eight miles north of Mount Vernon.

  Around the same time, Agent Joe Dietz met with other BCI&I agents at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. He told them that all the families had signed off on the deal put together by the prosecution and defense, where in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, Matt Hoffman would disclose where the bodies of Tina, Kody and Stephanie could be found.

  Dietz later recapped in his report the meeting with Hoffman’s defense team, “I met with Assistant Knox County Public Defender Brandon Crunkilton and Public Defender’s Office Investigator Avery Dyer. Mr. Crunkilton advised that he had received information from Matthew Hoffman as to the location of the missing victims and wanted to check the location to verify the accuracy of the information he was given. I then rode with Mr. Crunkilton and Mr. Dyer in their vehicle to locate the place where the bodies of Tina Herrmann, Kody Maynard and Stephanie Sprang were located.”

  Dietz documented that Lieutenant Rohler and Detective Sergeant Brown were following them in a separate vehicle. Dyer drove to a wooded area of public land in the Kokosing Lake Wildlife Area in the Yankee Street and Waterford Road locale outside of Fredericktown, Ohio; this was the area that Hoffman had indicated they should go.

  Lieutenant Rohler picked up the narrative. “As we were pulling in to the wildlife area, an officer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, flagged us down. Sergeant Brown explained to the officer the situation, and the Wildlife Officer was shown the map that was provided by Matthew Hoffman.”