♪
This is a case of brutal, staggering violence.
♪
We're talking about something quite extraordinary
that happened to this family--
multiple murders, the range, and incomprehensible.
What makes this killer so twisted
is the sick and truly bizarre sexual proclivity
that drove him to kill.
This is the strangest disorder I've ever heard of.
I've been reporting on criminal cases
for a long time,
and this one is one of the most twisted.
♪
Apple Valley is a very beautiful area
in a rural part of Knox County, Ohio.
Very pleasant place,
and not a lot of crime that occurs there.
This case was really unbelievable to happen
in a--in a community like Apple Valley.
It's something that they would have never anticipated
at all.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
We get a call from Valerie who is the manager
at the Dairy Queen where Tina worked
and she had become concerned
when Tina didn't show up for her shift.
Valerie told us Tina Herrmann is a single mom.
She has a 13-year-old daughter, Sarah,
and Kody is the 11-year-old son.
She has been living with a boyfriend, Greg Borders.
Her and Greg were getting ready to break up.
When we do have someone that's missing
and the person who is reporting it says
that there is a conflict with an ex
or current relationship, that is a red flag for us.
♪
The Knox County Sheriff's Office
did a welfare check around 7:25 p.m. that night.
The deputy had went to the residence
and they knocked on the door
and at that time no one responded.
The deputy didn't see anything out of the ordinary
and then left to go back on his shift.
The next morning we got a report
there's another missing woman.
Ron Metcalf contacted
the sheriff's office on Thursday morning
to make a report that his girlfriend,
Stephanie Sprang was missing.
Ron Metcalf told us
that Stephanie was a close friend of Tina Herrmann's.
One of the pieces of information that Ron gives
is that Stephanie had plans to go with Tina
to search for a new residence for her
and they were planning on doing that on Wednesday afternoon,
Tina was planning on moving out
from her boyfriend Greg's house.
Then it was a matter of, well, now they're both missing.
The next progression in this case
would be to check on Tina's kids, Sarah and Kody.
The sheriff's office made a contact
at the children's school
and determined they were not in school.
They had been dropped off by their bus drivers
at their house the day before.
Once we determined that the children weren't in school
that heightened the--the concern a great deal.
This is very unusual to have
basically a mother, her two children,
and her best friend all go missing at the same time
especially without any word to the wise, to anyone.
So that certainly, you know,
raised the question of what is going on here?
It wasn't long after that that we got another call.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
The sheriff's office of course responds immediately.
When I arrived at the scene, I walked into the living room
and I noticed that there are multiple bloodstain patterns.
There is the large saturation stain on the floor
just inside the doorway of the living room
where the significant amount of blood
did saturate into the carpet pad.
And then there's a spatter pattern on the wall.
And then you have this drag mark in blood
from that saturation stain down the hallway...
And then we see two other drag marks in blood
that converge in two of the bedrooms.
There was a significant bloodletting event
in each of the back bedrooms.
The saturation stains were probably a foot by a foot
and they soaked into the carpet pad.
There were
the living area,
Sarah's bedroom,
and also Tina's bedroom.
There were either a spatter
or cast off the patterns in each location.
When we look at the spatter pattern
and then the saturation stain,
that indicates someone was assaulted, they fell,
and they bled for a certain amount of time.
But we didn't see any evidence that gunshots had been fired
so we were more leaning towards blunt force trauma
or sharp force trauma.
There was a great deal of concern
that there might be at least three fatalities.
But we don't see any victims.
No bodies.
We found that there were three distinct drag marks in blood
that all converged into the bathroom.
As you enter the bathroom,
your eyes are immediately drawn to the bathtub.
There was a lot of blood in the tub area
and on the floor and around the sink and the toilet.
The shower curtain had a blood mark on it
like a high watermark
that would have suggested that at one point
there was maybe a couple of inches of blood
in the--in the bathtub.
There were spatter patterns, diluted blood,
and also tissue that was intermixed with the spatter.
Something really horrible has happened here,
and all those things tell me that...
victims were dismembered in the bathtub.
In the living room, in the bedroom,
in the children's room--
there is a saturation of blood
and you see blood splatter and cast off on the walls.
The bathroom-- clearly a slaughter house.
This is personal and the question is why?
This crime scene tells us some information
about the individual who created it.
This person was able to spend an extended period of time
in this household undetected.
This criminal didn't seem to be too concerned
about getting caught.
Seemed to be comfortable inside the house.
This is either someone who lives there
or has been watching the patterns of this family
over time.
There are four missing people.
Tina and Stephanie and Kody and Sarah.
My first gut reaction was that everybody is dead.
But we started seeing footwear impressions in the blood.
There was one that was a wavy pattern
and a second one that was some circles
with circles in between
and then lines attaching to those circles
and those told us that two people were walking around
after the blood-shedding event.
It could be two suspects.
One of these footwear impressions,
we could tell the type of shoe and the size.
Airwalk 7 1/2.
Agents went into the closets, started to look around.
And we could actually match it to a box
of the same shoes in Sarah's closet.
Sarah's footwear impression indicated
that she could be still alive.
The questions come up. Well, why is this person alive?
You know, are they alive because they've been kidnapped
or are they alive because
God forbid they might be involved?
We found garbage bags
and some tarps in a Walmart bag in Tina's garage.
They could have been left by the offender.
When we go into the basement, what happened,
that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It's like a horror story, really.
♪
At this point in the investigation,
Tina, Stephanie, Kody, and Sarah,
but only three
distinct areas of bloodstain patterns.
The crime scene is indicating that three people have been
brutally murdered and dismembered.
And then footwear impression evidence led us
to the suggestion that Sarah,
the 13-year-old daughter might still be alive.
♪
The idea that she might have, you know, been involved
was a very remote possibility in our minds
because the scene was obviously an indication
of extreme violence, and I mean,
we're dealing with a young 13-year-old girl.
We pretty much felt like the greater likelihood
was that Sarah is being held captive
by our potential suspect.
Regardless, time is of the essence.
The longer Sarah is out there,
the longer she's with the offender,
the more dangerous it is for her.
We've got to act quickly.
There was certainly a greater urgency to find Sarah
and to figure out who did this.
We have to continue pushing forward
with processing the crime scene
to see if there are any more leads
that we can derive from it.
♪
As you go into the kitchen,
the first thing you see on the ground
are several Kroger grocery bags
that had not been put away.
They also found a receipt in the bag
that showed that the purchases were made
just after 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday.
It would seem to suggest that Tina had been interrupted
after she got home from the grocery store
because that was basically the last kind of reference
they had for what was going on with Tina
before she didn't show up for work at 4:00.
There were no apparent signs of a burglary,
but I noticed that the garage door is off the track,
and to the right side of it is slightly ajar.
We're in the garage. We see the Walmart bag.
I look in bag, I pull it out,
and in the Walmart bag are two heavy-duty tarps
and a package of heavy-duty garbage bags.
There was no receipt in there.
We at that point identified it
as a piece of evidence that we were gonna collect.
Inside that garage, Tina's vehicle,
the Ford F-150 is missing.
There's a possibility that the offender took her vehicle.
Deputies put out an all-points bulletin--
a notice to any law enforcement officer in the area
that if they come across Tina's vehicle
that they need to stop it
and secure it for crime scene processing.
It was the number of victims and the potential
that there was, you know,
someone to be rescued that really put this into top gear.
For the sake of the family and for the sake of the case,
we've got to figure out where they are.
When I first found out that
Tina and the kids were missing,
it was like utter shock.
Tina, she was a good mom.
She showed her love and she was very protective of both of them
but very strict at the same time.
Sarah, as a bubbly personality,
and then Kody,
this shy little boy that had
the most innocent personality.
Stephanie was so generous.
She didn't have a lot of money at the time.
She was a single mom working three jobs.
Working very hard to take care of her kids.
You just wanna find your friend and save her.
You just wanna know where is she.
Of course, you all hope for the best at that time.
You're just wanting answers.
I was so mad and I didn't know who to be mad at.
I wanted my little girl back.
♪
While crime scene agents were processing the scene,
we were told that Tina's truck
had been recovered near Kenyon College
by the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
We believe the offender took it from the residents,
and now we have more opportunities
to get fingerprints and DNA from that.
The Knox County Sheriff's Office deputies
do a search of that area looking for the victims.
Despite searching that area very thoroughly,
nothing came of it.
On Friday at 5:30 p.m.,
Knox County detectives brought in
Greg Borders, Tina's boyfriend for questioning.
♪
We were all just trying to gauge
whether or not as a potential suspect he might be involved.
Greg Borders' story was that on that Wednesday he left
for work early in the morning as he usually does.
He said he spent the whole day at work
and then at the end of the day, he had made previous plans
to spend that Wednesday night at a friend's house.
Got up the next day, went and played golf,
and then drove back home.
So my plan was to hit the road the next morning
and check out those alibis.
♪
I basically headed down to his place of work
at the Target distribution center.
They explained to me that it was a very secure facility,
that their employees have to scan in with a card
and they have to scan out
when they leave at the end of the day.
That we thought that the crime had initiated
between the time the Kroger's purchase had taken place
and Tina failed to report for work,
which is roughly 12:00-ish to 4:00 on that Wednesday.
I talked to the supervisors
and he had been at work all day.
He had a rock-solid, you know, alibi.
We had eliminated Greg Borders at that point.
All the other alibis for the other suspects
had all checked out.
At this point, there is the obvious conclusion
that it could be a stranger.
When it's a stranger, we have no place to start.
We have to then rely hopefully on physical evidence
to identify who that person is.
Dan and the other crime scene agents
had raised the question about there being garbage bags
and some tarps in a Walmart bag in Tina's garage.
With a dismemberment,
when the bodies are not at the crime scene,
the offender has to use something
to take the victims out of the crime scene.
We start thinking that possibly this Walmart bag
could have been left by the offender,
but there was no receipt in there.
So I had to ride over to Walmart in Mount Vernon.
We look at all the purchases for two tarps
and a garbage bag from the time the family went missing
until law enforcement showed up that night.
We were basically able to find the transaction
in the computer.
It was just after midnight, Wednesday night into Thursday.
That then gives us the cashier and the aisle
that it was purchased.
And from there, we were able to obtain footage
of the individual who bought those items.
There are four missing people.
We believe the offender has killed three people
and dismembered them.
We hoped that Sarah was still alive so the clock is ticking.
Dan Winterich had raised the question about there
being garbage bags and some tarps
in the garage in a Walmart bag.
We start thinking that possibly this Walmart bag
could have been left by the offender.
Walmart has excellent surveillance cameras.
And we were able to obtain footage of the individual
who bought those items.
♪
It was an adult male.
I would say 25 to 40 years of age
and he didn't appear to be in any great hurry.
And not only did he buy the tarps and the garbage bags,
but he also bought a Turkey sandwich
and he also picked a--
an orange and black camouflage shirt
off of the dollar racks as he went to check out.
♪
What investigators noticed when they look at the video
is that this guy is heading right to the aisles
for the items he needs to buy.
So he seems to know this Walmart,
which means he probably lives in the area.
How could someone who just committed such a horrific act
go shopping and seem completely normal
and raise absolutely no red flags?
This is something we see in psychopathic individuals.
They don't have a fight or flight mechanism
the way an average person does.
We can experience an adrenaline rush
or a sense of anxiety
by going on a roller coaster or skydiving.
That bar for a psychopath is much higher
or at times impossible to obtain.
Seeing them act in a manner in which we see on this video,
casual, is not surprising to me.
He's already done what he needed to do.
He's undetected.
It's just a matter of cleanup for him and he'll head back.
♪
From the video footage of the individual at Walmart,
we saw after purchasing the items by using cash,
he went out to the parking lot and got into a Toyota Yaris.
We had hoped that a license plate would be visible
on the camera, which it wasn't.
And that's when Agent Dietz decided to search
for all the Toyota Yarises in Knox County
that matched that color.
There were multiple entries,
but at the bottom of the first page
was someone who looked just like our guy in the video.
Not only did he look just like him,
but he was wearing the same shirt
he had on at Walmart in the driver's license photo.
His name was Matthew Hoffman.
The address associated with that was on Apple Valley Drive
which is only 4/10 of a mile from the crime scene.
He was run through the various police databases
and he did show a criminal history
for burglary in Colorado.
His method of operation was he liked to go into houses
and steal things
and then leave without the person
ever knowing he was in the house.
We all felt our first real jolt
of "this must be the guy."
There was certainly a greater urgency.
We don't know if Sarah has been abducted.
If she is alive, how long she was gonna be alive?
So it was that point that we wanna get a search warrant
in Matthew Hoffman's house.
It wasn't going to be a knock on the door.
Would you let us in? We have a search warrant.
It was gonna be a no-knock search warrant.
And we were going to do a joint venture
with the sheriff's office
on the possible apprehension of Matt Hoffman
and hopefully the rescue of Sarah Maynard.
♪
When we approached the house, it was just after daybreak.
♪
Get a couple of deep breaths...
That door flies open and the flashbang goes in.
I entered that residence with my partner behind me
and we encountered Mr. Hoffman.
I observed what appeared to be a weapon within reach.
We pulled him off the couch. He didn't wanna comply.
He realized I was not playing
and he put his hands behind his back.
He was handcuffed and he was escorted out the door.
♪
I observed a very large pile of leaves in the family room.
Found that very odd.
I felt it was deep enough
that there could be bodies underneath these leaves
whether they're alive or not.
So without disrupting evidence,
I used the stick to hit the floor.
"It's the police.
If you can hear me, please move around."
But there was nothing but a pile of leaves.
The upstairs team lets us know that that's clear.
We let them know downstairs is clear.
The one room to the left was where this basement door was.
♪
Made our way down the steps.
When we go into the basement, what happened--
that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
We hit Matthew Hoffman's house
with the SWAT team.
♪
Four of us make our way into the basement.
♪
We find a terrified, exhausted little girl
tied up on a bed of leaves.
♪
I was laying down there
and I heard this really, really loud noise.
And I was like, literally scared to death.
My first thought was somebody is coming downstairs,
you know, to get me again.
And they shine the lights on me and they said,
"Are you Sarah Maynard?"
And, um, I said, "Yes."
They said, "We're not here to hurt you.
We're here to save you."
I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.
We knew that we just saved this little girl's life.
It was really one of the greatest momentary feelings
of relief and victory that I've had in my, you know,
40 years in law enforcement.
When I stepped out of the basement into the real world,
I felt so free.
You know, not have to worry about
if it's gonna be death tomorrow.
♪
After Sarah was rescued
and Hoffman was placed into custody,
our objective was to process that crime scene.
In addition to finding Sarah in the basement,
we also recovered a blackjack,
which is a blunt force weapon
that can be used to incapacitate people.
In the same drawer was a pretty heavy-duty knife.
It's potentially the murder weapon
and certainly capable of dismembering a body.
There was a large pile of leaves
as I walked into the living room,
which is something that was really kinda shocked me.
And then there were more leaves that were found in bags
stapled against the wall,
in the bathroom, in an upstairs bedroom,
and also in the basement where Sarah was being held.
I just didn't understand the significance of it
and had never really seen anything that unusual.
Leaves scattered throughout the living room.
Bags of leaves lining the walls.
Has he used these bags
to muffle the sounds of Sarah
in the dungeon of his home
so that she cannot be heard?
What is the rationale?
Maybe he really is a psycho
and he has this fetish for leaves.
And the idea that he's put Sarah
whose life he has spared on a bed of leaves
is to him a kind gesture.
This would not be the first individual
who had a sexual attraction or affiliation to trees.
In fact, there's an actual term for it.
It's called dendrophilia and it describes individuals
who have a sexual attraction
and a particular level of comfort with trees,
and he seems to fit that profile.
I went and accompanied Sarah to the hospital.
She was remarkably composed.
She was able to talk and tell the story of what happened.
On November 10, 2010,
Kody and I do our
say bye to mom, give her a hug and kiss,
and then tell her that we loved her.
♪
We got home and Kody and I open up the door
to go into the house.
I shut the front door.
And when I looked down to take off my shoes,
I see blood.
♪
And then I started yelling for mom.
No answer. Mom didn't reply.
♪
And then a guy ran out from the hallway
and I proceeded to run into my room.
And then I hear Kody yelling and screaming,
and I don't know why I didn't turn back,
but I think I was too scared.
I'm looking around.
I'm seeing blood that was all over the walls.
And then all of a sudden,
this guy busts through the door.
He had the knife out,
and he put the knife to my chest
and it had blood on it.
He then tied my hands.
He then blindfolded me.
He told me that if I start screaming,
that he was going to kill me.
Eventually, he puts me over his shoulder.
He lays me in a vehicle.
So I'm super scared
and it felt he was driving very fast and crazy.
Eventually, the vehicle stopped.
He unblindfolded me.
I was in a house at this point.
He opened up the door to the basement
and he literally pushed me all the way down the stairs.
And I'm looking around and it's completely, like,
scaring the crap out of me even more now.
There was leaves everywhere.
♪
I think it was the second or third day.
♪
He sexually assaulted me, um,
and when he did so,
he had laid the knife on top of me.
♪
During those four days while I was down there,
it was complete darkness.
So I was just mentally tired
and so extremely worried.
I asked where my mom and brother are
and he said that if I brought it up again
that he was gonna kill me.
I knew that something serious
had happened to my mom and then Kody.
And I'm trying to have the hope
that my mom's okay and Kody is okay.
As excited and thrilled as we were to--to have rescued Sarah,
it was tempered by the fact that the other three
were not able to be rescued because they were in fact dead.
We're still missing Tina, Stephanie, and Kody.
We don't know where the remains are,
and there's only one person who knows where they are
and he's not talking.
♪
Sarah was recovered.
She was harmed, but she was alive.
Matthew Hoffman had been taken into custody
and was taken back to the sheriff's office.
Of course, that was some sense of relief that, okay,
we have the guy we're looking for
and he's not able to do something else,
but where are the other victims?
We knew that by having him we had the best chance
to find out hopefully what happened to the rest.
They've been, you know, laboring at it
for several hours with nothing.
So I asked if I could take a shot.
Hi, Matt.
We have to try to get him to talk to us
before he asks for an attorney.
When you have a suspect
who does not talk,
it is the absolute worst nightmare
for any investigator.
Authorities suspect he may be catatonic.
The likelihood of this is essentially zero.
You cannot be a psychopath and go into catatonia.
Catatonia is an anxiety response.
It's a reaction that significantly depressed
or psychotic, schizophrenic individuals go into.
Psychopaths, for the most part,
are essentially unable of experiencing anxiety.
And so the only alternative is that he's using this
as a strategy to not speak to the authorities
and is putting on a show.
In the state of Ohio, there was a death penalty
and prosecutors would seek it in a case like this.
So there is some leverage to use against Hoffman
in trying to get him to cooperate.
Maybe take death off the table. Tell us where the bodies are.
Then it would give the family some closure.
He could save his own life,
and let the families bury their loved ones.
The consensus was that recovering their family members
and getting Hoffman put in prison for the rest of his life
was more important than the death penalty.
Part of the deal that the prosecutor
put into the agreement was that he would give a full confession
and he agreed to the deal.
So Hoffman told his attorneys and he claimed that it was
a burglary that, you know, went wrong.
♪
One of the reasons he identified that house
was because it was isolated
and didn't have any close neighbors.
Matthew Hoffman explained to us.
He camped out across the street in the woods
to watch the house.
He waited till Tina left in the truck.
And then he crawled under the garage door which was ajar.
He felt comfortable with spending some time there.
Maybe an hour or so later,
Tina had got home from the grocery store
and that's when Matthew Hoffman confronted her.
He struck her several times in the head,
but she would not go unconscious.
At the same time, Stephanie had plans
that afternoon to go with Tina
to search for a new residence for her--an apartment.
Stephanie shows up at the house
when he was confronted by two people.
He panicked.
And he grabbed his knife and stabbed Tina
who was on the bed...
and then chased after Stephanie
who went into Sarah's room, stabbed her.
Matthew then dragged Tina and Stephanie
down the hall into the bathroom.
And then he dismembered their bodies...
With his knife in the bathtub.
And then a couple hours later...
The children come home before he can finish what he's doing.
He told us that he had stabbed Kody,
but Sarah ran down the hall to her room
and Hoffman said he gagged her and tied her up.
And then Kody was dismembered.
♪
So he went and bought bags and tarps at Walmart.
He was using those to transport the body parts
out of the bathroom into the vehicle.
And then drove off to the house with Sarah.
He stated that he then disposed of the bodies
and then left Tina's truck near Kenyon College.
He described himself as having become a monster.
The location of those bodies was the last card to be played.
And that's when Hoffman tells us the remains
are in a hollow tree.
We're all motivated in wanting to find Tina,
Stephanie, and Kody.
Matthew Hoffman had given this information
about where the bodies were.
He decided I'm putting them in the hollow tree...
The Kokosing Wildlife Refuge area.
It's a wildlife area,
heavily wooded, very remote.
It's just not a place
that it was likely we would ever find anybody.
So we drove out to that area
following the directions that he had given to us.
We were not going to let him go out there.
We walked into the woods and it was a huge tree,
but there was a knothole about 7-8 feet off the ground
that looked like it might give us a look inside.
And I climbed up and I could see black garbage bags.
And then we decided we needed a tree surgeon to come out
and they basically started the knothole
and cut squares going down the tree.
It was basically lift-- just lifting heavy bags
out of the tree and down a ladder onto the ground.
The challenging part was...
looking at the bags, and--you know.
♪
The final confirmation that they were in fact deceased.
The bizarre part of this whole thing--
Matthew Hoffman wanted pictures to show
that we had not destroyed the tree.
He killed three people and kidnapped a fourth,
and he was worried about the tree.
This tree represented
his sacred burial ground,
the place that he had a connection with.
When putting the bodies in this tree,
in his mind he's likely created sort of the ultimate shrine,
the ultimate place he can go back and visit
which killers often do.
Who would have ever thought about a tree
and then the inside of his home is like a tree, right?
It's full of leaves.
And he kidnapped a 13-year-old girl
and sexually assaults her on a bed of leaves.
I mean, I've never seen a factual scenario like this
and probably never will again.
♪
I was laying in the bed at the hospital.
I looked up and I see it on the news.
Authorities in a small Ohio town say two women
and an 11-year-old boy were stabbed to death
and dismembered before their remains
were put inside a tree.
I kept thinking to myself and telling myself
that it wasn't real because of the details were so gruesome.
I just seriously couldn't believe
that somebody could ever even
do such a thing to a human being.
I don't understand how you could have
a normal loving family...
♪
And then...
one day, it's gone in a split of a second.
♪
I think that on that day, honestly...
There was...
♪
There wasn't anything I could have done.
♪
Hoffman admitted to killing the three people he killed,
admitting to the gross abuse of corpse,
charges for dismembering their bodies.
Admitted to kidnapping and raping Sarah Maynard.
So there's not gonna be a trial,
but it all came down to life in prison without parole.
Never ever getting out of prison.
♪
I don't believe she's dead. She's, like...
Gone away for a long visit in my head.
If I don't see her anywhere else,
I'll see her in heaven.
♪
When things get hard,
um,
I just picture them standing there
telling me that everything is gonna be okay.
I wanted to tell my mom, you know, thank her
for how she made me become
a strong-willed little girl
and a strong-willed woman.
She would be happy that
I'm...
I'm carrying her memory on with me forever.
♪