MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — A frantic 911 call from a Dairy Queen manager about a no-show employee unraveled a nightmare that had been hidden behind a barricaded basement door, leading to the rescue of a kidnapped teenage girl and exposing a killer whose obsession with autumn leaves masked a brutal triple homicide.
The call came in just after sunset on November 10, 2010. Valerie Hawthorne, a shift manager at the local Dairy Queen, was not calling about a scheduling issue. Her voice trembled as she reported that her employee, Tina Herrmann, had failed to appear for her shift, a complete anomaly for the punctual mother of two.
Hawthorne, deeply concerned, had driven to Tina’s home on Apple Valley Drive in the quiet, unassuming community of Howard. The front door was unlocked. What she found inside sent her racing back to her car to dial the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.
“There is blood everywhere,” she told the dispatcher, her words clipped with panic. The dispatcher’s immediate, stark command was clear: “Don’t go back in the house.”
Within minutes, the initial concern for a missing worker morphed into a full-scale crime scene investigation. Deputies arriving at the residence were met with a scene of staggering violence. Blood was not confined to a single point of attack; it painted a horrifying trail from the front door, through the hallways, and into the bedrooms, converging in a macabre focal point in the family bathroom.
The sheer volume of forensic material was overwhelming. Investigators noted that the assailant had attempted to destroy evidence by pouring motor oil over the crimson stains, a clumsy but effective method that contaminated DNA samples and smeared footwear impressions. Yet, in their meticulous grid search, they found a single, pristine footprint in the hallway—a small, size 7.
5 Airwalk sneaker. It was a shoe typically worn by a teenager. This single piece of evidence gave investigators their first, fragile hope: 13-year-old Sarah Maynard might have walked out of that house alive.
The victims were identified as Tina Herrmann, 37, her son Cody, 11, and her close friend, Stephanie Sprang, who had been visiting. The family dog was also missing. The disappearance of an entire family unit, coupled with the presence of a young girl’s footprint, sent a shockwave through the small, tight-knit community.
“I think everyone’s just kind of really scared that something like this could happen so close to home,” one neighbor told reporters as search parties scoured the dense Ohio woodlands. The police immediately zeroed in on Larry Maynard, Tina’s ex-husband and the father of Sarah and Cody. Maynard had a documented history of domestic violence, placing him at the top of the suspect list.
In an interview, he appeared genuinely distressed, stating, “I just got this weird creepy feeling that you know something is wrong with the kids.” Despite his past, his alibi checked out, and detectives were forced to look elsewhere. Their attention soon shifted to Greg Borders, Tina’s recent boyfriend, who admitted to a heated argument with her on the day of the disappearance.
However, he too was cleared as the investigation progressed.
For 48 agonizing hours, leads were scarce. The case broke open not through witness testimony, but through a mundane piece of trash. In the garage of the Herrmann home—the only area not saturated in blood or oil—detectives discovered a Walmart plastic bag.
Inside were heavy-duty garbage bags, tarps, and a cash receipt. The timestamp and location led them to the Walmart in Mount Vernon, a neighboring town. Detectives requested the store’s CCTV footage for that specific date and time.
What they saw on the grainy security tape was a revelation that would redefine the entire investigation. The footage showed a man loading what appeared to be a bound figure into the trunk of a vehicle. The figure was small, clearly a child.
They had found their kidnapper, but he was not the boyfriend, the ex-husband, or any known associate of the family. He was a complete stranger.
The security guard on duty noted the vehicle appeared to be a Toyota Yaris. A DMV search for that specific model in Knox County yielded a short list of owners. On that list was a name that made the detectives’ blood run cold: Matthew Hoffman.
Hoffman’s driver’s license photo showed him wearing the exact same shirt as the man in the Walmart footage. But the most chilling connection was his mother’s address on file—Apple Valley Drive, a mere stone’s throw from the Herrmann residence. Hoffman, a 30-year-old with a history of petty theft and a bizarre fixation on collecting leaves, had been living right under their noses.
He had recently moved to Mount Vernon, but his link to the neighborhood was undeniable.
Armed with a warrant, a tactical team converged on Hoffman’s residence in the early morning hours of November 13. The scene that greeted them was one of profound psychological disturbance. The house was a shrine to autumn.
“The whole house was full of leaves,” one officer recounted. “He had collected a large amount of leaves and had them tacked to his walls, in bags, but there were just huge piles of leaves all through the house.” Hoffman was found asleep on the couch, surrounded by his decaying collection.
He was taken into custody without incident. But the search for Sarah was just beginning. The ground floor yielded nothing.
The second floor was a labyrinth of leaf walls and clutter. It was only when officers noticed a dresser that seemed oddly out of place, pushed firmly against a wall, that they discovered a hidden door. Behind it, a staircase descended into a dark, damp basement.
The basement smelled of earth and decay. Officers found ropes, duct tape, and a makeshift bed—clear signs of captivity—but no sign of Sarah. As they prepared to leave, dejected, one officer noticed a small crevice in the wall near the stairs.
He peered inside and saw a pair of eyes staring back. Sarah Maynard was curled into a fetal position, wedged into the tiny space, wearing nothing but garbage bags. She was alive.
“I could hear Joe yelling, ‘They found her, she’s alive, she’s alive!’” one detective recalled. The rescue was a beacon of light in a case that had turned increasingly dark.
Sarah was emaciated, dehydrated, and covered in dirt. She had been held captive for four days, surviving on virtually nothing. As paramedics carried her out, she remained silent, her eyes fixed on the floor, unable to process the sudden shift from terror to safety.
At the hospital, Sarah was stabilized. Her father, Larry, rushed to her side, but was reportedly shocked by her gaunt, hollow appearance. She looked as if she had aged a decade in four days.
When detectives gently questioned her about her ordeal, she recounted the horror of her captivity. Hoffman had forced her to wear garbage bags, telling her he was doing her a favor. He had sexually assaulted her.
He had kept her in the dark crevice, threatening her life if she made a sound. But the most harrowing part of her testimony came when she was asked about her family. In a whisper, she recounted the events of November 10.
She had arrived home with Cody to find the house eerily silent. She saw a clot of blood on the floor. A man—Hoffman—had emerged from the hallway, grabbing her.
She screamed for Cody to run, but he was too slow. Hoffman had a knife, already bloodied. He cut her finger to subdue her.
She froze, terrified that if she screamed, he would 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her mother.
She was forced into the kitchen where she saw her mother and Stephanie Sprang tied up. She heard the sounds of violence from the bathroom. “I heard the toilet flush and then I heard running water,” she said, realizing with sickening clarity that her brother Cody was being killed in that bathroom.
Hoffman then dragged her to the garage, forcing her into the back of her mother’s Jeep. It was only later, after her rescue, that she learned the horrifying truth: she had been lying on top of the garbage bags containing her family’s remains. Hoffman had murdered Stephanie, Tina, and Cody in the bathroom, dismembering their bodies with a pocket knife.
Two days later, he had stuffed their remains into the garbage bags and hidden them inside a hollow tree deep in the woods, a grotesque parody of his leaf collection.
Faced with overwhelming evidence and Sarah’s testimony, Matthew Hoffman confessed. He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder, as well as kidnapping, burglary, assault, and 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 of a corpse. In a plea deal that spared him the death penalty, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I have no regrets about this case whatsoever,” the prosecutor stated. “Life in prison without parole is a just outcome. Matthew Hoffman is no longer in control.”
The community of Howard breathed a collective sigh of relief, but the trauma was far from over for Sarah.
In the aftermath, Sarah hoped to find solace with her father, Larry. Instead, she found a new nightmare. In the years following the rescue, Sarah alleged that she was subjected to physical and emotional 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 by her father and stepmother.
She stated that she felt trapped once again, this time in a different kind of prison. But Sarah, who had survived the unthinkable, refused to be a victim again. She broke her silence, and both Larry and her stepmother were served with protection orders, legally barring them from contacting her.
She made the courageous decision to sever ties with her remaining biological parent to save herself.
Sarah’s journey of healing has been marked by an extraordinary resilience. As a teenager, she wrote a book about her experience, turning her trauma into a tool for advocacy. She established a victim support fund with her grandmother.
She also adopted Elsa, one of the police canines who had participated in the search for her family, giving the dog a loving home. She became a mother herself, a testament to her refusal to let her past define her future. With a grant provided by Dr.
Phil and the University of Florida, she pursued her dream of studying pediatrics, driven by a desire to help others. “We were all inspired by your courage and your bravery,” the grant announcement read.
Sarah has since chosen to use her voice to support other survivors. She reached out to Jamie Closs, a fellow kidnapping survivor whose case bore striking similarities to her own. “If she is able to look up to me, I can help her in a very positive way,” Sarah said.
Her advice to Jamie was simple and profound: “Of course, we have days where we feel hopeless and we want to give up. But we can’t.” Sarah Maynard’s story is not just one of tragedy, but of an indomitable spirit.
She has transformed herself from a victim hidden in a basement into a strong mother, an advocate, and a symbol of survival. “It made me become a really strong woman,” she said. “It made me become a really strong mother.”
The case of the “Leaf Killer” remains one of the most disturbing in Ohio’s history, but Sarah’s survival ensures that the memory of Tina, Cody, and Stephanie is carried forward with strength, not just sorrow.
