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Sheriff Barber's office that is covered in blood.
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When we saw the enormity of the crime scene, it
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was very clear that something really terrible had happened.
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This is the first time they have ever seen Matthew Hoffman,
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but this is not the first time Matthew Hoffman has
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seen that.
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With the amount of blood that we saw, it's clear
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that they could die very shortly if we didn't recover them.
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When you look at it, I think it certainly is
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a domino effect. Where do I stop.
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The level of violence that he displayed is far beyond
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anyone that I've ever really seen.
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Matthew Hoffmann. His mom described him from an early age
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as somebody who was interested in trees, loved to climb,
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take his friends in trees. Friends of his said he
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was incredibly bright, but had no common sense, kind of
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a quiet kid, somebody who liked to jump on things
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and jump off of things, kind of a risk taker,
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and also a kid sometimes who seemed to struggle sometimes socially.
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Not a behavior problem. Oh, they just kind of I
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think shrugged it off for the most part as well.
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That's just Matthew.
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In two thousand and one, twenty year old Matthew Hoffman
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has his first encounter with the law.
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After he graduated. He seemed to kind of get lost,
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like he didn't really know exactly what he wanted to do.
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He's living with his mom and so he eventually decides
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to get a job in Colorado. So he moves to
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Colorado Springs and he's working as a plumber's assistant. People
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tend to like him. He makes a good impression. At
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the beginning. He realizes that one of his jobs, the
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owner of the condominium, is going to be out of town,
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and so he decides to essentially visit and set up
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camp there, cooking meals there, watching cable TV. He's using
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the jacuzzi, the hot tub. He ends up stealing some
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things out of the home and then in his head
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he is concerned about all these fingerprints that he might
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have left behind, and so what does he decide. He
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decides to burn up the condominium.
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Our sin was one in which we often find juveniles
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are very much involved in, but to hav an our
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sin to cover up another crime is another level. We
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start to see the development here of an individual that
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has tendencies that are not socially bonded, that can lead
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to more serious crime in the future.
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It suggests a couple of things that suggests certainly poor judgment,
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poor decision making, and just a complete disregard for the
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safety of other people who were in that condominium complex.
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So at this point he decides he needs to go
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back to Ohio and live with his mom. Meanwhile, in Colorado,
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they're these investigations, ask him, did you do it? And
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he goes, YEP, I did do it, And so they
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said you got to come back and face these charges.
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So he gets in the car and he drives back
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to Colorado and he ends up serving six years.
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My name is Bob Maugladore and I'm a retired Columbus
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police officer. I was assigned to the Columbus Resident Agency
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FBI as a member of their Violent Crime Task Force
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after he'd committed the burglaries in Colorado and set those
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buildings on fire to cover his crime. Being caught and
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sent to prison was very hard on Matthew. He had
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a very difficult time in prison and it was a
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very bad experience.
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Eventually he gets out of six years, he gets a
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job as a tree tremor. He ends up saving up
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some money and he buys little house. His neighbors initially
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describe him as as a good guy, and then starting,
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you know, at the end of the summer of twenty ten,
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people just notice this abrupt change in him. He had
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developed this fascination with squirrels in his yard, and neighbors
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had had noticed this, and all of a sudden, he
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starts trapping and killing and eating them. Whenever somebody's behavior
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starts changing, particularly of course, when it's changing for the worse,
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that's a red flag something is going on.
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As we look at the research related to serial killing
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and violent crime, we often do see a pathway to that,
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the mistreatment of animals, the abuse being shown early age.
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And here we have another.
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Example of this, the ability to control ones in It
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is seen as something that we all want to do,
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but the question becomes how.
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We do it.
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He becomes violent with his girlfriend, who then leaves. His
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boss finds out that he's misrepresented his qualifications and that
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he had failed to tell them they had a criminal record.
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He's starting to watch the neighbors. They talk about him
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just literally sitting in a tree and staring at them
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for hours. I believe that Matthew Hoffman made a good
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faith effort when he got out of prison to lead
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a normal, law abiding life, and I think it wore
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on him. And I think over time he got tired
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of pretending to be something he was not, because in
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reality he was a deeply disturbed and troubled person.
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My name is Harry trum bid Us. I'm a retired
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FBI agent. During the Matthew Hoffman case, I was involved
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in investigations of violent crime.
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Matthew Hoffman spends the night camped out in the woods
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overlooking the home of the Herman family, around twenty five
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minutes from his house. Mom Tina works at a local
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fast food restaurant, while her children, Sarah thirteen and Cody eleven,
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are popular pupils at the local high school. Hoffman appears
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to be sticking out the area for burglary Tuesday night.
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He had seen the house, He drove his vehicle, parked
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it not too far from the area there, and he
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actually spent the night in the woods right across the
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street from the house.
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We have Hoffman literally camping out across the way from
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this house in suburban Mount Vernon, Ohio. But there becomes
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this question of staying overnight is a very long time
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to look at your potential victim's house. A typical burglar
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has the ability to see the issues, see the lack
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of security, and say that is a good target.
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So he waited for a while. He walked across the
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street from the woods and he was able to crawl
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underneath the garage door. He went into the garage. He
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kicked the door into the house, actually into the kitchen.
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He said there was a sense of excitement of being
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in somebody else's house when they weren't there. He hears
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the pickup truck pulled back into the driveway, and he
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hears Tina Herman come back, parked the vehicle in the
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driveway and come in through the front door.
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A burglar is one that wants to get in and
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out without any contact with an individual. A burglar usually
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is not prepared to physically have an altercation with an individual. Instead,
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we find that he attacks Tina.
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He immediately confronted her with the knife, made her lie
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down on the bed. All of a sudden, another woman,
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Stephanie Sprang, shows up, and she starts yelling at him,
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and he's panicked. He doesn't know what to do, but
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he brought a knife in with him. And he panics
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and stabs Tina Herman a couple of times in the back,
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gets up and runs after and Stephanie. Instead of leaving
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the house, she goes back into another bedroom. He's able
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to catch her, stabs her a couple of times in
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the chest. Then he goes back to where Tina is
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and stabs her a couple of more times, and he
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said it. By this time, it's clear both women are dead.
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Matthew Hoffman's motive depends on what you believe. He says
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that he just wanted to break in to burglarize the house.
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However, there are.
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Some things that don't add up for me. Number one,
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he brought a huge knife with him. Number two is
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he apparently attacks Tina the minute she walks in the door.
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Number Three, he takes nothing from the house. There's no
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evidence that he's burglarizing anything. Not only did Matthew Hoffman
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totally kill Tina and Stephanie, he continued to stab them
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long after they were dead. There was no reason to
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keep stabbing them, and yet he did.
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When you look at it, I think it certainly is
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a domino effect. I'm already in a terrible situation. Then
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it moved to that of a murder, then another murder,
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Where do I stop?
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After Matthew Hoffman kills Tina and then kills Stephanie, the
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dog is barking and he's worried that's going to draw attention,
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and so he kills the dog as well. He then
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proceeds to take each one, one at a time into
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the bathtub, where he then basically dismembers all of them
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and puts them in plastic bags.
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So killing has occurred. The mother, the mother's friend, even
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the dog had been killed. Now the children come home.
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Matthew Hoffman has murdered Tina Herman and her friend, Stephanie Spring.
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So he carried them both into the bathroom and started
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sawing their body parts. And while he's in there and
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finishing up with the two women, the family dog was
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barking at him, and that so he killed the family
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dog as well. And all of a sudden, he hears
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said children come in the door.
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They opened the door and they see drops of blood
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on the floor, and so immediately Sarah and Cody call
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out for their mom, and instantly Matthew Hoffman comes running
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out full force toward them. Sarah manages to run by
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him Cody tries to run out the door. He grabs
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Cody and stabs in the back of the head and
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kills him pretty much instantly. Meanwhile, Sarah is in her
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room desperately fumbling for her phone, trying to call nine
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one one. Unfortunately, before she can do that, Matthew bursts
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into the room and does not kill her, stops and
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then ties her up. I know it's horrendous.
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Here we have a horrific situation where the brother is
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killed but the daughter is kept alive. I think we
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see control factor here. Thirteen year old child exists in
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the picture. She is saved, I think to be his
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controlling element. Perhaps he's even thinking she can humanize me
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for the demon type activities that I have just done.
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Serial killers we often find are more interested in those
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people in which they can control, and for a male,
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it is often that of a female. Multiply that even
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to a smaller female, a younger female, and the control
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element goes up.
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Tina works at a local fast food restaurant, and on
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the evening of her murder, Tina's boss is the first
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to worry that something isn't right.
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Share barber's office, Hi, I work out a directly on
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the general Nader out there. Uh huh, one of my
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employees is not short for workers afternoon four o'clock, okay,
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which is totally uncharacteristic of her. She's won my managers.
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Okay. This is Wednesday, November tenth of twenty ten. The
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first information I received was that Tina Herman failed to
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show up for her four pm start time at the
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local dairy queen. The manager was so concerned about Tina
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not showing up because she had never missed work before,
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she had never been late. So about seven o'clock that night,
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a sheriff's deputy went to the home. Saw a blue
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pickup truck in the driveway, which was registered to Tina.
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But when the deputy knocked on the door, nobody came
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to the door. Still, he left, and then he went
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back later that night around eleven o'clock, knocked on the
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door again, no activity, Nobody came to the door. There
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didn't seem to be any problem.
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The day after the attack, Stephanie Sprang's boyfriend reports her missing,
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and the police discovered that Sarah and Cody haven't gone
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into school. Tina's boss is even more worried.
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Tina still hadn't shown up for her shift. The manager
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got so concerned she went ahead and drove to Tina's house.
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There were no cars in the driveway, and she noticed
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a window was partly a jar, so she was able
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to raise it and actually get into the kitchen.
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Chef Barber's office.
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I called in last fight about Tina Mervin being missing.
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I am out at her house now. I just went
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in her home because I'm so worried about her. There's
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blood everywhere.
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Okay, just give us a few minutes and we'll be
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in around okay, okay.
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And seeing the crime scene, the local sheriff's office asked
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the FBI for assistance.
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Harry just contacted us and said, looks like we have
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a homicide up here and we're gonna.
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Need some help.
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When we saw the enormity of the crime scene, it
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was very clear that something really terrible had happened.
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Investigators arrive just hours after Hoffmann has left. At this stage,
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investigators are unaware of his involvement. It's not clear if
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any of the victims are still alive or where they've gone.
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Do we have any inclination was this self inflicted? Do
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we have any information that tells us. Was there another person,
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Are there any cameras, any neighbors, or any individuals that
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can give us time frame so that we can have
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a picture of when did this happen.
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There's not a lot of wealth in the house. There's
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no indication that there's any kind of narcotics activity taking
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place at the house. So we had four people that
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seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. We felt
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as though there had to be at least one other
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person involved, possibly too. We had a real life who
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00:18:15.839 --> 00:18:17.079
done it on our hands.
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If they weren't already dead. With the amount of blood
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and everything that we saw, it's clear that they could
249
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die very shortly if we didn't recover them.
250
00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:37.559
Police immediately conduct interviews with known contacts of Tina and Stephanie.
251
00:18:37.599 --> 00:18:41.359
Tina's boyfriend was a suspect at the time, but he
252
00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:44.799
was very cooperative. It was provided an alibie to us.
253
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It appeared as though he had nothing to do with this.
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00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:52.240
We knew Tina and actually Stephanie had been out and
255
00:18:52.279 --> 00:18:56.440
about on Wednesday, could have met anybody, Could somebody have
256
00:18:56.480 --> 00:19:00.279
followed him home. It was pretty much an unknown because
257
00:19:00.279 --> 00:19:05.079
we had received no information, No suspicious people or vehicle
258
00:19:05.160 --> 00:19:09.319
reports in the area, so it was it was truly
259
00:19:09.359 --> 00:19:10.000
a mystery.
260
00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:19.000
At that point, police are still looking for the perpetrator
261
00:19:19.640 --> 00:19:22.279
and the victims of what appears to be a murder.
262
00:19:23.480 --> 00:19:27.039
The crime scene was pretty much based out of the bathroom,
263
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:31.680
yet there was blood also down the hallway. There were
264
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two bedrooms where they found blood. And once they finished
265
00:19:36.920 --> 00:19:40.640
inside the house, they went into the garage and started
266
00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:45.000
processing the items inside the garage and they found a
267
00:19:45.119 --> 00:19:49.279
bag from Walmart. They looked inside and they found a
268
00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:57.160
receipt where somebody had gone on Thursday and made a
269
00:19:57.200 --> 00:20:01.480
purchase of some heavy duty garbage back and a couple
270
00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:02.119
of parts.
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00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:07.079
That is where the first big break in the case
272
00:20:07.160 --> 00:20:10.960
came was a discovery of a receipt at the crime scene.
273
00:20:12.519 --> 00:20:14.880
That receipt really broke the case open.
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00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.640
Now people should know there's a lot of information on
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00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:22.759
your receipt from Walmart. It tells what items you purchased,
276
00:20:23.480 --> 00:20:27.000
it tells the location in which you purchased them, and
277
00:20:27.079 --> 00:20:30.680
the time and date in which you purchased them. That's
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00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:34.359
a lot of information that can get an investigation going.
279
00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:39.000
So good policing says, let's go to this Walmart. Let's
280
00:20:39.039 --> 00:20:42.680
look at the cameras. Let's try to put evidence together
281
00:20:42.759 --> 00:20:45.000
to see who does this bag belong to.
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00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:52.160
Police are yet to identify Hoffman as a suspect. Since
283
00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:55.799
breaking into the Herman's house and killing Tina, Stephanie, Cody,
284
00:20:56.240 --> 00:21:00.759
and the family dog, he's moved the bodies, still keeping
285
00:21:00.799 --> 00:21:04.599
Sarah alive. She's now his prisoner.
286
00:21:11.119 --> 00:21:16.200
And he takes Sarah to his home, binds her, keeps
287
00:21:16.200 --> 00:21:20.440
her bound up, puts her in the crawl space, told
288
00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:23.279
her that he had accomplices, that you know, if she
289
00:21:23.359 --> 00:21:27.000
made any noises or anything, they would be there to
290
00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:29.480
take care of her and perhaps kill her if she
291
00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:32.200
didn't continue to cooperate.
292
00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:35.359
Won't let her take a shower, won't let her go
293
00:21:35.359 --> 00:21:39.160
to the bathroom. He sexually assaults her on multiple occasions.
294
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:51.640
I think Matthew's motivation is sex and control. Not only
295
00:21:51.680 --> 00:21:53.559
does he want to have sex, I think with Sarah,
296
00:21:53.559 --> 00:21:56.920
but he wants to have complete control over her. I
297
00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:01.799
think that Cody and Tina and Sepie or collateral damage
298
00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:04.119
in this situation, that he just wanted to get them
299
00:22:04.119 --> 00:22:05.759
out of the way, and he was willing to kill
300
00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:10.079
anybody that he needed to get Sarah. I think this
301
00:22:10.359 --> 00:22:15.759
desire to essentially capture somebody and have them under your
302
00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:21.359
total control is so telling in terms of that person's psychology.
303
00:22:22.119 --> 00:22:24.640
I think there was some fantasy going on for him.
304
00:22:24.839 --> 00:22:27.640
This is going to be like a girlfriend, or this
305
00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:29.880
is going to be somebody who we're going to watch
306
00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:34.039
movies together, which of course would never ever ever happen.
307
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:42.640
Police don't know if Sarah or her family are alive
308
00:22:43.240 --> 00:22:46.200
or where they are. So far, their only lead is
309
00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:50.559
a Walmart receipt found in the herman's garage. They don't know.
310
00:22:50.599 --> 00:22:53.559
They're in a race against time to save the only survivor.
311
00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:57.799
The family went missing technically on Wednesday. We really didn't
312
00:22:57.839 --> 00:23:02.440
know about it until Thursday. It wasn't until Friday that
313
00:23:02.759 --> 00:23:07.440
they found the receipt. So the investigators went to the
314
00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:10.960
Walmart and they were able to pull up video of
315
00:23:11.039 --> 00:23:14.759
the individual that was in there shortly after midnight, and
316
00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:18.519
they saw this person walking in the Walmart store, going
317
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:24.799
directly to the tarps and the garbage bags and buying those,
318
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.319
going up to the cash register. Unfortunately paid with cash,
319
00:23:29.519 --> 00:23:32.640
so we weren't able to get a name, but we
320
00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:37.559
could see him walking to his vehicle. Turned out to
321
00:23:37.599 --> 00:23:41.160
be a Toyota yaris. So let's pull up all the
322
00:23:41.240 --> 00:23:45.519
known Toyota yarises in this area, and they were able
323
00:23:45.599 --> 00:23:49.400
to click on the information about one of the yearses
324
00:23:49.960 --> 00:23:52.119
and it belonged to an individual by the name of
325
00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:58.920
Matthew Hoffman. So they pulled up his driver's license photo
326
00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:04.200
and he happened to have the same shirt on in
327
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:07.960
his driver's license photo that we saw in the video
328
00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:11.960
of the individual that was walking around in the walmart.
329
00:24:12.200 --> 00:24:16.160
And that's when Matthew Hoffman was identified as a suspect.
330
00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:21.799
Once that occurred, they did some quick background information checks.
331
00:24:22.839 --> 00:24:25.279
He is a convicted felon for some crimes that he
332
00:24:25.319 --> 00:24:28.319
had done in Colorado. Spend time out there in prison.
333
00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:31.480
You then now start looking at that person as your
334
00:24:31.559 --> 00:24:36.200
person of interest. They find Hoffman has been fired from
335
00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:40.759
his job, has a case of domestic violence against him.
336
00:24:40.920 --> 00:24:45.319
We're starting to see the puzzle gather pieces that may
337
00:24:45.359 --> 00:24:46.079
fit together.
338
00:24:56.839 --> 00:25:00.640
Saturday night, heading into Sunday morning, were able to get
339
00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:04.200
the search warrant and based on what we've found with
340
00:25:04.279 --> 00:25:07.000
the tarbs and the garbage bags, we felt we had
341
00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:11.960
enough information there to get an arrest warrant for him.
342
00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:16.079
Police have two addresses for Hoffman. One of them is
343
00:25:16.119 --> 00:25:19.079
his house and the other his parents, both a short
344
00:25:19.160 --> 00:25:24.519
drive from the Herman's. Police plan to monitor both properties simultaneously.
345
00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:29.359
Harry Trombitis heads to Matthew Hoffman's parents' house. Bob Mullador
346
00:25:29.480 --> 00:25:31.000
heads to Matthew Hoffman's house.
347
00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:36.920
So we're going to the residents that belong to Matthew Hoffman.
348
00:25:38.279 --> 00:25:40.680
Because of the condition of the crime scene, I don't
349
00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:46.240
believe that anybody there really expected that we were going
350
00:25:46.319 --> 00:25:48.960
to find anyone alive.
351
00:25:51.079 --> 00:25:54.400
So right now in the investigation, you know that Hoffman
352
00:25:54.519 --> 00:25:57.519
is a person of interest, but you don't know where
353
00:25:57.720 --> 00:26:00.720
the people who lived at the crime I'm seeing where
354
00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:05.759
they are, So this is a very tense time.
355
00:26:08.039 --> 00:26:12.160
The question still remains, where are these people and how
356
00:26:12.200 --> 00:26:24.720
are we going to find them.
357
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:28.640
Police have evidence linking Matthew Hoffman to the suspected murders
358
00:26:28.920 --> 00:26:32.400
of Tina Herman, her children Sarah and Cody, and her
359
00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:36.200
friend Stephanie Sprang. They have no idea that Sarah is
360
00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.279
still alive, and are preparing to search his parents' home
361
00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:43.279
and his own residence. Has he fled the state? If not,
362
00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:44.480
where is he?
363
00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:49.480
We had to assume that the possibility was there that
364
00:26:49.559 --> 00:26:54.359
Hoffman would be at either house. We pulled up in
365
00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:59.160
front of Matthew's mom's house. We're wearing our bulletproof vests,
366
00:26:59.480 --> 00:27:01.680
we've got our hand guns out. I said, I'm with
367
00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:05.759
the FBI. We're looking for Matthew as he here. The
368
00:27:05.839 --> 00:27:13.119
stepdad said no. We were disappointed that we didn't find
369
00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:17.079
him there, but we realized that more than likely Matthew
370
00:27:17.319 --> 00:27:20.079
would be at the house in Mount Vernon.
371
00:27:25.519 --> 00:27:28.640
When the officers went to the door, they knocked and
372
00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:35.880
announced and he actually came to the door, so he
373
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:41.759
was taken into custody right away. As far as Matthew's demeanor,
374
00:27:42.119 --> 00:27:46.799
he was quiet. He almost seemed relieved that we were there.
375
00:27:47.960 --> 00:27:50.559
But as you go into the house, the first thing
376
00:27:50.599 --> 00:27:54.279
that you see off to your right hand side is
377
00:27:54.319 --> 00:27:58.279
a living room without any furniture inside, but there's a
378
00:27:59.240 --> 00:28:08.160
enormous pile of leaves covering the floor. It covers an
379
00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:14.119
entire room. It was really shocking. We looked at that
380
00:28:14.279 --> 00:28:17.640
and wondered, right away, are we going to find four
381
00:28:17.640 --> 00:28:19.960
bodies and covered up in this pile of leaves?
382
00:28:21.799 --> 00:28:24.920
With Hoffman now in custody, the swap team search for
383
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:26.920
survivors fearing the worst.
384
00:28:28.400 --> 00:28:31.640
Anytime a tactical team enters a house like that, the
385
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.559
first thing is that they do is conduct a room
386
00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:39.839
to room search. There were carcasses of animals in his refrigerator,
387
00:28:41.799 --> 00:28:46.359
The house itself was in a state of disarray, and
388
00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:50.000
it was during that search that Sarah was located in
389
00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:54.960
the basement of the home. Everyone who was involved in
390
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.200
that was just shocked that we had this young girl
391
00:28:59.359 --> 00:28:59.799
and she was.
392
00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:05.200
She was bound and.
393
00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:09.680
Sleeping in a pile of leaves with some blankets. She
394
00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:14.599
was pretty confused. Obviously, she was scared, but relieved.
395
00:29:19.279 --> 00:29:22.839
The main point now is to move that thirteen year
396
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:25.799
old Sarah to safety and then to get her to
397
00:29:25.880 --> 00:29:29.279
give us as much information about what occurred.
398
00:29:29.480 --> 00:29:33.000
We quickly interviewed Sarah to see if she knew where
399
00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.599
her family was. He had indicated to her that he
400
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:42.000
was holding her hostage until the family provided whatever money,
401
00:29:42.039 --> 00:29:45.160
and that that they were negotiating. He even showed her
402
00:29:45.640 --> 00:29:48.599
what the word ransom means in the dictionary.
403
00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:54.240
With Sarah now safe, investigators are desperate to learn the
404
00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:57.440
fate of Hoffman's other victims.
405
00:29:59.079 --> 00:30:01.240
Ruger around me have to pear to Sheriff's offs.
406
00:30:02.119 --> 00:30:06.160
You now have Hoffmann in custody, and usually what we
407
00:30:06.279 --> 00:30:10.039
find is that an individual that's in this situation is
408
00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:14.680
usually fearful, uncertain, and scared, and so with all of
409
00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:17.680
that coming at them, they want to defend themselves and
410
00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:20.160
they usually say at least something.
411
00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:24.039
Think, you know what we want to talk about, but
412
00:30:24.160 --> 00:30:31.279
we need to find some find some people. Can you
413
00:30:31.319 --> 00:30:31.559
hear me?
414
00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:38.680
But he does not. He does not for four hours.
415
00:30:39.519 --> 00:30:42.920
Wow, he just sat there like he was in a trance.
416
00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:46.480
After a a couple of hours of him just sitting there,
417
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:53.640
he made emotion like her. Then he does this like
418
00:30:54.119 --> 00:31:00.480
he's breaking something broken. Your heart's broken because what happened,
419
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:04.440
and he kind of nods yes, and that was all
420
00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:05.519
they could get out of it.
421
00:31:08.039 --> 00:31:12.279
I think the longer this capture or kidnapping went on,
422
00:31:12.599 --> 00:31:15.880
I think the harder it would have been for Matthew
423
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:18.200
to let Sarah go. For a couple of reasons. One
424
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:21.160
is she's been missing for so long and the criminal
425
00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:25.119
charges are going to be just racking up longer and longer,
426
00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:28.680
and I think he would have considered her kind of his.
427
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:32.720
He's also killed most of her family, so if he
428
00:31:32.839 --> 00:31:35.880
lets her go, she is now going to find out
429
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:40.240
that he has murdered her mother, her brother, and her dog.
430
00:31:42.279 --> 00:31:46.079
With Hoffman offering no information, police use other tactics to
431
00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:50.079
help them understand what's happened to Tina, Cody, and Stephanie.
432
00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:55.799
I was given the responsibility of escorting his ex girlfriend.
433
00:31:56.519 --> 00:32:00.160
He would take this young lady on dates and he
434
00:32:00.200 --> 00:32:04.240
would find a huge tree, put up his equipment, hoist
435
00:32:04.279 --> 00:32:06.319
them up thirty or forty feet in the air, and
436
00:32:06.359 --> 00:32:08.920
they would hang out for a whole saturday in the
437
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:11.880
hammocks in the canopy of these trees.
438
00:32:12.119 --> 00:32:14.799
Bob hopes that he'll find some clues by driving to
439
00:32:14.839 --> 00:32:17.319
the places that Hoffmann visited with his ax.
440
00:32:17.640 --> 00:32:21.000
She said that he was actually polite most of the time,
441
00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:25.240
but towards the end of their relationship, he was prone
442
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:28.359
to fits of anger and they would come on quickly.
443
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:31.279
When she finally put an end to the relationship, it
444
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:33.839
was because he had held her down and choked her
445
00:32:33.960 --> 00:32:35.440
to the point that she thought she was going to
446
00:32:35.480 --> 00:32:41.759
lose consciousness, and that really scared her. It seems like
447
00:32:42.359 --> 00:32:47.160
Matthew liked the thrill of being in someone's house that
448
00:32:47.279 --> 00:32:49.799
didn't belong to him when they weren't there. That's what
449
00:32:49.880 --> 00:32:54.319
I was hearing from the words of his former girlfriend,
450
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:57.480
and in her case, that led to the demise of
451
00:32:57.519 --> 00:33:01.960
their relationship as she came to know him better. So
452
00:33:02.440 --> 00:33:06.440
she and I drove all over Knox County, put hundreds
453
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:08.680
of miles on my truck that those couple of days,
454
00:33:10.039 --> 00:33:10.880
but to no avail.
455
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:15.759
We just assumed that they were dead and that they
456
00:33:15.759 --> 00:33:19.039
were hidden somewhere and it was going to be up
457
00:33:19.079 --> 00:33:21.359
to Matthew Hoffman and tell us where they were.
458
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:25.960
You can start to then think, was there a movement
459
00:33:26.079 --> 00:33:29.880
of body parts? The piece is all in one place,
460
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:33.480
and this is where they make the horrific finding.
461
00:33:47.119 --> 00:33:50.039
Matthew Hoffman is in custody for the kidnapping of Sarah
462
00:33:50.119 --> 00:33:53.559
Maynard and the suspected murder of her mom Tina, her
463
00:33:53.559 --> 00:33:56.200
brother Cody, and her mom's friend Stephanie.
464
00:33:56.920 --> 00:33:57.079
Hi.
465
00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:00.240
Matt, Hi, my name is Chris Wanda. Talk you fond
466
00:34:00.279 --> 00:34:04.559
if I could. After two days of interrogation, the police
467
00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:07.839
have no information about whether or not he's killed Sarah's
468
00:34:07.839 --> 00:34:10.760
family or what he might have done with their bodies.
469
00:34:11.599 --> 00:34:17.280
He didn't talk a lot. He seemed easily frustrated. He's
470
00:34:17.440 --> 00:34:20.920
just sort of a haunted personality.
471
00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:25.440
It was extremely frustrating. We just weren't able to get
472
00:34:25.519 --> 00:34:28.800
him to admit anything or tell us any of the information.
473
00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:33.400
At that point, he was eligible for the death penalty,
474
00:34:33.880 --> 00:34:37.679
but we wanted to find out where the family was.
475
00:34:38.239 --> 00:34:42.440
So basically, the prosecutors said, we think that if we
476
00:34:42.559 --> 00:34:47.320
dropped the death penalty charges against Matthew Hoffman in exchange,
477
00:34:47.639 --> 00:34:50.880
he'll tell us where the family where your family members are.
478
00:34:51.719 --> 00:34:55.480
And all of the family members were in agreement that
479
00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:58.199
they wanted to know where their loved ones were so
480
00:34:58.239 --> 00:34:59.280
they can bring him home.
481
00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:06.000
What's extremely important is trying to bring closure, not just
482
00:35:06.159 --> 00:35:10.280
to that of the case, but what is very important
483
00:35:10.360 --> 00:35:11.280
to the families.
484
00:35:11.599 --> 00:35:13.159
Not knowing is.
485
00:35:13.159 --> 00:35:18.679
Often the question that eats at them every single day.
486
00:35:19.599 --> 00:35:23.280
The deal works with the prospect of the death penalty removed,
487
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:26.119
Hoffman reveals the truth in a written statement.
488
00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:33.800
In his statement, Matthew Hoffman indicated that while he conpleted
489
00:35:34.920 --> 00:35:39.519
processing the bodies, he realized that those bags weren't going
490
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:43.159
to be strong enough for him. So he loaded Sarah
491
00:35:43.199 --> 00:35:49.239
and the body parts into Stephanie's vehicle and he parks
492
00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:53.920
the vehicle, goes back and gets his vehicle, and he
493
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.440
takes Sarah to his home binds her, keeps her bound up,
494
00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:04.039
goes to the walmart where he purchases the garbage bags
495
00:36:04.079 --> 00:36:07.159
and the tar, transfers the body parts that are in
496
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:11.920
the smaller bags into the larger bags. Goes a cocusing
497
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.960
wildlife area which is about ten miles from Tina's house,
498
00:36:17.159 --> 00:36:21.000
and had remembered a tree that he had a particular
499
00:36:21.119 --> 00:36:25.239
liking to. This is a sixty foot tree, and about
500
00:36:25.239 --> 00:36:28.960
halfway up is a hollowed out area, and he hauls
501
00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:32.960
the body parts up, drops him down the center, and
502
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:39.320
then he goes back home. He tells us these different things.
503
00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:42.199
You know, it's just very difficult for us to believe
504
00:36:42.599 --> 00:36:45.119
what he went through to do this, so we were
505
00:36:45.239 --> 00:36:46.079
very skeptical.
506
00:36:47.800 --> 00:36:52.039
During his interviews, they talked to him about why he
507
00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:55.440
chose to dispose of the bodies in that manner, and
508
00:36:56.320 --> 00:36:58.760
he said that at one point he had thought about
509
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:03.639
putting the bodies in to Stephanie Sprague's jeep vehicle and
510
00:37:03.719 --> 00:37:07.079
driving it into a pond and letting it sink. The
511
00:37:07.159 --> 00:37:10.360
reason he didn't do that was because he was concerned
512
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:13.760
that because of the water temperature and the time of year,
513
00:37:13.800 --> 00:37:17.119
that he would not be able to safely escape from
514
00:37:17.119 --> 00:37:19.519
the vehicle and swim to shore. So that tells me
515
00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:23.480
that this is a guy who's he's worrying about himself.
516
00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:31.800
So the attorney leads us out to Cocasing Wildlife Preserve,
517
00:37:32.079 --> 00:37:34.519
and all of a sudden, after a quarter a mile
518
00:37:34.639 --> 00:37:38.199
or so, he stops. He gets out of his vehicle.
519
00:37:38.559 --> 00:37:42.440
He's looking at the map, and he comes back to
520
00:37:42.480 --> 00:37:46.559
the sheriff's car and he goes, I think that's the
521
00:37:46.599 --> 00:37:50.079
tree right there. You gotta be kidding me. This tree
522
00:37:50.159 --> 00:37:54.159
is sixty feet tall. There is a hollowed out portion
523
00:37:54.719 --> 00:37:57.360
in the tree, but it's thirty feet off the ground.
524
00:37:57.440 --> 00:38:01.079
And you know, we're just real skeptical. I'm seeing guys.
525
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:04.239
They got a saw and they cut out about six
526
00:38:04.280 --> 00:38:08.039
feet off the ground a little hole where they could
527
00:38:08.079 --> 00:38:11.679
stick a pole and a mirror attached to the end.
528
00:38:12.360 --> 00:38:15.639
And as they're looking, they go, I think we see
529
00:38:16.519 --> 00:38:20.960
garbage bags down there. And sure enough, just like Matthew
530
00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:24.800
Hoffman had said that he had dropped seven garbage bags
531
00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.159
down the center of the tree, and the inside the
532
00:38:27.199 --> 00:38:29.760
garbage bags were the body parts.
533
00:38:33.559 --> 00:38:39.800
Those bodies may not have been discovered for decades in
534
00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.920
that tree. The way that they were, it's very possible.
535
00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:44.920
It could have been fifty or sixty years ago by
536
00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:48.360
until that tree rotted and fell, that those bodies would
537
00:38:48.360 --> 00:38:49.239
have been discovered.
538
00:38:50.239 --> 00:38:55.280
I think that for Matthew Hoffman, trees meant so many things,
539
00:38:55.320 --> 00:38:56.639
and I think one of the things they did mean
540
00:38:56.679 --> 00:38:59.000
to him is like it's a sacred space for him,
541
00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:02.800
and it's a that's his. And so I think by
542
00:39:02.840 --> 00:39:06.639
putting these bodies down in this tree, number one, it'd
543
00:39:06.679 --> 00:39:09.280
be almost impossible to find them. Is they're a practical
544
00:39:09.320 --> 00:39:11.840
part of it. But I think even more importantly for
545
00:39:11.920 --> 00:39:15.840
him psychologically, is it was kind of like, if not
546
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:21.679
like an offering a sacred place that was his. So
547
00:39:21.719 --> 00:39:23.840
it was a sense of ownership as well that he's
548
00:39:23.880 --> 00:39:34.239
putting them in this tree.
549
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:41.559
He faces aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse, burglary, kidnapping,
550
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:46.519
and rape. When you're going into trial with such an
551
00:39:46.519 --> 00:39:51.559
emotional case that has the loss of life and still
552
00:39:51.639 --> 00:39:55.960
has a thirteen year old that went through this ordeal,
553
00:39:57.000 --> 00:39:58.960
you've got a lot there to deal with.
554
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:03.440
The family was all there. I remember being in the courtroom.
555
00:40:03.960 --> 00:40:07.079
There was no trial, it was just a plea. He
556
00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:12.320
pled guilty, and you know, it's just awful situation for
557
00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:16.000
the families, certainly for Sarah.
558
00:40:16.039 --> 00:40:22.840
He is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
559
00:40:23.559 --> 00:40:24.280
of parole.
560
00:40:25.880 --> 00:40:29.199
We see some horrific things throughout our careers, and that
561
00:40:29.320 --> 00:40:33.519
and to recover, you know, a family is just a
562
00:40:33.559 --> 00:40:37.039
horrific thing. Nobody should ever have to go through that.
563
00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:40.039
But you know, that's what we do in law enforcement.
564
00:40:40.119 --> 00:40:43.800
We see the worst of the worst. But you know,
565
00:40:44.199 --> 00:40:50.000
it was closure for them. Matthew Hoffman will never ever
566
00:40:50.159 --> 00:41:02.480
get out of prison again. As far as Hoffmann's mindset,
567
00:41:02.639 --> 00:41:07.199
it's so difficult to tell exactly where he was at
568
00:41:07.199 --> 00:41:10.199
the particular time. I've been involved in a number of
569
00:41:10.239 --> 00:41:15.440
cases where this kind of thing will repulse somebody, and
570
00:41:15.480 --> 00:41:20.239
I've also worked cases where when somebody actually does this
571
00:41:20.760 --> 00:41:26.599
and they feel the power of control, it can fuel
572
00:41:26.599 --> 00:41:31.639
a fire inside them that you know. I like this feeling.
573
00:41:34.119 --> 00:41:38.000
I think that he was escalating once he had killed.
574
00:41:38.639 --> 00:41:46.880
I think he would have killed again. My daughter, who
575
00:41:46.960 --> 00:41:50.960
is now an adult, actually teaches at the middle school
576
00:41:51.880 --> 00:41:55.679
where Sarah and her brother went to school at, and
577
00:41:55.800 --> 00:41:59.880
she lives in the Mount Vernon community. Cody would have
578
00:42:00.039 --> 00:42:05.119
graduated in twenty nineteen, and for the graduation ceremony, the
579
00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:09.800
school placed a chair with Cody's cap and gown and
580
00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:15.840
his diploma on that chair, along with a white rose.
581
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:23.679
And when my daughter sent me that photograph, it hit
582
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:27.199
me like a load of bricks. This particular case has
583
00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:32.880
always stuck with me. I have kind of followed after
584
00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.000
Sarah to just kind of see how she's getting along
585
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:40.920
in life. It's unimaginable to me how you could experience
586
00:42:41.159 --> 00:42:46.239
something this horrific and still go on. I'm just honored
587
00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:49.800
to have been able to afford her the opportunity to
588
00:42:51.039 --> 00:42:55.159
have a life and just hope and pray that she
589
00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:00.480
finds solace and can go on with her life and
590
00:43:00.519 --> 00:43:04.199
not allow this experience to define who she is.
1
00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:12.439
Sheriff Barber's office that is covered in blood.
2
00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:20.039
When we saw the enormity of the crime scene, it
3
00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:23.679
was very clear that something really terrible had happened.
4
00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:28.280
This is the first time they have ever seen Matthew Hoffman,
5
00:00:29.559 --> 00:00:31.600
but this is not the first time Matthew Hoffman has
6
00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:31.920
seen that.
7
00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:35.679
With the amount of blood that we saw, it's clear
8
00:00:35.759 --> 00:00:38.759
that they could die very shortly if we didn't recover them.
9
00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:41.439
When you look at it, I think it certainly is
10
00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:44.119
a domino effect. Where do I stop.
11
00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:52.479
The level of violence that he displayed is far beyond
12
00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:54.439
anyone that I've ever really seen.
13
00:01:31.239 --> 00:01:34.719
Matthew Hoffmann. His mom described him from an early age
14
00:01:35.159 --> 00:01:39.040
as somebody who was interested in trees, loved to climb,
15
00:01:39.519 --> 00:01:42.079
take his friends in trees. Friends of his said he
16
00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:45.400
was incredibly bright, but had no common sense, kind of
17
00:01:45.400 --> 00:01:49.200
a quiet kid, somebody who liked to jump on things
18
00:01:49.239 --> 00:01:51.120
and jump off of things, kind of a risk taker,
19
00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:57.359
and also a kid sometimes who seemed to struggle sometimes socially.
20
00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:00.879
Not a behavior problem. Oh, they just kind of I
21
00:02:00.879 --> 00:02:02.560
think shrugged it off for the most part as well.
22
00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:03.319
That's just Matthew.
23
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.120
In two thousand and one, twenty year old Matthew Hoffman
24
00:02:07.439 --> 00:02:09.960
has his first encounter with the law.
25
00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:13.159
After he graduated. He seemed to kind of get lost,
26
00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:16.080
like he didn't really know exactly what he wanted to do.
27
00:02:16.719 --> 00:02:19.960
He's living with his mom and so he eventually decides
28
00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:23.080
to get a job in Colorado. So he moves to
29
00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.360
Colorado Springs and he's working as a plumber's assistant. People
30
00:02:26.400 --> 00:02:29.000
tend to like him. He makes a good impression. At
31
00:02:29.080 --> 00:02:34.240
the beginning. He realizes that one of his jobs, the
32
00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:36.319
owner of the condominium, is going to be out of town,
33
00:02:36.439 --> 00:02:41.400
and so he decides to essentially visit and set up
34
00:02:41.400 --> 00:02:48.840
camp there, cooking meals there, watching cable TV. He's using
35
00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:52.800
the jacuzzi, the hot tub. He ends up stealing some
36
00:02:52.919 --> 00:02:55.639
things out of the home and then in his head
37
00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:00.840
he is concerned about all these fingerprints that he might
38
00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:04.199
have left behind, and so what does he decide. He
39
00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:09.520
decides to burn up the condominium.
40
00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:13.639
Our sin was one in which we often find juveniles
41
00:03:13.800 --> 00:03:17.080
are very much involved in, but to hav an our
42
00:03:17.199 --> 00:03:22.039
sin to cover up another crime is another level. We
43
00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:26.360
start to see the development here of an individual that
44
00:03:26.639 --> 00:03:31.639
has tendencies that are not socially bonded, that can lead
45
00:03:31.719 --> 00:03:33.800
to more serious crime in the future.
46
00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:38.120
It suggests a couple of things that suggests certainly poor judgment,
47
00:03:38.919 --> 00:03:43.680
poor decision making, and just a complete disregard for the
48
00:03:43.759 --> 00:03:47.800
safety of other people who were in that condominium complex.
49
00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.680
So at this point he decides he needs to go
50
00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:57.599
back to Ohio and live with his mom. Meanwhile, in Colorado,
51
00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:01.280
they're these investigations, ask him, did you do it? And
52
00:04:01.319 --> 00:04:04.000
he goes, YEP, I did do it, And so they
53
00:04:04.039 --> 00:04:05.520
said you got to come back and face these charges.
54
00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:06.919
So he gets in the car and he drives back
55
00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:09.520
to Colorado and he ends up serving six years.
56
00:04:14.639 --> 00:04:18.199
My name is Bob Maugladore and I'm a retired Columbus
57
00:04:18.199 --> 00:04:23.680
police officer. I was assigned to the Columbus Resident Agency
58
00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:26.920
FBI as a member of their Violent Crime Task Force
59
00:04:28.279 --> 00:04:33.079
after he'd committed the burglaries in Colorado and set those
60
00:04:33.439 --> 00:04:37.079
buildings on fire to cover his crime. Being caught and
61
00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:43.160
sent to prison was very hard on Matthew. He had
62
00:04:43.199 --> 00:04:47.639
a very difficult time in prison and it was a
63
00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:48.879
very bad experience.
64
00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:53.279
Eventually he gets out of six years, he gets a
65
00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:57.800
job as a tree tremor. He ends up saving up
66
00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:04.240
some money and he buys little house. His neighbors initially
67
00:05:04.279 --> 00:05:11.480
describe him as as a good guy, and then starting,
68
00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:14.199
you know, at the end of the summer of twenty ten,
69
00:05:15.160 --> 00:05:18.879
people just notice this abrupt change in him. He had
70
00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:22.319
developed this fascination with squirrels in his yard, and neighbors
71
00:05:22.360 --> 00:05:25.360
had had noticed this, and all of a sudden, he
72
00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:32.560
starts trapping and killing and eating them. Whenever somebody's behavior
73
00:05:32.600 --> 00:05:35.480
starts changing, particularly of course, when it's changing for the worse,
74
00:05:35.879 --> 00:05:37.879
that's a red flag something is going on.
75
00:05:38.839 --> 00:05:42.279
As we look at the research related to serial killing
76
00:05:42.360 --> 00:05:47.040
and violent crime, we often do see a pathway to that,
77
00:05:48.199 --> 00:05:53.439
the mistreatment of animals, the abuse being shown early age.
78
00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:55.199
And here we have another.
79
00:05:54.959 --> 00:06:01.160
Example of this, the ability to control ones in It
80
00:06:01.199 --> 00:06:03.439
is seen as something that we all want to do,
81
00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:05.240
but the question becomes how.
82
00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:05.560
We do it.
83
00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:15.279
He becomes violent with his girlfriend, who then leaves. His
84
00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:20.920
boss finds out that he's misrepresented his qualifications and that
85
00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:23.439
he had failed to tell them they had a criminal record.
86
00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:28.079
He's starting to watch the neighbors. They talk about him
87
00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:30.839
just literally sitting in a tree and staring at them
88
00:06:30.879 --> 00:06:36.079
for hours. I believe that Matthew Hoffman made a good
89
00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:38.160
faith effort when he got out of prison to lead
90
00:06:38.199 --> 00:06:41.920
a normal, law abiding life, and I think it wore
91
00:06:41.959 --> 00:06:45.800
on him. And I think over time he got tired
92
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:49.240
of pretending to be something he was not, because in
93
00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:52.680
reality he was a deeply disturbed and troubled person.
94
00:06:54.800 --> 00:06:57.680
My name is Harry trum bid Us. I'm a retired
95
00:06:57.800 --> 00:07:02.920
FBI agent. During the Matthew Hoffman case, I was involved
96
00:07:02.959 --> 00:07:05.160
in investigations of violent crime.
97
00:07:12.439 --> 00:07:15.279
Matthew Hoffman spends the night camped out in the woods
98
00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:18.759
overlooking the home of the Herman family, around twenty five
99
00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:22.720
minutes from his house. Mom Tina works at a local
100
00:07:22.759 --> 00:07:27.360
fast food restaurant, while her children, Sarah thirteen and Cody eleven,
101
00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:32.360
are popular pupils at the local high school. Hoffman appears
102
00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:37.000
to be sticking out the area for burglary Tuesday night.
103
00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:41.560
He had seen the house, He drove his vehicle, parked
104
00:07:41.560 --> 00:07:44.759
it not too far from the area there, and he
105
00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:48.639
actually spent the night in the woods right across the
106
00:07:48.680 --> 00:07:49.839
street from the house.
107
00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:57.360
We have Hoffman literally camping out across the way from
108
00:07:57.399 --> 00:08:01.600
this house in suburban Mount Vernon, Ohio. But there becomes
109
00:08:01.639 --> 00:08:06.079
this question of staying overnight is a very long time
110
00:08:06.439 --> 00:08:12.240
to look at your potential victim's house. A typical burglar
111
00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.759
has the ability to see the issues, see the lack
112
00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:18.480
of security, and say that is a good target.
113
00:08:24.879 --> 00:08:27.920
So he waited for a while. He walked across the
114
00:08:27.959 --> 00:08:31.079
street from the woods and he was able to crawl
115
00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:36.200
underneath the garage door. He went into the garage. He
116
00:08:36.279 --> 00:08:39.960
kicked the door into the house, actually into the kitchen.
117
00:08:42.639 --> 00:08:46.159
He said there was a sense of excitement of being
118
00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:51.200
in somebody else's house when they weren't there. He hears
119
00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:56.480
the pickup truck pulled back into the driveway, and he
120
00:08:56.480 --> 00:08:59.639
hears Tina Herman come back, parked the vehicle in the
121
00:09:00.759 --> 00:09:04.080
driveway and come in through the front door.
122
00:09:10.600 --> 00:09:13.960
A burglar is one that wants to get in and
123
00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:19.080
out without any contact with an individual. A burglar usually
124
00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:24.679
is not prepared to physically have an altercation with an individual. Instead,
125
00:09:24.799 --> 00:09:29.679
we find that he attacks Tina.
126
00:09:30.279 --> 00:09:33.960
He immediately confronted her with the knife, made her lie
127
00:09:34.279 --> 00:09:38.240
down on the bed. All of a sudden, another woman,
128
00:09:38.360 --> 00:09:45.279
Stephanie Sprang, shows up, and she starts yelling at him,
129
00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:49.559
and he's panicked. He doesn't know what to do, but
130
00:09:49.679 --> 00:09:54.159
he brought a knife in with him. And he panics
131
00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:57.120
and stabs Tina Herman a couple of times in the back,
132
00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:02.840
gets up and runs after and Stephanie. Instead of leaving
133
00:10:02.879 --> 00:10:06.639
the house, she goes back into another bedroom. He's able
134
00:10:06.679 --> 00:10:09.639
to catch her, stabs her a couple of times in
135
00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:14.120
the chest. Then he goes back to where Tina is
136
00:10:14.759 --> 00:10:18.879
and stabs her a couple of more times, and he
137
00:10:18.919 --> 00:10:21.759
said it. By this time, it's clear both women are dead.
138
00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:30.039
Matthew Hoffman's motive depends on what you believe. He says
139
00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:33.200
that he just wanted to break in to burglarize the house.
140
00:10:33.639 --> 00:10:35.240
However, there are.
141
00:10:35.120 --> 00:10:38.639
Some things that don't add up for me. Number one,
142
00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:44.120
he brought a huge knife with him. Number two is
143
00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:48.799
he apparently attacks Tina the minute she walks in the door.
144
00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:53.960
Number Three, he takes nothing from the house. There's no
145
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evidence that he's burglarizing anything. Not only did Matthew Hoffman
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totally kill Tina and Stephanie, he continued to stab them
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long after they were dead. There was no reason to
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keep stabbing them, and yet he did.
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When you look at it, I think it certainly is
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a domino effect. I'm already in a terrible situation. Then
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it moved to that of a murder, then another murder,
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Where do I stop?
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After Matthew Hoffman kills Tina and then kills Stephanie, the
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dog is barking and he's worried that's going to draw attention,
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and so he kills the dog as well. He then
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proceeds to take each one, one at a time into
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the bathtub, where he then basically dismembers all of them
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and puts them in plastic bags.
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So killing has occurred. The mother, the mother's friend, even
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the dog had been killed. Now the children come home.
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Matthew Hoffman has murdered Tina Herman and her friend, Stephanie Spring.
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So he carried them both into the bathroom and started
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sawing their body parts. And while he's in there and
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finishing up with the two women, the family dog was
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barking at him, and that so he killed the family
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dog as well. And all of a sudden, he hears
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said children come in the door.
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They opened the door and they see drops of blood
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on the floor, and so immediately Sarah and Cody call
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out for their mom, and instantly Matthew Hoffman comes running
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out full force toward them. Sarah manages to run by
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him Cody tries to run out the door. He grabs
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Cody and stabs in the back of the head and
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kills him pretty much instantly. Meanwhile, Sarah is in her
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room desperately fumbling for her phone, trying to call nine
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one one. Unfortunately, before she can do that, Matthew bursts
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into the room and does not kill her, stops and
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then ties her up. I know it's horrendous.
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Here we have a horrific situation where the brother is
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killed but the daughter is kept alive. I think we
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see control factor here. Thirteen year old child exists in
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the picture. She is saved, I think to be his
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controlling element. Perhaps he's even thinking she can humanize me
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for the demon type activities that I have just done.
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Serial killers we often find are more interested in those
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people in which they can control, and for a male,
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it is often that of a female. Multiply that even
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to a smaller female, a younger female, and the control
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element goes up.
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Tina works at a local fast food restaurant, and on
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the evening of her murder, Tina's boss is the first
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to worry that something isn't right.
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Share barber's office, Hi, I work out a directly on
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the general Nader out there. Uh huh, one of my
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employees is not short for workers afternoon four o'clock, okay,
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which is totally uncharacteristic of her. She's won my managers.
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Okay. This is Wednesday, November tenth of twenty ten. The
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first information I received was that Tina Herman failed to
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show up for her four pm start time at the
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local dairy queen. The manager was so concerned about Tina
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not showing up because she had never missed work before,
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she had never been late. So about seven o'clock that night,
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a sheriff's deputy went to the home. Saw a blue
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pickup truck in the driveway, which was registered to Tina.
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But when the deputy knocked on the door, nobody came
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to the door. Still, he left, and then he went
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back later that night around eleven o'clock, knocked on the
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door again, no activity, Nobody came to the door. There
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didn't seem to be any problem.
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The day after the attack, Stephanie Sprang's boyfriend reports her missing,
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and the police discovered that Sarah and Cody haven't gone
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into school. Tina's boss is even more worried.
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Tina still hadn't shown up for her shift. The manager
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got so concerned she went ahead and drove to Tina's house.
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There were no cars in the driveway, and she noticed
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a window was partly a jar, so she was able
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to raise it and actually get into the kitchen.
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Chef Barber's office.
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I called in last fight about Tina Mervin being missing.
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I am out at her house now. I just went
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in her home because I'm so worried about her. There's
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blood everywhere.
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Okay, just give us a few minutes and we'll be
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in around okay, okay.
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And seeing the crime scene, the local sheriff's office asked
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the FBI for assistance.
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Harry just contacted us and said, looks like we have
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a homicide up here and we're gonna.
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Need some help.
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When we saw the enormity of the crime scene, it
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was very clear that something really terrible had happened.
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Investigators arrive just hours after Hoffmann has left. At this stage,
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investigators are unaware of his involvement. It's not clear if
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any of the victims are still alive or where they've gone.
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Do we have any inclination was this self inflicted? Do
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we have any information that tells us. Was there another person,
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Are there any cameras, any neighbors, or any individuals that
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can give us time frame so that we can have
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a picture of when did this happen.
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There's not a lot of wealth in the house. There's
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no indication that there's any kind of narcotics activity taking
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place at the house. So we had four people that
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seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. We felt
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as though there had to be at least one other
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person involved, possibly too. We had a real life who
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done it on our hands.
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If they weren't already dead. With the amount of blood
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and everything that we saw, it's clear that they could
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die very shortly if we didn't recover them.
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Police immediately conduct interviews with known contacts of Tina and Stephanie.
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Tina's boyfriend was a suspect at the time, but he
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was very cooperative. It was provided an alibie to us.
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It appeared as though he had nothing to do with this.
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We knew Tina and actually Stephanie had been out and
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about on Wednesday, could have met anybody, Could somebody have
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followed him home. It was pretty much an unknown because
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we had received no information, No suspicious people or vehicle
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reports in the area, so it was it was truly
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a mystery.
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At that point, police are still looking for the perpetrator
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and the victims of what appears to be a murder.
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The crime scene was pretty much based out of the bathroom,
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yet there was blood also down the hallway. There were
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two bedrooms where they found blood. And once they finished
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inside the house, they went into the garage and started
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processing the items inside the garage and they found a
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bag from Walmart. They looked inside and they found a
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receipt where somebody had gone on Thursday and made a
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purchase of some heavy duty garbage back and a couple
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of parts.
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That is where the first big break in the case
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came was a discovery of a receipt at the crime scene.
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That receipt really broke the case open.
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Now people should know there's a lot of information on
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your receipt from Walmart. It tells what items you purchased,
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it tells the location in which you purchased them, and
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the time and date in which you purchased them. That's
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a lot of information that can get an investigation going.
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So good policing says, let's go to this Walmart. Let's
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look at the cameras. Let's try to put evidence together
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to see who does this bag belong to.
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Police are yet to identify Hoffman as a suspect. Since
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breaking into the Herman's house and killing Tina, Stephanie, Cody,
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and the family dog, he's moved the bodies, still keeping
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Sarah alive. She's now his prisoner.
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And he takes Sarah to his home, binds her, keeps
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her bound up, puts her in the crawl space, told
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her that he had accomplices, that you know, if she
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made any noises or anything, they would be there to
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take care of her and perhaps kill her if she
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didn't continue to cooperate.
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Won't let her take a shower, won't let her go
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to the bathroom. He sexually assaults her on multiple occasions.
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I think Matthew's motivation is sex and control. Not only
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does he want to have sex, I think with Sarah,
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but he wants to have complete control over her. I
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think that Cody and Tina and Sepie or collateral damage
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in this situation, that he just wanted to get them
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out of the way, and he was willing to kill
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anybody that he needed to get Sarah. I think this
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desire to essentially capture somebody and have them under your
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total control is so telling in terms of that person's psychology.
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I think there was some fantasy going on for him.
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This is going to be like a girlfriend, or this
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is going to be somebody who we're going to watch
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movies together, which of course would never ever ever happen.
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Police don't know if Sarah or her family are alive
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or where they are. So far, their only lead is
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a Walmart receipt found in the herman's garage. They don't know.
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They're in a race against time to save the only survivor.
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The family went missing technically on Wednesday. We really didn't
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know about it until Thursday. It wasn't until Friday that
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they found the receipt. So the investigators went to the
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Walmart and they were able to pull up video of
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the individual that was in there shortly after midnight, and
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they saw this person walking in the Walmart store, going
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directly to the tarps and the garbage bags and buying those,
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going up to the cash register. Unfortunately paid with cash,
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so we weren't able to get a name, but we
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could see him walking to his vehicle. Turned out to
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be a Toyota yaris. So let's pull up all the
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known Toyota yarises in this area, and they were able
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to click on the information about one of the yearses
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and it belonged to an individual by the name of
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Matthew Hoffman. So they pulled up his driver's license photo
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and he happened to have the same shirt on in
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his driver's license photo that we saw in the video
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of the individual that was walking around in the walmart.
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And that's when Matthew Hoffman was identified as a suspect.
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Once that occurred, they did some quick background information checks.
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He is a convicted felon for some crimes that he
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had done in Colorado. Spend time out there in prison.
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You then now start looking at that person as your
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person of interest. They find Hoffman has been fired from
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his job, has a case of domestic violence against him.
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We're starting to see the puzzle gather pieces that may
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fit together.
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Saturday night, heading into Sunday morning, were able to get
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the search warrant and based on what we've found with
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the tarbs and the garbage bags, we felt we had
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enough information there to get an arrest warrant for him.
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Police have two addresses for Hoffman. One of them is
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his house and the other his parents, both a short
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drive from the Herman's. Police plan to monitor both properties simultaneously.
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Harry Trombitis heads to Matthew Hoffman's parents' house. Bob Mullador
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heads to Matthew Hoffman's house.
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So we're going to the residents that belong to Matthew Hoffman.
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Because of the condition of the crime scene, I don't
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believe that anybody there really expected that we were going
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to find anyone alive.
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So right now in the investigation, you know that Hoffman
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is a person of interest, but you don't know where
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the people who lived at the crime I'm seeing where
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they are, So this is a very tense time.
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The question still remains, where are these people and how
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are we going to find them.
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Police have evidence linking Matthew Hoffman to the suspected murders
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of Tina Herman, her children Sarah and Cody, and her
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friend Stephanie Sprang. They have no idea that Sarah is
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still alive, and are preparing to search his parents' home
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and his own residence. Has he fled the state? If not,
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where is he?
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We had to assume that the possibility was there that
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Hoffman would be at either house. We pulled up in
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front of Matthew's mom's house. We're wearing our bulletproof vests,
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we've got our hand guns out. I said, I'm with
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the FBI. We're looking for Matthew as he here. The
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stepdad said no. We were disappointed that we didn't find
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him there, but we realized that more than likely Matthew
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would be at the house in Mount Vernon.
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When the officers went to the door, they knocked and
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announced and he actually came to the door, so he
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was taken into custody right away. As far as Matthew's demeanor,
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he was quiet. He almost seemed relieved that we were there.
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But as you go into the house, the first thing
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that you see off to your right hand side is
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a living room without any furniture inside, but there's a
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enormous pile of leaves covering the floor. It covers an
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entire room. It was really shocking. We looked at that
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and wondered, right away, are we going to find four
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bodies and covered up in this pile of leaves?
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With Hoffman now in custody, the swap team search for
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survivors fearing the worst.
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Anytime a tactical team enters a house like that, the
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first thing is that they do is conduct a room
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to room search. There were carcasses of animals in his refrigerator,
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The house itself was in a state of disarray, and
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it was during that search that Sarah was located in
389
00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:54.960
the basement of the home. Everyone who was involved in
390
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.200
that was just shocked that we had this young girl
391
00:28:59.359 --> 00:28:59.799
and she was.
392
00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:05.200
She was bound and.
393
00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:09.680
Sleeping in a pile of leaves with some blankets. She
394
00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:14.599
was pretty confused. Obviously, she was scared, but relieved.
395
00:29:19.279 --> 00:29:22.839
The main point now is to move that thirteen year
396
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:25.799
old Sarah to safety and then to get her to
397
00:29:25.880 --> 00:29:29.279
give us as much information about what occurred.
398
00:29:29.480 --> 00:29:33.000
We quickly interviewed Sarah to see if she knew where
399
00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.599
her family was. He had indicated to her that he
400
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:42.000
was holding her hostage until the family provided whatever money,
401
00:29:42.039 --> 00:29:45.160
and that that they were negotiating. He even showed her
402
00:29:45.640 --> 00:29:48.599
what the word ransom means in the dictionary.
403
00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:54.240
With Sarah now safe, investigators are desperate to learn the
404
00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:57.440
fate of Hoffman's other victims.
405
00:29:59.079 --> 00:30:01.240
Ruger around me have to pear to Sheriff's offs.
406
00:30:02.119 --> 00:30:06.160
You now have Hoffmann in custody, and usually what we
407
00:30:06.279 --> 00:30:10.039
find is that an individual that's in this situation is
408
00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:14.680
usually fearful, uncertain, and scared, and so with all of
409
00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:17.680
that coming at them, they want to defend themselves and
410
00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:20.160
they usually say at least something.
411
00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:24.039
Think, you know what we want to talk about, but
412
00:30:24.160 --> 00:30:31.279
we need to find some find some people. Can you
413
00:30:31.319 --> 00:30:31.559
hear me?
414
00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:38.680
But he does not. He does not for four hours.
415
00:30:39.519 --> 00:30:42.920
Wow, he just sat there like he was in a trance.
416
00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:46.480
After a a couple of hours of him just sitting there,
417
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:53.640
he made emotion like her. Then he does this like
418
00:30:54.119 --> 00:31:00.480
he's breaking something broken. Your heart's broken because what happened,
419
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:04.440
and he kind of nods yes, and that was all
420
00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:05.519
they could get out of it.
421
00:31:08.039 --> 00:31:12.279
I think the longer this capture or kidnapping went on,
422
00:31:12.599 --> 00:31:15.880
I think the harder it would have been for Matthew
423
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:18.200
to let Sarah go. For a couple of reasons. One
424
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:21.160
is she's been missing for so long and the criminal
425
00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:25.119
charges are going to be just racking up longer and longer,
426
00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:28.680
and I think he would have considered her kind of his.
427
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:32.720
He's also killed most of her family, so if he
428
00:31:32.839 --> 00:31:35.880
lets her go, she is now going to find out
429
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:40.240
that he has murdered her mother, her brother, and her dog.
430
00:31:42.279 --> 00:31:46.079
With Hoffman offering no information, police use other tactics to
431
00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:50.079
help them understand what's happened to Tina, Cody, and Stephanie.
432
00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:55.799
I was given the responsibility of escorting his ex girlfriend.
433
00:31:56.519 --> 00:32:00.160
He would take this young lady on dates and he
434
00:32:00.200 --> 00:32:04.240
would find a huge tree, put up his equipment, hoist
435
00:32:04.279 --> 00:32:06.319
them up thirty or forty feet in the air, and
436
00:32:06.359 --> 00:32:08.920
they would hang out for a whole saturday in the
437
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:11.880
hammocks in the canopy of these trees.
438
00:32:12.119 --> 00:32:14.799
Bob hopes that he'll find some clues by driving to
439
00:32:14.839 --> 00:32:17.319
the places that Hoffmann visited with his ax.
440
00:32:17.640 --> 00:32:21.000
She said that he was actually polite most of the time,
441
00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:25.240
but towards the end of their relationship, he was prone
442
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:28.359
to fits of anger and they would come on quickly.
443
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:31.279
When she finally put an end to the relationship, it
444
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:33.839
was because he had held her down and choked her
445
00:32:33.960 --> 00:32:35.440
to the point that she thought she was going to
446
00:32:35.480 --> 00:32:41.759
lose consciousness, and that really scared her. It seems like
447
00:32:42.359 --> 00:32:47.160
Matthew liked the thrill of being in someone's house that
448
00:32:47.279 --> 00:32:49.799
didn't belong to him when they weren't there. That's what
449
00:32:49.880 --> 00:32:54.319
I was hearing from the words of his former girlfriend,
450
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:57.480
and in her case, that led to the demise of
451
00:32:57.519 --> 00:33:01.960
their relationship as she came to know him better. So
452
00:33:02.440 --> 00:33:06.440
she and I drove all over Knox County, put hundreds
453
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:08.680
of miles on my truck that those couple of days,
454
00:33:10.039 --> 00:33:10.880
but to no avail.
455
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:15.759
We just assumed that they were dead and that they
456
00:33:15.759 --> 00:33:19.039
were hidden somewhere and it was going to be up
457
00:33:19.079 --> 00:33:21.359
to Matthew Hoffman and tell us where they were.
458
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:25.960
You can start to then think, was there a movement
459
00:33:26.079 --> 00:33:29.880
of body parts? The piece is all in one place,
460
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:33.480
and this is where they make the horrific finding.
461
00:33:47.119 --> 00:33:50.039
Matthew Hoffman is in custody for the kidnapping of Sarah
462
00:33:50.119 --> 00:33:53.559
Maynard and the suspected murder of her mom Tina, her
463
00:33:53.559 --> 00:33:56.200
brother Cody, and her mom's friend Stephanie.
464
00:33:56.920 --> 00:33:57.079
Hi.
465
00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:00.240
Matt, Hi, my name is Chris Wanda. Talk you fond
466
00:34:00.279 --> 00:34:04.559
if I could. After two days of interrogation, the police
467
00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:07.839
have no information about whether or not he's killed Sarah's
468
00:34:07.839 --> 00:34:10.760
family or what he might have done with their bodies.
469
00:34:11.599 --> 00:34:17.280
He didn't talk a lot. He seemed easily frustrated. He's
470
00:34:17.440 --> 00:34:20.920
just sort of a haunted personality.
471
00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:25.440
It was extremely frustrating. We just weren't able to get
472
00:34:25.519 --> 00:34:28.800
him to admit anything or tell us any of the information.
473
00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:33.400
At that point, he was eligible for the death penalty,
474
00:34:33.880 --> 00:34:37.679
but we wanted to find out where the family was.
475
00:34:38.239 --> 00:34:42.440
So basically, the prosecutors said, we think that if we
476
00:34:42.559 --> 00:34:47.320
dropped the death penalty charges against Matthew Hoffman in exchange,
477
00:34:47.639 --> 00:34:50.880
he'll tell us where the family where your family members are.
478
00:34:51.719 --> 00:34:55.480
And all of the family members were in agreement that
479
00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:58.199
they wanted to know where their loved ones were so
480
00:34:58.239 --> 00:34:59.280
they can bring him home.
481
00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:06.000
What's extremely important is trying to bring closure, not just
482
00:35:06.159 --> 00:35:10.280
to that of the case, but what is very important
483
00:35:10.360 --> 00:35:11.280
to the families.
484
00:35:11.599 --> 00:35:13.159
Not knowing is.
485
00:35:13.159 --> 00:35:18.679
Often the question that eats at them every single day.
486
00:35:19.599 --> 00:35:23.280
The deal works with the prospect of the death penalty removed,
487
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:26.119
Hoffman reveals the truth in a written statement.
488
00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:33.800
In his statement, Matthew Hoffman indicated that while he conpleted
489
00:35:34.920 --> 00:35:39.519
processing the bodies, he realized that those bags weren't going
490
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:43.159
to be strong enough for him. So he loaded Sarah
491
00:35:43.199 --> 00:35:49.239
and the body parts into Stephanie's vehicle and he parks
492
00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:53.920
the vehicle, goes back and gets his vehicle, and he
493
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.440
takes Sarah to his home binds her, keeps her bound up,
494
00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:04.039
goes to the walmart where he purchases the garbage bags
495
00:36:04.079 --> 00:36:07.159
and the tar, transfers the body parts that are in
496
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:11.920
the smaller bags into the larger bags. Goes a cocusing
497
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.960
wildlife area which is about ten miles from Tina's house,
498
00:36:17.159 --> 00:36:21.000
and had remembered a tree that he had a particular
499
00:36:21.119 --> 00:36:25.239
liking to. This is a sixty foot tree, and about
500
00:36:25.239 --> 00:36:28.960
halfway up is a hollowed out area, and he hauls
501
00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:32.960
the body parts up, drops him down the center, and
502
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:39.320
then he goes back home. He tells us these different things.
503
00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:42.199
You know, it's just very difficult for us to believe
504
00:36:42.599 --> 00:36:45.119
what he went through to do this, so we were
505
00:36:45.239 --> 00:36:46.079
very skeptical.
506
00:36:47.800 --> 00:36:52.039
During his interviews, they talked to him about why he
507
00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:55.440
chose to dispose of the bodies in that manner, and
508
00:36:56.320 --> 00:36:58.760
he said that at one point he had thought about
509
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:03.639
putting the bodies in to Stephanie Sprague's jeep vehicle and
510
00:37:03.719 --> 00:37:07.079
driving it into a pond and letting it sink. The
511
00:37:07.159 --> 00:37:10.360
reason he didn't do that was because he was concerned
512
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:13.760
that because of the water temperature and the time of year,
513
00:37:13.800 --> 00:37:17.119
that he would not be able to safely escape from
514
00:37:17.119 --> 00:37:19.519
the vehicle and swim to shore. So that tells me
515
00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:23.480
that this is a guy who's he's worrying about himself.
516
00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:31.800
So the attorney leads us out to Cocasing Wildlife Preserve,
517
00:37:32.079 --> 00:37:34.519
and all of a sudden, after a quarter a mile
518
00:37:34.639 --> 00:37:38.199
or so, he stops. He gets out of his vehicle.
519
00:37:38.559 --> 00:37:42.440
He's looking at the map, and he comes back to
520
00:37:42.480 --> 00:37:46.559
the sheriff's car and he goes, I think that's the
521
00:37:46.599 --> 00:37:50.079
tree right there. You gotta be kidding me. This tree
522
00:37:50.159 --> 00:37:54.159
is sixty feet tall. There is a hollowed out portion
523
00:37:54.719 --> 00:37:57.360
in the tree, but it's thirty feet off the ground.
524
00:37:57.440 --> 00:38:01.079
And you know, we're just real skeptical. I'm seeing guys.
525
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:04.239
They got a saw and they cut out about six
526
00:38:04.280 --> 00:38:08.039
feet off the ground a little hole where they could
527
00:38:08.079 --> 00:38:11.679
stick a pole and a mirror attached to the end.
528
00:38:12.360 --> 00:38:15.639
And as they're looking, they go, I think we see
529
00:38:16.519 --> 00:38:20.960
garbage bags down there. And sure enough, just like Matthew
530
00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:24.800
Hoffman had said that he had dropped seven garbage bags
531
00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.159
down the center of the tree, and the inside the
532
00:38:27.199 --> 00:38:29.760
garbage bags were the body parts.
533
00:38:33.559 --> 00:38:39.800
Those bodies may not have been discovered for decades in
534
00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:42.920
that tree. The way that they were, it's very possible.
535
00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:44.920
It could have been fifty or sixty years ago by
536
00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:48.360
until that tree rotted and fell, that those bodies would
537
00:38:48.360 --> 00:38:49.239
have been discovered.
538
00:38:50.239 --> 00:38:55.280
I think that for Matthew Hoffman, trees meant so many things,
539
00:38:55.320 --> 00:38:56.639
and I think one of the things they did mean
540
00:38:56.679 --> 00:38:59.000
to him is like it's a sacred space for him,
541
00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:02.800
and it's a that's his. And so I think by
542
00:39:02.840 --> 00:39:06.639
putting these bodies down in this tree, number one, it'd
543
00:39:06.679 --> 00:39:09.280
be almost impossible to find them. Is they're a practical
544
00:39:09.320 --> 00:39:11.840
part of it. But I think even more importantly for
545
00:39:11.920 --> 00:39:15.840
him psychologically, is it was kind of like, if not
546
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:21.679
like an offering a sacred place that was his. So
547
00:39:21.719 --> 00:39:23.840
it was a sense of ownership as well that he's
548
00:39:23.880 --> 00:39:34.239
putting them in this tree.
549
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:41.559
He faces aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse, burglary, kidnapping,
550
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:46.519
and rape. When you're going into trial with such an
551
00:39:46.519 --> 00:39:51.559
emotional case that has the loss of life and still
552
00:39:51.639 --> 00:39:55.960
has a thirteen year old that went through this ordeal,
553
00:39:57.000 --> 00:39:58.960
you've got a lot there to deal with.
554
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:03.440
The family was all there. I remember being in the courtroom.
555
00:40:03.960 --> 00:40:07.079
There was no trial, it was just a plea. He
556
00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:12.320
pled guilty, and you know, it's just awful situation for
557
00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:16.000
the families, certainly for Sarah.
558
00:40:16.039 --> 00:40:22.840
He is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
559
00:40:23.559 --> 00:40:24.280
of parole.
560
00:40:25.880 --> 00:40:29.199
We see some horrific things throughout our careers, and that
561
00:40:29.320 --> 00:40:33.519
and to recover, you know, a family is just a
562
00:40:33.559 --> 00:40:37.039
horrific thing. Nobody should ever have to go through that.
563
00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:40.039
But you know, that's what we do in law enforcement.
564
00:40:40.119 --> 00:40:43.800
We see the worst of the worst. But you know,
565
00:40:44.199 --> 00:40:50.000
it was closure for them. Matthew Hoffman will never ever
566
00:40:50.159 --> 00:41:02.480
get out of prison again. As far as Hoffmann's mindset,
567
00:41:02.639 --> 00:41:07.199
it's so difficult to tell exactly where he was at
568
00:41:07.199 --> 00:41:10.199
the particular time. I've been involved in a number of
569
00:41:10.239 --> 00:41:15.440
cases where this kind of thing will repulse somebody, and
570
00:41:15.480 --> 00:41:20.239
I've also worked cases where when somebody actually does this
571
00:41:20.760 --> 00:41:26.599
and they feel the power of control, it can fuel
572
00:41:26.599 --> 00:41:31.639
a fire inside them that you know. I like this feeling.
573
00:41:34.119 --> 00:41:38.000
I think that he was escalating once he had killed.
574
00:41:38.639 --> 00:41:46.880
I think he would have killed again. My daughter, who
575
00:41:46.960 --> 00:41:50.960
is now an adult, actually teaches at the middle school
576
00:41:51.880 --> 00:41:55.679
where Sarah and her brother went to school at, and
577
00:41:55.800 --> 00:41:59.880
she lives in the Mount Vernon community. Cody would have
578
00:42:00.039 --> 00:42:05.119
graduated in twenty nineteen, and for the graduation ceremony, the
579
00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:09.800
school placed a chair with Cody's cap and gown and
580
00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:15.840
his diploma on that chair, along with a white rose.
581
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:23.679
And when my daughter sent me that photograph, it hit
582
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:27.199
me like a load of bricks. This particular case has
583
00:42:27.280 --> 00:42:32.880
always stuck with me. I have kind of followed after
584
00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.000
Sarah to just kind of see how she's getting along
585
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:40.920
in life. It's unimaginable to me how you could experience
586
00:42:41.159 --> 00:42:46.239
something this horrific and still go on. I'm just honored
587
00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:49.800
to have been able to afford her the opportunity to
588
00:42:51.039 --> 00:42:55.159
have a life and just hope and pray that she
589
00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:00.480
finds solace and can go on with her life and
590
00:43:00.519 --> 00:43:04.199
not allow this experience to define who she is.
