The Girl in the Leaves
A hundred thoughts raced through Sarah’s mind as she lay on the kitchen floor. What had happened to Kody? What had happened to her mom? And was this man going to kill her?
Sarah’s shock was beginning to gradually make way for survival mode. She began to wonder what she had to do to stay alive. Should she try and talk to this man? Should she just stay silent?
He told her not to struggle or make any noise. If she did, he would kill her. He then blindfolded her, picked her up once again and took her down some stairs. Even though she couldn’t see, she soon realized he had placed her into Stephanie’s Jeep. She could feel something in the backseat next to her, but she didn’t know what it was . . .
PRAISE FOR ROBERT SCOTT AND HIS BOOKS
“Compelling and shocking . . . [A] groundbreaking book.”
—Robert K. Tanenbaum
“Fascinating and fresh . . . [A] fast-paced, informative read.”
—Sue Russell
“Skillfully written . . . [Scott] has the ability to tell a true story with compassion and taste while grabbing and keeping the reader’s attention.”
—ReviewingTheEvidence.com
“An excellent true crime writer.”
—True Crime Book Reviews
THE GIRL IN THE LEAVES
ROBERT SCOTT
WITH
SARAH MAYNARD
AND
LARRY MAYNARD
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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THE GIRL IN THE LEAVES
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Robert Scott
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley premium edition / January 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Robert Scott.
Cover photo courtesy of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-101-60094-8
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, for all the help on this book, and my literary agent, Sharlene Martin. I’d also like to thank the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and Knox County Prosecutor’s Office. And special thanks go to Larry, Tracy and Sarah Maynard.
—ROBERT SCOTT
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
About the Author
Photos
ONE
“He’s a Real Weirdo”
MOUNT VERNON, OHIO—NOVEMBER 2010
Relations between Dawna Davis (whose name would often be spelled as Donna in future accounts and articles) and her next-door neighbor on Columbus Road in Mount Vernon, Ohio, had not always been strained. Dawna, the mother of three children, initially liked the young man, thirty-year-old Matthew Hoffman, who resided next door in a two-story house with his girlfriend and her eight-year-old son. In fact, Dawna’s eldest son often went over to Hoffman’s house to play with the girlfriend’s son. The two boys would toss a football around, watch TV and just generally hang out together after school.
Dawna’s friend, Leanda Cline, agreed that Hoffman was friendly in the beginning and referred to him as a nice guy. Leanda’s son, who would also play over at Hoffman’s house, told her that Hoffman let the boys jump around on a trampoline, and made popcorn for them too. They would often sit in front of the TV watching a DVD and eating popcorn.
Dawna and Leanda’s sons also had sleepovers at Hoffman’s house, and on occasion, Hoffman would give Dawna’s fourteen-year-old daughter rides home from the movie theater in Mount Vernon. All in all, he seemed just as Leanda had indicated, “a nice guy.”
But near the end of summer 2010, Matt Hoffman began to change. He became more irritable and moody. One day, his dogs suddenly disappeared. Dawna later said, “I believe in my heart that he killed those dogs. He started pulling back and acting strange. I don’t know what set him off. He was just getting more and more weird.”
Around the same time, Hoffman began setting squirrel traps around his yard. Dawna learned from his girlfriend that Hoffman was catching the squirrels, taking them into his house, butchering them and eating them. On occasion, the girlfriend said, he
would even barbecue the squirrels. It freaked Dawna out. She said later, “We liked those squirrels and used to feed them. And then he killed them!”
Dawna quit letting her daughter ride home from the movie theater with Hoffman when she learned he was taking the girl on indirect routes home. These roads ran through sparsely populated areas of woods away from the main logical route back to Columbus Road. Dawna’s daughter told her, “We didn’t take the main roads back home, we took back roads. It made me uncomfortable.”
Dawna also quit letting her son play next door. Hoffman was just becoming “too weird” in her estimation. Hoffman’s girlfriend was changing as well. She had initially been talkative and outgoing, but as autumn came along in 2010, she became more reserved and quiet. In fact, by that point, whenever she came over to see Dawna, it was almost as if she had to sneak out of Hoffman’s house so that he wouldn’t know that she was there. It got so bad that Dawna and Leanda later said that they began to fear for her safety. “We knew something was wrong.”
It was more than just a gut feeling on their part. In mid-October an incident brought to light just how much Matt Hoffman had changed from the nice guy next-door neighbor into something else.
Hoffman’s girlfriend had finally had enough of his increasingly bizarre behavior and she and her son moved out of his house. She came back one day to pick up some items that she’d left behind, and almost immediately she and Hoffman got into an argument. As it became more heated, she started to leave, but he pushed her over a chair and knocked her to the floor. Then he began choking her.
She later related in a police report, “We were in his living room talking and he got upset and pushed me against a wall. He had his forearm up against my neck and was choking me. I got loose, but he grabbed me again and we tumbled over a chair to the floor. I was fighting to try and get him off of me, but he choked me on the ground.”
She estimated that they struggled for two minutes, with him choking her on and off as they rolled around on the floor. Finally he let her up, and they spoke briefly before she left his house. She reported the incident to the police, but then for whatever reasons, decided not to press charges.
After Hoffman’s girlfriend and son moved out, Dawna no longer let her children go anywhere near Hoffman. In fact, she wouldn’t even let them play in their own yard if Hoffman was outside. He was too erratic, in her estimation, to be anywhere around her children. And his habits were becoming more and more strange.
On occasion he would climb up into the branches of a large tree on his property and perch up there for hours. Just what or who he was looking for, Dawna didn’t know. He would also spend great amounts of time in a hammock in a tree. He seemed to be obsessed with trees.
By now, Hoffman gave Dawna the creeps.
As if that wasn’t enough, Hoffman, who had always been addicted to computers, had his electricity turned off. Suddenly even that outlet for him was gone. With winter coming on, it seemed crazy to be without such power. But crazy is exactly the word Dawna now used to describe Hoffman. She soon started letting everyone know, “He’s a real weirdo.”
* * *
Matt Hoffman didn’t care what Dawna Davis or anyone else thought about him. He had always marched to the beat of a different drum. For example, more than ten years earlier, when he was nineteen years old, he had left Ohio and moved to Colorado, where he had gotten himself into a great deal of trouble. Though he rationalized to himself that he had mainly been the victim of bad luck, that bad luck had cost him prison time and made him a very angry young man.
After his prison stint, Hoffman had moved back to Ohio, where his mother lived, as a condition of his parole. He got a job as a tree trimmer, which suited him. He had always liked being in and around trees. Like his neighbors, his employer at Fast Eddy’s, a grounds-maintenance and tree-trimming service in Mount Vernon, at first thought Hoffman was a nice guy. Office manager Sandy Burd later said, “There was nothing strange about him in the beginning. He just blended in. But as time went on, he struck me as really strange. He would just stare off into space.”
Not only that, but Burd learned that Hoffman had oversold his tree-trimming experience and had not disclosed that he had been in prison. Hoffman’s actions became so troubling that at the end of October 2010, he was let go from his job.
Hoffman was bitter as October turned to November 2010. Now, as Hoffman sat in his house, with no job, no electricity, no gas and no girlfriend, he became more and more angry. He was worked up and agitated, and when he was in such a state, he had to blow off steam. That’s when his urges were at their strongest. And the urge right now was as it had been back in Colorado. He liked breaking into people’s homes. People who led “normal lives.”
He didn’t consider himself to be normal. He thought of himself as extraordinary. The rules that pertained to others didn’t pertain to him. When he felt these urges, he was a man of action, and he acted upon them come hell or high water. He knew about a place in the town of Howard named Apple Valley. It was a house that sat alone on a street across from some woods. Best of all, its garage door would not close all the way, giving easy access into the interior of the house. He’d wait until all the people in the house had left for the day, and then he’d sneak inside and take whatever he wanted. Hoffman got a charge out of those kinds of things, and was no stranger to breaking and entering.
TWO
Larry and Tina
1993—CENTRAL OHIO
Fifteen-year-old Larry Maynard was riding his bike down the street in his neighborhood of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, when he spotted one of the cutest girls he’d ever seen. She was blond, petite and athletic looking. Wanting to know more about her, Larry kept pedaling his bike past her block, hoping each time to get another glimpse of her. Before long he learned that she was the same age he was, and her name was Tina Herrmann.
Larry already knew Tina’s elder brother, and discovered that she was staying the summer with him, though she usually lived in the small town of Pataskala, which was much more of a farming community, about ten miles farther east. When school resumed in the fall, Larry and Tina started hanging out together every chance they got, despite the distance between their homes.
Along with being cute, Tina was outgoing and popular. She had an infectious laugh and upbeat personality. Lots of teenagers, Larry included, liked being in Tina’s orbit. Larry recalled, “There was just something about her that made you like her. Not just me, but lots of kids at school. You hear about someone lighting up a room? Tina was one of those people.”
After a few months, Larry and Tina began “officially” dating. They did the usual teenage things—going to movies, sitting down to burgers and fries, cruising around with friends. Though they didn’t go to the same high school, Larry and Tina were a couple. She liked watching him play on the football and basketball teams.
Both took school seriously, and Larry and Tina adopted a work ethic early on in life. Neither came from wealthy families, and they realized that no one was going to just hand them money as they grew older. Larry began doing jobs with his grandfather, a professional painter of houses and businesses. And Tina started working at a Kmart store. Soon after graduating high school, they got an apartment together on the outskirts of Columbus.
In April 1997, when Larry and Tina were both nineteen, Tina was rushed to the hospital and gave birth to a baby girl, six weeks premature. Larry was stunned when he heard the news at work. He had not expected the baby to be born so premature. Larry made a beeline to the hospital, where he was presented with his baby daughter, only four pounds, nine ounces, whom he and Tina named Sarah. Larry recalled, “She was so tiny. It seemed incredible that she was alive. She looked so fragile. Sarah changed our world. It was as if our responsibilities had just doubled. I was determined to give Sarah the best life possible.”
Larry’s mother, Esther Maynard, recalled, “When
my son called me to tell me I was a grandma, I thought he was joking since it was April Fool’s Day.” She was surprised as well that the baby was so premature.
Esther continued, “It was true, however, and my daughter and I hurried to the hospital to see her. Sarah was premature, with lots of wires attached to her. Sarah was a fighter, though, and became strong very quickly and continued to show strength every day.”
Despite Sarah’s small size, she began to flourish more every day. In some ways she seemed to adopt Tina’s vibrant vitality early on. Friends and family “oohed” and “aahed” over her, and she developed a happy quality that became the hallmark of her young life.
Sarah gained more and more weight as each month progressed, and slowly but surely the underweight baby turned into a healthy athletic girl, as her mother had been. Running around the house, getting into mischief, but basically a good, happy child. Sarah was a bundle of energy.
Two years later, Sarah was presented with a baby brother, whom Larry and Tina named Kody. And just like his sister, Kody was also born tiny and premature. But once again, just like Sarah, Kody soon developed into a happy, healthy baby. In no time, he too was a burst of energy, crawling all over the house like a little dynamo.
Larry said, “He turned into a real live wire just like his sister. Sarah doted on her baby brother. There was a real bond between those two. I was real proud of both my kids. They were also very kind, and they always shared with others. I don’t even know how much of that was learned. It was just who they were.”
Larry’s mother, Esther, recalled that Sarah and Kody both loved bicycles. “We started out with little ones and worked our way up to big kids’ bikes. I would watch them ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk until they got tired. They were so happy. I always tried to make sure they knew how much I loved them.”
Now, with a growing family, there was even more pressure on Larry and Tina to provide a good life for them. Because neither Larry or Tina had a college education, the prospect of good-paying jobs was limited. Larry looked around and discovered that one of the best paying jobs within his grasp was becoming a long-haul truck driver. The work suited him—he’d wanted to drive a large truck since he was five years old, when he’d sat in the cab of a relative’s truck and imagined how it would be to be behind the wheel of such a large vehicle.