Hi, welcome back to give us more leave. I'm Megan, and I'm so sorry it's taking us this long. Yeah, well we only missed one week, which is like for us, at least we're doing it again. You know, Usually we're like, ah, you know what, the break was really nice? Are you proud of us? Guys? We didn't We didn't take a whole month this time, although this one is kind of last minute because like today is Friday, the thirty first of March, and you
will be listening to this by the end of today. So random applause from Megan. I woke up this morning and I was like, yes, day off work, I get to record the podcast because my alarm went off and I just well, like as soon as alarm goes off, I'm triggered. Like I'm like, I'm pissed already. Then I ordered my little Starbucks, which is not empty, but it was so fucking good. I got um an iced Oh Bran sugar iced Oh Shaken espresso. You first of all,
health Queen for the oat milk. Secondly, it doesn't take much to impress me. Secondly, I wish I could order. Sorry, I have to fix my computer so I can see you better. I wish I could order Starbooks to my home, but I can't because we don't have that in our tiny little town. Honestly, it's one of the little pleasures of living here. I could be like crying about missing my family and friends. I got
to start boom, but I can order Starbooks to my home. I have a question for you, Actually, what do you order when you go to Starbooks? I do like a bran sugar shaken and fucking espresso. It is chef's kiss and an iced white Smoka is also very good, but I haven't tried it, Like I don't think I've tried it. So is it good? Like is it sweet? And it is sweet? But it is good.
I like it. And then and listeners at home at home, every on the radio and listeners at home phone in, what is your Starbucks order? Tell me? I am I'm not very adventurous. I won't lie though, my Like, you know, when you don't know what to get, so you just get kind of like a comfort one that you just know that you will enjoy. And it is a basic, bitch one. And I'm well aware that it is very basic. Okay, you don't need to tell me it is. I know it is. I like an iced caramel macchiato.
Oh, it's got caramel drizzle in it. So as you're like sucking it up, you're getting like little clumps that You're getting little clumps of caramel and it's just tasty. Do you know what? I don't like a pumpkin spiced latte. I can't remember if I've ever tried one. I tried one because I wanted to see what the hype was. You know, m I am a fall girl. I'm a fall girl. I love fall slash autumn. So I was like, this is the like autumn drink. I have to try it? Mm hmm. It was fucking foul. It's like,
the fuck is this shit? Why are people drinking this fucking sacrilege? You're gonna be absolutely you're canceled. Hal. I don't think I'm I don't think I'm allowed to be a fall girl anymore. Also, can I just say chi chai latte? Chi chi tea whatever? Fuck Chaila? No, I've never tried it, and I wanted to try it. It tastes like um, it tastes like winter. You know when you get a piece of fruitcake at Christmas? Gross? Yeah, that's what it tastes like in my opinion.
Anyway. I don't know if you follow or see a girl on TikTok and a star or something like that is her name, and she does the she goes to star Bees and she's like, just give me what you want, yeah, what you would get, and she always gets these amazing drinks. But in Ireland we don't have some of those ingredients. We don't have most of them. To be honest, I see some of those Starbucks orders and I'm like, what the fuck? But luck listen, I wouldn't be
able to. Actually, I don't have the confidence to go into a Starbucks and be like, Hi, can I get a child latte with sweet vanilla, cold foam? Three pumps vanilla, two pumps chocolate. I just don't have it in me to go in and be like, Hi, yeah, can I have this really intense specific order? To be honest, I feel like in Ireland, if you ask for cold foam, the barista would hop
over the counter and punch you. Swear in the face, yeah, you can tell it when you ask for an iced one, when you're like, Hi, can I get an iced caramel maccietto they're like, iced, you fucking dick, thank you, love you so much, thank you. Yeah. So, anyway, tell us what your goal to drink is and maybe we'll try it. But if it's pumpkin, spice, batte or chilte, we will not be trying it. No, no, we will not.
So two things before we get in, and one of them is, if you haven't already checked out Megan's episodes with that's so fucked up, make sure you do so Gi Little extra GI, Little extra Megan your life Extra Meg. Why does that sound rose? Doesn't it sounds fabulous? Yeah, and go listen to those. And then the last thing is the shooting in Nashville. M let's talk about it. Okay, they were nine years old. The three students that died, was it? What was it? Three students
and a teacher. Three students and three teachers, and all three teachers were in their sixties and the three kids were nine years of age. And currently America is more focused on trying to trying to reverse lgb t Q plus laws, trying to ban books that talk about race and religion and other books that
talk about LGBTQ plus. And I saw a TikTok and I have to say it was a very powerful TikTok and it was of a like a senator or a politician anyway over in America, and he's arguing about why are we banning these books? You know, he's just like, what home is it going to do if students read these kinds of books and they're not like out their books. I don't know what one's there, but they're not like like, hey, you should be trends or you know, they're just talking. Yeah
he was. He just turned around at the end of his argument and was like, put jokes on you because dead kids can't read. And you know what, he has a point like when when is it when? Like how many school shootings? Is too many school shootings? When I hear people make the argument about how they want to keep their guns in one way, I'm like, Okay, I see your point, but also it's not a good enough point for them to be so easily accessible. That this shooter had something
like seven guns they had brought. I'm not sure. I'm actually not sure. I'm confused on whether they were. I think she had transitioned to she to she. I wasn't sure if she had transitioned from she to he or from he to sheep. They were able to buy something like seven guns from five different shops, like five different firearm stores. Like, how is that actually legally possible? Do you know what I mean? Because obviously it's like
all over internet. And one politician was like, do you know what what an A or it was like an A or fifteen or something that she used I believe in one of her guns anyway that she purchased, And it was like, do you know what that does to a person? Like you don't shoot deer with that kind of gun because it destroys the deer. There's been nothing left of the deer. So why does anyone of the public need a
gun like that? Because what's that? Like? Whatever about? You know, like a shot not a shotgun, a handgun, a handgun that like you I can like I can get that, I get it, and I can I can understand if you are like a single woman and you live alone in a rough neighborhood. Now if you just want to protect your family, like if you as long as you keep that gun and you follow guns safety protocols and completely understand having a handgun locked away safely in your home for in
case there was ever in a treader or anything like that. What do we what does like a society like that need shotguns, rifles, a salt rifle, AsSalt like assault rifles, Like what do they need those kind of weapons for? I don't know. This is not like, let's suppose it is. I wanted to say that this is not us giving a political stance. Obviously we have like no right to talk about really what's going on over there
because it's not our country, we're not living in it. But at the same time, as Europeans, I don't think we can sit here and comprehend why this needs. These shootings happen so often it just boggles their mind. So our hearts go out to the victims of every shooting in Americas so far this year, obviously, and to the kids and teachers that were involved in in any school shot shootings. I can't remember. I can't like, oh,
I think yeah, I think it was Monday or Tuesday. Am. I can't fathom what it would be like as a parent to have Anna in school. No, like you you just dropped Anna off to school right now? Like sorry you cry, no, because I guess actually terrifying, like you're they're sending kids to school with backpacks that are bulletproof, and they're on about like trying to build safe rooms in classrooms so that if this happens, that they like pull this thing out of the wall and it turns into like
a safe like a panic room. Why are you building that instead of banning guns? Just banning guns and you don't need the panic rooms. I'm sorry. What's more important your right to own a gun or to have your child alive? See, So, yeah, I just wanted to mention it. Obviously, it's a true crime podcast. We have a platform to talk about these kinds of things, and we shouldn't be silent, you know. Obviously
there's nothing we can say that's ever going to change anything. And I'm sorry if this conversation is fucking pissed you off, But I'm sorry, there's a there's grieving parents. I hope it's pissed you off in the right way that if you live in America and you hear this and you get riled, I hope it riles you in the correct manner that you then are like, let's go fucking sort these gun laws at Yeah, so let's talk about our case
today. Our case today is a very interesting one, and I think I'm just going to get right into it because we don't have a whole pile of time. On Wednesday, November tenth, twenty ten, Valerie Haythorn called police to let them know that her co worker at Dairy Queen, Tina Herman, had not shown up for work. Tina was a thirty two year old mother of two who was known for her reliability, so this was so when she didn't show up to work, they were like, oh, something the fuck
is wrong. And Valerie Haythorne reminds me of do you remember in the Chris Watts case there was a friend that came to the house and immediately knew that Chris had done something. When Tina missed her four PM shift, Valerie drove out to the house in Apple Valley, Ohio. The lights were on and Tina's car, as well as another truck were at the front. It didn't sit right with Valerie that Tina still wouldn't answer calls or texts, which is
why she called to the police to ask for a wellness check. Smart friend. Neither of Tina's two children, thirteen year old Sarah Maynard and eleven year old Cody Maynard had been in school the next day, Thursday, the eleventh of November. That same day, Valerie was told by a man named Ron Metcalf that he had not seen his girlfriend, Stephanie Sprange, forty one, since the morning of the tenth of November, about twenty four hours previous.
This is shrouded in mystery. I know. Stephanie Sprange was a neighbor of Tina's, and her last known movements were that she was going to Tina's house to help her move, as Tina and the kids were living with Tina's then boyfriend, Greg Borders, who had left the house early on Wednesday morning at about three forty five am to get to his job as a Target warehouse worker in a town a couple hours away. Oh, Greg, I already something like the scent of you, Poor Greg. You'll see, I doesn't always
assume as the boyfriend. That's That's exactly what happens. So then Greg was going to continue on to meet his friend and stay with him for a couple of days to hang out and play golf. See, the thing is that Greg and Tina were actually in the middle of breaking up. There's been in all abuse or anything like that. It was as amicable as a breakup can
be. I know it's shocking to the world, but sometimes just people just fall out a lot and are like, look, listen, I think it's best to be separates, and they're like, yeah, I think it is best to be separate. Let's go. Yeah, Like I think that there had been anger, and there had been fights obviously, but it wasn't like it wasn't it too, Like, yeah, people can get angry and have
fights, but not like getting physical or abusive. Yeah, exactly. And that was the same kind of split that Tina had when she went through when she was going through the divorce with the father of her children, Larry Maynard. Oh, Larry, I already till like the Sunday any man's name. You're just like, I don't like the sound at you. Tina and Larry
met when they were both only fifteen. Larry saw Tina when he was at cycling one day and he tried to set up like a little bit of a little cute, like a meat cute cute and by just cycling past her repeatedly, which like adorable. It's like, notice me on my bicycle. I don't even have stabilizers anymore. Look at me fifteen. I hope the fuck he doesn't have stabilizers. Well it must have worked anyway, like whatever he'd done, because they did start hanging out, and they eventually started dating a
few months later. Quote. 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. It's a quote from Larry. Larry. I'm sorry I said it, and like you earlier. No, it's okay, we can hate Larry, Okay, never mind Fuqui Larry. They moved in together after school to an apartment in
Columbus, Ohio. When they were both only nineteen, Tina gave birth to Sarah, who came into the world six weeks early and weighed only four pounds and nine ounces. Tiny. I know, but they obviously cared for her super like. They done a really good job, and before long she was a healthy wait for her age, and it says she was just like a little raised unshine. She was just a happy kid. Sarah was only two years old when Tina gave birth to Cody, her little brother, who also
came prematurely, weighing only five pence and seven ounces. Yea, I know, But as they had managed before, they got Cody to a normal weak too. It wasn't long after Cody's birth that Tina and Larry's relationship started to get a little bit strained. They were both so intensely focused on building it a great life for their kids and both working to achieve that that they kind
of forgot to nurture their actual, their partnership, their relationship. Larry got a well paying job as a long haul trucker for a florist, and Tina was busy picking up shifts at a grocery store called Meyer Major m e I j e er Yeah. But um, Larry says that it was like the two were becoming strangers to each other. Like he'd be walking in the door and she would she'd be walking out. Yeah. They were just like two passing ships in the niche geez, Okay, that's the thing, is it?
Yeah? For like when you when you never see each other, you're just two passing ships in the night. I kind of like it. Um. At the time, the family were living with Larry's grandmother, but as the pair drifted apart, and anger came to the surface, as it does in a breakup or divorce. Tina and the kids moved out. The divorce itself was like normal. It was at first like anger, resentment, the typical like fuck you, you're not taking my kids away from me. No,
fuck you, They're living with me. I'm their mother. Well, this is the thing. They actually wouldn't use the kids against each other because because of Harry was a long haul trucker, he knew that he was never going to be able to have to take really Yeah, so they did go to live with Tina, and no matter what they thought about, like, they never thought about the kids or in front of the kids. And I think that just speaks to how hard they were like trying to give the kids
a really good life. Yeah, Like whatever was going on between the two of them, it never had anything to do with the kids. And like if the kids were around and they were like, oh two dad, Like that is that is unreal parenting? Yeah, co parenting at its finest. Honestly, yes, so many people need to learn that. True. And like I'm sure that they I'm sure I'm sure the divorce affected the children,
but at this stage they were both doing really well at school. Boats and Cody were athletic from a very young age, and Cody played football at school and Sarah was a cheerleader for the same team. Isn't that just adorable? God team? Can you imagine, Like how nice of a bonding experience that is to get home from a game and you're literally both on the same team. You're both cheering to your same team. You're a boat like on a
high being like, oh my god, we did so wow. Yes, I'd say it was like really really nice and something that you can like bond with your sibling about. When I was younger, I so desperately wanted to be a cheerleader. We don't have cheerleaders in Ireland, by the way, Like it's not a thing. So my dream was never gonna happen. Give
me a gee, imagine it to do. Give us Mark take forever, give me, give me an give me a give me an m give me so we're just don't give Mark. Larry said that Cody was the type of kid who would make friends with the unpopular kid at school, Like if you saw somebody getting bullied, He's like, no, none of my way. We're going to be friends. Okay, Flay, I know, and I think again that speaks to Tina and Larry's parenting. Yeah, you leave nobody
out. M things were going really well for everyone, it seemed. Larry met and married a woman named Tracy, and the two welcome to son Aj in two thousand and six. The three of them would soon become neighbors of Sarah, Cody, and Tina and Tina's new boyfriend Greg. I mean, I get it being neighbors because it's like handy for the kids and stuff like that. But at the same time, I would not want my ex living right beside me. Yeah, no, I get that, But that's the
same time. I think they were like still once they've gotten past the bitterness of the divorce, they were like chill with each other. I get it. I do get it. I get why people do that, just personally for me. Can you live like in the next estate, Well, I don't know how close they lived so, because I don't understand that area, but I'd imagine it's like not too much different from like living in our town
and seeing your X or end. And this is an almost perfect situation for them because, like you said, the kids can see both of their parents and their new sibling. So sure, yeah, it kind of like does make sense a little bit. And then of course the recession hit and Larry, Tracy, and Aj ended up moving miles away to Florida for work. Tina had found a new job after losing hers at the grocery store, and she did consider following them to Florida, but she decided against it, and
instead she moved into a place called Apple Valley. Apple, And instead she moved to a place called Apple Valley in ment Vernon, Ohio, about forty miles from Columbus. And it's a tourist trap and for good reason. Like I looked at this place up on Google Maps and there's like you can't even on Google Maps, you can't go down like certain roads and stuff. And it is beautiful. It's kind of like a small community, like if you couldn't think in my head, I'm thinking like Gilmore Girls ESK, except a
different setting, yes, okay with me. And there's this big, massive lake which is the valley, and then there's like houses and woods kind of surrounding it. So it's like homely. Yeah, and so is the house on King Beach Drive. And it looks normal. It's not that far from the lake, and it's almost totally surrounded by woods. My dream, I know. And when I'm trying to like fall asleep, or when I'm trying to relax myself, if I'm feeling anxious or whatever, I close my eyes
and that's where I go. I go to a house in the woods. Yeah, like you go to somewhere like that. Yeah, yeah, and it and now it's it's been solely you know what I mean by what happens? Oh God, Okay. With Tina being outgoing and friendly, it didn't take long for her to make friends with the neighbors. She got close with Stephanie Sprang, who lived close by and Maker's Drive with her boyfriend and three children, Michael, Tricia, and Seth from her previous Marriach, and she
absolutely doted on them. She herself was pretty athletic and she ran tracking cross country before, and people say like her main priority was always her children, and she loved nothing more than just like being around her family and like just chatting with them, like talking talking about anything at any sort of social event or gathering. Like she's just as out going as Tina was in early twenty ten, Larry was able to move back to Ohio and was able to see
the kids more often. Cody was starting baseball and Sarah had just joined softball. And they're doing all of this while they're both really focused on their studies at school. They sound like angel kids. Yeah, they are angel kids. Yeah. And they even got a new sibling. Larry and Tracy had another son, who they called Peyton in two thousand and eight. Cute.
And then again, things seemed to be coming together, rebuilding after the recession, except for Tina, who, like I said, was in the middle of her break up with Greg and Tina was currently sleeping on the catch. I had heard that Greg was like, the bed is mine and the couch is yours. Like, if we're going to do a separation, then that's what we're doing. Greg. I knew I didn't like you, but yeah,
that was that's what was going on. Because they had bought the house together and at this point Tina was she wanted to move out and start fresh, and that's why Stephanie was going over to her house that day on the tenth, the Wednesday to go at her apartment hunting. So back to the wellness check, the zone had gone down Before an officer made his way down to King Beach Drive for the wellness check, Charles Statler received it's no answer
when he knocked on the door. At this time, there were no cars in the driveway and it just seemed as if nobody was home. Again, later that night, he drove by at around eleven pm, and this time the lights were on and there was a two thousand and four four pickup in the drive, so he did not approach the house again. He didn't complete his wellness check then, well, because he went to the house before and he was like, oh, nobody's home, And then when he went back,
there's a car at the front. Like this town Apple Valley, Like the crime rate is so small, so I know, yeah, but even but to complete like a wellness check, like you have to make sure that the person's fucking alive and himself. But I think they can go to the house and if nobody answers, they can't force themselves in. No, Like that's fair. But the next time he went back to the house and saw that someone was home, he should have rung the doorbell and been like,
kay, is everything okay? I've been requested to do a well check. I mean yeah, but also it was the end of his shift, so he was probably like, oh, they were just out, like they're they're fine right now. At this point, all he knows is that Tina didn't show up for work. That's all he knows. The kids had been in school that day, Wednesday, the tenth, it was just teenage that didn't show up. So then it's the next day, the kids don't show up
to school. So that day, the next day is we're talking about November eleventh, When she still had not shown up for work, Valerie became desperate and she called the sheriff's office again. The sheriff found out that the kids hadn't shown up for school on that day, and Valerie had spoken to Ron, Stephanie's boyfriend, who assumed that she had just spent the night la Tina's
because like neighbors. Yeah, yeah, apartment hunting ran late and they got caught up in time or whatever, so she just fell asleep, Yeah, which is which is something that you would especially if they were close friends and neighbors. I'm sure it's something that has happened before. So yeah, so he didn't think too much of it. Again, officers went back out to Tina's noticed that the Ford pickup that had been there last night was no longer
there, and again the officer did not approach the house. Determined fabibly met ron at the house, and remembering that Tina always left a window cracked in the back, she climbed in. She found a her endless scene which it was a literal blood bath. She immediately left and called to the police. When police arrived, they found blood in almost every room of the home,
including the bathroom, bedrooms, and basement. In the bath there was a ring of red indicating that blood had been at least two inches deep in the tube at one point. Goods a lot of ament of blood, like the bath to hold about two inches of blood, and then blood in every other room. That's like draining actual blood bath. Yeah, you're not surviving.
No, you're not surviving that lost blood. There were drag marks from the hallway to the bathroom, and bleaching motor oil had been like kind of like splashed in different spots of the house, like on the blood marks on the walls and stuff like. It was like somebody had tried to clean up and then they were like, oh, fuck it, and then they got the motor oil, and we'll see in a bit what they were planning to do
with that motor oil. Oh god, some footprints and blood had been created by someone wearing air walk shoes, which kind of looked like vans, like they're like a skate shoe, And this actually gave officers hope because they then found a box for a pair of air walks for a shoe looking to be about the same size in Sarah's closet. So Sarah the thirteen year old daughter of Tina. Oh, okay, so that means that she's walking around in
it at some point. So she's They're like, okay, she has to be alive, because yeah, the footprints were going out to the garage, so okay. Yeah, so it's like she has to be Yeah, she was at least alive at some stage during the literal blood, black blood, black blood bath. Yeah. So they'd found all of this blood and all of this mess, but they didn't actually find any of the missing people or
the family dog, a pincher named Tanner, not the God. The most interesting piece of evidence they found was a Walmart bag, right, a fucking Walmart bag with a receipt in it for trash bags, terps, a Halloween T shirt that was a dollar, and a turkey sandwich. You mean to tell me that this damn fool purchased items to get rid of bodies, a T shirt and a sandwich, a turkey one. At this point, Greg had actually not returned back home from his trip with his friend, and he
didn't really know what was going on. Like somebody called him and was like, hey, there's like police outside your house, Like you need to get back home. So he raises and he's met at the scene by police. He gives them like verbal permission to enter the home and to take evidence, because I think they needed to get a warrant. But verbal permission from him was like okay at first, something like that, I'm pretty sure you don't fully need a warrant or you don't need scene. If you're a crime scene,
you don't need like a full blown warrant. If the owner of the house is like, yeah, no, you can do whatever. M And they checked him over for like scars or scratches or anything like that, and they found none. He was clean, so and his alibi was pretty good. Like he was hours away. He was hours away with a friend that evening, a patrol car was driving past the Coco Saying Gap Trail parking area when he saw a truck similar to Tina's, which was missing from the scene.
Not far from it was a man sitting in a silver Toyota Yarus. The officer asked this young man behind the wheel what he was doing, and the officer was told that this man was waiting on his friend, who was called Sarah, and the officers like, okay, what's Sarah's last name? And he's like, I don't know, because we just started dating. I don't know. The police officer also asked for the idea of this man,
checked it and sent him on his way. And so I know that the truck actually being fund here completely sent things into a frenzy because it was found near a university and like the high school is kind of behind the university from what like Google Maps kind of showed me. So there was a full lockdown because truck was found there, because they were like, there's obviously from the scene, like there's obviously a fucking madman running around, so let's get everybody's
safe and everybody go home. Larry Maynard at this time had actually not been informed by police, what was going on? Oh, I mean his two kids are missing. His two kids and his ex wife are missing. You'd think that they would be like, hey, Larry, have you seen down here? Yeah? Like have you seen your ex wife and your two children? But it was actually Greg Borders and Greg called him in a friendzy being like where are they going nuts? And Larry's like, what the fuck are
you talking about? So Greg kind of filled him in and then Larry put on he had to find out everything from the news more or less. Oh, that's not nice, Like, no, I'm confused as to who'd done it. So if Larry is, if you are innocent, Larry, it's not nice that you found it through the news. What about a secret third option? So even from like so, even if Larry's innocent or whatever, right, even from the point of view of the police, you would have
thought that they would have wanted to question him. Yeah, I don't know what was going on there, because you would your your go to, like in in cases like this, the go to is to the partner or the like ex partner, m like, they're like the first people that you question. So Larry was questioned alone as well as Greg Ron Stephanie's ex Mike and her son Michael. They were all questioned anybody that could have close to the
family. Yeah. Now, throughout all of this, the house and King Beach Drive is being thoroughly processed, and police were even using like infrared helicopters, like infrared equipment on helicopters to see if they could see anything in the woods below. Yeah, because they're like, where the fuck of these like four people gone. Yeah, they're just like disappeared. Volunteers came out in force, searching high and low as well, so like the community rallied around
too. Yeah. It was a couple of days later, November the thirteenth, when detectives contacted Walmart for more information on the receipt that they had uncovered at the scene, because at first they were like, could this be Tina's or Greg's. Well, let's just check it out. Yeah. The person who purchased the items terp bin bags, Impulse fucking Halloween t shirt, and a Turkey sandwich paid in cash, so they requested the secure already tapes from
that time. The description of this man makes me, it sends me. It's absolutely hilarious. Oh god, So they watched a man about twenty five to forty. It's like, that's a that's a big old age gap that you have a big age range that's twenty years. You can look so different in twenty years. But like, I find it hilarious because you know when you see people and you're like, you're either thirteen or you're sixty, I have no idea what age you are. Yeah, that's literally what that is.
They're literally like they might as well have just said age unknown. That's not the best part. This guy is wearing a camouflage shirt eyeglasses, so he's wearing glasses and and I'm not laughing at people with this, but because it's this guy, I'm not gonna it's karma and a receding hairline. I love the way that they added that into the description. Yeah, and we all know how bad CCTV footages. I think that like they're like and a
receding hairline. They watched him make the purchase and then go into the car park and get into a silver Toyota Yaris. Sarah's boy. Exactly, I just did air coat and that's for everybody. And that's what they were able to quickly figure out, is they were able to figure out like who had a registered silver Toyota Yaris in Knox County, and one man stead stood out as the same man in the tape even were in the same camal shirt the
whole and that man was thirty year old Matthew Hoffman. Before we get into who Matthew Hoffman is, we're going to take a quick ad break. Okay, we're back, and let's talk about Matthew J. Hoffman a bit so. Matthew J. Hoffman was born on the first of November nineteen eighty to his parents, Robert and Patricia. He originally grew up around the Warren area in northeast Ohio before I moved into Apple Valley in Knox County with his mother
after his parents got divorced. People that knew him and his adolescence say that he was a strange kid, but he just kind of seemed unemotional and just unhappy and like not fully there, like he would just stare at you, like just kind of weird. But he did really seem to love the outdoors and he enjoyed spending a lot of time outdoors, Like he would spend time in treehouses and like climbing buildings to get to roofs, roofs roofs and stuff
like that. Like he just he was a kid that liked to be outside. He was an adoorsy kid, but also somewhat an unhappy kid. Yeah, at the same time, there's nothing wild or crazy that stick said about his childhood, Like it seems relatively normal. He was just a weird kid. Yeah. In two thousand, when he was about nineteen, Matthew graduated
from Knox County Career Center and moved to Steamboat Springs in Colorado. On the twenty eighth of August two thousand, Matthews set fire to a condo building after breaking in to rob it, like he'd been in the home previously because he was doing plumbing work. And when he was doing that work, he stole a set of keys from a drawer to get it normal, so it's pre planned in the first place, and then really gets there because he knows the
owner is like out of town for a while. He stays for a while, He relaxes, he eats some food, he watches their TV, he uses their Kuzy like he's having a grand old time. He caused playing having a normal life. Right now, Jesus Christ, what's it like to be rich. I don't know, let's go and rob this house and sitting there jakus in the and then he left. But then he realized, oh fuck, I probably left a shipload of evidence behind that I was there, probably
left every single type of DNA behind. Yeah, exactly. So you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go and buy ten gallons or ten leaders I think it's the same, I don't know, a fuel of petrol, and I'm gonna bring it back, pour it all over the place and set the fucking place on fire, because then nobody will know I was there. That's that's a lot of it's a lot of fuel, you know, Like you don't need that much, Like are you trying to set the whole fucking
state on fire? Or Well, it did do quite a bit of damage, and but luckily nobody was hurt. Sixteen people were evacuated, and he had caused about two million dollars worth of damages, but nobody got Hurt's well, thank god nobody got hurt. Two million damages? She's christ. Yeah, Like I think there was smoke damaged two of the condos, and then there was like eight houses or something surrounding that people had to be evacuated from
something like that. Apparently in late September of the same year, Matthew also stole some of the ten signs that said Welcome to Steamboat Springs that were also pretty expensive, and I believe like stealing those signs actually carries a pretty heavy weight. Why would you steal that might be a felony. Why would you
steal them? What do you need them for? I don't know, Like we've all seen people that have like, you know, signs hanging up in their bedroom that they've stolen from like crossroads since so, I mean, I guess I just but like I think this is actually a pretty big, hefty sign. It's like welcome to Steamboat Springs, you know, as you're driving in probably cause fucking thousands. And he's just like that will go nice in my sitting room. I may not have making cups, but I have a
welcome to Steamboat Yeah. I don't know if his interior decorating skills are very good, and we'll actually see more of that later two, but his interior decorating so he of course was caught and in two thousand and one he was given an eight year sentence for the fire, and he was told that he would need to pay back some of the money for restitution. He got out
after only six years for good behavior and was on parole. He was allowed to move back to Apple Valley in Ohio in two thousand and seven under the conditions that he lived with his mother. And he had just paid about five K back. Now somehow, I don't really know. I think it was cheap, but my he managed to buy at home. And it's like, if you're being ordered to pay back like two mill how are you getting a fucking loan? Like, how did you get the money for this for to
buy at home? His mother probably got the loan. I was like, get the fuck out of my HAPs. Probably, I'd say there was some kind of like I don't know, fucking around that went on there, but he did. And it was listed as a second address. And I think the first address that was listed was belonging to him in like the DVLA or whatever the fuck's called, and was like his mother's address or an address that belonged to his stepfather. I heard two different things, yeah, or not
to his steff father, to his father. Anyway, Matthew lived in this house with his then girlfriend and her child. It's a normal two story home in what was reported as being a quote lower middle class neighborhood. The neighbors said that initially he was nice. He was like absolutely lovely. He'd bring the kids home for movies and hang out with them and just super chill.
But this actually stopped when he made one of the neighbor's daughters uncomfortable by bringing her on a like a long route home one night, like an out of the way way. Yeah, and she was like, yeah, never again, You're not coming near my fucking kids. Yeah. Then his dogs disappeared. I believe he too, and the neighbor is convinced that he killed him.
I just girded the fucking dogs. And it wasn't long after that that it became very apparent that Matthew was killing squirrels to eat them, because obviously they're in a wooded area. Yeah, they're very Yeah, why eat Matthew. Matthew, honey, Okay, this has to do with him, like thinking, Ada, he's a hunter. M b. He's quite cheap. You can buy minutes for cheap. I'm sorry, you can get cheap cheap meat at the butcher's why, like even deer. You you're allowed to hunt
deer. That would be a bit better. That would be a bit better. You want to eat squirrels, It's pretty sure they carry diseases. No, probably do people say they're like the rats of the trees, not as pigeons, rats of the sky the trees. That's me. I'm pretty sure rats of the trees are just rats. Yeah. And then he would get
up and he would just sit in trees for hours. That's not just like no, he would perch himself up there and just watch, like out of all the things that you could have said, that is not what I thought was coming like that. He just would climb trees and sit there for a while and be like hey, yeah. So one thing about Matthew is he really fucking loves trees and he really loves leaves. And I don't know if
it's like a sexual thing. I don't know if he was, like you know, at this day and age, it probably fucking is in sexual because he sends like a little fucking freak. Well, there's a name on it. It's called dendrophilia. Of course, there's a name for it. Yeah, And I don't know if that's if the trees brought him like an innocence
type of comfort, or if they were a sexual comfort. If I don't know if the trees gave him would either way, Matthew, there's no need to go climbing and sitting in them, being like no looking me into the neighbor's garden too, And it got to a point where the neighbor was like, no, kids, you're not allowed outside. If Matthew is outside, no way, like that's okay. So I could not find any information on who Matthew's girlfriend at the time was, and to be honest, I didn't
really look that hard because she's not involved. The only thing I will say is that in October of twenty ten, so a couple of weeks I think it was like three weeks before Tina's disappearance, Tina and the kid's disappearance and Stephanie's his girlfriend. The X did file a report against him, stating that he had assaulted her and when she returned back to the house because they had broken up and she went back to the house to get her car and then
he just lost it. Assaulted her, like he choked her. He used his forearm and like pushed up against the wall and then like jumped on her basically, and she she genuinely thought like always going to kill me, but he let her go and he was like, oh my god, I don't know what just come over me. And she was like, I'm Eddie here. Around the same time, Matthew lost his job as a tree trimmer because he had completely exagger yeah, you know, he completely exaggerated his experience and
had apparently made the supervisor uncomfortable. And he was probably Triman the leave like, oh yeah, maybe you like that. Oh no, no, no, of course he got a fucking job, Triman leaves. Yeah. Yeah. When you think about it, you're like, that's like, I don't know, why would you even compare that too. That's like it's not as a stream, it's not as extreme, but it's like a pedophile getting a
job and a fucking crash or something I did. I was gonna. I was thinking that it's like not as extreme obviously because his thing is trees, but like, so that's Matthew and that's where we're at right now. Detectives started to piece things together and realized the man an officer had pulled up on before, like in the arrows said that he was waiting on Sarah Yeah in a silver arrows like next to ten years car. On November fourteenth, twenty
ten, a swat team descended an On Hoffman's house on Columbus Road. They had gotten a no knock warrant and used a battering ram to break in the door before throwing a flashbang device in to stun anyone inside. They found halfman asleep on the couch in the living room. A detective took him outside while the rest of the house was searched, and they found a lot of questionable things in this yes, And to start, the first thing they noticed was
leaves absolutely fucking everywhere. Why is the leaves inside this man's home? Oh, my grant, what is wrong? Why? No? Why is he actually so fucking obsessed with treason ly? That's fucking weird. I don't know. And can you imagine the fucking bugs and shit that come with that? Like no smell, sweet baby Jesus, what is wrong with that? When I tell you there are piles that are like they look to be like waist high. That's not even the worst of it. Leaves he had bags,
some of these in grocery bags. And if you go into the bathroom. His whole all his bathroom was completely lined with grocery bags full of leaves. It's not normal, it's not it's not. I guess I can't. And yeah with you, Matthew, I can't. And if you think about it, like the SWAT team through in a flash bang device, they're very fucking lucky nothing went on fire. That I mean, they honestly weren't expecting a
fuck ton of leaves to be inside this man um. They did also find an inactive weed firm in one of the bedrooms, so like even more like the store leaves even more different types. Yeah, and you know what, he probably wasn't even smoking the weed. He probably just wanted to grow it to look at it. Yeah, Like, I'm imagining this guy like rolling around and ladies, you know, the way you see dogs running rent and as tim day and day out, and he's like rolling around in it with
like childish glee. The SWAT team then moved a bookcase or kind of cabinet thing to the side that then uncovered a door to the basement where they found thirteen year old Sarah Maynard and with the yellow rope and duct tape wearing a makeshift nappy over her clothes. Oh God, she's lying. She's also lying on a bed of leaves by the way, and her first words to officers
were quote, I have to get to school. Oh it's like four days later, she was immediately taken to the hospital to be checked over and answer some questions. She had no idea what had happened to the rest of her family and to Stephanie, but was sure that they had been killed. She and Larry were reunited here. Larry said he remembers, and this broke my
heart. He remembers getting the call that they had found Sarah, but they didn't mention Tina and Stephanie or Cody, and he was obviously ecstatic to go and see Sarah. But he did make note of that that they didn't mention anybody else. He was like, oh, you only found like not only but like pank, God, you found her, but she's the only one you found. Yeah. Halfman was taken to County jail and was charged initially
with kidnapping Detective Joe Deeds and Special Agent Kristen Cadell. I believe it's how you say your second name. We're there to question Matthew, who stayed mostly silent, and he tried to use his hands to try and communicate, like he's like knocking on his chest to be like hurt. And then he was like making this movement with his hands to be like broken. And Joe's like, are you trying to tell me that your your heart's broken? But Matthew
won't talk. Okay, you're going to try and play crazy now, Matthew. Yeah, And they don't have time, Like time is of the essence because they still have three missing people. They need to know if these three people are still alive, like they're obviously because they found Sarah. They're hopeful that maybe the other three or just somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. Now, at the same time they kind of that they are likely dead. You do have to have a certain ment of hope. So no matter what,
they don't try and build a report didn't work. And when he did talk, Hawfman was just talking about how much of a monster he is if he's done the things that they're telling him he's done. Oh, give us a break. You know exactly what you've done, Matthew. He says that he doesn't know how Sarah got into his house, but when he realized that she was there, that he took really good care of her. He led her shower, he fed her. Did you did you? That's so kind of
you. What about the fact that you fucking murdered her brother, mother and her mother's friend and her dog. He's like, no, I fed her, we got we had burgers, I let her shower, I washed her clothes, we played the wee together. I gave her a book. Like, but Sarah, obviously you know, She's like, no, none of that happened. He kept me downstairs and he was just really fucking weird.
He offered to give me squirrel to cook me earl, and when I said no to that, he gave her sour milk and cereal and she was like, well, I had to fucking eat it, because yeah, because she was to eat nothing else was coming my way. Oh god, oh. On the morning of the sixteenth of November, Hoffman changed his tune. After his breakfast of a McMuffin and coffee, he asked in the interrogation room if
everything was being recorded. Then he asked if he could go to the bathroom, quote because this coffee is getting to me, which like same, I mean, okay, I'll get that happens to me too, and we'll find out what happened in the bathroom after this quick at break, Okay, and we're back. So Deats brought him to the bathroom, where Hoffman confided in him that he had had a nightmare the night before that he would that he was at a food processing plant and he opened a bin bag and saw severed
body parts inside. He said that he would reveal the location of the bodies by writing them on a piece of paper and giving them to his lawyer. The lawyer would be instructed to only provide the letter to law enforcement after Hoffman would be shot to death by police on an escape attempt. So he's like, So he's like, I'll tell you where the bodies are, but if you kill me right now and don't make me go to trial. Yeah, he's like, I want you to. I want you to kill me.
I'm going to try and escape and then you're going to shoot me and I'm going to die, and then you can find out where the bodies are. And obviously this request was refused. Yeah, they're obviously like, no, we're not going to kill you. No, we're not going to give you exactly what you want and not even know then what happened. And then after that was refused to Matthew confess that he just made that whole thing up, the dream about being at the food processing plant, just so he could get
started on his escape plan. Matthew was held and on one million dollar bail, showing up to the hearing in a suicide gown or an anti suicide smock, which is like a green padded dress which doesn't allow for much movement and it can't be ripped. The gas thing is the tho. I'm sorry, but there was no way he was actually ever going to harm himself. He just wanted to be all like, wait till you hear, Wait till you fucking hear. Oh my god, you hit the nail on the head.
Because even though at one point Matthew wanted nothing more than to die and be shot, it was ultimately his will to stay alive that traced police back to Tina. Cody and Stephanie Hoffman signed a deal that took the death sentence off the table if he provided their location. See, he doesn't actually really want to die. He just wants the fucking feel thory for me, because I feel bad about what I did so like I should. Yeah, toads die.
Please don't give me the death penalty. He's just a fucking master manipulator. He's just a fucking scumbag, and I don't know. I don't get him. But on November eighteenth, police were given directions to a spot in Cocoasing Wildlife Area where they found a large tree with a whole cut in the shaft was in a fucking tree yep. Using a flashlight, officers were able to see the inside of the tree, where there was black plastic bags.
The detectives gently cut a hole out of the tree to make it easy for them to pull the bags out, and multiple black bin bags were recovered containing the dismembered body parts of forty one year old Stephanie Sprang, thirty two year old Tina Herman, eleven year old Cody Maynard, as well as Tannered the dog. Hoffman wrote out a long confession where he explained what he had done. He liked to break into people's homes, and he realized that the house
and King Beach Drive did not have a lot of neighbors. He set up camp on the night of November ninth, sitting in the woods across from the home, watching the comings and goings of the house. He slept there that night, having even brought his own sleeping bag. I'm going to read and excerpt from the confession. I parked my car and Howard and walked from there to the house. I got to the woods across the street from the house
a little after midnight. I slept across the street from the house that night in a sleeping bag. I woke up at daylight. There were two vehicles parked at the house during the night, and I saw that the Gray care had left. I went back to sleep until around nine on Wednesday morning. I stayed there until a woman left in a pickup truck. This meant that there were no vehicles at the house. I walked across the street and tried to enter the front door, but it was locked. I then went into
the garage door. The garage door was not closed all the way, so I slid under it into the garage. I kicked the door into the house from the garage. By this time it was approximately ten thirty am Wednesday morning. I looked around the house to make sure no one was there. Even if I did not take anything, there was a certain amount of excitement in being in someone else's home without them being there. I was looking for anything of value that could be carried out easily, money, jewelry, etc.
I did not find anything of any real value. I was getting ready to leave, as I had been there approximately an hour, but someone pulled into the driveway. I was back in the bedroom when she entered the house and was unable to exit without breaking a window or trying to jump out. I had brought my knife for a certain amount of intimidation in case I ran into someone and needed to make an escape. When she made her way back into the bedrooms, I confronted her and made her get onto the bed, lying
face down. I believe that we were in her bedroom. I had a blackjack. I was going to try to knock her out. I hit her a couple of times in the head, but this would not knock her out. It was not doing the job, and I started panicking. The next thing that I knew, her friend came into the bedroom. I had no idea when she got there, what she was doing there and how she gained access. This other woman yelled at me. There were now two to deal
with, and I did not know what to do. I grabbed the knife that I had put inn on the nightstand and stabbed the woman on the bed, threw her back twice. I chased the other woman, den Stephanie, and stabbed her a couple of times in the chest. Instead of running out of the house, she had run into another bedroom. I believe this bedroom was for a girl to the contents of the room. I then went back to the other bedroom where the first one was located, and stabbed her a
couple more times. I could tell that both women were now dead. At this time, I was in a total state of shock. I wandered around the house, slowly coming to the realization of what I had done and how bad it was. During this time, I killed the dog because it would not stop barking. After a while, I came to the conclusion that I was going to dispose of the bodies and burn the house down. At first, I thought about loading the bodies into the vehicle and driving it into the
foundation park pond. I would swim away as the vehicle sank, but I felt that it was too cold and I might not make and I might not be able to make it out of the water. I decided to process the bodies and dispose of them inside a tree that I knew was hollow. I took the bodies into the bathroom and begin processing the bodies to dispose of them. I used garbage bags from within the house and place the bodies inside. Once I had finished processing the bodies, I moved the jeep into the guard
to load up the bodies. I still had a couple of bags into the jeep when I heard the children come into the house. I confronted the children, and the girl instantly ran to a bedroom. I stabbed the boy in the chest a couple of times. I ran into the bedroom after the girl to make sure she was not on the phone for help. I saw the girl was not on the phone, and I could not bring myself to kill her. End quote. He then brought Sarah back to his hell hole,
where he sexually assaulted her and tied her up. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In court, he stated loudly guilty for all of his other fucking families, which was like ten, but once it got to the sexual assault charge, he barely spoke up. Knowing what happens two men like that in prison, the community really rallied and started to grieve together, also celebrating the very full lies that the victim's led. A
memorial was set up near the house, with people leaving gifts behind. The dairy Queen that Tina worked at donated a portion of profits from ice cream and sales to have fun set up for the surviving children. The tree was cut down to avoid it becoming a spectacle, to which I thought was great. Yeah, that's good because it can there's people out there that would be like, oh my god, let's go see the tree, the murder tree.
And in court, Sarah wanted to make a statement to Matthew to the court, but they didn't think that it would be good for her to do that. So she wrote one and then the prosecutor read it out loud, and it's really nice, she said. Quote. Some memories of Cody. He was a left handed pitcher and he was really good. A whole bunch of people always told him how good a player he was. In life, he wanted to be a helicopter pilot in the coast Guard. Some memories of Mom.
She always made sure we were happy, and she went out and did stuff with Cody and me, even though she didn't have that much money. She always made sure we had heat in our house to stay warm, made sure we had food on our plates, nice clothes on, and that we had shoes on our feet. She was a really caring woman and when someone needed help, she would take her time to go help them. I loved her as a mother, even though there were times we didn't get along.
She loved dolphins and sunflowers. One thing she said to me quote Sarah, when I die, I want you to send me with the dolphins, and I will tell you a little bit about me. I played softball for three years. I was so good at it. I pulled in the outfield, and I played on the All Star team over the summer. I loved it. I'm almost fourteen. I enjoy my new school and the people there. Which that was her statement. So she's like, fuck, you have not
ruined my life. She's like, what you did is horrible, but it doesn't change the fact that, like my family were amazing and like I am amazing. Yeah, right, because for like, that's a that's a powerful statement for thirteen fourteen year old to make to write in the first place. It's really amazing and a lot of the family statements. They they literally told him like, I hope you burn in hell. Like it was nothing but the worst for Matthew, which like he deserves, you know, he deserves.
Yeah, Like it was literally just like he didn't even know these people. No, he just literally picked the house because it didn't have neighbors and because it had an easy point of access because the guard shore was broken.
Yeah, that's it. That's it, And just one last thing. Obviously, Sarah went to live with Larry and Tracy after this, but in May of twenty and thirteen, she actually reported them both for abuse, reporting that Larry had punched her in the back and that Tracy had pushed her down the stairs. Oh my god, Now she lives. I think now she lives with her grandmother. She might also I think she's going by a different name
too, which is fair enough. She probably wants to not be associated with the crime, if you will, so that people that aren't oh my god, are you the girl that Yeah, like that's changing your name or anything like that. It's not going to change the fact that you knew these people. That was your mother and your brother and your friends. Well, it just stops people like strangers from asking you about it, like when you are
trying to move on with your life exactly. And I don't believe that, like Larry and Tracy were prosecuted for the abuse allegations, but it's a shitty ass thing to do, and like they paraded her around doctor Phil and talk shows and shit like that. That's wrong. That's wrong. Hm okay, but yeah, that's it. It's a crazy fucking story. That is a crazy story. And I hope you really enjoyed it, and we'll I know next week. Yeah, and don't forget to check us out on Instagram,
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