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The Leaf Killer · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:08
  Welcome to ten Minute Murder, Brief and binge Able True Crime. I'm Joe.
• 0:14
  I'm the host, and thank you for joining today and on the previous
• 0:17
  episode, during this intro time, I talked about how much I love words.
• 0:21
  I'm kind of a word nerd. I love how descriptive you can get
• 0:25
  with them and using words that not everyone uses sometimes, and that many of
• 0:29
  you reached out and said you're the exact same way, which made me feel
• 0:33
  better about myself. I'm not as weird as I thought I was when it
• 0:35
  comes to words. But then several of you also said that you like to
• 0:40
  intentionally mispronounce words for no reason whatsoever. Let me tell you, I've never
• 0:46
  felt more seen in my entire life. I do that too. I don't
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  do it on this podcast because that would be weird. You'd be wondering why
• 0:53
  is Joe saying paradigm like paradiicum, Because if you didn't know I do that,
• 0:58
  then you just think I'm an idiot. And I didn't start it until
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  I had a kid and when he was growing up. You know how kids
• 1:04
  mispronounce words, and it's cute. Like to this day, for example,
• 1:10
  I still say something instead of something because he was little, and he would
• 1:14
  say something. Instead of I need to go get something, we would say
• 1:17
  I need to go get something. Also, when he was reading, he
• 1:19
  would read the word original as organal and I thought that was cute. And
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  to this day I will still say around him and he says it back,
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  and he's seventeen years old. But anyway, I'm just glad that I'm not
• 1:32
  the only one that does a weird stuff like that. All right. If
• 1:34
  you are brand new to listening to this podcast, please make sure you subscribe
• 1:38
  to ten Minute Murders so that you can always be able to find the show
• 1:41
  and never miss an episode, and connect with ten minute Murder on social media.
• 1:46
  If you have friends and they also like true crime stories, please let
• 1:49
  them know about this podcast as well. Links from the show notes of this
• 1:52
  episode and at ten minute murder dot com. Now to the story. True
• 2:07
  crime cases often used the principle of Akam's razor. In other words, the
• 2:13
  most simple explanation for a crime is usually the correct one, But sometimes a
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  murder simply takes a turn for the bazaar, and the investigation leads to discoveries
• 2:23
  that nobody could have anticipated. One of these tip of the Iceberg Cases is
• 2:29
  the two ten murder of Tina Herman. When thirty two year old Tina Herman
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  didn't show up for work on the tenth of November, her manager, Valerie,
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  was immediately worried. Tina was the mother of two young children, thirteen
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  year old Sarah and nine year old Cody. She had a reputation for being
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  reliable, trustworthy, and upbeat. It wasn't like her to take a day
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  off work without calling to let Valerie know first. The next day came and
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  there was still no sign of Tina and Sarah, and Cody's school had reported
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  both children as absent. What's more, Tina's best friend, Stephanie Sprang,
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  was also missing. Valerie called the police for a wellness check on Tina,
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  but after calling their mutual friends and discovering that nobody had seen or heard from
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  Tina in days, Valerie felt like it was time to take action. She
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  went to Tina's house alone, a decision that she would remember for the rest
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  of her life. The door was locked, so Valerie broke into Tina's house.
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  As soon as she stepped foot in the hallway, she knew something was
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  horribly wrong. The floor was covered with pooled blood, which was also splattered
• 3:37
  on the walls and furniture. Valerie made a second phone call to the police
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  and told them there's blood everywhere. When the police arrived, they were baffled
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  by what they found. Despite the huge amounts of blood in the house,
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  there was absolutely no sign of Tina, Sarah, Cody, or Stephanie,
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  except for one single bloody footprint that was identified as Sarah's. In most missing
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  person cases, the culprit is known to the victims, so authorities honed in
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  on one, Greg Borders, a recent boyfriend of Tina's with whom she had
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  had a tumultuous relationship. But Greg had an air tight alibi for the night
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  Tina and her children had vanished. He'd been at work, then he spent
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  the night with a friend. With Greg ruled out as a suspect, the
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  investigators looked back at the scarce evidence they gathered from the crime scene. In
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  the garage of Tina's house, there was a collection of new trash bags and
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  sheets of tarpaulin. Investigators used this piece of knowledge, together with the cleaning
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  spray that had been used on some parts of the blood spatter, and realized
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  that the culprit had been trying to clean up after themselves. This led them
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  to a wild theory. Maybe the culprit had left the house at some point
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  to purchase further cleaning supplies. Scrolling through Walmart security footage at approximately the time
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  of the attack, investigators saw somebody suspicious, a man and who made a
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  bee line for the garbage bags and tarps in the store. The footage showed
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  this man walking to his car, a Toyota Yaris. Filtering through local Toyota
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  Yaris owners led authorities to one name, Matthew Hoffman. He had an extensive
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  criminal record, even serving time in prison for burglary and arson. Identifying Matthew
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  as a suspect led to a shocking revelation. A deputy remembered pulling over Matthew
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  on the night that Tina and her children went missing. The deputy had stopped
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  Matthew because he was trying to drive into a closed parking lot in the RS.
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  Matthew replied that he was just waiting until his girlfriend finished work. At
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  that time, Tina, Sarah, and Cody hadn't even been reported missing,
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  so the deputy had no way of knowing that he was talking to their assailant
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  in hindsight. One detail made the deputy's blood run cold. Matthew had told
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  him that his girlfriend's name was Sarah. Matthew Hoffman didn't have a girlfriend,
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  but that was the name of one of the missing children. So who is
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  this person of interest in the Toyota Yaris. Matthew Hoffman was a thirty year
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  old man who loved nature and had worked as a tree trimmer throughout his adult
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  life. When things go wrong, we tend to cling to what we know,
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  and when Matthew's life began to go downhill, he became more and more
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  obsessed with trees and the outdoors. Once he'd scaled the branches of a tree,
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  Matthew would perch there, hidden from sight, watching his neighbors go about
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  their lives. Sometimes he would patiently wait until a squirrel was at arm's length,
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  then grab it and store it in a freezer to later eat. Watching
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  his neighbors from a specific patch of woods behind his house became routine. Matthew
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  started to feel like he truly knew them, what time they woke up,
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  what time they went to work, and what they did for fun. On
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  the night the Herman family disappeared, Matthew attempted to break into their house and
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  robbed them. Tina arrived home early started Matthew, who hit her in the
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  back of the head. When this did not subdue her, he stabbed her
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  with a hunting knife. While he was attacking Tina, her friends Stephanie Sprang
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  came over to visit and interrupted the attack. Matthew quickly stabbed Stephanie as well.
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  With both Tina and Stephanie dead or dying. Matthew then killed Tina's dog,
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  which was barking in panic. Matthew then dragged Tina and Stephanie into the
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  bathroom and dismembered their bodies in the bathtub. It was at this time that
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  Sarah and Cody arrived home. Cody was murdered just like Tina and Stephanie,
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  but Sarah's fate was very different. What police didn't know was, at the
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  same time they were viewing their surveillance footage of Matthew and Walmart, Sarah Herman
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  was trapped inside Matthew Hoffman's house, fighting desperately to stay alive. On November
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  fourteenth, investigators rated Matthew's home, taking a sleeping Matthew into custody, where
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  they found inside the house was completely totally out of right field. It was
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  filled with leaves. Piles and piles of leaves covered every inch the furniture,
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  the floor, the walls. Initially, police thought the piles of leaves were
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  hiding the bodies of the missing family, but there was no sign of them.
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  There was, however, one living person tucked away in the cross base
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  of the house. Sarah was found chained to a wall, naked except for
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  a makeshift plastic diaper, sprawled on a pile of leaves as if she was
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  sitting on a nest. She remembered the attack on her family and trying to
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  scream for help, then being stuffed into a car with a blindfold over her
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  eyes. Although she didn't realize it at the time, the objects in the
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  car next to her were the dismembered bodies of her family. During her time
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  in captivity, Matthew had sexually assaulted thirteen year old Sarah, fed her rotten
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  food, and chained her up next to him while he slept. Sarah had
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  no idea how much time had passed, and Matthew had told her that her
• 9:01
  family was still alive. Investigators had to break the tragic news to Sarah once
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  they realized that she had not witnessed the murders. One person had been recovered
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  alive, but where were the bodies of the other victims. Matthew initially didn't
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  co operate with investigators, but after saying that he had a horrifying nightmare that
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  jogged his memory about the crimes, he agreed to write down the location of
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  the bodies on a piece of paper, but only if detectives agreed to shoot
• 9:28
  him dead before receiving the paper. Detectives understandably refused. Two days later,
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  Matthew agreed to reveal the location of the bodies if he was given a lighter
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  sentence. It turned out that Matthew's obsession with trees had taken an even more
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  sinister turn. The dismembered remains of Tina, Stephanie, and Cody were found
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  in the trunk of a hollow birch tree that was more than sixty feet tall.
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  Matthew seemed much more emotionally invested in the well being of the birch tree,
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  which he worried would be chopped down, than he did the lives that
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  he had taken and the young girl he had traumatized. Although it never became
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  clear whether the crimes were truly a burglary gone wrong. Investigators suspected that Matthew
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  had indeed planned to murder the family and kidnapped Sarah from the beginning. He
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  was sentenced to life in prison without parole, only saved from the death penalty
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  by the plea deal he had accepted. Despite Matthew's concerns about saving the tree
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  he had disposed of the body's end, it was cut down shortly after the
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  corpses were retrieved. Sarah, now an adult, has vowed to live the
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  kind of life that her mother would have wanted. Matthew Hoffman took many things
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  from his victims, but that was one thing that he could not take away.