FIFTEEN

A Huge Break

On November 13, 2010, Captain David Shaffer contacted Walmart in Mount Vernon to cross-reference purchases of the tarps and fifty-five-gallon heavy-duty trash bags found in Tina Herrmann’s garage. A woman from customer service was able to locate the purchase of a tarp with the same bar code and a purchase date and bar code on the trash bags. The purchase had occurred just after midnight on November 11, 2010. The only problem was that the person who had bought the items had done so with cash, not a credit or debit card.

To try and identify the person who had bought the items, BCI&I Special Agent Joe Dietz and Detective David Light went to Walmart to request that the store provide them with a video of purchases made around the given time frame. They spoke with Jared Scoles of the store’s security department, telling him that they needed the video immediately.

Dietz noted in his own report that he obtained a copy of the receipt for the transaction, and by comparing the product codes on the receipt with items on the shelf, and relaying that information to Special Agent Daniel Winterich at the crime scene, was able to determine that the items recovered at the crime scene exactly matched the items purchased at Walmart. Dietz noted that in addition to the garbage bags listed on the receipt, tarps, a turkey sandwich and T-shirt had also been purchased during the same transaction.

Scoles provided a video for the two investigators. One person on the footage soon caught their attention: a white male who exited the store with a purchased tarp and garbage bags. He looked to be between twenty-five and forty years of age, and was wearing eyeglasses and a camouflage shirt. He had brown hair with a partially receding hairline. They could see on the security cameras that the man crossed the parking lot and got into a small silver-colored car, then drove out of the parking lot eastward in the direction of Apple Valley.

Scoles told the officers that he thought the car looked like a Toyota Yaris. The officers uploaded photos of a Toyota Yaris from the Internet and agreed that the silver car in the video matched that description.

This was a huge break. Officers began researching all male owners of Toyota Yaris’s in Knox County. Special Agent Dietz and Lieutenant Gary Rohler checked the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway system for owners of silver Toyota Yaris vehicles in Knox County. Rohler quickly pulled up one image that looked a great deal like the man on the videotape. The man was named Matthew J. Hoffman, and he had renewed his driver’s license on October 26, only sixteen days previously. Incredibly, when Hoffman had his driver’s license photo taken, he was wearing the same kind of camouflage shirt as the man on the Walmart videotape. While the new driver’s license photo did not show Matthew Hoffman with glasses, earlier driver’s license photos did.

Agent Dietz checked the Knox County Auditor website, looking for Hoffman’s current address. He found two possibilities: the first listed was the 3000 block of Apple Valley Drive, within walking distance of King Beach Road, and the other location was 49 Columbus Road in Mount Vernon.

* * *

Over at Matthew Hoffman’s house, Sarah lay alone on her bed of leaves. After forcing her to do things that disgusted her, he left her alone. It was dark, cold and damp down there, and her sense of time had almost evaporated by now. In fact, it was so dark down there, she could not tell night from day. She had no idea of all the frenzied police activity going on all around the area.

At least the man wasn’t with her now. She had done what he wanted, and he’d left for some other part of the house. She was always cold, even though she was bundled up and covered with blankets. She even had gloves on her hands, which he’d put on her. It didn’t matter, though; she still shivered from the frigid temperatures down in the basement.

Her stomach growled from hunger. All she’d had to eat since being kidnapped was a few mouthfuls of cereal with spoiled milk. She constantly thought of food, but was determined not to eat the squirrels he had offered her. She thought of daylight. But most of all, she thought of freedom.

At one point, the man gave her a dictionary and told her to look up the word “ransom.” She did so and found out what it meant. Then he told her he might let her go by Christmas. He never explained exactly what he meant, but she didn’t believe him in this regard anyway.

Sarah said later, “Even after he told me about the ransom, sometimes I thought he would kill me anyway, just so that it would be over with. It was scary.”

He also told her now and again that he had someone watching the house. She was pretty sure he said “someone” as in one more person, rather than persons.

* * *

Things just kept getting better for the detectives. Lieutenant Rohler stated later, “As we were gathering additional information on Mr. Hoffman, we spoke with Deputy Aaron Phillips. Deputy Phillips was the officer who had located Tina Herrmann’s F-150 pickup truck at the bike path in Gambier. Deputy Phillips indicated that he had confronted a white male sitting in a silver vehicle near the bike path at the same time that the F-150 truck was located. Deputy Phillips approached the white male and requested identification. Deputy Phillips ran the information through LEADS [Law Enforcement Agencies Data System] and the information returned to Matthew Hoffman.”

Detective Sergeant Roger Brown looked up Matthew Hoffman in the KCSO computer system. The records showed that on Thursday, November 11 at around 6:55 PM, Deputy Aaron Phillips had made contact with Hoffman at the river access parking lot on Laymon Road, and that Hoffman had been sitting in a silver Yaris. Phillips was in the area because minutes earlier he’d noticed Tina Herrmann’s Ford F-150 pickup parked at the Kokosing Gap Trail lot. The two parking lots were only two hundred yards apart.

And for the first time, Detective Sergeant Brown learned that Matthew Hoffman had told Phillips the reason he was sitting in his car was that he was waiting for his girlfriend, Sarah, to get off work at the Kenyon Inn. Brown also learned that Hoffman said he did not know Sarah’s last name because they had just started dating. Phillips had told Hoffman the parking lot was closed after dark, and he had moved on.

Now Special Agent Dietz also discovered that Matthew Hoffman had been involved in a domestic violence issue with his then live-in girlfriend only a few weeks earlier, on October 24, 2010. This had occurred at the 49 Columbus Road location.

* * *

Because of all the information coming in, KCSO decided it was time to request a search warrant on Matthew Hoffman’s residence at 49 Columbus Road. In the request, Detective David Light stated all the early facts about the search and seizure of items at King Beach Drive. He detailed how the record of the trash-bag purchase at Walmart had lead back to a video of a man exiting the store with a tarp and trash bags and getting into a silver Toyota Yaris in the store parking lot. Light stated that not only did the man in the video resemble the photo on Matthew Hoffman’s driver’s license, but he was also wearing the same kind of camouflage shirt as pictured in the driver’s license photo.

Detective Light included the description of Deputy Aaron Phillips’s interaction with a man in a silver Yaris parked near Tina Herrmann’s pickup truck at the closed lot. During the encounter, Deputy Phillips had observed that the Yaris had a noticeable dent in it; so did the Yaris that had been videotaped leaving the Walmart parking lot.

Deputy Phillips would later say of these hectic minutes, “When the detectives got that information [about Matthew Hoffman], it was like [Ohio State University] just scored the winning touchdown. Guys were yelling and jumping up and down. Grabbing gear and sprinting out the door.”

For all of these reasons, Detective Light wrote, “Your affiant has probable cause to believe that Matthew J. Hoffman purchased the trash bags and tarps at Wal-Mart, on November 11, 2010, and that he was in Tina Herrmann’s residence where he left the trash bags and tarps and during the time of the criminal offenses alleged herein. Affiant has good cause to believe that Matthew J. Hoffman is dangerous and presents a risk of serious physical harm to law enforcement officers who will execute the search warrant.”

Now Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher became involved. He was contacted even though it was in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 14. Thatcher agreed there was enough probable cause for a warrant to be issued. He quickly set things in motion, despite the early hour. He said later, “I knew this was it. We had to go. I was already up and decided to come into the office instead of turning around and going back to bed until later that morning.”

Thatcher said later that he knew time was of the essence. At least one of the missing people had walked in the garage area of the house on King Beach Road and might yet be alive. In fact, there was still a possibility that all four were still alive. Getting a search warrant as soon as possible was of grave importance.

Thatcher contacted Judge Paul Spurgeon, who read the request for the search warrant and signed it at 6:00 AM, November 14, 2010.