The Leaf Killer

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Welcome to ten Minute Murder, Brief
and binge Able True Crime. I'm Joe.

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I'm the host, and thank you
for joining today and on the previous

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episode, during this intro time,
I talked about how much I love words.

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I'm kind of a word nerd.
I love how descriptive you can get

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with them and using words that not
everyone uses sometimes, and that many of

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you reached out and said you're the
exact same way, which made me feel

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better about myself. I'm not as
weird as I thought I was when it

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comes to words. But then several
of you also said that you like to

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intentionally mispronounce words for no reason whatsoever. Let me tell you, I've never

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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

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is Joe saying paradigm like paradiicum,
Because if you didn't know I do that,

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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

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mispronounce words, and it's cute.
Like to this day, for example,

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I still say something instead of something
because he was little, and he would

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say something. Instead of I need
to go get something, we would say

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I need to go get something.
Also, when he was reading, he

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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

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the only one that does a weird
stuff like that. All right. If

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you are brand new to listening to
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If you have friends and they also
like true crime stories, please let

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them know about this podcast as well. Links from the show notes of this

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episode and at ten minute murder dot
com. Now to the story. True

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crime cases often used the principle of
Akam's razor. In other words, the

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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

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that nobody could have anticipated. One
of these tip of the Iceberg Cases is

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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

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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

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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

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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.