Hold My Sweet Tea
Where True Crime collides with chilling ghost stories and Southern folklore. Join us, sip sweet tea, and uncover shocking tales of murder, mystery, and the supernatural, all with a healthy dose of Southern charm and a touch of sass!
Hold My Sweet Tea
EP. 123-Inside Ohio’s Strangest Crime Scene: The Leaf Killer
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A house stuffed with leaves sounds like a joke until SWAT opens the door and realizes the piles aren’t just weird, they’re dangerous. We travel to Mount Vernon, Ohio to unpack the Matthew Hoffman “Leaf Killer” case, a true crime story where a missing persons call turns into one of the strangest crime scenes we’ve ever covered. Bags of leaves stacked floor to ceiling, dead squirrels in the freezer, and a basement hiding a kidnapped 13-year-old girl bound on a literal bed of leaves.
We walk through how Tina Herrmann disappears, why her boss’s concern matters, and how a second look at the home reveals blood and clear signs of a struggle. From there, the timeline tightens: Tina, her friend Stephanie Sprang, and Tina’s children are suddenly missing, and investigators have to decide whether they’re dealing with a runaway, an accident, or something far worse. We also dig into the theory that Hoffman started as a burglar and then escalated when confronted, turning a break-in into murder and abduction.
Then we get into the investigative details that help police build the case fast: a Walmart bag with a tarp and heavy-duty trash bags, surveillance video, a Toyota Yaris that narrows the suspect pool, and an interview strategy that finally gets Hoffman talking. The ending is as haunting as the beginning, with a confession leading to bodies hidden inside a hollow tree and a sentence of life without parole. If you’re into Ohio true crime, kidnapping cases, and the real-world mechanics of solving murders, this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves true crime podcasts, and leave us a review with your biggest question from the case.
Welcome To Ohio And A Warning
SPEAKER_00Come along with us to Ohio as we travel through time and maybe even space when you consider the things that have occurred in this case. This is Hold My Sweet Tea. And that rhymed.
SPEAKER_01And my flabberts have been gasted again. I was like, what? That just caught me up though.
SPEAKER_00I just I didn't even sing it. Right.
SPEAKER_01Well in your introduction when you said come, let's we're going to Ohio, and I was like, oh I can't. Ohio is for lovers. Did you know that? Was it? Is it? That's that's their motto. Weird. I'm like, of all states, I I feel that Ohio is pretty boring, but it is for lovers, apparently. Well, don't know why. I have been to Ohio. I've been to several places in Ohio, and I I don't get it. Tommy boy? Maybe.
SPEAKER_00You can get you some breaks.
SPEAKER_01You're right.
SPEAKER_00Sorry that I'm taking you back to the boring land, but apparently people are just weird. There.
SPEAKER_01I 100% agree. Thank you. And um, not to mention it's a lot of sexually promiscuous people.
SPEAKER_00Maybe that's what they meant by lovers. It's not actual love.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you notice, like, well, I mean they can't put the state for booty calls on license plate.
SPEAKER_01Ohio is for pedophiles.
SPEAKER_00You know?
SPEAKER_01But uh there's a lot of weird sexual things that come out of Ohio on different cases.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think there's just weird sexual things in general in this world. Yeah. I I don't I don't understand a lot of it, but you know.
SPEAKER_01Crazy.
SPEAKER_00Here we are. We're actually gonna talk about someone's yawned. Yep, I yawned. Sorry.
Meet The Leaf Killer
SPEAKER_01It's okay. We're just gonna leave that in there.
SPEAKER_00I yawned and I sighed. Right. But this guy is called the leaf killer. Okay. Not because he killed leaves. I mean, he was uh an unemployed uh tree cutter.
SPEAKER_01Arborist?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, tree cutter.
SPEAKER_01Tree cutter, tree cutter, tree surgeon, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't uh know how much surgery he didn't have a PhD in trees. No, no, okay, no, he just killed leaves. He well, he killed trees, apparently. The whole tree, the whole damn tree.
SPEAKER_01But um, and people. Okay. So he's like, damn these trees.
SPEAKER_00And you people he actually um I don't know. I I wonder if he has like a leaf fetish.
SPEAKER_01Again, the weird sexual Ohio things things that happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I I am not at all like Sugath. I'm like, okay, and it's to be expected. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00So when when SWAT raids the home of Matthew Hoffman, literally there are piles of leaves found inside this man's house. Some as high as three feet tall. They're in on the living room floor, they're as like bags of leaves. Okay. There's leaves in the bathroom. Was he wiping his leaves in the basement? You know, I don't know. Was he wiping his butt with leaves? Couldn't tell you. Can't find that anywhere where I've been breeding. But yeah. Like, this man lives in Mount Vernon and he has a leaf obsession.
SPEAKER_01Fetish, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Literally, when they raid his home, they find a kidnapped thirteen-year-old girl in his basement who is bound on you guessed it, a bed of leaves. Oh my god. There's bagged leaves hanging in like three floor to ceiling rows on one wall in his living room. There was a bathroom crammed with a more than a hundred and ten bags of leaves. Like he's attaching them to walls, like to make them fit.
SPEAKER_01I have no words. Some of you are trying to form sentences, and I'm like, they literally say anything.
SPEAKER_00Cover the mirror in the bathroom. They're on the wall behind the toilet. At least they're not body parts. I guess. In this man's kitchen freezer. Leaves? No. Unskinned dead squirrels. And red popsicles. They're unskinned. They're unskinned dead squirrels and red popsicles in his freezer.
SPEAKER_01Are they blood popsicles? Did no. Oh my god, I'm dying over here.
SPEAKER_00They literally are like feeling around in these piles of leaves because what actually leads them to this man is like four missing people.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say a trail of leaves.
SPEAKER_00A trail of leaves, yeah. No. Four missing people lead to this man's house. Like, this is why they're in this man's house, because they're looking for these people. Yeah. But I'm just like, the leaves, man. The leaves. Leave me alone. Apparently he he did want them to leave him alone. But you know, it was crazy because you know, initially when they raid the house, they all just go in there and they see all these leaves everywhere. And then it's like the first question out of someone else's mouth
SWAT Enters A House Of Leaves
SPEAKER_00is Did anybody check this pile of leaves? Like, what if somebody's in there? Right. Like people could be hiding in these leaves. Crazy dangerous, I'm sure, to go in there and find that you're having to go through all of these leaves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, imagine having to like process that scene. Right. Having to like sift through leaves.
SPEAKER_00His neighbors would tell police that they would see him collecting leaves on walks through a park near his home and through the neighborhood. Like he's just running around collecting leaves. They are thinking the that possibly he was the reason he had filled his house with all of these leaves and the way he did it, they're thinking that maybe he was planning to burn his house down and like using these as like fuel for the fire.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I think he was just weird.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it sounds that way, right? Like, but so Tina Herman, she's she's 32 years old, and like she doesn't show up for work. And she's one of those people that when she doesn't show up for work, like her boss is even like concerned. They're going, she never just doesn't show up. Like she always calls if she's not gonna be here. She's like one of those super reliable people. So when she doesn't come to work, her boss is the ones who the one who starts reaching out to people going, hey, Tina didn't come to work. Has anybody heard from Tina? Well, she calls the police and asks them to please go out and do a welfare check because she hasn't heard from her, it's very unlike her. She tried to text her, she didn't reply. Like it's just weird. She's getting an off feeling about the situation. So the police go out and they see her truck in the yard, but nobody answers the door. But they don't see anything suspicious, so they they don't like probe further. They just say, you know, the car's there, maybe they're there, maybe she left with someone else, I don't know, but it doesn't appear that anything strange has happened here. So they go through the night, and then the next day she doesn't come to work again. So her boss gets permission to go check the house herself. Cause she I guess she felt like I just need to go put eyes on this, see what they were seeing. Well, the truck is gone. But she walks around the back of the house and there's like a open window. So she climbs in the window because she's like, I need to make sure. And there's like blood everywhere, but nobody's in the house. The house does not have a person in it, but there is evidence of a struggle, there's blood, right? So she immediately calls 911, tells them, you know, there's blood in here. It's y'all need to come. So the police show up and they see like there's just blood everywhere, but there are no people. Well, then they realize that there's another vehicle there, and it's actually belongs to a family friend, and her name is Stephanie Spray. So not only is Tina missing, but so is Stephanie. Oh now Tina has two kids. She's got a 11-year-old boy named Cody, and then his sister, who is the 13-year-old, who is later found in his basement.
SPEAKER_01Oh, dang.
SPEAKER_00In Hoffman's basement. I want to clarify that. So they call the school because they're like, are the kids at school? Did the kids come home last night? Did they leave today? Like they're trying to figure out when exactly did all these people go missing. So they call the school and the school's like, yeah, they were here yesterday, but no one came today. So it is speculated that Hoffman had actually targeted the family intending to like burglarize them because it was like, I guess, easy to get in their house because they had like a garage door that like was open, and I guess he had burglarized other houses in the past that way. So it wasn't like you know, he was specifically targeting this family because of who they were, right? It was just an ease of access, I guess. Um, they're
The Missing Family And Blood Evidence
SPEAKER_00thinking that him being like unemployed and whatever, like this was his way of like trying to still survive was just like burglarizing other people's houses. So they think he was surprised by Tina and Stephanie, and then the kids came home from school the day before. So then it became that whole all four of them being in that place at the same time. It is believed that he that is like where he killed everyone except the girl. So he stabbed Tina Herman, her son, Stephanie, and the family's dog.
SPEAKER_01The dog too?
SPEAKER_00The dog too. Jeez, dude. And then he just kidnapped the 13-year-old girl and brought her back to his house, where he did, like he brought her blankets from her house and laid them on her leaf bed that he had in the basement. And he he actually did sexually assault her as well. It's unclear why he initi why he even like chose to spare the girl, but she thinks that if she would have stayed, if she would have not been rescued that day by SWAT, that she probably would have eventually been killed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, eventually he would have gone ahead and killed her.
SPEAKER_00Now, of course, they they're searching his house, but they don't find anyone but her. So there's no bodies at his house either. And they're unsure if these people are actually dead, because you know, the blood was there, but that was it. Um, so it was unclear if somebody was injured or if they were actually dead. So they were just like still presumed pretty much missing despite finding the girl until they interview her, and they find out oh no, like my mother and her friend were were murdered before we even got there. Right. And then her brother was added to that situation. So it is said that the reason police were able to pin all of this on Hoffman was because he left behind a Walmart bag in Tina Herman's house that had a tarp and some heavy-duty trash bags in it.
SPEAKER_02Hmm.
SPEAKER_00So they were able to determine the date of purchase and the time of purchase, and then they were actually able to find video surveillance of the store where he bought these items, and they were also able to see his car, which is what led to finding out his name. And like literally, they they like had pulled up how many Yaris Toyota Yaris owners were in in this area, and there wasn't very many, and he's the only one who had like a record, but they were able to use his driver's license photo to compare to the surveillance video, and crazy enough, it appears he was wearing the same shirt in his driver's license picture as he was in Walmart then.
SPEAKER_01So they're like, Oh, got him.
SPEAKER_00They were like, Oh, yes, here we are. And then her Herman's pickup is also found because he stole it.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_00And that's like that's how he moved everyone and how he got the girl to his house and all that jazz. Prosecutors say that when they confronted him with evidence of the crime he committed, he agreed to finally tell police where these bodies were. But did he ever say like what was up with the leaves and why he don't think he's ever admitted to why the leaves were there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, that's why they were kind of speculating that he may have planned to burn his house down. Maybe like who knows? Maybe he was going through all of this and then thought maybe I'll uh you know finish her off and then burn my house down, nobody will be any wiser. Like, I don't think he thought he was gonna get caught.
SPEAKER_01Right, but then leaves just sit there and smolder. It doesn't, it's not like it right. Yeah. If you ever tried to just burn a pile of leaves without air, it's a lot of smoke. Yeah, it's a lot of smoke. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Well, in interviewing the girl he kidnapped, she's like, you know, he tried to he came down and and like fed her and brought her like stuff to eat, and then told her if she didn't eat what he brought initially, that she would have to eat a dead squirrel if she was still hungry.
SPEAKER_01I got him in my freezer.
How Police Identify Matthew Hoffman
SPEAKER_00Right. He shows her.
SPEAKER_01I got some pop shickles in the freezer too.
SPEAKER_00But crazy enough, when he when he finally confesses, which he takes forever to do, right, they actually end up having him interviewed by a female officer who has blonde hair, which is similar to the girl he abducted. And she even puts her hair in a ponytail just like the girls. Like she was trying to do anything she could to make him as comfortable as possible because he wouldn't talk to him.
SPEAKER_01Right. And they they do that. It's a tactic that they use.
SPEAKER_00And so when he finally gets around to talking to her, he admits that he killed the two women and the boy, and that he put their bodies into a hollow tree. I'm like wondering if I mean, I'm going, would anybody have ever thought to look inside of a hollowed out tree? Now, this was all in November of 2010. So it's been a while, hence the reason I said travel through time. Because it's been a very long while.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it's like, you know, people were like, oh, he would have been better off living in the middle of the woods. Like he was very odd, but still doesn't explain or excuse any of the crazy police behavior.
SPEAKER_01Uh and that's what I'm thinking. And, you know, they can say that, but also he was like sticking them to his balls. Why would he go to so much trouble to do that if he was just gonna burn his house down? I think he had some other he definitely had mental issues, but I think he did some other like things going on in his head that uh were not brought out. I'd say.
SPEAKER_00All the things. Um, and prosecutors had said they were not pursuing the death sentence at the wishes of the victim's family. Like they wanted the him to live and suffer in jail. So the abuse of the corpse comes because he actually did dismember the three bodies before putting them in the hollowed out tree in a nature preserve. And he does end up like just pleading guilty. And then he is sentenced to life because that's that's what he should get. Exactly. Like what makes you just I don't know. No possibility of parole.
SPEAKER_01And no leaves in prison.
SPEAKER_00And no leaves in prison, most likely. I don't know. I feel like how do you go Immediately into all of that. Like that's a huge downward spiral. Like you burglarize somebody's house, they show up. Why not just leave?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Like make like a tree and leave.
SPEAKER_01There you go.
SPEAKER_00So stupid.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Exactly. But like get out of there and like run. Don't kill somebody.
SPEAKER_00Knock somebody out. Get out of there. Do what you gotta do. You know? I'm just like, why on earth stay there and do all of that?
SPEAKER_01Like it's just he's like, it's going down. I'm yelling timber.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's like all these tree jokes. I know. It's terrible. So after his sentencing,
Confession And Bodies In A Tree
SPEAKER_00though, um the Hoffman family, his family, issues a statement. And in that statement, they say, our whole family has been and is still praying for the victim's losses. Our hearts go out to them. We obviously disagree with his actions. Yet we still love Matt as a member of our family. Which we've discussed that previously with you know, your case in Covington. Where like families still, you know, still they're still part of his family, and they're like, you know, while we love him, we don't love what he did. And I don't I'm not sure that they could shed much more light on why Matt would do the things he was doing. Right.
SPEAKER_01It I mean, mental health issues, apparently. Yeah Did somebody not notice that his strange behavior like in his family?
SPEAKER_00I honestly feel like he must have like he must have been somewhat of a a loner. Because there I don't feel like people really knew what was up with him. He didn't sound like he had a lot of friends. I mean his neighbors are out there watching him pick up leaves. Did anybody go, hey man, why are you picking up all these leaves? Or you okay guy? Like he doesn't seem like he was checked on at all. But I don't know. It's a little bit crazy.
SPEAKER_01A lot of bit crazy.
SPEAKER_00A lot of it crazy. There is also a show on Peacock, if you guys wanna see the making a serial killer Matthew Hoffman. Oh okay. Um they have like a bunch of little things on Prime too. So he has there's several different little shows that have come out talking about it.
SPEAKER_01I'm still reeling from uh motherly instinct over here. Oh yeah. Maternal instinct maternal instinct. I'm sorry, not motherly, maternal instinct.
SPEAKER_00Another mental health issue uh yeah type of situation there as well. Yeah. Crazy. Everybody's crazy.
SPEAKER_01We really are.
SPEAKER_00We really are. As a uh a race of beings, humans are crazy. Yes, agreed.
SPEAKER_01I mean, honestly, you have to be in this world because no sane person can function in this mess of what's going on. So you have to be a little bit crazy, but it's what you do with that crazy that that's the whole point.
SPEAKER_00There's a whole slew of folks that are a lot of bit crazy.
Sentencing Reflections And Listener Callouts
SPEAKER_00Once you uh push yourself over the edge, then yeah, and maybe maternal instinct situation can be a whole nother episode because we have plenty to say about that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Cause good lord.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but for now, we'll leave it alone.
SPEAKER_01Leave it alone. You know what I won't leave alone. Uh, would it have something to do with our theme music?
SPEAKER_00That's right. Because it has to accompany every episode.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00And it was created by Patty Salzetta. We're still waiting for Patty to send us some stories, and you should too.
SPEAKER_01Uh that's right. You should demand it.
SPEAKER_00Where are they gonna send it, Holly?
SPEAKER_01They are gonna send it to Hold MySweet Tea Podcast at gmail.com. That's right. Or on any damn place we're at. Any platform where you listen. Right. There's a buttonia. If you're following us. If you watch us on YouTube, or well, not watch us, but it's just a picture listen to us. Um you can leave a comment.
SPEAKER_00I said YouTube. YouTube. Y'all, I'm tired and I want to get in a tub of very hot water.
SPEAKER_01YouTube is is a whole nother.
SPEAKER_00Is that like a branch off of some OnlyFans? Well, I was gonna say OnlyFans, YouTube.
SPEAKER_01There we go. That's our new million dollar idea. Utub.
SPEAKER_00If y'all hear somebody coming up with that, y'all better tell on them because you heard it here first. Right.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. And just remember, as always, hold my sweet tea is a drunken bee production. And you guys remember to stay safe out there. Fall is coming. You don't need to collect all the leaves.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep dipping.
SPEAKER_00Bye.