It's been nine years since a mother, her two children and a family friend vanished from their home, sending a Knox County community reeling with shock and fear.
Tina Herrmann, 32, Stephanie Sprang, 41, and Herrmann’s two children, Kody Maynard, 11, and Sarah Maynard, 13, were reported missing on Nov. 11, 2010 from their home in Knox County, south of Mansfield. Their family dog also mysteriously disappeared.
Community members came out in droves, searching day and night for the two women and two children. On day eight of the search, authorities made a gruesome discovery inside a hollowed-out tree at the Kokosing Wildlife Preserve in rural Knox County: three of the four victims and the family pet’s dismembered remains.
Now, 10TV reporter Glenn McEntyre and the Vault Studios podcast “True Crime Chronicles” are taking a look back at the family’s tragic ending, the sole survivor and the man responsible for their kidnappings and murders. An episode on their case will be available beginning Monday.
You can download and subscribe to True Crime Chronicles on any podcast platform, including Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and Apple Podcasts.
You'll also be able to listen to Monday's episode in the player below after it is released.
The victims had multiple stab wounds to the chest and back, and each victim was dismembered, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Police said their remains had been put inside trash bags and placed inside the hollow tree by Matthew Hoffman, a 30-year-old professional tree trimmer, who led investigators to the bodies, near Fredericktown.
“We're hurting,” Rev. Todd Miller of the Amity-Apple Valley Baptist Chapel said at the time. “We're hurting as a group, we're hurting as community.
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“That is evil in the light of one person, evil in the light of sin, and sin, when it's fully magnified and fully developed equals death, and that's what we've seen.”
Herrmann’s teenage daughter, Sarah, survived. She was found alive, bound and gagged, inside Hoffman's Mount Vernon home.