Free The Girl in the Leaves by Robert Scott, Sarah Maynard, Larry Maynard Page A

there were blankets and
     stuff that he put there, it was always cold. At least it was better than lying on
     the floor [of the bathroom] where he first kept me. That was not only cold, it was
     hard too.
    Even though it was almost impossible to keep her thoughts from conjuring up frightening
     images of what might happen next, she later said that she tried to suppress these
     thoughts as best she could. Her plan was to only deal with whatever was happening
     at the moment. Especially when it came to interacting with her captor.
    While Hoffman was planning his next move, BCI&I Special Agents Edward Lulla and Edward
     Carlini arrived at Tina Herrmann’s residence on King Beach Drive. It was 9:45 PM on Thursday, November 11. Outside the house, they were briefed by KCSO Sheriff David
     Barber and several KCSO detectives, who gave the BCI&I agents all the background on
     the incidents that had led up to the request that they be there: the report by Valerie
     Haythorn, the blood in the house and the missing individuals.
    Sheriff Barber added that a KCSO patrol deputy had spotted the pickup truck that Tina
     usually drove, in a parking lot of the Kokosing Gap Trail. The pickup truck had been
     towed to a storage yard for analysis.
    After the briefing, Agents Lulla and Carlini and Detective Sergeant Roger Brown pulled
     on protective footwear over their shoes and entered the residence. During their initial
     run-through, they noticed that the garage door was off its track. They did not know
     whether this was something new or had been that way for a while.
    Given that it looked to be a very complex crime scene, Agents Lulla and Carlini requested
     that BCI&I Special Agent Gary Wilgus join them to do any blood-spatter analysis. Wilgus,
     however, told them he couldn’t make it there until the next day, so the two other
     agents decided to start doing some of the processing before he arrived.
    In the initial walk-through, Agents Lulla and Carlini noted “a remarkable amount of
     blood in three separate areas of the house, each [of] which led to the main bathroom
     of the house. In the bathroom were large stains and a bathtub and shower wall covered
     in suspected blood.”
    Both Agent Lulla and Carlini worked until 4:00 AM , November 12. Because of the very late hour, it was decided that the residence would
     be secured by KCSO, and the BCI&I agents would return again later in the day.
    * * *
    When he returned to his house following the incident with Deputy Aaron Phillips at
     the Kokosing Gap Trail parking lot, Matt Hoffman made sure that the girl was tied
     up on the bed of leaves in the basement and then decided to drink a bottle of wine
     and burn some incriminating evidence. He started a bonfire in his backyard and threw
     his shoes into the flames. This didn’t seem to concern his neighbors, since they were
     used to him doing odd things at all hours of the day and night. Hoffman made sure
     that the shoes burned down to ash. He wasn’t worried about the girl in his house—she
     was tied up and gagged. He then slept for a couple of hours and woke around midnight.
     Before he left, he went down to the basement and looked at the girl again. He didn’t
     say anything, just stared at her.
    In the early hours of Friday, November 12, Hoffman decided to go back to the woods
     near Tina’s house, the same woods where he had spent the night of November 9. He’d
     left items there he now needed to collect before the police found them. He also wanted
     to see what kind of police activity was going on at the residence on King Beach Drive.
    Hoffman drove to a parking lot at Millwood and then rode his bike to a hill near Apple
     Valley Lake. From there he left his bike and slowly made his way on foot to the woods
     near Tina’s residence. It was miles away, and once again this took a lot of time.
    When he arrived, in the darkness of the early morning hours, Hoffman noticed the crime
     scene tape around the house and the police