Killer Stuffed His House With Leaves, Kept Kidnapped Girl on Bed of Leaves

Feb. 10, 2011 — -- The Ohio man found guilty of holding a 13-year-old girl hostage after killing her family and stuffing their dismembered bodies in a hollow tree had an obsession with trees and leaves, police documents show.

Pictures of Matthew Hoffman's home reveal a living room stuffed with leaves, a bathroom lined with more than 100 bags of leaves, and a freezer that contained only a couple of red popsicles and two dead squirrels.

Hoffman, 30, is serving a life sentence for three murders and for the kidnapping and rape of the teen.

The two police officers from Mount Vernon, Ohio, who first entered Hoffman's home in November 2010 discovered mounds of leaves so high they feared that bodies could be buried underneath them.

"So much runs through your mind: What if someone is hiding under that pile? Or in this case, I thought, 'Is that where he's hiding the bodies,'" Mount Vernon Police Detective Craig Feeney told the Columbus Dispatch.