The Girl in the Leaves

Written by Sarah Maynard, Larry Maynard and Robert Scott

Narrated by Callie Beaulieu

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, thirteen-year-old Sarah and eleven-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.



On the fourth day of the search, evidence trickled in about neighborhood "weirdo" Matthew Hoffman. A police SWAT team raided his home and found an extremely disturbing sight: every square inch of the place was filled with leaves and a terrified Sarah Maynard was bound up in the middle of it like some sort of perverted autumn tableau. But there was no trace of the others.



Then came Hoffman's confession to an unspeakable crime that went beyond murder and defied all reason. His tale of evil would make Sarah's survival and rescue all the more astonishing—a compelling tribute to a young girl's resilience and courage and to her fierce determination to reclaim her life in the wake of unimaginable wickedness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Dec 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781515986584

[mksuzz671 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sara’s’ story will stay with me forever.
May your life be filled joy !!!

[tristan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hard to follow and uninteresting. Just poorly written. Morbid podcast did a better job telling this story.

[darleen04 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

True crimes are always good reads, shows how many screwed up pieces of scum are in this world and the damage they can cause. This book was good, but it read more like a police report.

[bellafoxx · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stephanie Sprang, Tina Maynard and her two children, Sarah and Kody disappeared one November day. Stephanie, Tina and Kody were never seen again. Sarah was rescued from the basement of a house where Matthew Hoffman was living. Oh and the house was filled with leaves.

For being described at ‘one of the most bizarre mass murders ever recorded’, this was a very dull and dry book. It seemed to be taken from transcripts of interviews and testimony. It was not so boring that I didn’t want to finish it, but there was no life to the book.

[sherylhendrix · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not able to impartially review this book since the crime itself happened in the little lakeside community that I live in, which naturally made me more interested in reading the story than the average person. That said, I believe the book was pretty faithful to the details, although local scuttlebut says that at least one of the victim's families disputes some portions of the story. I read it to see how true it was to the situation as I knew it from some of the people mentioned in the story. I was impressed by the fact that Robert Scott chose not to go into details that would be messy and uncomfortable for the one victim who did live through the experience. I was very surprised that he used the real names of the people who played roles in the rescue of the young girl and ultimate prosecution of the perpetrator. I actually saw only one reference locally that was incorrect - the grocery store Neff's was incorrectly called Noff's. But otherwise it seemed spot on as to the locals in the area. Reading the book did do one important thing for me - I am so very proud of our local police and court systems (prosecutor's office, etc.) who did a wonderful job of bringing a very horrific crime perpetrator to justice in a short amount of time, and who most notably saved the life of a 13-year old girl with their detective and police work. I think of some other cases with young victims in larger cities where it seems that the police formed a pre-judgement that led them one direction and as a result they never solved the crime. Great job for our Knox County law enforcement team!