Thaindian News

Jan 7 (THAINDIAN NEWS) As Matthew Hoffman stood in an Ohio court room on Thursday, thirteen year old Sarah Maynard showed a strength which was incredible as she stared down the man who had just plead guilty to murdering, dismembering, and stuffing the bodies of her mother, brother, and family friend into a hollow tree, and kidnapping, raping and holding Sarah hostage, bound and gagged in his basement for four days.

Sarah had prepared a statement for the Knox County prosecutor John Thatcher to read as she sat bravely next to her father, facing her abuser. “I’m not scared of you, Matthew. I’m going to stand up for myself and live my life.”

Hoffman will not face the death penalty, since he plead guilty to the crimes, but will spend the rest of his lifetime behind bars for the admitted murders of Sarah’s mother, thirty two year old Tina Herrmann, Sarah’s eleven year old brother, Kody Maynard, and Tina’s friend, Stephanie Sprang, who was forty one.

Sarah is now with her father, Larry Maynard who told the murderer, “Matthew Hoffman, when you took my son from me by brutally stabbing him to death repeatedly and then cutting up his body like a piece of meat, a majority of me died with him,” Maynard said. “I am very thankful my daughter lived from the wrath of your evil, but she will never be the bubbly, little, innocent girl she once was.”

Matthew Hoffman barely said a word as he waited for his verdict of life in prison for the three deaths.