Man pleads guilty to three murders, stuffing bodies in tree

CLEVELAND – A 30-year-old Ohio man pleaded guilty on Thursday to murdering three people, whose dismembered bodies were stuffed in a hollow tree, according to the Knox County prosecutor's office.

Matthew Hoffman pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and other charges in the deaths of Tina Herrmann, her young son Kody Maynard, family friend Stephanie Sprang, and to the rape and kidnapping of Herrmann's 13-year-old daughter.

The bodies of those murdered were found inside a hollow tree in November, and the girl was found by a SWAT team in the basement of Hoffman's Mount Vernon home, according to local media reports. The victims' family had asked Knox County Prosecutor John Thatcher not to seek the death penalty. Mount Vernon is northeast of Columbus.