Read Online The Girl in the Leaves by Robert Scott, Sarah Maynard, Larry Maynard - Free Book Online

before was now gone from the area.
    Around 4:00 PM , Valerie managed to contact Stephanie Sprang’s live-in boyfriend, Ron Metcalf, and
     they agreed to meet and check Tina’s residence. Ron lived with Stephanie on Magers
     Drive, only a few houses down the road from Tina’s place. When Valerie got there,
     she and Ron talked for a while, and then Valerie decided to enter the house. She removed
     a rear window screen, raised a window and climbed through. Everything was very still,
     quiet and spooky. Valerie went farther into the house, and what she saw terrified
     her: there were bloodstains on the living room and hallway carpet, a lot of blood.
     It looked as if someone had been dragged along the carpet. Valerie, now frantic, quickly
     left the house and phoned the sheriff’s office once more.
    Previously, the officers had been sent to do only “welfare checks,” but now it was
     clear there was something seriously wrong at the house on King Beach Drive. This time,
     when KCSO sergeants arrived at the residence, they were determined to go inside and
     figure out just what had happened there.

TEN
    A Chance Encounter
    David Barber had been the sheriff of Knox County, Ohio, for eighteen years by November
     2010. He was one of those guys who had come up through the ranks. Before becoming
     sheriff, he’d been a uniformed deputy sheriff, a detective, a detective sergeant and
     the lieutenant in charge of the detective division at the KCSO.
    He’d won numerous awards over the years, including Ohio’s Distinguished Law Enforcement
     Service Award in 1999. He was very proud of his office having received CALEA accreditation
     in July 2007. CALEA stood for Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies,
     which had been created in 1979 as a credentialing authority through the joint efforts
     of law enforcement’s major executive associations. CALEA’s goals were to “strengthen
     crime prevention and control capabilities, formalize essential management procedures,
     and establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices.” It was also to “solidify
     interagency cooperation and coordination and increase community and staff confidence
     in the agency.” In layman’s terms, being accredited by CALEA helped KCSO work more
     smoothly with other law enforcement agencies in cases of an emergency where a lot
     of police presence was needed.
    Sheriff Barber had no idea on the morning of November 11, 2010, that in a very short
     amount of time he and his office were going to need all the benefits CALEA accreditation
     had to offer. All he knew then was that KCSO was the smallest sheriff’s office to
     ever achieve CALEA standards.
    Despite the sheriff’s rightful pride in the accreditation, he did not regularly need
     to go outside his own department for help. Crime in Knox County was simply not prevalent.
     In the preceding year there had been only one confirmed robbery, one stabbing, one
     kidnapping case, and one homicide. Even the number of vehicle thefts had totaled only
     thirty for the whole year.
    * * *
    Because of Valerie Haythorn’s initial phone call to KCSO, the first officer to have
     had any contact with the King Beach Drive residence was Deputy Charles Statler of
     KCSO’s Patrol Division.
    The Patrol Division, headed by Captain David Shaffer and comprised of three sergeants
     and eighteen deputies, was responsible for protecting the sixty thousand people in
     the county, spread out over 525 square miles. Cities like Mount Vernon had their own
     police departments, but all the rural areas, including Apple Valley, where Tina, Sarah,
     Kody and Stephanie lived, were patrolled by KCSO units.
    Because of the disturbing circumstances at the home on King Beach Drive, the matter
     was taken on by the KCSO Detective Division. This division was headed by Lieutenant
     Gary Rohler, and included Detective Sergeant Roger Brown, and Detectives Thomas Bumpus,
     David Light and Doug Turpen. Prior to that