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Bazetta woman recalls suspect in central Ohio kidnapping
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Alice Morelli and her dog, Bernard, pose at their home on Westlake Drive in Bazetta Township. Morelli says she was very concerned about the neighbor, Matthew J. Hoffman, who lived next door between 1995 and 1997.
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Matthew Hoffman
By Ed Runyan
BAZETTA
Alice Morelli says a teenage Matthew J. Hoffman, who lived next door to her until 1997, frequently hung out with buddies in the woods behind his house.
He always appeared to be unhappy and acted strangely, she said. “He was really lost. He was on a bad path,” she said of the boy, then 14 to 16 years old.
Hoffman is now in police custody in Mount Vernon, Ohio, charged with kidnapping a 13-year-old girl and suspected in the disappearance of the girl’s brother, mother and another woman.
All four disappeared a week ago, but the girl turned up in Hoffman’s basement, bound and gagged but still alive, on Sunday. Hoffman has been in custody since then. Police found blood in the home where the girl and her family lived, and police suspect the three missing people are dead.
Hoffman lived on Westlake Drive on the west side of Mosquito Lake between 1995 and 1997, Morelli said. She recalled he sometimes jumped off of his roof onto a trampoline and frequently stood with an unemotional stare as the Morelli family’s dog barked wildly at him. The Bichon had a particular dislike for the boy.
Authorities say he grew up in Northeast Ohio, began high school while living in the Cortland area and moved to Howard, Ohio, just northeast of Mount Vernon and Columbus, in 1997.
Lakeview school officials say Hoffman was a student there starting when he was in third grade and continued until 1997, when he went to the Mount Vernon area.
After graduating from high school in 1999, he moved to Colorado and worked as a plumber in Steamboat Springs. There, he was convicted of arson and spent about seven years in prison from 2000 to 2007.
His neighbors in Mount Vernon, where he lived in recent years, say Hoffman showed some odd behaviors, such as sitting in a treetop or atop his roof and watching them.
Morelli said Hoffman’s behavior made her very uncomfortable, especially since she and her husband have three daughters who were about 10 to 14 at the time Hoffman lived next door.
“He was not happy, not at peace, just not a good kid,” Morelli said, adding that he didn’t appear to be involved in any school activities.
Morelli said she never had any run-ins with the boy, even though her dog barked at him constantly.
She was aware that Hoffman and his friends frequently spent time in the woods behind the houses, where they had built a fort or tree house. It appeared they did some drinking there because of the alcohol containers the family could see on the ground.
Morelli said she feels really bad for Hoffman’s mother, who seemed like a nice person. Hoffman’s stepfather seemed like a nice person also, but he commented to Morelli that Hoffman’s mother “had a hard time with Matt.”
Bazetta Township police and the Trumbull County sheriff’s office said they have no record of any incidents where Hoffman came to their attention, but Cortland police did arrest Hoffman on July 19, 1997, at Lakeview High School.
A police report says he was charged with criminal trespass after a jogger on the high school track watched Hoffman, then 16, and another boy, then 15, climb onto the school roof at just after midnight.
Police brought the boys down from the roof and asked them what they were doing.
Hoffman wrote in a statement: “Just wanted to see if we could get on roof, not trying to break in. Just hid when we saw police cruisers.”
Hoffman told officers his address was in Howard, Ohio, where he had recently moved. The boys were released to their parents.