Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, And

by Gregg Olsen

  In an effort to help his brother, Chris Stutzman took Eli to Canistota, South Dakota, to the Ortman Clinic—a kind of chiropractic health spa that does considerable business with the Amish. Stutzman checked in on August 28, citing “sleep problems” as the reason.

  He couldn’t get over his wife’s death, he told the admitting clerk.

  He checked out on September 1. His brothers feared that the treatments hadn’t done much good.

  “We could see he still wasn’t right,” Andy Stutzman said later.

  One Sunday when Stutzman was away, Susie Gingerich discovered her sister’s suitcase. Something was inside and she became curious, but it was locked. She thought there might be some clothes that belonged to Ida that should be stored properly or given away.

  Since she had the same kind of suitcase, she used her key. When she opened it she wished she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure what she saw—a radio or a cassette recorder. Whatever it was, it was against the Ordnung.

  There was something else. Inside the recorder, Susie saw a wad of money. She didn’t count it, but there seemed to be a great deal of it. Why, she wondered, was the money in her sister’s suitcase?

  When Stutzman returned home, Susie confessed what she had done. The troubled woman did not question him about what she had seen, but sought his forgiveness. She had violated their trust by looking someplace she should not have.

  Stutzman forgave her and told her that the contents of the suitcase were things he had used to help ease the pain of Ida’s death.

  Later, after Susie had told Amos what she had done and how sorry she was, Amos asked Stutzman about the suitcase.

  “It was something I had in the hospital. It made me feel better, but I don’t listen to it anymore,” Stutzman said.

  Amos Gingerich wondered if the whiskey he had found in the cooler fulfilled the same purpose—to make Eli Stutzman feel better.

  December 12, 1978

  Stutzman stopped in to see Elton Lehman at his office in Mount Eaton. He said that he was having trouble with church again and, in fact, that he hadn’t been to church in six weeks.

  “The church hasn’t agreed on its problems, so we haven’t had communion for two years. I want to take communion,” he said.

  Dr. Lehman felt sorry for the young man.

  “He was so troubled and yet so spiritual. He wanted to have communion and he couldn’t. It didn’t seem fair to him. He was upset about it,” Lehman recalled later.

  “My psychiatrist has told me to leave the church. I don’t know what I will do,” Stutzman told the doctor.

  Just before Christmas, Stutzman called his cousin, Abe, and asked if he and Danny could come visit after the holidays. He also shared startling news. He had sold all of his dairy cows and was leaving the Amish. He also had a new job where he couldn’t take his son. Could he leave Danny with Abe for a couple of weeks? Abe said it would be fine, since his wife, Debbie, wasn’t working. Besides, their daughter April, now 7 months old, would enjoy a playmate.

  When Abe hung up, he, too, felt sorry for Stutzman. Leaving the Amish again. It would be tough.

  “But I never understood why he went back in the first place,” Abe Stutzman said later.

  • • •

  It was snowing when Abe picked Eli and Danny up at the bus station. Snowflakes stuck to the black fabric of their Amish clothes. It had been a long ride across the state to Greenville, which lay only ten miles from the Indiana border.

  Immediately, Abe Stutzman decided that the towhead was the most mischievous and unmanageable little boy he’d ever seen—but only when Danny was around his father. Whenever Eli left the room the boy threw a small fit, but would calm down in a few minutes.

  Stutzman stayed the night and told Abe and Debbie about his job training horses in Georgia, though he was going to take some vacation in Florida before his job started in March.

  Abe asked why Stutzman didn’t take the child to his parents?

  The Amishman bristled. “I can’t give him to them. They’ll take Danny away from me and hide him so that I could never find him.”

  There was no reason to doubt his reply or even question him further. What he said seemed possible.

  Before daylight the next morning, Stutzman and Abe left Danny asleep on the couch and drove back to the bus station.

  “Get him a haircut and buy him some clothes. He’s going to need them.” Stutzman gave his cousin one hundred dollars.

  A few snips of the scissors brought Danny Stutzman into the twentieth century. He now looked like a little Englische boy, but he wasn’t really an Englischer, and no one knew that better than Debbie Stutzman. This little boy did not know English, and she certainly didn’t know Deutsch.

  While the little boy played in the house or outside in the snow, Debbie watched over him as if he were her own. In all the pictures she took of the child there was always one thing missing. The boy never smiled. In her mind, it was no wonder. His father never called to see how his son was doing.

  On January 7, Stutzman mailed a letter to the Gingeriches from Hawkinsville, Georgia. He had written it as though Danny were with him.

  We arrived here yesterday noon . . . How is everyone? I and Danny are fine. Much to be thankful for. My and Danny’s cold are much better. These people we are traveling with are good to us and are a great inspiration to Our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who died for our sins on the cross. Don’t know what forwarding address to give besides home as I don’t know how long we’ll stay here.

  Only a son-in-law,

  Eli and Danny

  Three weeks later, the Gingeriches received a postcard from Eli and, they believed Danny. At one point Stutzman had crossed out the word I and substituted We’re—had he forgotten for a second that Danny was supposed to be with him?

  1-27-79

  Hello,

  How do these lines find yours in the eyes of God? We’re now in Fla. it is nice & warm most of the time. I am picking oranges part time. It rained last night & is cool this morning. It is about 45 degrees so we’re just staying inside. I still have a sore and swelled mouth, but is improving. So long, Eli

  Near the end of January, Stutzman convinced Abe and Debbie to come down to Florida to work and get some sunshine. He said he missed Danny. Stutzman said he would pay for the apartment and their way down there. In the midst of another frozen Ohio winter, the plan seemed justifiable.

  When they arrived in Sarasota, Abe, Debbie, and April stayed for a couple of days with Debbie’s grandmother while Eli and Danny checked into a motel. Stutzman looked completely different: his tanned face was now clean shaven, and his hair was cut short. He even wore cutoffs. He also had a brand-new car, a shiny blue Cutlass. He boasted that he had paid cash for it.

  Stutzman found an apartment in Bradenton Beach—right across the street from the Gulf. Rent was a staggering five hundred dollars a month. Stutzman worked nights at the Holiday Inn as a busboy. Abe worked days at the motel.

  One day Stutzman told Abe he was going to meet a girl at a shopping center and disappeared for most of the day. Stutzman seemed to have plenty of friends and was always going out, but he never brought them around to the apartment.

  In March, both families returned to Ohio.

  When Stutzman returned to Wayne County, he made several visits to friends and family. He spoke with his neighbors Wilma and Norman Moser, telling them what was only too obvious. He was no longer Amish. It was all for the best, he said. He gave them oranges he had picked in Florida.

  He drove up to the Gingerich farm in Fredericksburg and boldly knocked on the door. He was happy now, he told them.

  The Gingeriches felt sorry for Stutzman, but most of all they grieved for Danny. Now the little boy would be lost to them forever. They heard that Stutzman had gone to Bishop Yoder and asked to be excommunicated and put under the bann. Such a request was unprecedented. Now, whenever Stutzman came to dinner, he sat in the kitchen alone with Danny. No one could take food from him. He had to set it down firs
t.

  The changes on Moser Road were both dramatic and swift—Stutzman wasted no time in modernizing the farmhouse by installing a telephone and power. The Amish saw what was going on, but few dared to talk to him about it since he was under the bann.

  Stutzman didn’t seem to care. If anything, he seemed happy with the barrier between himself and the Order. He flaunted his freedom by buying and training more racehorses. New friends also began to show up, none of whom the neighbors recognized.

  Norman and Wilma Moser and their daughter, Becky, had a front-row seat. The Mosers did what they could to help the widowed man and his sweet little boy. One time, Norman drove Stutzman out to see Ida’s grave in Fredericksburg. Another time, he took Stutzman to see his psychiatrist. Moser watched from the hospital parking lot as several Amishmen pleaded with Stutzman.

  Rumors circulated about their neighbor, and initially the Mosers thought little of such gossip, it was so outlandish. One rumor even had it that Stutzman had been engaged at the time of his wife’s death. Another indicated that Stutzman had been involved with drugs and that his wife had been on her way to the bishop to tell him when she died in that mysterious barn fire.

  The Mosers ignored the rumors. They looked after Danny, sometimes overnight while his father went away on what he said was horse business.

  Wilma Moser took Danny to the local Head Start program—his stuttering was so bad that such early help seemed warranted. Soon Wilma found that she had become a mother figure to the boy. As such, she grew increasingly concerned, even alarmed, about what was going on at the farmhouse down the road, even though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was happening there.

  Amishwoman Daisy Mast came weekly to clean the Stutzman house, to do the mending, and to cook some meals. She was delighted when Danny helped her with the mopping, though he was only three. She noticed a lot of men coming and going, but she only met a few of them. Stutzman didn’t include her in his life. He liked to keep things private. Mast noticed he always kept his wooden chest and desk locked tight.

  Mast had known Stutzman for years, long enough to take most of what he said with a grain of salt. If others could forget what had happened at Marshallville and believe that he was totally “cured of his mental problems,” she could not. After all, Stutzman was the same person before and after the stabbing incident. He hadn’t changed.

  One time he told her that he knew some people thought he was mentally disturbed.

  “I know some Amish didn’t like me taking Danny up to Ida’s grave all the time, but I did anyway. I know some of them said I was crazy.”

  Stutzman’s house had three small bedrooms upstairs. Though one was for Danny, the little boy seldom slept there. Instead, he slept in his father’s room on the main floor. The master bedroom was unusual in that it had two doors, one opening onto the hall, by the stairwell, and the other into the family room.

  In every way, from the wallpaper to the appliances, it was an Englischer’s house. The only thing hinting that it was the home of a former Amishman was the furniture that Amos Gingerich had made.

  One thing certain visitors noticed, however, was that the master-bedroom doors locked from the inside. The lock over the door to the family room was unlike any seen before by some visitors. It was a large hook.

  John and Lydia Yoder were among the many who stopped by to get a firsthand look at Stutzman’s remodeled house. While they visited in the kitchen, the Yoders heard someone turn off the television, and a man’s footsteps going up the stairs. Stutzman had made no mention of a house guest, and they didn’t ask who it was, though they wondered.

  Abe and Debbie Stutzman also came to see the changes in the house. With Stutzman getting settled into the Englische world, Abe wondered if Daisy Mast would leave the Amish to marry him.

  Since Stutzman’s strange visit to Greenville, Chris Swartzentruber and his wife, Diane, had discussed the circumstances of Ida’s death and shared some suspicions—though such feelings might have been tainted by bitterness. Swartzentruber felt Stutzman had “stolen” his brother’s farm. Stutzman had pretended to go back to the Amish just to get a cheap farm, he thought.

  The changes with the farm only confirmed Swartzentruber’s suspicions. He went out to the new barn and saw for himself that what the Amish were saying was true. The barn they had built for the grieving Amishman was not an Amish barn. It was built for horses. Stutzman had decided to leave the Amish immediately after Ida died. What else could explain the barn’s floor plan?

  During the visit, Diane noticed that Danny was strangely quiet for a 3-year-old. The boy said nothing and paid little attention to the visitors. Diane, who had suffered a miscarriage, was drawn to the blue-eyed child.

  The Swartzentrubers went upstairs to look at the rest of the house and found Danny in his bedroom, sitting silently on his bed. Next to the boy’s bed was a pornographic publication with pictures of nude men and women.

  All of a sudden, Danny’s withdrawn behavior made sense. He shows all the characteristics of being abused, Diane thought.

  On the way home Diane and Chris talked about the magazine and her suspicion that the boy might be a victim of sexual abuse.

  “Eli seemed so soft-spoken that he couldn’t hurt a fly. You know him, do you think he could be involved in something like that?”

  Chris Swartzentruber said he didn’t know.

  “With all that has been said about Ida . . . Chris, I think something is going on. I think he’s getting away with something.” Then she said it. “I think he killed Ida, and I’m going to do what I can to find out about it.”

  Though she meant every word of it, and there were many times she picked up the phone to call the Wayne County Sheriff to inquire about Ida’s death and investigation, she never dialed the number. Her husband had told her to mind her own business.

  “With the Amish, what’s done is done. They don’t want any part of bringing all of this up. Ida is buried, and we don’t have anything to go by. Forget it.”

  “But I can’t. And you can’t either.”

  What she would have given to have a little boy just like Danny.

  Even before his wife’s death, Stutzman had established himself as a first-rate horse trainer, and his reputation grew once he was free of the Amish and their yoke of rules.

  Standardbred racehorses were brought from all across Ohio to the Amishman who could break any horse. Stutzman used gentleness and patience, they said.

  Abner Petersheim, a quiet young Mennonite father who lived down the road from Stutzman, only saw his neighbor occasionally. After Stutzman had left the Order, their contact increased. Stutzman started going with Petersheim to the Mennonite church on South Kansas Road. Petersheim and his wife baby-sat Danny a few times, and though they liked the child, they felt he was a wild little boy. The Petersheims wondered why, if Stutzman was so good at taming horses, he couldn’t control his boy.

  On June 20, Stutzman said he had been feeling ill and needed bed rest. While Petersheim was over helping with chores, Stutzman asked if he and his wife Mary could take care of Danny while Stutzman rested. He also complained of problems with his kidneys.

  Petersheim saw the poor man slumped in bed, weak and tired, and had no difficulty agreeing to the request. Stutzman had been a wreck ever since his wife had died two years before—everyone in the neighborhood knew it. To make matters worse, the Amish had ostracized him with the bann.

  Who could live with all that?

  Later in the evening Petersheim called to see how Stutzman was getting along. When there was no answer he became alarmed and summoned the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department. He thought the worst, and wondered if his distraught neighbor had hung himself.

  When the deputy arrived, they searched the yard and house—Petersheim looked up at tree limbs for a hanging body. Nothing was found. Stutzman, who had been on his deathbed, was missing.

  While her husband and the sheriff’s department were searching for Stutzman, Mary Petersheim stayed
home with Danny and her children. She was frightened that Stutzman might come to their house. He had been acting so oddly, she didn’t know what to expect of him.

  The search continued the next morning.

  Twenty-six hours after Abner Petersheim had seen Stutzman in bed, the sheepish former Amishman showed up at the Petersheim’s to collect Danny. He apologized for being so late. He told them he had fallen asleep on a friend’s couch—he’d had too much to drink.

  For Petersheim, the story didn’t ring true. The Eli Stutzman he had seen the day before had been far too sick to go anywhere—especially to a party. Unless, of course, he hadn’t been sick at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Late summer and fall found the fields of Thayer County changing from emerald to golden. Harvest came early in 1987, with mountains of corn, milo, and soybeans filling grain elevators from Bruning to Chester. Farm machinery clogged county roads. The mood was upbeat, a good ending to a prosperous year.

  That fall, several communities celebrated centennials with bunting and banners. Locals lined up to sample food booths and to take a peek at the 4-H projects at the county fair in Deshler—the fair’s seventy-fifth year. Still there was no answer to the riddle of Little Boy Blue.

  Sheriff Young didn’t know it at the time, but all of that was about to change. Events were in the works that finally were going to lead somewhere—fast.

  Pleasantville, New York, is the headquarters of Reader’s Digest, and no other publication could have a more suitably named hometown. Indeed, what the Digest does best are stories of the heart. The December 1987 issue, sent to subscribers just before Thanksgiving, featured an inspirational article typical of the magazine: “Little Boy Blue of Chester, Nebraska.”

  The Digest reaches more than 16 million homes and has a total readership of more than 50 million—no police department anywhere in the country could have achieved such widespread attention. And no department needed help more than Thayer County’s.

  November 30, 1987