by Gregg Olsen
As far as Wanda Sawyer could tell from their phone conversations, her nephew was falling in love with Eli Stutzman. This both pleased and troubled her. It would make her feel more secure about Denny’s future and safety if he were involved in a monogamous relationship. She was concerned, however, when she learned that Denny’s feelings were not returned by Stutzman.
Ruston told her about the note on the refrigerator, and other gestures he had made to turn Stutzman into a lover. It is true that Denny had seen a lot in his young life, but his feelings were genuine. He couldn’t understand what Stutzman’s hang-up was. Why didn’t Stutzman want him? There were times when it bothered him that Stutzman was going to bed with other men. He told Wanda about the threesome with the man in the handcuffs.
Later Stutzman assured her that he cared about Denny, but that it was only friendship he wanted. Denny was just plain too young.
“Wanda, I get so upset with Denny at times because he doesn’t want to keep it a secret. I can’t afford for people I do business with to find out I’m like this,” Stutzman said.
Wanda understood the problem, but she still felt sorry for her nephew. In the back of her mind she felt that Eli had led Denny on in order to get him to come down to Austin. But she couldn’t figure out why.
Pot smoke filled the house on Banton Road. Almost every night the three men would kick back and smoke a 12-inch joint that Pritchett had rolled. If Danny walked in, Stutzman instructed the others to conceal the dope—although, considering what Stutzman had done with the boy in Colorado, such a gesture was more for the benefit of Ruston and Pritchett than for the little boy.
One of Pritchett’s jobs was to roll twenty-five joints every night for Stutzman to take to work and sell during the day.
One time Ruston noticed a cache of marijuana in a trunk in Stutzman’s bedroom, and he asked Stutzman about it. He wanted to know how much there was.
“A pound.”
“A whole pound?”
“Yeah.”
Ruston thought Stutzman was into heavier dealing than just selling joints to his employees.
“I’d seen him talking to a couple of people who came to the house in suits. Eli stayed outside in the front yard talking to them. Not really to visit, sort of a business meeting. They were in a Lincoln. Seemed really strange that Eli would be associating with people like that. I have a picture of people like that being with the mob,” Ruston recalled.
Leona Weaver moved to Austin on March 12, 1984—the one-year anniversary of her husband’s suicide. Weaver had grown up in the slums along the Sabine River in Orange, Texas. She was overweight, had frizzy red hair and a history of activism, and loved mysteries.
She didn’t know it then, but she had come to the right place.
Weaver met Denny Ruston at the Pizza Hut where she had taken a job. She liked him immediately. He was thin, gangly, and tried to be the center of attention. To Weaver, Denny Ruston was a big child who made a big show of flirting. He was playful, and in his overblown attempts to be liked, he was endearing.
Within a few days of their meeting, Ruston had become a frequent visitor to Weaver’s apartment, across the street from the Pizza Hut. Weaver would feed him, listen to him, and, when she could get a word in, counsel him. Ruston seemed to trust her from day one. Weaver was used to that kind of quick bonding. Even strangers seemed willing to tell her their life stories.
When he finally told Weaver about his sexuality, she felt more relieved than shocked.
“Are you sure it doesn’t bother you that I’m gay?” Ruston asked Weaver that first week.
Weaver shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me that you’re gay, as long as it doesn’t bother you that I’m not.”
Once the Big Secret was out, Denny Ruston started to talk about Eli Stutzman, whom he said was his lover. He told her that Stutzman had been Amish and that his wife had died in a fire. Stutzman owned a construction business, Ruston said, and had a little boy named Danny.
Stutzman could also get Weaver just about any drug she wanted, according to Ruston.
Pot was her drug of choice. It had been since she had grown up along the Sabine. Ruston had access to as much as she wanted.
“I used to get pot from Denny. He wasn’t buying. I know that there was more than pot there, but I didn’t do anything but smoke pot. I was going through Denny, who got it from Eli. He wasn’t going through Eli to get it from somebody else.”
It was late for a call to an early-rising Indiana dairy farmer like Ted Truitt. Eli Stutzman surely must have known that Truitt would have been in bed. It was after 11:00 P.M., April 21, 1985, when Truitt answered a call from his old friend and first male lover. The call lasted nineteen minutes. Stutzman said he was planning to leave Austin. There had been some trouble, and he needed to get away.
“Do you think you can put up with a visitor for a while?” he asked. His voice was that of the same old controlled, cool Eli. He even joked a little. He hoped he wouldn’t be any trouble. If he had any reason to leave Texas other than to take a vacation from his busy remodeling business, Truitt was unaware of it.
Truitt, who had always liked Stutzman, was pleased at the prospect of a visit. “When are you coming?”
Stutzman seemed vague, but he said it would be soon.
Cal Hunter drove a cherry red ’83 Dodge van with mag wheels and a running board, and spoke with the drawl of a native Texan, though the construction worker had grown up in the blue-collar east side of Indianapolis. In April, 1985, the 30-year-old Indianapolis man had found his way to Austin, where he was hired by Stutzman at the Texas Employment Commission (TEC).
As it turned out, Stutzman was looking for a new partner. He talked of big money.
“Eli said he made more than $60,000 in the first quarter of the year doing remodeling for out-of-town owners,” recounted Hunter. “I didn’t know what was happening at first, but later I learned how such things went. The real-estate management agent would send Stutzman on a job that would cost $10,000 to fix and charge the owner $30,000. They each got their extra piece.
“His other partner had gone back north to his family or something. He told me I could turn a real good profit working for him and eventually setting up a satellite operation.”
Hunter did not know that Stutzman was gay until he had Hunter go to his post-office box by the Sears off I-35 to pick up mail.
“What I found shocked me,” Hunter later said.
In among the stacks of letters and bills was a form letter or brochure of some kind from California.
“I thought it was a ‘straight’ sex brochure—it had something about deep throating, so I read it. But it was about fist fucking—how to put your hand up there safely. There was something else about bestiality, too. I thought I’d picked up the wrong mail—but it had Eli’s name on it.”
“I must admit I felt a little pity for Eli,” Hunter said on another occasion. “My feeling was that if he had been raised differently he would have turned out straight. Austin was his first time out in the real world. He didn’t want to be gay, but he just fell in with the wrong crowd.”
Hunter figured something was amiss with Stutzman and his son when he saw the two of them together at the house or the job site.
“The relationship they had was almost like a master and servant,” he recalled. “Danny followed his father around and wasn’t allowed to say anything. He wasn’t a son. He was a servant out of fear.”
Like the second grader’s speech pathologist, Ruth Davis, Hunter also saw bruises.
“Of course, I didn’t see him naked or anything, but I saw bruises all over his arms,” he said.
Dinner at Stutzman’s place one night offered additional evidence that Danny was a victim of ongoing child abuse.
“We were sitting at the table, and Danny was just beginning to relax with me being a stranger and all. He started to talk, and he began to stutter. Eli hit him in the mouth so hard the boy fell off his chair.
“Danny got up on his chair and l
ike a beaten little soldier wiped the blood from his mouth and sat back at the table. He didn’t say another word all night.”
Hunter also wondered if the boy had been sexually abused.
“Eli used to pat and pinch his butt, more than just a father–son type of thing. It was the way he touched him. But none of that was my business. Construction work was my bread and butter, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
“I know something wasn’t right with Eli. There is an unnatural coldness in a man who would smack his boy across the mouth the way he did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Churchgoers leaving for Sunday service in the vicinity of the Pilot Knob dump site noticed a considerable amount of activity on Colton-Bluff Springs Road the morning of May 12, 1985. A couple of patrol cars plus vehicles belonging to investigators and detectives had stirred up a cloud of dust as they parked in neat rows along both sides of the road.
In the space of one hour, quiet and kindly Mr. Raymond Kieke had been transformed from rancher to witness in a murder investigation. He gave his statement and told the investigators where he could be found—at home, just up the road.
Eight law-enforcement officers and investigators crowded together in the thick air around the culvert. Each of them could think of better ways to spend the morning, but a dead body draws gawkers and ghouls like flies, and the law-enforcement people were on hand to secure the crime scene as well as to investigate.
Travis County homicide detective Jerry Wiggins was one of the first to arrive. At 44, Wiggins was the quintessential veteran Texas cop; his haggard eyes never showed a trace of shock or surprise. Like other cops who lead lives wrought with long hours and temptation, Wiggins had a failed marriage. He knew it was his fault, and he regretted it, yet he was born to be a cop. He carried a gun the way most people carried a comb or a pack of gum.
Wiggins broke murders into two types: the smoking gun and the whodunit. This one was obviously one of the latter. The year, in fact, was shaping up to be a banner year in murders for the county—not the kind of record-breaking statistic that shows up on a chamber of commerce brochure. This was the fifth murder he’d worked, and it was only May. The year before there had been a total of seven.
Of course, he didn’t handle all the investigations himself, but it was Wiggins’s turn to work the weekend. His partner, Gary Cutler, was probably just getting out of bed. Lucky guy.
Juvenile Officer Kelley Liesman was there because she was the only officer from the sheriff’s department who had volunteered to assist the two-person homicide team. She was just 24 and wanted to learn more about homicide investigations firsthand. Harold Darby, a detective terrified of bodies, also watched from the sidelines. For him, the smell was enough. He was working on not getting sick.
Travis County ID technician David Weaver and investigator Jim Hall of the medical examiner’s office were also there to lend their expertise. Weaver, who had been with the county for four years, knew the Colton-Bluff Springs area well. He had been there at least ten times, most recently to investigate an attempted rape. A skilled composite artist, Weaver sometimes produced sketches rivaling a photograph in detail. Some cops thought they were more suitable for framing than for investigative work. Weaver and Hall looked for the “why” and “who.” The official “how” would be determined at the autopsy by Medical Examiner Roberto Bayardo.
Jimmy Davenport, a patrol sergeant, heard the call and drove by. He stopped for a few minutes that morning, mostly just to get a look at what was going on.
Those who had a reason to be there went to work. Wiggins made some notes he would later incorporate into his report. A clump of dark hair was found on the victim’s shoulder. Wiggins figured it had been torn from the scalp. Maggots covered the body. The eyes were gone, apparently from animal activity. Since the cutoffs were unsnapped, unzipped, and pushed down the victim’s legs, Wiggins considered the possibility of a homosexual murder, though he knew most such murders involved some kind of torture. No evidence suggested that, but the body was so decomposed that it was tough to tell much.
Weaver grimaced at the sight of a couple of scorpions crawling on the corpse. He figured they had come to the corpse to feast on the maggots.
The ID technician recorded the scene with forty-plus color photographs before anyone could so much as move a maggot. In a crime-scene search, Weaver’s standard procedure was to start at the body and work outward. Though the photos would be in focus, later when they were needed it would be difficult for some investigators to distinguish the body from the soil. Both were black. It was only the white—a writhing frosting of maggots—that seemed to form the shape of a dead man. The victim’s limbs had a greenish cast. Blossoms of Queen Anne’s lace framed each shot. Weaver also took wider shots of the area, including the farms and barns in the distance.
The victim wore no shoes, underwear, or shirt. There appeared to be a gunshot wound through the head.
A few of those present smoked cigars to mask the stench—a technique a number of investigators use during an autopsy or the discovery of a badly decomposed human body. Wiggins had another advantage: a bushy mustache that crowded his nostrils like a filter. Kelley Liesman breathed through her mouth and tried to get uphill as often as possible; she wished she had some Vicks or other mentholated salve with which to coat the inside of her nostrils and upper lip—another common technique. Meanwhile, investigators lifted the body onto a stretcher and hoisted it out of the ditch. Wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a pearl-button shirt, Hall stood above the ditch like the Lone Ranger and gave orders.
Wearing rubber gloves, Wiggins and Liesman poked through the body-fluid-soaked earth with hands and fingers, searching for shell casings or other evidence. Wiggins explained a few things he had picked up in his years as an investigator, and Liesman listened carefully. The ghastly mire yielded no clues.
Near where the body had lain, however, a rusty shotgun shell was recovered from under a rock that had been resting next to the victim’s head. Weaver studied the shell. “It’s too old to be related.”
“Collect it anyway,” Wiggins said.
The investigators searched a quarter-mile radius and found nothing. Wiggins, Weaver, and Liesman scoured the length of the culvert. Nothing.
Measurements of the dump site’s key features and its location were recorded. It was four feet ten inches from the level of the road to the body’s location in the ditch. Wiggins noted that the body had been lying face up on an east-west axis, the head against the culvert, facing east. So fragile was the body that a good downpour could easily have washed the bones through the culvert and scattered the remains.
He wrote: “The odor was putrid, I recognized it as decaying flesh and body fluids.”
Weaver, Wiggins, and the foul-smelling corpse, now in a body bag, rode in Jim Hall’s county van to introduce Dr. Bayardo to his latest patient.
The Travis County Morgue is in the basement of Brackenridge Hospital, on the outskirts of downtown Austin’s business district, only a few blocks from the beautiful, rosy-colored sandstone capitol building. Brackenridge is a rundown, borderline-condemned building with a leaky roof. It’s an institution with an image problem, a reputation as the hospital for the poor and illiterate of Texas’s capital city.
Medical Examiner Roberto Bayardo, 51, had been raised in Mexico, where he earned a medical degree at the Universidad de Guadalajara. The superior schools in the States and a fascination with forensics brought him across the border in 1967. Dr. Bayardo had been the county’s chief medical examiner since June 1978, after coming to Austin by way of Harris County, Texas, where he had held the medical examiner’s job. He had all of the right credentials: a medical degree, four years of training in pathology, and the stomach to handle what at times was an unsettling job.
Even his detractors conceded that the doctor never pointed fingers when someone made an innocent mistake. Dr. Bayardo had done thousands of autopsies, and he knew that the unexpected sometimes happened on the table.
Autopsies are not a pretty sight, and, in spite of the medical jargon and protocol surrounding them, the doctor and his assistant are still hacking at a human body with saws and scalpels. None of that is lost on the investigators who observe such proceedings. In fact, Travis County sheriff’s deputies and detectives call the assistant “Bayardo’s ghoul.” The ghoul’s job is to saw open the head, do some of the meat-cutter’s work for the doctor, and sew the body back up. One ghoul used a Swiss Army knife, which he kept in his pocket, to make the incisions. Most use a scalpel.
“That ghoul didn’t last too long,” Wiggins remembered. “He liked his job too much.”
The easiest part of the autopsy is the first procedure, the external exam. Weaver, who assisted Bayardo with this part of the exam, took two series of photographs of the body. One, of course, would seem sufficient. But, in the game that must be played with defense attorneys, the second of the series was taken without the medical examiner’s ID tag in each shot. This is done so that a defense lawyer can’t say: “Is this exactly as the body was found? Was that little tag on the body when it was found?”
Every once in a while Weaver would respond to one of the doctor’s motions to take another photograph.
Wiggins and Weaver listened carefully as Bayardo went through his routine—a routine so exact they figured he could do it in his sleep. Some, who had worked with the doctor many times, wondered if they could do it in their sleep. Wiggins’s cigar smoke battled the odor from the dead man’s body. The cigar didn’t have a chance in the small and, in his opinion, poorly ventilated room.
Trace evidence—such as the carpet fibers that helped nail the Atlanta Child Killer, Wayne Williams—had emerged as a major advancement in forensics. Answers could be found under the lens of a microscope. Many medical examiners in the major cities now used special “clean suits” for the doctor and the assistant examiners. No particles or fibers could fall from these, as in the case of the old surgical scrubs. Bayardo, however, wore a disposable, white plastic apron over street clothes—things were not so progressive in Travis County. This office did things the old-fashioned way and looked only for the obvious.
