Abandoned Prayers

by Gregg Olsen

  “That’s the reason Danny stutters,” he said, pointing at the black hats in the photograph. “It’s the Amish. We weren’t supposed to speak English for years, until school.”

  Stutzman typed a letter asking whether, if something should happen to him, Freeman would raise Danny. Again, as with Palmer, Eli’s stated reason was his hatred for the Amish and the fear that they would take his boy away from him.

  Freeman turned him down.

  “Eli,” Freeman said gently, “I’m just too damn old to raise any more kids.”

  It rained like hell the spring day that Stutzman invited ten gay men, including Freeman and Hankins, to a party at the ranch. Stutzman served an Amish-style chicken dinner.

  Chuck Freeman marveled at his cooking.

  “Eli was one hell of a cook. He could turn weeds into jam.”

  And he was a great father, too.

  “When Danny tore his pajamas, his father told him he would make him a new pair the following day,” Freeman added. “I was real impressed. He was going to make his boy new pajamas.”

  After the little boy went to bed, the men sacked out on the living room floor and watched gay porno videos.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Nobody could fault Glen Pritchett for not being a nice guy. Even after all the events that led him to Texas, he still would have given someone his last dime. If he’d had one. When he finally left Montana he had a sack of clothes and an impossible thirst that could only be slaked by beer—lots of it.

  Though he was only five feet nine inches, his medium build and lean 152 pounds made him seem taller; a crown of wavy dark hair added to the illusion. His brown eyes were washed in the red that comes from too-little sleep and too much booze and pot.

  In some tragic way, his life had been without hope. Like the old tattoo that drunken sailors would have etched onto beefy forearms, Glen Albert Pritchett was born to lose.

  Born in 1961 to a Latter-day Saints family that had migrated from Logan, Utah, to Montana, Pritchett was the first son of Bob and Evelyn—a fifteen-year veteran of the Postal Service and his dry-cleaner wife. Glen Pritchett had a younger brother and two older sisters. None of the other Pritchett children had any trouble with the law—not brother Cecil or sisters Sharon and Nona.

  When it came to trouble in the Pritchett family, Glen was always in the center of the storm.

  It started early. Pritchett, who had never done well in school, began to rebel against the strictness of Mormon life. He began to drink, skip school, smoke pot, and be a typical, out-of-control, hell-raising teenager.

  “Incorrigible” was the word used by social workers who knew the boy.

  For Pritchett’s sister, Nona, the handwriting had been written on the wall in indelible ink for some time, maybe ever since her brother was born. The Glen she knew had been a runaway with a chip on his shoulder.

  “Glen had always resented authority. He was constantly taking off,” she recalled, years after his final flight from Montana. “Sometimes he would be gone for a week at a time—it tore my parents up. Nothing seemed to work. Nothing made him stay.”

  As a teen, Pritchett worried about not being popular—he had a fear of being rejected. Those who knew him later claimed that it was his insecurity that led him to seek refuge in the contents of a beer bottle.

  When it got so bad that he could no longer be part of the family, his parents put him in a foster home up north in Cutbank, Montana. The family was LDS—as the Pritchetts wanted. The father was an FBI agent. The arrangement was fine for a couple of months, until a friend of Pritchett’s sent him marijuana through the mail.

  After a forty-five-day evaluation at the juvenile detention center of Pine Hills, in Miles City, Montana, Pritchett ended up in the home of Jo Lyn and Allan Kuser, in Helena. It was one of the best things to happen to him. The Kusers and their children—with whom Glen was gentle and caring—were the closest he had come to having a real family. They even took him on a vacation to California.

  Pritchett tried to complete his education, but never got the knack of schoolwork and the attendance it required. His GPA was 0.53 when he withdrew from Helgate Senior High in the spring of 1978.

  While in detention at the boys’ home, he met a girl with the same kind of background as he had. Sandy Turner was a block away in Missoula’s “Attention home,” a short-term facility for troubled and defiant teenagers. Sandy’s problem, she later said, was her mother, a well-meaning and controlling woman who had expectations of behavior her daughter could not meet. Sandy was wild. Sandy was incorrigible. Sandy was a runaway looking for trouble. All were designations offered by Barbara Turner.

  But Sandy was none of those. She was a scared girl who, for some reason, got off on the wrong foot and couldn’t come to grips with the way things should be—or at least the way her mother thought they should be.

  Glen and Sandy, both 16, made their plans to run away at a Missoula Dairy Queen. A few weeks after they had hitched a ride to Billings, Montana, Sandy called her mother and told her she would come back on one condition: that she and Glen could wed. Mrs. Turner agreed.

  On August 15, 1978, Sandy Turner and Glen Albert Pritchett were wed across the Montana border in Wallace, Idaho. The reception was held at the East Missoula Moose Lodge: cake, coffee, and punch were served. Sandy never left Glen’s side, holding his hand with the devotion of the beautiful bride that she was. For a moment, those attending the party set aside prophecies of doom for the marriage. Just maybe these kids had something special after all.

  The authorities at the Missoula boys’ home suggested that it wouldn’t set a good example for the other kids if they saw Sandy and Glen married and around town. They urged—“demanded,” Sandy later said—that the couple leave. They packed up and got a place in Helena.

  Then a miracle occurred—to Sandy and her parents it could have seemed nothing less. Pritchett pulled himself together and joined the Coast Guard. He was 17, with Pine Hills and minor scrapes with the law behind him. It was a chance at a future. He enlisted and was fingerprinted on February 6, 1979.

  Friends told each other that Pritchett was going to get his life together, that he had the right idea—get into the military, learn to be an electrician, then come back to Montana and make a life for himself. It was neat and simple. Everyone was happy.

  Everyone, of course, except Pritchett. He and Sandy left Montana, first for Reedsport, Oregon, then for Staten Island in New York. They hated Reedsport; it was dark, damp, and dingy.

  “Even the beach was lousy,” Sandy recalled.

  The only thing good about Reedsport was the birth of a daughter.

  New York wasn’t much better. Pritchett had a grueling schedule, pulling duty every other day and on weekends. He relieved tension and boredom by continuing his love affair with the drunken state. He partied whenever he had the chance, leaving his wife at home with their baby girl.

  Glen’s sister Sharon got a call from him during which he complained about having to do things the Coast Guard’s way. Sharon’s advice was not exactly what Glen had been fishing for: “Why do you have to act that way? When they tell you to do something, just shut up and do it!”

  In 1982 the Pritchetts’ son was born in Montana, Sandy having flown back ahead of time. Glen returned from his ship in time to hold his son in the hospital. The following year, Pritchett was discharged from the Coast Guard and returned to Montana full time. He sat around the apartment drinking, using up most of the money from his unemployment checks while Sandy waitressed.

  One time Barbara Turner took her daughter to Al-Anon, the support group for spouses of alcoholics. By then, however, the marriage was over.

  September 6, 1983 was the culmination of the big slide for Glen Pritchett. At 10:00 P.M. his erratic driving caused a Montana Highway Patrol officer to pull him over under suspicion of drunk driving. When it was clear that he was too drunk to complete the alphabet and was swaying side to side during routine sobriety tests, Pritchett was arrested.


  The 21-year-old told the officer that he had been on his way to see a friend in Helena and had consumed a six-pack of beer in the car on the way—that he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night.

  Three days later, the young man was out of jail and in court. He was ordered to complete an alcohol-abuse program and was fined $505, with $225 suspended on the condition that the fine was paid and the program completed.

  On September 8, 1983, Sandy filed for divorce. She was only 21, but she had been married for five years, and she had two children to raise. The court ordered Pritchett to pay $75 per month, per child.

  Pritchett admitted himself to the hospital drug and alcohol program. He finished a day or two early and called Sandy to pick him up. In no time at all, though, he was shaking hands with a six-pack again.

  The Missoula police were among the more frequent visitors to the Pritchett residence during the month of October 1983. They visited the apartment three times, each time finding a domestic dispute involving an angry young woman and a drunk man.

  The Pritchetts’ divorce was final on October 13, though they still saw each other and still entertained the hope that they could get back together someday.

  Once Pritchett suggested that they leave the kids with Mrs. Turner and run away together, just as they had when they were teenagers. Sandy refused.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eli Stutzman’s Four Corners watering hole was a dingy bar that sat in a heap off Highway 550. Even today, it’s a locals-only kind of place, despite its proximity to the main road through the desert. Though the logo is a martini glass, beer accounts for the lion’s share of the bar’s receipts. The men who sit inside and pass the day are as much a fixture as the beer taps they drain. Lonely small-town women go there to meet dates and, if they feel like it, take a ride with a handsome stranger to a motel or a deserted roadside.

  Though the place never made it into Bob Damron’s Address Book, men do all right there, too. At least Stutzman did.

  The former Amishman surely must have stood out when he started coming in, first with Freeman, then on his own. Stutzman’s appearance was neater than that of the regular cowboys and ranchers. His hair and mustache were perfectly trimmed, and his blue jeans showed the crease of a steam iron.

  It took Freeman a little while to catch on to Stutzman’s sexual modus operandi, and when he did he was amazed. Sitting at the bar, tipping back a beer, Stutzman effortlessly connected with men and disappeared into the bathroom or outside for a blow job.

  Hankins, for one, thought he had Stutzman figured out: “Eli’s deal is to smoke a joint, snort a popper, just get high, and as far as his sex drive and stuff, everybody that knows him says ‘My God, the man is wilder than a peach-orchard boar!’ ”

  Stutzman gave Freeman a copy of the guide to T-rooms or “trick rooms”—places men could go for sex. Stutzman had obviously studied the book and put it to good and frequent use.

  “Eli Stutzman would have fucked a snake if he could have,” Freeman later said.

  Stutzman was unconcerned about AIDS. He once told Hankins he would never use a condom.

  “I ain’t fuckin’ in no sock,” he said.

  One summer night at the bar, Stutzman met up with a construction worker from Bloomfield, and Freeman loaned him his car so the two men could trick. A while later, bored and impatient, Freeman went looking for them and found them just north of town. Stutzman, his pants down, was on top of the man, engaged in anal intercourse. Neither man paid much attention to Freeman—who even took a photograph for his collection.

  Stutzman boasted about such conquests, and Freeman wondered what it would take to become one of the notches on Stutzman’s leather belt. The closest he got was when Stutzman stayed over one night and they masturbated. Freeman finally saw what all the fuss was about.

  It was the size of Stutzman’s penis.

  “I’ve showered with hundreds of men in the military, and Eli Stutzman was the biggest I’ve ever seen,” Freeman said.

  Stutzman appeared at Palmer and Bloom’s new farm, saying that he planned to sue the Hjermstads—the people from whom the farm was purchased—because he had uncovered selenium in the soil—a harmful trace mineral found in high concentrations in parts of Colorado.

  “But there isn’t any out there. All of the places with selenium have been mapped and recorded,” Palmer answered.

  “I don’t care. I’m filing a suit against the Hjermstads for selling the place under false pretenses. I’m going to tell them I found selenium.”

  If Stutzman had wanted Palmer to be a party to the fraud, he had miscalculated. Palmer told him he was crazy.

  Danny hugged Palmer’s leg. “Could I live with you instead of my dad?” he asked.

  Then Palmer grew angry when he found that Stutzman had taken the stallion for a trail ride in New Mexico—under the agreement, the horse couldn’t leave Colorado without Palmer’s consent. In response, Stutzman waged a hate campaign that would hit Palmer where it hurt the most—the secrecy of his sexual preference. Since Palmer believed no one in the community knew he was gay, to Stutzman, telling others could have been viewed as the ultimate revenge.

  An old-timer who lived near the old ranch called Palmer one night.

  “You the one that gives the blow jobs?”

  “What?”

  “I see there’s a sign in the highway bathroom that says to call you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Better go look at it,” the old man said.

  Palmer grabbed a camera and drove out to the rest room, where he found written: “If want a good blow job call Terry Palmer. He’s over 50, but he’s gut.”

  The handwriting was Eli Stutzman’s. Further, the second good had been spelled in German. Enraged, Palmer confronted Stutzman, but he denied he had done it.

  While Stutzman was trying to get revenge on Palmer, new men like Kevin Stansfield, an army officer stationed in El Paso, Texas, came across one of Stutzman’s advertisements. Stansfield, a Mormon, also shared a conservative religious background. Both preferred the country over the city, and, finally, both professed a love of children.

  Stansfield drove up to Colorado for the weekend.

  Like others, Stansfield initially saw Stutzman’s good, gentle side.

  “I watched Eli and Danny together as they fixed supper, and I thought, ‘what a nice, wonderful relationship’ they had. It was the ideal father and son relationship.”

  After the meal, Stutzman told Danny to put on his pajamas. A few minutes later, the boy came back to the kitchen wearing a blue blanket sleeper. He crawled on Stansfield’s lap, and the officer read a bedtime story.

  After Danny went to bed, the two men stayed up talking. Stansfield wanted to find out as much as he could about growing up as a gay Amishman.

  Stutzman showed him a photograph of himself, posed in a buggy and dressed in his Amish clothes. He told Stansfield the photo was taken when he and some other Amish boys were racing buggies. From the way Stutzman described himself, in conversation at the ranch and in his letters, Stansfield assumed that Stutzman had left the Amish only recently—within the last year.

  The friendly mood changed when Stutzman recounted the story of his wife’s death in the fire. He said they had been sleeping, when she woke him and then left to save some animals, only to collapse in the milk house. The story was chilling.

  “As he was telling me the story, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. All I could think was, This man murdered his wife. He killed her to get away from the Amish community. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I knew it. I didn’t think it. I knew it.”

  The sleeping arrangement that night also disturbed Stansfield. Eli’s and Danny’s bedrooms were connected by a bathroom, and Stutzman deliberately left the connecting doors open. Further, Stutzman’s room was illuminated by a night-light.

  “If we had sex and Danny got up, he would have seen us. He surely would have heard us.”

  Stan
sfield left the next day. He felt sorry for Stutzman and the sheltered Amish world he had been compelled to leave. Yet Stansfield couldn’t forget the thought that Stutzman had killed his wife. He considered calling the police.

  “What could the police do now?” he thought as he drove back to El Paso. “His wife was burned up and buried somewhere in Ohio. Calling the police was a silly idea. I didn’t have anything to go on. It was all a suspicion.”

  In the end, he figured Stutzman’s motive for killing his wife was to get his son out of the Amish community. He couldn’t have just left Ohio and his wife—if he had the Amish would have taken his son.

  “He must have loved his son an awful lot to do that,” Haynes later said.

  In spite of financial pressures, throughout the summer Stutzman continued his wild spree of pickups at the Strater and the Holiday Inn—even at the shopping mall in Farmington. He delighted in picking up the inexperienced married tourists or younger men—“chickens”—who came through the area. The parties turned into orgies, and summer 1983 drifted to fall.

  Stutzman must have raced about the house, concealing any evidence of the gay life, when he learned his old friends Eli and Gail Byler were coming to see him while on a vacation trip to Ohio. The timing couldn’t have been better. The Bylers arrived in time to celebrate Danny’s birthday on September 9.

  In the basement of the ranch house, the Bylers noticed all of the ribbons and trophies won by the stallion. Stutzman told them he had purchased the horse and intended to use it for stud. He made no mention of Terry Palmer.

  Stutzman drove the Bylers around, showing off the spectacular Colorado landscape. His car was old, and he quickly apologized for its condition.

  “A friend of mine borrowed my truck, because they were going to drive across country to New York and didn’t think this one would make it,” he explained.

  The Bylers marveled at the size and beauty of the ranch, but Stutzman claimed that problems had just surfaced and that he might lose it.

  “There’s an Indian reservation near here, and the Indians are trying to get this land back,” he told them. “Someday they might try to take the ranch from me. There’s nothing I can do about it.”