Abandoned Prayers

by Gregg Olsen

  “Oh.”

  “They’re not careful enough, and Jay knows that he is wanted. Therefore he’s much harder to find. But if this keeps . . . going on, what I’m gonna do is, ah, put Danny, my son, give somebody else custody of him—temporary custody. So they can’t get a hold of him and involve him anymore, just as they already have. And, ah, go back and do whatever it takes—just prove that I’m innocent. Because my attorney has said, you know, that he’s got enough evidence to prove that I’m innocent. That’s what he thinks, and he told me this morning to hold off a little bit longer to see if he can come up with Jay. And, ah, if they can, he’s gonna, you know, have me come back and go to trial or whatever it takes just to prove that I’m innocent.”

  “Well,” said Weaver, “I think that you should. I think you should come back and face it and get it over with. Because if you didn’t do it, then you don’t have nothing to be afraid of.”

  Stutzman indicated that the real reason he had fled Austin was because the police had harassed Danny.

  “And I . . . I mean, it freaked me out with this thing, I mean, Christ, what’s going on, I mean, this can’t be. I said, harassing me is no problem, but my little kid is a different story. And my attorney says they had no . . . they should have never questioned him in the first place.”

  Weaver agreed. “I don’t think they should have done that either.”

  Near the end of the call, Stutzman hit on the subject of his mail.

  “And one of the biggest things is, you know, so much mail that had come in that I just told Denny and Glen to never leave it in the house. And if the desk was gone they probably took the mail too.”

  What could have been in the mail that was so important? Weaver wondered. What could have been worth more than the other things Stutzman had left behind?

  He told Weaver that if Ruston called, to give him Stutzman’s number and have Ruston call collect.

  “I don’t know what to tell you about calling me back,” Stutzman said. “If I do call you, what I’ll do is I’ll just leave a brief message where . . . ah, I tell you what, I’ll give you a code name.”

  A code name? It seemed weird, Weaver reflected, but under the circumstances what else could she expect?

  “If you’re not there, or you’re busy,” Stutzman said, “I’ll tell them that you’re supposed to call ‘Junior.’ I won’t mention my name.”

  If Stutzman had known that his story was causing him more trouble than any physical evidence, he surely would have shut up. But there he was, running from Travis County, yet telling everyone that the gun used to kill Pritchett belonged to him.

  Ballistics, however, had come back inconclusive. While it was confirmed that the bullet that killed Pritchett had been fired from a gun just like Stutzman’s, the slug was so misshapen from impact that it was unclear whether his gun had in fact been the murder weapon.

  In court, ballistics would amount to nothing.

  Only the killer—or someone with direct knowledge of the crime—would know that it was the right gun.

  Stupidly, Stutzman was concerned about his fingerprints being found on it. Since he had handed the gun to Wiggins, of course, his prints were naturally on the weapon.

  None of this was lost on Cutler or Wiggins, but they needed more. No one was talking, and there wasn’t enough to go on. This “Jay” to whom Stutzman kept referring didn’t exist, as far as they knew. Throughout the investigation, the sheriff’s office never questioned anyone with that name.

  Cal Hunter had told investigators that he knew nothing.

  By mid-July, the investigation had foundered, and Stutzman had vanished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Stutzman and his son returned to the Four Corners area in late June. In Aztec, New Mexico, at the home of Stutzman’s old buddy, Chuck Freeman, Stutzman confided to Freeman and Kenny Hankins that his roommate had been killed in Texas.

  “My gun was involved,” he said.

  Freeman and Hankins hit the roof, but Stutzman assured them he hadn’t killed anybody.

  “My lawyer told me to get my ass out of Texas until this blows over,” he said.

  “That don’t make sense, Eli,” Hankins said. “You should go back. What kind of lawyer would tell you to get out of the state?”

  “If I do go back they’ll arrest me, and, when they do, they will pick up Danny and send him back to Ohio.”

  “To your folks?”

  “Yeah. I’d much rather see Danny dead than have him live with the Amish.”

  Stutzman made a number of calls to his lawyer. Each time he got off the phone he announced some atrocity committed by the Travis County Sheriff’s Office: they had taken his furniture, his money, his business.

  Hankins asked who the attorney was, who was giving Stutzman all this bad advice—was he one of their lawyer friends from Durango?

  “No, he’s from Texas,” Eli said, refusing to elaborate.

  • • •

  Danny Stutzman was showing signs of trauma. His stuttering had worsened dramatically.

  “Danny could hardly spit a word out,” Kenny Hankins recalled. “The kid was a mess. He couldn’t do anything. He was like a baby. When he wanted to get a toy that was on the other side of the walkway, he just stood there and cried for his daddy to get it for him.”

  Stutzman said he was going to take Danny to stay with his friends Dean and Margie Barlow, in Wyoming. “They’ll take care of Danny until I get situated and buy a house,” he said.

  The next day Stutzman and his son boarded a bus bound for Wyoming.

  Leona Weaver and Evelyn Martel listened to the tape twice before Gary Cutler returned to pick it up. Each time the women listened, they heard the same thing: Eli Stutzman was a nervous, evasive man.

  In all fairness, Weaver would concede that she came off little better than Stutzman. She cringed each time she stammered.

  Weaver played the tape for Cutler, who sat stone-faced in her living room. When the tape was over, all he said about its content was, “You did good. Real good.”

  “He thinks it was the law who took his furniture and stuff. Did you take it?” Weaver asked.

  Cutler shook his head. “What would we want with all of his stuff?”

  Weaver also asked whether investigators had questioned Danny.

  “We wouldn’t do something like that,” Cutler said.

  Weaver didn’t tell the detective about the drugs she knew Stutzman had sold—she figured they knew too much about her and her habits already.

  “Shoot,” she later said, “Cutler probably knew who I bought my little bit of pot from.”

  Her sister, however, told Weaver that she should have said something.

  “They probably already know,” Weaver replied. “If they’re gonna find out about it, it ain’t gonna be from me.”

  When Cutler left he wasn’t sure what he really had. Stutzman had made one statement, though, that did seem to have some importance: that it was “pretty obvious” that Pritchett had been “murdered with my gun.”

  Who was the attorney Stutzman kept mentioning in his conversation with Weaver?

  A couple days later, “Junior” called the Pizza Hut. He told Weaver that he was going to send Hunter over to pick up his TV and mantel clock. This terrified Weaver, who felt that things were getting out of control and that she was sinking deeper into this murder case than she wanted. Send someone to my house! Even having some killer’s friend know where she lived was out of the question. She told all the workers at the Pizza Hut not to give out her address to anyone for any reason.

  Every time Stutzman called, she had to sit down and drink a coke. She would shake all over. What am I gonna do? He’s gonna send someone to get that damn TV? How do I get out of this?

  The only answer was to lie.

  “Listen, Eli,” she finally said, “somebody came to my house. I was scared and I gave the TV to him.”

  “Who was it?” Stutzman asked.

  “I don’t know. The cops have
been coming around too. I don’t think you should call me again.”

  “You didn’t give anybody this number?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t,” he pleaded.

  She hung up and never heard from Eli Stutzman again. When Weaver saw Cutler she told him that she hadn’t heard from Stutzman since the call she had taped.

  She figured it was safer reading and writing about murder than being involved in a case.

  Sam Miller had hightailed it home to Ohio and enlisted in the navy. He kept his mouth shut about what Stutzman had told him in the truck on the way back to Banton Road.

  He figured he’d live longer.

  Stutzman made a call to Cal Hunter at his mother’s house in San Antonio, wanting more help from his business partner.

  “He wanted me to get some things out of his safe deposit box. I told him to forget it. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t want to get mixed up with the law. The police had told me they wanted Stutzman. Getting involved in murder was the last thing on my mind,” Hunter said.

  On July 5, 1985, Stutzman signed guardianship papers for Dean and Margie Barlow to administer medicine in case Danny became sick while he was away. He also signed two checks over to the Barlows to use for the boy’s support. He told them that an employee of his had been murdered in Texas and that he knew who had done it and was going to track the killer himself.

  After leaving Danny with the Barlows, Stutzman resurfaced at the Greyhound bus station in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Ted Truitt, the young dairy farmer who had lost his virginity to Stutzman in January 1983, was there to meet him. Stutzman was traveling light, carrying only the gym bags Denny Ruston had given him the night he fled from Austin.

  Truitt had been looking forward to seeing his friend since the phone call in April.

  “I’m going to be taking a little vacation,” Stutzman had told him then, though he was vague about when it would be. Almost immediately Truitt knew this was going to be no ordinary visit.

  Stutzman told Truitt he was involved in a murder investigation in Austin.

  “One of my crew was murdered. The police questioned me about the murder. I told them I knew who did it—a guy who worked for me, but I fired him.”

  “Did the police get the guy?” Truitt asked.

  “No. They didn’t even try. I have to go get him myself. He’s in Ohio,” Stutzman said.

  Truitt thought Stutzman was lying. It was obvious that he had left Austin with only what he could carry in his two arms. Even his gun rack and rocker and other furniture—things he had said he’d made himself—had been left behind. Stutzman had seemed so proud of his things that he would never abandon them.

  Eli Stutzman had come to the little town outside of Fort Wayne to hide out, and Truitt didn’t like it.

  A lot of what Stutzman said seemed out of synch. He told Truitt that he had been driving up from Texas with a friend and that, when the police had pulled their car over to the side of the road, for some reason the friend had run away.

  The story was disjointed and convoluted. Truitt didn’t ask any follow-up questions. He didn’t know where to begin.

  Stutzman indicated that gay sex might have been involved in the crew member’s murder, though he did not say if the man and he were lovers. He also said that he had been questioned by the police and singled out as a suspect, when, in fact, he’d had nothing to do with the murder. “But I know who the killer is,” he repeated.

  Stutzman later said that the victim had been working for him and that he was keeping his money in a savings account so that his ex-wife couldn’t get her hands on it. He added that one night a friend had gone into Stutzman’s house and been met by cops with drawn guns. The friend had been very scared when he called Eli.

  It was as if Eli Stutzman were the writer, producer, and director of a bad television show, with Truitt the captive audience.

  Stutzman said his attorney had advised him to lay low for a while until the smoke cleared back in Texas. Truitt figured Eli should have turned himself in to the police, especially if he was innocent. I have a killer in the house, he thought.

  “Eli had changed. Something about his eyes wasn’t the same—there was a coldness, a distance. His eyes were mad looking,” Truitt later said.

  Stutzman also looked sick. Red blotches mottled his body. He complained that the rash was itchy, even painful. At first, Truitt thought it was scabies, but Stutzman said it couldn’t be. Truitt took him to his doctor.

  Later, when Truitt snooped around Stutzman’s things, he discovered that the medication Stutzman had been prescribed was indeed for scabies.

  Several times through the summer, Truitt went down to the farm to call a friend of his in Newcomerstown, Ohio. Truitt was convinced that Stutzman was a killer, and the friend concurred. The word among the Amish was that Sam Miller had stumbled on a murder in Texas.

  Truitt told his friend that Eli Stutzman had said the killer was now in Ohio, and that he was headed there to find him. The prospect was not a good one.

  “Whatever you do,” the man told Truitt, “keep him away from here. I don’t want to run into him in Newcomers-town.”

  Truitt said he would do his best. The problem was, he wanted Stutzman to leave Indiana—even the fugitive’s phone calls were getting to him.

  Once, when he answered the phone, the caller, a woman, asked for “Junior.”

  “There’s no Junior here—” Truitt began, but Stutzman cut in.

  “Oh, that call’s for me. I’m Junior,” he said, taking the phone.

  That was news to Truitt, who had never known anyone to call Stutzman by that nickname. Stutzman offered no explanation, and Truitt didn’t want to know about it anyway. He felt as if he already knew too much.

  “I felt that at any moment the police were going to bust in and cause a scene. It was the last thing I needed,” he later said.

  Another caller, this time a man, asked for “Junior.” Stutzman was weeding the garden when Truitt answered the call.

  “Look,” Truitt told the man, “this guy’s name is not Junior. He’s wanted for murder, and if you are looking for a time and place to meet him I suggest you give it up.”

  The caller was surprised, but didn’t believe Truitt.

  “I still want to talk to him.”

  Truitt couldn’t believe it. What is with these people anyway?

  Truitt noticed that Stutzman always knew when the mail carrier was coming and that many times there were things for him; more often, he had mail that needed to be sent out.

  He must be looking to meet more tricks, Truitt thought.

  One time Stutzman had Truitt drive him over to the Western Union office in Auburn, Indiana, to pick up some money he’d had wired to him.

  “It’s money from the ranch in Colorado,” Stutzman said.

  The news about the murder in Texas reached the Gingeriches in the Beaverton, Michigan, settlement. They wrote to Stutzman the first week in July, but their letter was returned. The Gingeriches were beside themselves with concern for Danny, so on August 21, 1985, Amos wrote to the Austin Police Department.

  . . . we would very much like to come in contact with our grandson Danny which is Eli’s son. We hear rumors that Eli is in trouble with the law . . .

  A week later, Sergeant Al Herson of the Austin Police Department’s missing persons section sent back the following reply:

  It is true your son-in-law is in some trouble with the law. Your grandson is with his father and I am not able to divulge his whereabouts at this time. He is no longer in the state of Texas. My information indicates Danny is okay and he is with his father . . .

  Herson was technically correct that he couldn’t divulge Stutzman’s whereabouts due to privacy laws. In fact, however, no one in either Austin or Travis County law enforcement knew where Eli Stutzman was—they had lost track of him in July.

  Meanwhile, Stutzman had taken a break from Truitt’s farm, a great relief to the Indiana man, and gone into Ohio, where he signed up fo
r a new driver’s license and fabricated a new middle initial and birth date.

  Stutzman returned to Aztec, with his scabies cleared up, a new social security card, a new name. A new man. Yet he still had the same old problem—Danny. He planned to leave the boy in Wyoming until he had gotten back on his feet again and put Pritchett’s murder behind him once and for all.

  Eli moved into the trailer house on Chuck Freeman’s six-hundred-acre ranch near Dutchman’s Hill, in Aztec, New Mexico. He worked on the so-called Breakaday Ranch—“Either we start at the break of day or we break something everyday”—for five dollars an hour, painting, pouring cement, and putting up rails.

  Whenever he called Danny, it was from the back bedroom. On September 7, two days before Danny turned nine, he spoke with someone at the Barlows’ number for thirty-one minutes.

  The next day, Stutzman dispatched a letter to the Gingeriches. He and Danny, he said, had returned from a two-month vacation—having moved back to New Mexico on June 15. He claimed that Danny had spent July and August in a children’s summer camp—“He chose to go to this camp instead of traveling.”

  The truth was that Danny had been abandoned by his father.

  Danny said he enjoys school here more than in Texas. School started Sept. 3. He is getting tall, hard to keep in clothes. He had his 9th birthday yesterday.

  In desperation Amos Gingerich wrote to the Austin police again. Would they help find Danny now?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Just before Halloween, Dean Barlow and another man—a live-in friend, as he later described the man to police—dropped Danny off at Breakaday Ranch on the way to the American Poultry Show in Albuquerque. Barlow had packed the boy’s belongings in a box, believing the stay was going to be permanent.

  Stutzman, naturally, had other plans.

  Danny played on the farm, and Stutzman had him take pictures of him for his ads, including a shot of his Levi’s-clad backside. It wasn’t likely that taking such a photo mattered much to the boy. Neither was it likely that the boy didn’t know why his father wanted a “butt shot.” By 9 years of age, Danny had seen it all. Those who saw him a month before his death felt that the boy was showing signs of emotional wear and tear. Danny, according to the ranch foreman, Byron Larson, was “in his own little world.”