Abandoned Prayers

by Gregg Olsen

  Amos Gingerich, for one, felt that Danny was dead. But he knew it hadn’t been a car wreck.

  “Sometimes we feel that maybe Danny got killed some other way,” he wrote back to the Barlows.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  December 1, 1987

  Once Gary Young and Jack Wyant had a name, the information flow became a deluge. They learned that Stutzman had two middle initials and two social security numbers. His wife had died in a fire in 1977. He had moved to Colorado in 1982 and finally on to Texas, where his roommate had been shot and dumped in a rural ditch in 1985.

  Dumped in a ditch? The scenario was familiar. And, even though the autopsies and pathologists’ reports hadn’t fixed a cause of death, the case was still a murder as far as the Nebraskan investigators were concerned.

  It had to be. Everything about the case, and the suspect, suggested foul play.

  Young requested school photos and records from the elementary school Danny had attended, after the Barlows did some digging and said they doubted they had anything with the boy’s fingerprints still on it. Later, they sent a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit, which Danny had read.

  Young spoke with Stutzman’s Mennonite neighbor Abner Petersheim again, this time seeking information on the whereabouts of Danny Stutzman’s grandparents. Lehman referred the sheriff to David Yoder, the well-traveled Amishman who had gone out to Lyman with Amos Gingerich.

  Yoder told him about the letter Stutzman had sent his in-laws with the story of the fatal car accident. He gave Young the phone number of an Englischer near the Gingerich’s Michigan farm. Later that same day, Gingerich called Young, telling him that Stutzman was supposedly in England working at a stable.

  “His parents have a letter from there,” Gingerich said.

  Holmes County, Ohio, sheriff’s investigators went to Welty Road and got a copy of the letter:

  11-15-87

  Dear Mother,

  Greetings from above, in His name. How are you all? I am fine. Much to be thankful for. I received your letter 2 weeks ago, by way of N. M. I guess that’s why it took so long. The weather is cool & foggie here this time of year, earlier it was much nicer.

  I’m keep’in busy with my work. And am working with horses, which I spend a lot of time on.

  Wish you all well, in good health & all. Would be sorry to hear other wise.

  So long for now.

  Eli

  The envelope carried a foreign stamp, but was without a postmark. The return address was 92 A North End Road, Kensington West, London W, 14, England. On the envelope Stutzman repeated the date, 11-27-87.

  Later, when Wyant gave the address to Interpol, the news that came back was of no help—there wasn’t any such address in England.

  The fact that it hadn’t been postmarked was also checked out. Postal authorities conceded some stamps slip through the system without being canceled. On the other hand, it was possible that Stutzman—or someone helping him—had put that letter in Eli H. Stutzman’s mailbox as a red herring.

  As more was uncovered about Stutzman, such a subterfuge seemed increasingly likely.

  Included inside a package from Danny Stutzman’s elementary school were his last school portrait and his report card envelopes. The envelopes were packaged for the crime lab in Lincoln. Young was disheartened—the report cards themselves were missing. They would have been an even better source of fingerprints.

  From his office in Thayer County, Young dispatched a letter to Jack Wyant.

  Take a good look at the largest photo. Compare it with the morgue photo. You will see a couple larger freckles in the same places on both photos. Also the shape of the ear is the same. I am sure we have a name for our December ’85 victim.

  Margie Barlow called Sheriff Young with further confirmation. The Barlow family was certain that the morgue photo was Danny.

  Through the La Plata County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office, Young got hold of the man who had sold Stutzman and Palmer the ranch. Young learned that Stutzman couldn’t make the payments after he and Palmer dissolved their partnership. The man said he had foreclosed on Stutzman in November 1984, but had been ordered to pay the former Amishman $7,500. He had held off on payments until June 1987.

  June through November the man had mailed monthly checks to 400 Toronto Road, Azle, Texas. Oddly, four of the checks appeared to have been endorsed by someone other than Stutzman.

  In a letter postmarked Dallas, in September, Stutzman had written saying that money was tight and that he had needed cash earlier. The September check endorsement was one of the only two matching Stutzman’s signature.

  • • •

  Diane Swartzentruber sat straight up in bed as a sketchy report came over the 11:00 P.M. TV news.

  “They flashed across the screen that a Wayne County man was being sought in connection with his son’s death—they didn’t say his name. I got goose bumps on me. It was so weird,” she said later.

  “It’s Eli. It’s Eli,” she cried, running from the bedroom and into the kitchen, and spinning around the table. “I just know he killed his son. I know it.”

  Diane Swartzentruber wasn’t about to let Stutzman get away with anything. She had suspected him of killing his wife, of abusing his child—her mind flashed on the pornography she had found in Danny’s bedroom. She had even heard the story of the murder in Texas. She got on the phone and began calling and calling. She called everyone she thought might help.

  The next day, she called Abe Stutzman, who told her that he had read the Reader’s Digest article three times.

  “There was something about it,” he told her.

  Diane also called Eli Byler, who now farmed land near Grand Rapids, Michigan, to see what he knew. The last Byler had heard, Stutzman was somewhere in Texas.

  “I thought by getting a hold of Eli Byler that I could call the police and say, ‘Look for the sucker here,’ ” she later said.

  She also called Gary Young, after picking up his name from the Digest piece. She told him that she’d call back if she found out anything more about Stutzman.

  She dialed the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and left a message that she wanted to talk about Eli Stutzman.

  It was Tim Brown, who was working the case in conjunction with the Nebraskans, who returned her call.

  “I’m not going to talk with you. I know what you are—you’re a faggot,” she said, her voice rising through angry and tightened lips. “I want to speak with Sheriff Alexander.”

  Loran Alexander returned her call later that day. Swartzentruber was still angry, and she let the sheriff know it.

  “What’s the deal here? Brown is probably his boyfriend, and you’re letting him run the investigation? What kind of deal is this? First the coroner and now this?”

  The sheriff calmly assured her that Tim Brown was a good cop and doing a good job.

  Headlines in Ohio newspapers dredged up more memories of Ida Stutzman and the fire. Wayne County Coroner J. T. Questel told a Canton reporter, “I didn’t really like the way it looked, though there was no evidence of anything. There was an awful lot we never did uncover.”

  Diane Swartzentruber called Questel and gave him a blast of her anger.

  “What’s with these people?” she later asked. “They believed this liar?”

  December 9, 1987

  Azle, Texas, is the kind of place where realtors take out classified ads and hit heavy and hard on the words Country Livin’. It’s the kind of place where cowboys drive pickup trucks from neat split-levels on the edge of town to jobs in Fort Worth.

  The city’s stationery features the motto: “Small enough to welcome you, large enough to serve you.” Sure, more outsiders came every week, but with them came new friends and new businesses. But if being neighborly wasn’t on a transplant’s mind, Azle would be a good place to get lost.

  No doubt Eli Stutzman thought so.

  Police Chief Ted Garber had come to Azle after twenty years in law enforcement with the department in Garl
and, Texas, most recently heading the SWAT team. He had arrived a no-nonsense professional with a sense of humor and a slight touch of gray to his hair. After a couple of years in Azle, he had kept his humor, but his combed-back hair had turned the color of ash.

  When he came to Azle he had had to “kick some butt” and make a few changes. First, naturally, was a good house-cleaning of the dead weight. He updated the criminal investigation division and developed an emergency response team.

  Garber listened with interest to Gary Young when he called with the story of the boy left dead on Christmas Eve. Young was looking for Eli Stutzman in connection with the possible homicide and child-abuse case. Garber could hear the obvious personal concern and emotion in Young’s voice.

  Ted Garber wanted to catch this character Stutzman.

  Some slob who dumps his kid off in a ditch is no class-C misdemeanor, no run-a-red-light kind of person, he thought. This son of a bitch needs to be caught.

  A check with his records clerk turned up two Stutzman entries—one an Eli E. Stutzman, the other, Eli C. Stutzman. There were also different dates of birth. One incident involved a burglary in October, the other a stolen vehicle in November.

  Records indicated a VCR, 20 videotapes, an answering machine, and a gold “Four Corners Rodeo” belt buckle had been stolen on October 16. Stutzman’s truck had been recovered two days after it was stolen in November.

  Garber considered simply passing the information on to an investigator, but he was sufficiently interested to pursue the case and play detective on his own.

  He went out to the rundown house at the Toronto address but found no one home. He checked with neighbors, and no one seemed to know the man. Owen Barker, Stutzman’s former landlord, did not know exactly where Stutzman had moved. Barker thought Stutzman might be in Dallas doing some construction work. There was a possibility that he was staying in the Cedar Springs area of Dallas.

  Cedar Springs. Garber knew it as a faggot hangout outside of the Metroplex. Leather and lace. Whips and chains. Eli Stutzman hung out with a crowd Garber knew little of, beyond the standard, negative stereotypes.

  He really didn’t care to know more about those kind of people anyway.

  Garber reported back to Young, telling him that Stutzman was gone and that no one knew where he was. Young didn’t let it sit; he told Garber that he and Jack Wyant were on their way to Azle. Nobody back in Thayer County wanted the story to end with another cold trail.

  Garber put the word out that he was looking for a light-blue Ford pickup with Texas plates, and a man named Eli Stutzman, known to his friends as “Junior.”

  On December 11, a warrant for Stutzman’s arrest was finally issued. Officially, the charge was felony child abuse, though the Nebraskans knew that they had to prove the abuse happened in their state in order for the charge to stick. . . .

  Knowingly or intentionally cause or permit Daniel E. Stutzman, a minor child, to be placed in a position that endangers his life or health or deprived of necessary food, clothing, shelter or care.

  The next day, Wyant and Young were in Azle, Texas, calling on Owen Barker. Barker had told Ted Garber he expected Stutzman back that weekend. He was even holding mail for him, including a letter from New Mexico.

  At six feet three inches and three hundred pounds, Owen Barker was an immense man with gray eyes and blond hair who worked as a comptroller for a Fort Worth company. Wyant and Young sat in the man’s crowded and dumpy house on Toronto Road.

  Cats were everywhere.

  Wyant took the lead in the interrogation. Barker said he had met Stutzman when they became pen pals through The Advocate. They had met for the first time in person when Stutzman and Danny had come down for a horse show in Fort Worth.

  Barker was unsure whether it was February 1978 or 1979.

  Stutzman and his boy had stayed in Azle for three or four days, and left when Stutzman got off the phone with news that his grandfather was ill and that he would have to leave right away.

  “When did you next hear from Eli?” Wyant asked.

  Barker again was uncertain, but thought it had been February 1986 when Stutzman called asking if Barker still remembered him and could he come visit.

  Barker had told him to come on down.

  Stutzman had arrived driving a gray Gremlin with New Mexico plates. He said that his car had broken down and that he had borrowed the Gremlin. Stutzman claimed that Danny was still in the care of the Barlows, in Wyoming.

  “Why isn’t your son with you?” Barker had asked.

  “Danny’s fair-skinned and blond and the other kids—Mexicans and Indians—tease him.”

  “Why didn’t you bring him down here?” Barker recalled asking Stutzman.

  “He likes it in Wyoming with the Barlows and their children. I’m going to get him later, when I’m settled in,” Stutzman said.

  In mid-June 1986, Barker and some friends made plans for a vacation to Guadalupe. Barker said he pressed Stutzman to have Danny come down to join them on the trip.

  “It was around Father’s Day,” he recalled.

  Barker stated that he went outside for five minutes or so after he talked to Stutzman about bringing the boy; when he returned, Stutzman was on the phone.

  “I’ve got Danny here,” Stutzman said, handing the phone to Barker.

  “Danny, this is Owen. You looking forward to coming down here to go to Guadalupe?”

  The answer from a child was, “Fine.”

  “I hope you’ll enjoy Texas,” Barker said.

  “Okay,” said the boy.

  “Are you sure it was Danny Stutzman?” Wyant asked.

  “I hadn’t talked with Danny since 1979. But it sounded like a 9-year-old boy,” Barker said.

  Neither Wyant nor Young knew what to make of Barker’s statement. He couldn’t have been talking to Danny Stutzman, who had died six months before. But who was the little boy pretending to be Stutzman’s son? What kind of person would put someone up to something like that?

  But there was more.

  Barker said that the day before Danny was to fly down to Texas, Stutzman called. “Danny was involved in a traffic accident on his way to the airport,” he said. “He’s in the hospital. You go on the trip without me, I’m driving up to Salt Lake City.”

  “Later, Eli called me and said he was at the hospital and it had taken him sixteen hours to get there,” Barker told the Nebraskans.

  Stutzman told Barker that Danny was conscious, though he had suffered head injuries.

  Barker said he went ahead on the four-day trip. When he returned to his house on June 24, he was surprised to find Eli Stutzman inside.

  “How’s Danny?”

  “He died,” Stutzman said.

  “You’re kidding!”

  Stutzman got mad and left. Still Barker wondered how it, everything, including a funeral, could have happened so fast.

  Barker gave the investigators a couple of addresses that might help them find Stutzman. One was a bar called Cowboy City, the other a place in south Dallas—Stutzman had moved there on November 30. That was about the date Little Boy Blue’s identity was being talked about all over Wayne County, Ohio.

  An interview with the other family planning the trip to Guadalupe backed up Barker’s story. So did phone records. No calls had been made to Wyoming during the time when Stutzman said Danny had died in the car wreck.

  It left the Nebraskans to wonder who had helped Stutzman bluff Owen Barker with “Danny’s” call?

  Young and Wyant drove around the Metroplex looking for Stutzman. The addresses Barker had given turned up nothing. The trip was a waste.

  “We decided it was a fruitless venture . . . money not well spent and all this bullshit; we decided to come back,” Wyant later recalled.

  During the long drive back to Nebraska, Wyant and Young pulled over to watch what they thought were flying saucers. It turned out to be a Soviet satellite that had come apart, leaving a shower of lights and debris. Both men were discourag
ed. They had come so close to catching Stutzman, who could be anywhere now.

  After Stutzman had been named as the man who had dumped his son in a ditch, the Amish pipeline bubbled with new and old rumors. Sometimes the grapevine seemed wild and ridiculously inaccurate; often it was dappled with truth.

  “Eli told people he saw a dove just before his wife died.”

  Some Amish, particularly the Old Order groups, put faith in folktales of the visiting bird as a messenger of death.

  “As a schoolboy, Eli used to twist the heads of kittens and cats until they choked to death.”

  Wasn’t it Stutzman who had told people when he first left the Amish that he had been the victim of a terrible prank—a skinned cat hanging in his buggy?

  “He started the fire at Keim’s, just like he did the one that killed his wife.”

  Mose Keim had never thought so.

  “Eli wrote a letter to his mother telling her it was true that he was homosexual. He wrote that he was closer to God than he ever had been.”

  Canton Repository newspaper reporter Dennis Webb got into the Stutzman story as a chance to work on something of national interest, away from the mundane stories he wrote for a county bureau. He never expected to become part of the story. He had been chasing down leads since the first word from Nebraska came that Little Boy Blue was Danny Stutzman, a former Amishboy from Dalton.

  On December 12, he left a message for Stutzman on the answering machine belonging to his boss in Dallas.

  A soft-spoken man called Webb’s house asking if “David Summers” was there.

  Joyce Webb answered the call and told the caller he had the wrong number.

  A short period later the phone rang again.

  “Is Dennis Webb there? This is David Summers.”

  The voice belonged to the same person on both calls—halting, with a definite trace of an Amish accent.

  The man told Dennis Webb that he understood the reporter was looking for Eli Stutzman, and asked him why.

  Webb filled him in on the Little Boy Blue story.

  “Eli’s out of the country,” the man insisted. “He’s in England now.”

  Webb didn’t know what to make of the caller, first asking for David Summers, then saying he was David Summers.