Abandoned Prayers

by Gregg Olsen

  “I think it was Eli Stutzman that I talked with,” he later said.

  Webb called Ted Garber, and later Jack Wyant, with the information.

  Azle police chief Garber had a strange call of his own to contend with nine o’clock one Sunday night, when an informant called his office saying he, too, had spoken with a David Summers. He told the police chief that Eli Stutzman was using the Summers’ name and was now hiding out up north somewhere in the county. Stutzman’s P.O. box number was 405.

  “Look for his pickup,” the caller said.

  Garber asked for more specifics, but either the man didn’t know or flat refused to tell. As little information as it was, Garber decided to drive up Highway 730 to have a look around.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was cold, windy, and rainy—an ugly combination just about anywhere, but somehow worse in nighttime Azle. Ted Garber, who by now could understand Gary Young’s obsession with Eli Stutzman, figured he was crazy to be out combing the county for a phantom pickup. He smoked and flashed a spotlight on mailboxes and suspicious vehicles.

  Turning off the paved road onto a dirt and gravel road, a street sign grabbed his attention: “Summer’s Circle.” Suddenly he knew.

  Stutzman is using the street name.

  At the end of a driveway joining a one-lane road through a trailer park shrouded in manzanita and live oak was Stutzman’s pickup, parked in front of a trailer house. Garber shut off his headlights and verified that the plates were Stutzman’s.

  It was around midnight when he radioed the office to get some backup. Garber decided it would be best to stake out the place all night and arrest Stutzman in the morning. The wooded area made a nighttime arrest risky. It would be too easy for Stutzman to bolt out the back door and into the cover of the trees.

  Officer John Lyons, a 25-year-old redhead with the deliberate walk of a military officer, came out to mark time with the chief until daylight. They took turns catching a bit of sleep, and Garber had Lyons make a coffee run down 730 to an all-night store.

  In the meantime, he had the department run a crisscross check on the mailbox number in an effort to come up with a telephone number. They turned up a phone number belonging to Elvy Kenyon. A check on Kenyon’s driver’s license and prior arrests showed that he had been in the Azle jail two times on alcohol-related offenses.

  Monday, December 14, 1987

  Morning brought a new perspective to the trailer court. Stubborn, sodden oak leaves stuck on branches. The thick mesh of trees made Garber glad it was winter—in spring the olive-green-painted, single-wide trailer would barely be visible from the road. A Japanese lantern and a cherub kneeling in a birdbath decorated the front yard, which was enclosed by a chain-link fence.

  It had been a good decision to wait. At the very least, Garber figured that if Stutzman ran, they could corral him in the yard.

  At 7:00 A.M., Garber called for the day shift to come out to the trailer park to assist with the bust of a child killer. With all of the interest in this case, Ted Garber wasn’t about to risk being known as the cop who let the father of Little Boy Blue escape.

  At 7:45 A.M., officers encircled the mobile home, and a dispatcher called Kenyon’s telephone number to let the occupants know that the trailer house was surrounded and to tell them to come out one by one with their hands on their heads. Garber knew this would accomplish one thing for certain. He would learn their attitude fast.

  “Either they’d come out and say ‘Okay,’ or they’d refuse and say ‘To hell with you, come on and get us,’ ” he later said.

  Elvy Kenyon told the dispatcher that there were three men inside and that they had been sleeping.

  “We need to get dressed first,” Kenyon said.

  When the front door swung open, three disheveled men stepped outside into the morning drizzle. The second one out was Stutzman. To Garber, Stutzman looked small, almost frail—hardly a menacing child killer—but he knew looks mean nothing. Stutzman wore Levi’s and a Western, snap-pocket, flannel shirt. His hair was cropped short and his face, clean shaven. Garber recognized him from the picture Gary Young had sent—the one taken by Dean Barlow in front of his Christmas tree just before Danny died.

  Garber fixed his eyes on Stutzman and displayed a teletyped warrant for Felony IV Child Abuse.

  If Stutzman had just been asleep, he woke up fast.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that. Those charges aren’t true,” he said.

  Garber turned to Kenyon. “I don’t know what kind of charges will be brought against you,” he said coolly.

  Kenyon’s ruddy face went white.

  “I will want to talk with you later. Don’t you run off now, Elvy Kenyon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Garber asked if Kenyon had ever heard of harboring a fugitive.

  Kenyon looked sick. “Yes, sir.”

  Stutzman’s pickup was impounded, searched, and taken to Wood’s Auto Pound in Azle. It was clean.

  Nothing unusual was found on Eli Stutzman. In fact, what wasn’t on him was remarkable. His wallet held no photograph of Danny, no reminder of his lost son. Inside the wallet, Garber found Stutzman’s phony social security card; his attempt to disguise his handwriting was obvious—it looked as though Stutzman had used his left hand to sign his name. In a ridiculous addition, he had written his new middle initial—“C”—after he had signed his name. It looked like an afterthought.

  He did a little better with the signature on the Ohio driver’s license, which had been issued on August 30, 1985. The signature still looked wrong. A plastic promotional card for a country-music station had been issued in the name of Junior Stutzman.

  A business card belonging to a man who bought snakes raised Garber’s eyebrow. He also found a Fort Worth doctor’s business card. Later, he called the number, and the doctor said he had been treating Stutzman for a head injury. In addition, Stutzman had tested HIV positive.

  “I ain’t going to fuck in no sock,” Stutzman had told Kenny Hankins in New Mexico.

  Garber phoned Young with the news that Stutzman was now in custody. “Young was wound up real tight,” Garber later said.

  “Now we can put the case together and get this all resolved,” Young said. Further, a fingerprint examiner at the state patrol’s crime lab in Lincoln had confirmed what everyone knew: A palm print on the documents sent from Wyoming matched Little Boy Blue’s.

  Young asked Garber to interview Stutzman.

  “He’ll probably have an attorney by the time he gets up here,” he said.

  Garber was glad to comply. Stutzman was a monster, a man who had dumped his kid on the side of the road like yesterday’s trash. Garber wanted to be certain that he didn’t do anything that could hurt Nebraska’s case. The interview would have to be totally by the book.

  There were several times in the five hours that followed when Garber wished he could break a few rules—and maybe a few bones.

  Stutzman was subdued, a little mousy even. Maybe even feminine, Garber thought, though he couldn’t be sure if it was a prejudice against homosexuals that was working on him or the glaring indications of a stereotype. He had to be careful. He didn’t want to focus on the subject’s sexuality and have him get pissed off and freeze up during the interview. He led the suspect into the small interrogation room—a room Garber half-hoped the suspect would think “reeked of rubber hose and pipes.”

  The department called the room “the interview room” when referring to it to outsiders. It sounded nicer, friendlier. Stutzman and Garber sat in straight-backed chairs, across a small, circular table.

  After a few awkward moments, Stutzman agreed to talk, but only to Ted Garber. At 10 A.M., Ted Garber became the first law-enforcement officer to talk with Stutzman since Jerry Wiggins of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office had taken his statement regarding Glen Pritchett’s murder in 1985.

  Garber didn’t know it then, but he would also be the last police officer to talk to Stutzman without the suspect
protected by the shield of a lawyer.

  Later, in a report, Garber noted: “Mr. Stutzman appeared very distant and unemotional.”

  Stutzman told Garber that he would talk about his son’s death on the condition that only Sheriff Young would hear the information. He did not want any reporters to get wind of his statement. He did not want publicity of any kind—good or bad.

  Garber agreed. He started by asking about the long, jagged scar on Stutzman’s forehead, just below his hairline. Stutzman said he had been hurt and hospitalized when a car he was working on fell on him.

  Easing into the interview, the police chief told Stutzman that he was from New York and that his family had on occasion traveled to the Amish community in Pennsylvania. He asked question after question about the horse-drawn buggies, the beards, the horse-pulled farm equipment. Stutzman’s responses were brief, but not to the point of being curt. He seemed to hold some esteem for the “downto-earth, basic way of life” the Amish lived.

  Stutzman told Garber the scenario of Ida’s death, but the police chief didn’t buy it. The lightning, the fire at midnight, the milk pails. It was all there, but it didn’t make sense to Garber.

  “Eli, you think I’m stupid.”

  Stutzman didn’t react.

  “Eli, do I look stupid to you? I’m not really stupid. I can tell when you’re telling stories.”

  Stutzman half shrugged, but didn’t say anything.

  Garber continued. “You’re telling me your wife went into a burning barn, and then when she came out she went back in all the way around to the other side of the barn. Why didn’t she go in the same door she came out of? She was pregnant—why did she go in anyway?

  “You killed her. She was a burden to you.”

  The statement jolted Stutzman, and he looked at the ceiling. Garber figured he was trying to buy time to come up with an excuse or a lie.

  “I’m telling you the truth. This is your idea and this is mine. And I was there.”

  After his wife died, Stutzman told Garber, he had lost interest in the Amish way of life and left the Order.

  Garber turned his attention to the Pritchett murder case.

  “Are you a queer?” he asked.

  Stutzman seemed surprised at the question.

  “What has that got to do with anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Eli. Just curious.”

  “Well, because I suck a dick every once in a while makes me a queer, then I guess I am.”

  Garber, who by his own admission is not exactly a gay-rights advocate, half smiled at Stutzman. “I guess you are, Eli. Don’t you touch me!”

  Stutzman was visibly angry and defensive. “What’s wrong with being gay?”

  “Nothing. It’s perfectly normal,” Garber said, his sarcasm subtle but unmistakable.

  The interview went on. Stutzman said that in 1984 he and Danny had lived with Pritchett in a house in Austin. One night something terrible happened.

  “Me and Danny were in bed, and I heard several people talking loudly in the front room. I was afraid to get up, so me and Danny stayed in bed. I heard a gunshot, and after a while, when things got quiet, I went into the front room and found everyone had left.”

  “Who was in the living room arguing that night?” Garber asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Stutzman’s delivery remained slow and quiet. He indicated that he and Danny had stayed in bed until morning, before getting up to see what had happened.

  “Austin police began questioning me about this situation because my gun was used,” he said.

  “Why did you leave Austin shortly after the murder of your friend if you have nothing to hide?” Garber asked.

  Stutzman thought for a moment. “That’s a very good question.”

  Next was Danny’s story. Garber felt that Stutzman had teetered on the edge of a confession throughout the interview. This was a chance to clear up a mystery, and it wasn’t lost on him. He wished he could grab the guy by the throat and rough him up a little, like they did in the “good old days of police work”—just enough of a shaking to loosen Stutzman’s tongue about the boy’s death.

  Maybe he could shake the lies right out of the man’s throat.

  After leaving Austin, Stutzman said that he and Danny stayed with some friends in the Azle–Fort Worth area. He would not say who the friends were. Danny, Stutzman said, was dropped off in Wyoming with some foster parents in July 1985.

  In December 1985, Stutzman said he returned to Wyoming to pick up Danny for a cross-country trip to Ohio for the Christmas holidays.

  “I still felt that Stutzman was not telling the truth on many pertinent points and that he was being very evasive. As we began talking about his son, Stutzman displayed a very indifferent attitude about his son and showed little, if any, emotion,” Garber later wrote.

  Stutzman explained that Danny was sick when he picked him up at the home of Dean and Margie Barlow. Stutzman was unclear, however, about exactly what had ailed the boy. Medication was provided by the Barlows.

  “Danny seemed to get worse as we traveled. He would not eat very much.”

  “Why didn’t you take him to a doctor?” Garber asked.

  “I thought the boy would get better. He was quiet, sleeping on some luggage, wrapped in a blanket in the back.”

  Stutzman added that he and Danny stopped at a truck-stop near Salina, Kansas, to eat. Danny went inside, but did not eat much. When they came back to the car, Stutzman said, he changed Danny into a pair of blue pajamas. The boy got into the back seat of the AMC Gremlin and wrapped a blanket around himself.

  “As we were driving along the boy seemed to be sleeping. I would talk to the boy but he would not answer. I thought he was sleeping.”

  Stutzman was unable to pinpoint the exact time sequence, but sometime later he stopped the car to see how Danny was doing. He said he noticed that Danny had slid off the luggage and that his head had become wedged between the luggage and the side of the car. A blanket was wrapped around the child’s head. As he shifted the boy’s body, he noticed that his son’s eyes had rolled back.

  Stutzman’s story and his emotionless delivery were too much for Garber. He slammed his open hand on the table and Stutzman jumped. “Yeah. You’re the son of a bitch that put the blanket around his face and neck!”

  Garber wanted to take the man apart.

  Stutzman, now nervous, shook his head. “I freaked out,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  He lifted Danny back on top of the luggage and drove on.

  “Was Danny alive at that point?” Garber asked.

  “I don’t know. Could have been. I’ve often wondered if he was.”

  Garber grew more frustrated. Stutzman’s response indicated to him that if Stutzman had been unsure whether the boy was dead or alive, then surely his intent had been to kill Danny by dumping him in that frozen field.

  “Why didn’t you seek medical help?”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I freaked out,” he reiterated.

  Maybe he couldn’t kill the boy outright. Maybe he tried to kill the boy in increments. Maybe the only way he could kill his boy was gently. He could have left it up to the frozen air to finish a job he’d started somewhere between Wyoming and Nebraska. Garber figured Stutzman must have known the boy would be dead in thirty minutes in those frigid conditions.

  The police chief felt that Stutzman’s defenses might be tenuous. He wanted an emotional reaction. He could see Stutzman’s eyes clearing as he tried to focus and regroup. Garber thought he was trying to remember a story he had made up.

  “Did you kill your son?”

  For the first time, Stutzman showed some emotion. Tears welled in his eyes. It was the first time Garber saw that the man might have actually cared for his child.

  “No, the boy was sick.”

  “Did you use the blanket to smother the boy?”

  “No.”

  Stutzman fought for composure.

  “Loo
k at me!” Garber demanded. “Did you kill your son?”

  Tears pushed at Stutzman’s eyelids. “No. No, the boy was sick.”

  Stutzman said he drove for a long time, and, after he had pulled himself together, he decided to leave Danny, as he put it a moment later, “where God could find him.” Stutzman described how he turned off a highway onto a side road and decided to leave his son.

  Garber wanted details.

  “I drove a ways, pulled over, and got Danny out from the back seat. I took him off to the side near a ditch, laid him down, and covered him with snow. I would have buried him, but I didn’t have anything to dig with. I wanted to leave him where God could find him.”

  This was too much. Garber wanted to reach across the table and smack Stutzman. Better yet, he wanted to ram him into the wall. But the good old days were gone. Instead, he pushed on and asked another question.

  “Was Danny alive when you threw him outside into that ditch?”

  Stutzman tensed. “I didn’t throw him. I laid him there.”

  “Sure, Eli. Was he alive when you laid him there?”

  Stutzman paused. “That’s a very good question. I don’t think so, but he could have been.”

  He said he continued on to Ohio, where he lied to relatives about Danny’s whereabouts. He also admitted he had lied when he later told people the boy had died in a car accident. None of that, of course, would be news to Gary Young.

  “Why did you lie about Danny’s death?” Garber asked.

  Stutzman repeated himself. “That’s a very good question.”

  “After you left Ohio, where did you go?”

  “Back to Texas.”

  “Did you go back to Nebraska to the spot where you left Danny?”

  “Yes,” Stutzman said, his eyes now drying. “I went there to see if Danny was still there. He wasn’t, so I figured someone had found him.”

  Garber was beat from twenty-four hours without sleep, and Stutzman didn’t feel too good himself. He’d had too much coffee and too many cigarettes. Five hours had passed since they’d sat down in the little interrogation room. Garber wrapped up the interview.