Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, And Page 5

  Later, Stutzman was working as a hired hand on a nearby farm when officers of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department took him into custody.

  “Because of that little button, my father told the sheriff I was crazy,” he said.

  Byler was disgusted, yet he understood. Stutzman’s father was a preacher who had to set the standards for the community and uphold the rules of Amish life. But turning his son in to the sheriff and claiming he was crazy was outrageous and extreme—even cruel. Why was it better to say that his son was insane than to have the others in the church district think his boy’s behavior was a reflection on his leadership at home?

  Ida Gingerich continued to write to Stutzman after he moved in with the Chupps. She loved Eli and wanted him to see that he was wrong and should come back to her and the Amish.

  Susan Stutzman tried to win her son back with Amish baked goods, but it was no use.

  Stutzman was examined for the draft on January 22, 1973, and cleared for conscientious-objector classification the following day. To fulfill his obligation to the government—something many Amishmen refused—Stutzman applied for a job as an orderly at Massillon City Hospital in Stark County.

  “He told us he didn’t look forward to working at the hospital, he preferred farm work,” Leroy Chupp later said.

  On Valentine’s Day, 1973, Stutzman told the Chupps he planned to ask Ruth Zook, whom he had been dating off and on since he left the Swartzentrubers, to marry him. Zook was a slightly overweight Amish girl who seemed to find her salvation in the bed of different Amish boys, instead of church. She was gossiped about by everyone, though the rumors were outrageous and not necessarily true.

  “She once had twenty-one men in one night,” John Yoder recalled, although he wasn’t sure where he had heard it—from Zook or one of the twenty-one men.

  A month later, Stutzman said Zook had turned him down, but he continued to date her. In April, Stutzman said he was going on a date with the ward secretary at the hospital.

  “We wondered if he had gotten over Ruth Zook so quickly,” Liz Chupp said.

  Stutzman started working the 3:00–11:00 P.M. shift at the hospital. When he came home late, he said it was because he’d had to assist a patient. One of many Amish doing CO work, Stutzman made friends with several young Englischers. At the hospital, few could name a harder worker or a better-liked young man than Eli Stutzman. In spite of his simple education, hospital friends felt he held his own. He was especially good with patients who needed some extra care and consolation.

  At the same time, Stutzman broadened his interests. In the spring and summer he attended Cleveland Indians baseball games, visited Sea World, saw the horses race at North-field, and went to a Charley Pride concert.

  He also went out at night regularly. Usually, he said he had a date with Zook.

  Rebecca Yost, a Mennonite girl, thought Stutzman was handsome; he had the deepest blue eyes she’d ever seen. He seemed so sure of himself, so full of fun. Once at a party, he put a napkin on top of his head, like a woman’s droopy head covering, and wandered around the room, breaking everyone up. Some said Stutzman should have been an actor.

  Later, when Yost became pregnant, she narrowed down the list of potential fathers to Stutzman and another man. Stutzman gave her half the money for an abortion. He was dutiful, but he showed no remorse for his probable role in the pregnancy.

  One weekend evening Stutzman gathered up a group of old friends to see a movie in Akron. When they arrived at a club, it was obvious that they weren’t going to be seeing any movies that night. Stutzman had taken them to a strip joint. Stutzman sat near the stage as a half-dozen women performed. It was clear that Stutzman was not a stranger to this kind of entertainment.

  Liz Chupp called the hospital when she discovered that Stutzman hadn’t slept in his bed on the night of November 1. The personnel office told her that Stutzman had clocked out at 11:30 P.M.

  “I’m sorry. I should have called,” a sheepish Stutzman explained when he returned at 8:45 A.M. “But I fell asleep at a friend’s place.”

  He also shared a bit of other news. His classification had now changed and he was no longer CO. He planned to tell Ed Stoll that he was ready to return to farm work. Three days later, he was on the dairy job.

  If any of his close friends doubted that Eli Stutzman had odd ideas, they became believers at a birthday party in December 1973. John Yoder was turning 23, and Stutzman showed up wearing a brown plaid jacket, jeans, zippered boots and bearing a gift that would be remembered years later by those who attended.

  Yoder unwrapped the small package and revealed a box containing men’s red bikini underwear. Even the outside of the box seemed X-rated to the Swartzentruber boys in attendance, who had been raised without underwear of any kind.

  Stutzman cozied up to Yoder on the living-room armchair and urged him to put the bikini on, but Yoder refused. He was embarrassed and didn’t know what to make of the gift.

  “Maybe it would be okay to give something like that to a girl,” Yoder later said, “but to a man?”

  In February 1974, the Chupps, Stutzman, and his friend Chris Swartzentruber made the 3,625-mile round trip to Orlando to see Disney World and Epcot. The week after they returned, Stutzman traded his Olds’ for a new ’74 Gran Torino. Friends wondered where he had gotten all the money.

  Abe Stutzman left Stoll Farms for a job with a silo company in Greenville, Ohio, and Stutzman followed a month later. Before leaving, he told the Chupps he had gone to see his parents and had parked his car at a neighbor’s so he wouldn’t cause them more embarrassment. The visit was a disaster.

  “My dad told me I’m not welcome at home anymore,” he said.

  Stutzman lasted barely a month on the silo-building job in Greenville. He returned to Stoll Farms on July 27, 1974, complaining that his cousin and the owner of the silo company were involved with drugs.

  Liz Chupp doubted his story; Abe Stutzman didn’t seem like a drug user to her. “We knew Abe, he was a good man. He wasn’t using drugs that we could imagine,” she said.

  The situation became more confused when word came up from Greenville that it was Eli Stutzman who had been using drugs and had been fired because of it. The New Order Amishwoman, who was a trusting and faithful friend, found that hard to believe, too.

  In late August a new employee was hired at Stoll Farms, a former Amishman named Henry E. Miller, whom Liz Chupp felt “had as much get-up-and-go as a lazy dog.” He stuck mostly to himself, but in time Stutzman befriended him.

  The following months would later become a blur. Years later Liz Chupp sorted them out with the help of her diary.

  On September 5, 1974, Stutzman dropped a bomb when he told the Chupps he had ordered a buggy and planned to return to the Amish within a year. It didn’t make sense. Stutzman had just spent thousands on a new car. Further, he continually spoke of the rigors of the Swartzentruber world and how happy he was that he no longer had to endure their harsh, archaic ways.

  The day after his out-of-the-blue announcement, Stutzman broke his collarbone in a farm accident. He told everyone that a cow had forced him into a wall while he was milking—although no one had seen it happen.

  Jim Frost used to tell people he had dreamed of being a cop from the time he was 13. The dream came true. After graduating from Orrville High, he earned a law-enforcement degree at Cuyahoga Community College, quickly followed by an elementary-education degree from Kent State. After working as a dispatcher for the state patrol in Wooster, he was hired as a police officer in Orrville in 1967. He remained on the force for six years.

  Brash and bright, at 28 he was elected sheriff of Wayne County. He was a local boy who had made good. People had expected that from Frost, an impeccably neat man with dark hair parted in the middle and a thin upper lip that was barely a line between his mouth and nose. He had a lovely wife who seemed to hang on his every word. Off duty, he favored cowboy hats and boots.

  Although on the surface he was perfect
, there was something secretive about the man. Indeed, he once told a reporter for the Wooster Daily Record, “I am very careful about what I do. I like to get away and go places where people don’t know me, sometimes.”

  As sheriff, Frost’s record was exemplary. Aside from some political trouble with a fellow officer when it came time for reelection, his only mistake centered around Eli Stutzman. In late fall, the sheriff’s department, eager to catch some marijuana growers, put out the word that they needed some help in making a case. They even contacted the Amish for help, which was unusual in that the Amish prefer staying away from the Englischers’ law.

  Information that the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department had gathered indicated that Earl, Lester, and Levi Miller were growing substantial quantities of marijuana among their potato- and cornfields. Gossip in town had it that the Millers’ beautiful new house had been paid for in cash—something unheard of in a farm community where money was as tight as a clenched fist. The Millers allegedly dried pot in their barn and packaged it for sale in the basement of their farmhouse.

  The Wayne County sheriff was not about to let the Millers get away with it. An undercover sting operation seemed the perfect solution.

  Throughout the late fall, Stutzman seemed more secretive and preoccupied than ever, but no one could have guessed what was going on.

  Stutzman moved from the Chupps’ into Walter and Maryjane Stoll’s on October 20. He said he wanted to move so that he could watch television and listen to the radio. Later, the timing seemed remarkable.

  On October 30, farmer and alleged pot-grower Earl Miller answered the phone; it was Eli Stutzman on the line, saying he wanted to buy some marijuana to cure his headaches. He told Miller that when he was sharing a room with Henry E. Miller at Stoll Farms he smoked some and his headaches went away. It was Henry E. Miller—no relation to the Miller brothers—who had suggested he call.

  That night, Les Miller gave Stutzman a small bag of pot. Stutzman offered money, but Miller told him to forget it—the pot was as green as lawn clippings. Stutzman persisted and set some bills on the kitchen table.

  From the Millers’, Stutzman rendezvoused with Jim Board, a Wayne County sheriff’s detective working the case with Frost. Stutzman gave Board the little bag and said one of the Millers had gone into the basement to get it.

  Stutzman didn’t keep any of this secret. He told Liz Chupp what he had done at the Millers’ and, even more surprising, whom he had done it for.

  “He said he had purchased some marijuana undercover for the sheriff’s department,” she recalled.

  On Halloween Day, Stutzman’s friend from Stoll Farms, Henry E. Miller, was interviewed by Deputy Board.

  Q. Who was the sale made to last night?

  A. Eli Stutzman.

  Q. What kind of sale was made and for how much?

  A. He bought a small bag of marijuana for twelve dollars.

  Q. Did you help set up the sale?

  A. Yes, Eli called me, then later came to the farm and bought it.

  Q. Whose idea was it to grow and sell the marijuana?

  A. I don’t really know whose idea it was to grow it, but Earl did the selling.

  Q. Where is the unsold marijuana now?

  A. I don’t know.

  Q. Who hid the unsold marijuana?

  A. Earl Miller.

  Q. When was the last time you saw the marijuana?

  A. About two weeks ago, Sunday.

  Q. Where did Earl get the marijuana that he sold Eli Stutzman?

  A. He went down in the basement and came back up in about five minutes with it.

  Stutzman’s name was not on the arrest warrant, but his connection was obvious. The warrant stated that marijuana had been purchased the night before the sheriff showed up to serve it.

  “You mean that goddamn Eli Stutzman is what got you out here?” Earl Miller said when Frost waved the warrant in his face.

  “I’m not saying who it is,” Frost replied.

  “What do you think we’re running here, a grocery store where everyone comes and shops? Stutzman was the only one here last night.”

  Earl told the sheriff and his deputies to go ahead and look around. “You won’t find shit.”

  Frost read the brothers their Mirandas and took them to the county jail in Wooster. Levi was released after questioning, but Les and Earl had to spend the night in a cell. It was not a complete loss: Earl Miller was glad that he didn’t have to get up at 5:00 A.M. to milk.

  The following night Levi Miller drove up to Marshallville to have a little chat with Stutzman. He found Stutzman in bed in his room. Miller wasn’t there for small talk, and the look on his face must have made that evident to Stutzman.

  “We want to know if you did this to us,” Miller said.

  Stutzman shook his head but said nothing.

  “We’ve been treating you like a friend. We want to know if you screwed us,” Miller insisted, trying to keep his voice low.

  Stutzman denied it. He said he didn’t know what Miller was talking about. His face went red and he kept a blanket wrapped around him as though it offered some protection.

  Miller didn’t touch Stutzman, although he thought a little force might loosen his tongue. He left with no more information than he’d had when he arrived.

  The Sunday after the Miller brothers’ arrest brought an unlikely visitor to their farm: Eli Stutzman. Stutzman complained that the sheriff’s department had forced him into going undercover. He said he was sorry and wished that he hadn’t done it.

  “He said he was going to tell the judge he had been pressured and tricked by the sheriff’s department,” Levi Miller said later.

  Stutzman didn’t say why or how he had been coerced, and the Millers didn’t ask. Levi Miller thought Stutzman’s participation stemmed from his desire to join the department—if he did a good job, they’d hire him.

  They get to wear uniforms and carry guns. It might be a big deal to an ex-Amishman like Stutzman, he thought.

  Later, when Miller gave it more thought, it all seemed so far-fetched: How was Stutzman forced into making the buy? What did they have on Stutzman?

  Stutzman changed his mind a day later and said he was not going to recant. Once again he was siding with the Wayne County sheriff.

  When Levi Miller found out, he flipped. “When he’s talking to us, he’s with us. When he’s talking to them, he’s on their side. Eli Stutzman doesn’t have a mind of his own!”

  On November 2, Stutzman told the Chupps that Henry E. Miller had called to warn him to stay away from the Millers’ farm. “They’re out for blood,” he said.

  Stutzman seemed shaken by the threat. He told Abe he had been making calls to the sheriff for help. “Someone has been making death threats,” he said.

  Stutzman showed Ed Stoll some of the dozen hand- and typewritten notes he’d received. The message on each was the same: “If you talk . . . we’re going to get you. There’s no place to hide. We’re watching you closely.”

  Ed Stoll called the sheriff to report the threats.

  “Eli was scared . . . and he had proof they were after him,” he recalled.

  The writer of the notes stated that he had seen Stutzman doing various chores around the farm—things that someone had to have seen. Stutzman was frightened. “Look, he saw me unload hay . . . they are close enough to see me!” he said.

  The letters were postmarked Canton, but that didn’t mean much. Even mail from Marshallville was sent to Canton to be processed.

  “Eli said he had been talking to the sheriff’s department and they had just put him under protective custody. He was a witness in a drug case and the accused pushers were trying to force him to back down,” Ed Stoll recalled.

  A few times Stutzman took Stoll into the barn and showed him things that had been moved or disturbed—proof that something was up. “The pushers did this,” Stutzman said. “I’m telling you, they’re out to get me.”

  “You’re just spooked,” Stoll offere
d, trying to calm Stutzman. Deep down, the dairy farmer was also a bit worried.

  November 19, 1974

  Ed Stoll spent all day hauling corn from a barn to a storage building on the other side of the dairy. Stoll left Stutzman in the barn doing chores just after 5:00 P.M., when he took the last load.

  The final load took about an hour, instead of the usual half hour. Stoll returned at dusk and found that the barn had been ransacked—bags scattered, hay bales knocked askew, feed bags spilled, and, more horrifying, blood splashed everywhere. It looked as though a dozen chickens had been slaughtered by a blind man. Gruesome arcs of blood stained the walls.

  Stoll found Stutzman at the end of the barn, lying in a puddle of blood and surrounded by bloodied rocks.

  “What took you so long?” Stutzman muttered weakly, blood dripping from his arms. His blue eyes were glassy.

  “What happened?” Stoll asked as he hurried to Stutzman’s side.

  “Two guys jumped me and stabbed me. . . . I tried to fight them off. . . .”

  In shock, Stoll ran to the house, cursing the Wayne County sheriff. Eli had as much as told them that this would happen.

  “They are out to get me,” he had said.

  Abe was babysitting the Chupps’ little girl, Marie, when Stoll ran into the house to call the emergency squad and the sheriff. By the time he made it back to the barn, Stutzman was on a stretcher. The color was drained from his face. Abe was sure that Stutzman was going to die.

  For the second time in nine months, Sheriff Frost was on the scene, looking for evidence around Stoll Farms. Liz Chupp noted in her diary that Sheriff Frost had been out on January 29, investigating the theft of some hay bales from one of the neighboring farms.

  Eli Stutzman was admitted to Dunlap Memorial Hospital, where he remained for five days.

  By nightfall, a strange and frightening thing came to light. Before his attack, Stutzman said he had seen a strange car with out-of-state plates—West Virginia, he thought—driving up and down the road near the farm. Later, when he was in the barn, someone hiding in the hayloft threw a rock, hitting him in the head but not knocking him down. A second later, another man jumped from behind and cut him with a knife. Stutzman said that in the struggle he had stabbed one of his attackers with a pitchfork, but they had overpowered him.