Abandoned Prayers (20 page)

The Four Corners’ towns of Durango and Cortez, Colorado, and of Farmington and Aztec, New Mexico, show traces of the Hispanic, Indian, and Old West influences that mark the region:
pueblo, mesa
, and
wagon wheel
pop up in cafe names and design motifs. Breathtaking mountain and desert scenery draw in tourists from all points, to ride the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, to wander the Anasazi ruins, or just to kick back and relax in Old West shops and restaurants. In winter, world-class skiing tops the itinerary.

As far as the gay scene of the early 1980s was concerned, locals confined themselves to the Diamond Belle Saloon, the bar in the red and white Gay Nineties Strater Hotel, and the Animas Riverside Lounge at the Durango Holiday Inn. Out-of-towners looking for gay sex also took in the Main Mall and the Narrow Gauge Train Station, both of which were listed in
Bob Damron’s Address Book
, a pocket guide listing gay “cruisy” places.

When Stutzman connected with Colorado rancher
Terry Palmer
, the former Amishman made it clear that he wanted to get away from Ohio—more critically, away from the Swartzentruber Order.

The West was Stutzman’s escape route, and, in the end, a death sentence for Danny.

Several years older than the Amishman from Ohio, Palmer was a trim man with smooth skin and fine features who had never before advertised in
The Advocate
. Yet, in the spring of 1982, following the suicide of his lover and adopted “son,” he placed an ad answered by Eli Stutzman.

Stutzman’s reply displayed a naïveté about the gay lifestyle that appealed to Palmer, who had a job requiring discretion, hence the ruse “the adopted son.” Stutzman seemed a perfect candidate. In fact, the Amishman claimed he had never seen
The Advocate
until a Mennonite friend showed him the edition featuring Palmer’s ad.

Stutzman wrote that he had been shunned by the Amish, and that it was causing his son some problems. He was looking for a new life, something wholesome for his little boy. He enclosed photographs of Danny.

Palmer, who was of Swiss stock and had been brought up on horror stories of the “weird” Amish, was moved by Stutzman’s predicament. Palmer’s grandmother had painted a sinister picture of the Amish.

“You have no idea how many Amish children never grow up,” she had said.

“I was raised to believe that the Amish were strange, more or less that they worship the devil,” he recalled. “I knew they had been thrown out of the Catholic Church in Europe. I wanted to help Eli get out of that situation.”

Palmer flew to Cleveland and spent the Memorial Day weekend of 1982 at the Dalton farm. Stutzman played the shunned Amishman to the hilt, and Palmer bought it.

Stutzman said that when he was a young man he had been raped by an old Amishman in a feed mill.

“That’s what made me gay,” he said.

In June, Eli and Danny flew to Durango to look over
Palmer’s ranch. Stutzman said the place wasn’t large enough for what he had in mind, and left without making a deal.

In the summer he returned to Colorado, and, after a week with a real estate agent, Stutzman and Palmer put money down on a large ranch with a four-bedroom house, near Durango.

Palmer sold his small ranch, and Stutzman put up the down payment of $65,000. Palmer, who had fewer resources, agreed to make the monthly payments until their equity balanced. Palmer’s chief asset outside of some farm equipment was a stallion valued at $15,000.

Though Stutzman had sold most of what he had in Ohio, he packed a buggy and the Amish furniture Amos Ginger-ich had built. Stutzman announced that he planned on introducing surrey racing to Colorado.

With Eli and Danny Stutzman gone from Ohio, Dalton neighbors worried about the boy.

“What would his life be like in Colorado?” Wilma Moser asked her husband. The Mosers could only assume the worst—the rumors about Stutzman’s activities were no longer whispered. They were public knowledge.

On her way to work at Gerber’s Feed Mill, Wilma Moser prayed that God would save Danny from the nightmare she felt certain he must be enduring.

On the surface, Danny Stutzman’s life might have seemed idyllic given the magnificence of the Colorado ranch setting. Anyone seeing the 5-year-old likely would have believed him to be an average, happy child. He dressed in blue jeans, wore
Dukes of Hazzard
T-shirts, and had a ready smile.

But it was a facade. The truth was that Danny represented little more than a cover for his father’s homosexuality. That had also been true in Ohio, but in Colorado,
away from the Amish and the neighbors who had passed judgment on him, Stutzman felt free to ignore his son and cut loose. Terry Palmer provided the parenting role that Stutzman shirked.

Each morning, Palmer drove Danny to the county road to catch the bus for the fourteen-mile ride to the Ignacio Elementary School, where the boy had been assigned to kindergarten teacher Janet Green. Though drawn to the little boy, Green could barely understand him when he spoke, so severe was Danny’s stutter.

His father was ready with an excuse. “Danny didn’t speak much English until about a year or so ago,” he offered as an explanation, when he enrolled the boy in November.

Danny, his hair now clipped so close to his head that he looked as if a Marine had shorn him, was assigned to a speech pathologist for twice-weekly therapy. Stutzman told the school that stuttering had been a family problem. “All seven of my brothers stuttered,” he said. “All but my oldest brother talk fine now.”

Almost immediately Danny began to relate more to Palmer than to his own father. The boy started directing his school activities to Palmer, who tried to avoid them, sensing that he was in the middle of a dangerous situation.

“Tell your dad. I don’t want to hear it,” Palmer would say, whenever Danny approached him with news from school.

While Danny was settling into a normal routine at school, things were happening at home suggesting renewed trouble with Stutzman’s mental health. Of course, Palmer didn’t know anything about Stutzman’s previous breakdowns, other than what he volunteered.

In Ohio, Stutzman had been warm and communicative; in Colorado, he was often silent and moody. Palmer, who had expected both a partnership and a life with Stutzman, felt that the Amishman was slipping away. Once, when he
asked Stutzman if he, Palmer, had done something wrong, the younger man snapped at him, “No. It’s not you.”

Another time, Stutzman became enraged after Palmer opened a box of Pennsylvania Dutch stickers he had purchased on the trip to Wayne County. “Throw them away! I don’t ever want to see them around here again!” Stutzman screamed.

When Palmer spoke about his dead “son,” Stutzman yelled at him to be quiet. “I don’t ever want to hear about him again,” he said.

“It was almost a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of switch in personality. It was like he had a split personality,” Palmer later said.

Strangely, there were times when Stutzman seemed like the caring man Palmer had met through
The Advocate
. Stutzman asked Palmer if he would be Danny’s guardian should something happen to Stutzman. He had a lawyer draft up a document specifying the wish.

Palmer was flattered, but Stutzman’s erratic behavior made him guarded.

“What about your relatives back east?” he asked.

“I don’t want my boy with the Amish. Anyway, none of them would travel out west to get him.”

If Palmer’s relationship with Stutzman was faltering, the little boy continued to grow closer. Danny shadowed Palmer on the ranch. Since Stutzman had said he wanted Palmer to be close with the little boy, Palmer asked if he could take Danny to church.

“No! I’ve had enough of that in my life,” Stutzman said.

Eli Stutzman had changed from the man Palmer had met in Ohio.

For a gay man who had initially professed disinterest in the gay lifestyle, Palmer noticed that Stutzman kept a sizeable collection of gay porno magazines and videotapes.

The number of Four Corners gays was small enough that when the gay and bisexual crowd got together everyone
knew everyone. When Stutzman showed up in mid-October 1982, he was seen as new blood—“new meat,” some joked—in a crowd that could use a little. Having sex with the same old bunch had become boring. Even drugs lacked the punch and excitement of a new sex partner.

Four Corners gays partied in two basic groups: Durango, Colorado, and Farmington, New Mexico. Though the Durango group included a doctor and a lawyer, most were average working-class gays, or ranchers like Eli Stutzman. Calendars were crammed with parties every Friday and Saturday night—and every holiday in-between. Hosts provided the gathering place, others brought drugs.

At 39,
Kenny Hankins
ran a successful business in one of the nondescript, dusty little towns around the Four Corners area. Hankins was closeted because of the small-town community. Yet he found action on the endless highways of the desert. His CB handle, “WW,” stood for “Wienie Washer.” Whenever he had the opportunity, Hankins climbed into the air-conditioned comfort of his Cadillac to prowl for men who wanted a blow job. He found a little bit of danger, and more than enough takers, among the truckers passing through.

Hankins met Eli Stutzman in the bar at the Holiday Inn in the late fall of 1982. As far as Hankins could see, Eli Stutzman was a gay sex symbol: a well-muscled body, blue eyes, and a neat mustache.

“He was a real hunk. He would get the attention at any bar he went into. Where in the hell did Mother Nature go wrong, because he’s attractive, physically fit?” Hankins later asked.

Stutzman’s biggest attraction—according to Hankins, anyway—was the size of his penis.

“Eli would always wear Levis, ironed, and was the type that he made damn sure of his pants. He was enormous. I would say he would make John Holmes look sick,” he said.

At the time they met, Stutzman told Hankins that his lover and ranch partner Terry Palmer had threatened to harm him if he ever invited any friends out.

“ ‘Don’t you ever bring anybody to this fuckin’ house and don’t you ever tell anybody that I play around cuz I’ll beat your ass,’ ” Stutzman claimed Palmer had said.

When Hankins dropped Stutzman off at the ranch, the ex-Amishman said, “I’d invite you in, but you never know. I don’t want Palmer to fly off the handle.”

Stutzman, Hankins, and other gay men lived in a haze of marijuana and a white cloud of coke when they could get it. Stutzman also used “poppers.” Amyl nitrate—or the similar formulas butyl nitrite or alkyl nitrate—were considered the drugs of choice for gays in the early 1980s. Inhaling the drugs heightened and prolonged the sensation of orgasm. Popular brands among Stutzman’s crowd included Rush and Thrust.

As far as Hankins could see, Stutzman had been a user for some time.

October 13, 1982

On November 4, 1982, Wilma and Norman Moser received a tedious letter from Stutzman, who wrote endlessly about the ranch and Danny’s progress in kindergarten. The real reason for the letter was buried in the trivia in the third paragraph. Stutzman complained that the Postal Service had mixed up his address and that he was getting X-rated mail he wasn’t supposed to—it wasn’t even addressed to him by name.

Stutzman had gotten wind of the stories about his X-rated mail and wanted to defuse them. He knew the Mosers would spread the word that gay letters sent to his old farm hadn’t been meant for him.

For the kind of fun Stutzman must have been looking for, the Four Corners most likely proved a sexual playground with more new friends and variations than he could have hoped for in Dalton, Ohio.

Louise
and
Mark Hanson
were what friends liked to call an “alternative couple.” Mark, now in his middle years, had
had some gay experiences when he was a teen that he wanted to rekindle. Louise, an attractive woman who favored the New Age movement, went along for the ride. If some considered her a “Fag Hag,” it was all right with her.

The summer of 1982 was her initiation into the gay world. By the time Eli Stutzman showed up in the fall, Louise Hanson might have thought she had seen it all.

She could not have been more wrong.

Eli Stutzman’s name made it onto the guest list for Louise’s impromptu birthday party. Stutzman brought Danny along. What Stutzman had his son do that night was both shocking and repugnant. Stutzman told his son to grab men’s crotches.

“Danny must have been five at the time,” Louise later remembered, still trying to shake the implausibility of it all. “Eli was encouraging Danny to grope men and swat them on the butt.”

There was no doubt about the former Amishman’s intentions.

“He was trying to teach him homosexual behavior,” she said.

Danny did what his father wanted, willingly and innocently.
He had been told by his father to do it
. The boy giggled as he went from man to man, groping and petting.

“What are you doing, Eli?” Louise asked, cornering Stutzman at her party.
“He’s just a little boy—let him be a little boy!”

Stutzman was adamant. “I’m going to train him so he’ll never have to deal with women.”

Another who met Stutzman around the time he first arrived in the Four Corners was an artist/psychic/teenager from Farmington named
Michael Harris
. Harris noticed Stutzman at the early parties, always keeping to himself and being very discreet when he left with a trick.

“The first time I saw him in Amish clothes, I thought he was dressed up old-fashioned Western-style. When I
asked him about it, he told me he was from that Amish religion. It blew me away.”

You’re kidding . . . and you’re carrying on like this?
he thought when he first met Stutzman.

It was obvious that living with Stutzman had been a mistake for Terry Palmer. The routine had become unbearable. After dinner, Stutzman usually went out or to his room to watch television alone, leaving Palmer to care for Danny and get him ready for bed. The strain was showing on Danny, too.

At night, the little boy frequently woke crying. He said he was afraid to sleep alone. He asked to sleep with Palmer, but the man told the boy he was too big. Danny’s second choice was his father’s bed, where he routinely slept. Palmer, trying to be helpful, approached Stutzman about the boy’s sleep problems.