Abandoned Prayers (38 page)

“We would have gone by bus or rented a car and driver,” Gingerich said years later, still unable to make sense of his son-in-law’s motives.

In Apple Creek, Eli and Susan Stutzman received a similar letter.

Word spread about the boy’s tragic death.

Liz Chupp called Stutzman to offer her condolences. Stutzman had been so kind to her and Leroy when their five-year-old daughter died in a farm accident in Kentucky.

Now both of the old friends had lost a child.

Stutzman sobbed as he recounted the accident that took his boy’s life.

“I was so thankful for the time we had in the hospital,” he said. “Danny drifted in and out of consciousness, and we were able to talk before he died. It was a very precious time for me,” Stutzman said.

“He told me what a great father I was . . . and I told him how much I loved him. I can’t believe he is gone. Danny is my last bond to my dear Ida.”

Later, Chupp figured Stutzman had told her only what he thought she wanted to hear.

In August, Stutzman returned to Ohio to see old friends and rekindle happier memories. He made it to the gay bar in Akron, where he ran into Rick Adamson, the man who first met Stutzman when the former Amishman’s nude photo and convenient address had caught his eye in
Stars
.

“Danny died in a car wreck in Utah . . .”

Amos Gingerich wrote his suspicions to his old neighbor in Fredericksburg,
David Yoder
, an Amishman who had done considerable traveling.

“Amos was troubled and wanted to get to the bottom of Eli’s story,” Yoder said.

The Amishmen agreed that a little detective work was needed—a trip to the Barlow family cemetery in Lyman, Wyoming, would be a good place to start. If that led nowhere,
they wanted to find the hospital where Danny had died.

Gingerich wrote ahead to the police, but since there was no police department in Kemmerer, the letter didn’t reach the authorities in Lyman until later. “We are looking for the Barlow family cemetery,” the letter said.

Amos, his daughter, Susie, and son-in-law Andy Miller joined Yoder at the Chicago bus terminal, and arrived in Lyman on Wednesday, November 12, a little after 6:00
A.M
.

At the police station, they were told to wait at a café while Dean and Margie Barlow were notified. The police had never heard of a Barlow cemetery, and they didn’t have any records indicating an accident involving Danny Stutzman and Dean Barlow.

“We were having breakfast, and they called for us to come down, and we hurried to meet this Dean Barlow,” Gingerich recalled.

At the station, Gingerich gave a nervous and confused Dean Barlow the letter from Stutzman recounting Danny’s death. The Barlows had brought a photo of Danny, just in case the Amish had confused him with another Amish boy.

“It’s Eli’s stationery, his handwriting,” Barlow said, sinking into a chair as he read the letter. “But none of this is true . . .”

Margie Barlow sat like a lump, looking as though she had been shot.

“We had the boy until December of 1985. We haven’t seen him since,” Barlow said.

The Barlows showed a copy of the July 5 agreement they had made with Stutzman to care for Danny.

Around nine o’clock, the Barlows took the Amish up to the house and introduced their children.

“They liked Danny, he was a good boy, an intelligent boy, they said. He was good on their computer,” Yoder recalled.

The Barlows hoped the news of Danny’s death was a terrible mistake. They said Stutzman had been working at a cabinet shop in Benton, Ohio, and Danny had been attending
a Mennonite school. They had talked with Stutzman a couple of times after he had left with Danny, but each time they had asked to speak with the boy, they had been told he was either asleep or outside playing.

“He took Danny to see his ailing grandmother once a week,” Barlow said.

Margie Barlow served cookies and gave Amos a photograph of Danny and Eli taken in front of their Christmas tree on December 14, 1985—no one knew it then, of course, but it was Danny’s last photograph.

The Amish wondered how Barlow and Stutzman had become friends. Barlow said it was through a thoroughbred-horse deal. As a story, it was possible. After all, nearby Evanston did have Wyoming Downs.

Still, there was something about the Barlows that made the Amish wonder if they were being completely truthful.

When the Amish indicated that Stutzman had had a bad temper or some emotional problems in the past, they were met with disbelief. That was not the
Eli
they knew, they said.

Dean Barlow said that when Stutzman ran into trouble over the murder of his employee in Texas, he and his wife had agreed to take Danny in.

“Eli had a wood-working business, and had a few fellows working for him that did not get along the best, so one fellow took Eli’s gun and shot the other. Eli’s fingerprints were on the gun, but the other fellow’s were on top of Eli’s,” Yoder later recalled the Barlows saying.

When he came to pick up Danny in December, Stutzman said that he had been cleared of the Texas charges.

Dean Barlow bought the Amish soda pop and drove them the hundred miles to Salt Lake City. It was no trouble, he insisted. His father had cancer and he was going to visit him anyway.

Barlow told Amos Gingerich, “Eli has some questions he needs to answer.”

The Wyoming man wanted the Amish to know how wrong he thought the
bann
was, how much it had hurt Eli
Stutzman. Maybe his hurt had contributed to all of the lies.

Amos tried to explain. “It is not a boycott, we do it so they repent.”

The next day the Amish caught a train for Denver’s bus station, though they had considered going to Durango to see what they could turn up. The trip had been the furthest west Amos and Susie Gingerich and Andy Miller had traveled.

After returning to Michigan, Amos Gingerich received a letter from Margie Barlow. The Barlows had written to Stutzman again and there had been no response. “We thought for sure Eli would have called or written us by now, so we are a little worried,” she wrote.

In Ohio, David Yoder continued the role of detective, but nothing panned out. At the Benton Mennonite school, no one had heard of Danny Stutzman.

Chris and Diane Swartzentruber were on a buggy ride with their friend Amos Slabaugh, who lived south of Kidron, when Eli Stutzman’s name came up. The Amishman said he had heard that Danny had died in a car accident and that some Amish had gone looking for the child’s grave, but that they couldn’t find it.

“Right when this was said, I’m not a real religious person, I don’t attend church, but I do believe in God. Something went through me. Chills,” Diane later recalled. “I knew something else had happened to Danny.”

The talk went to Ida’s death.

Diane spoke up and said she and Chris had always thought Stutzman had murdered his wife.

“Her neck had choke marks on it and the tongue had been bitten in half,” Slabaugh said.

They wondered why something hadn’t been done.

When the Swartzentrubers got home, Diana told her husband that she knew Stutzman had killed Danny, too.

“Chris knew it too. We just
knew
that he did. But we didn’t know where he was. Nobody did.”

David Yoder went to a sawmill near his home and called the Barlows when the
Reader’s Digest
article came out about Little Boy Blue. He and others were convinced that Danny Stutzman was the boy who had been buried in the Chester cemetery.

Margie Barlow said she would come forward and contact the authorities. She had also read the article and wondered if it could be Danny.

She sent a letter to Amos Gingerich.

Dear Amos,

David Yoder called me yesterday regarding the
Reader’s Digest
article “Little Boy Blue of Chester, Nebraska.” I, too, have been haunted by the story of “Little Boy Blue” ever since I read it, but have been busy with the speech team and my classes, so have not acted upon it. Also I thought maybe I was just grasping at straws and being emotional. David’s call made me realize that maybe I wasn’t the only one receiving gut level feelings about the story.

After David’s call, Dean and I discussed the situation and decided to contact the Chester, Nebraska, Police Department directly instead of going through our police department. We feel this route will bring faster answers. I am enclosing a copy of our letter to them. I will let you know what they answer.

A couple of details leave room for doubt. Unless Eli bought him one, Danny did not have a blue blanket sleeper. I’m not sure he had perfect teeth. I thought at one time I had to take him to the dentist, but may have been confused with my own children’s appointments. If I’m remembering
correctly, Eli left with Danny December 20. He should have been in Ohio by December 23. If he followed I-80, he wouldn’t have been close to Chester, Nebraska. I checked this out in our atlas. Danny was in good health when he left us although he had had a cold and the doctor had prescribed some antibiotics which he was taking.

But, then I wonder why Danny never wrote us . . .

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.

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.”