Abandoned Prayers (43 page)

It was mid-afternoon when Wyant arrived at their neat house on Lincoln Street. The Barlows were guardedly friendly. As they had told Amos Gingerich when he and
the other Amish had come to Wyoming, they wanted answers, too.

Before the interview began they made it clear they didn’t think Danny had been murdered by his father.

Wyant set up his tape recorder and sized up the subjects. Dean Barlow seemed agitated. There was good reason for that, and Wyant knew it. He asked Barlow how Stutzman had come into his life.

Barlow hesitated.

“I met Eli in Durango, Colorado. That’s the only thing that’s kind of private and I don’t want to discuss,” Barlow said rather dramatically, as though he had practiced the words.

Wyant planned to corner the man later, away from his wife, which he did when Margie left the room.

“I don’t care if you like to suck . . . I have a murder to solve . . .”

Barlow admitted he and Stutzman had sex, but it had been only “one time.”

He didn’t volunteer, however, that he and Stutzman had met through a magazine.

Barlow said the next time he saw the Stutzmans was when they came up from Texas for Christmas 1983. After that, they lost contact. Accordingly, he was surprised to hear from Stutzman when in late June or early July 1985 he called to see if the Barlows could take Danny. He was having trouble with the police regarding the murder of an employee.

Barlow reasoned that Stutzman had called the Barlows because he knew they had been foster parents in Hawaii and Colorado. Barlow also said he had been a “Big Brother” in Hawaii for eight years.

Wyant let the fidgety schoolteacher ramble before asking for details about Texas.

“Danny had gone through a pretty brutal session with an investigator,” Barlow said, “and Danny had been upset about it.” Barlow explained that Stutzman had wanted to “get Danny out of Austin as quickly as possible. There was
some question about a rifle. Later he told us it was not his gun that killed his employee.”

“Did he say who had been killed?”

“A guy from Wyoming. He had paid him two weeks earlier to go back to Wyoming to be with his family.” Stutzman had never indicated to Barlow that Glen Pritchett had been his roommate.

Barlow picked up steam. “This sounds real crazy. I questioned him at the time. He said his lawyer in Texas told him to leave Austin and take Danny to Colorado.”

When Barlow had picked Danny and Eli up at the Greyhound station in Salt Lake City, the boy and his father were carrying only a couple of small bags between them.

Stutzman had signed over two checks totaling $1,950 for Danny’s care and clothing. He told the Barlows that he knew who the killer was and was going to look for him in Denver and Ohio.

“He said a private investigator in Denver was looking for this guy,” Barlow said.

Wyant asked why the Barlows had let such a bizarre story pass as truth. Why hadn’t they questioned Stutzman more thoroughly?

“It was an awkward topic—we didn’t want to be rude and ask him too much,” Dean Barlow said.

Stutzman said he had signed over his checking account to his Austin attorney.

“At the time it seemed real bizarre,” Barlow conceded.

I’m sure it did
, Wyant thought.

Barlow said Stutzman left on July 5 or 6.

“He seemed real anxious to leave,” he said.

Wyant asked if Stutzman’s story had seemed genuine.

“We never questioned his honesty until all of this. We never thought he was lying. My impression was that he was the Quaker Oats guy on the Quaker Oats box—strong Amish, kind, sensitive,” Dean Barlow said.

Wyant later wondered if Barlow had been in love with Stutzman. The way the Wyoming man protected and talked
about Stutzman, it was like a man talking about the woman he loved.

Yet Margie Barlow’s statements mirrored her husband’s.

“I think he’s naive and he doesn’t understand the ways of the world,” she said softly, sitting next to her husband as he defended Stutzman.

Maybe she didn’t know about the two of them, but, of course, she
had
to.

Dean Barlow told Wyant that he had gone with Stutzman when he purchased eastbound bus tickets, but that he hadn’t paid any attention to the man’s destination.

And Danny Stutzman, for one, hadn’t known how long his father was going to be gone.

“Just a few weeks,” Stutzman had told the boy before he left on the Greyhound. He told the Barlows that enrolling Danny in school wouldn’t be necessary—he’d take care of his problems and be back for Danny.

Wyant coolly flipped the tape over.

Occasionally Stutzman called to have Barlow wire money through the Western Union office at the Evanston, Wyoming, bus station. Stutzman had arranged it so that he would pick the funds up by giving his mother’s maiden name: Susan Miller. The mother whose illness had been an excuse wherever Stutzman went had come in handy again.

A mouse scurried across the floor, provoking a tension-releasing laugh. Dean Barlow laughed the hardest.

Wyant, who didn’t know about the parties in Colorado and was still trying to see if a case could be made for felony child abuse, asked what kind of a father Stutzman had been.

It was Margie Barlow who took the lead.

“Kids would ask him why his father left him, why he was here, but he would never answer,” she said. “ ‘My dad’s the best,’ he’d say.”

“Danny
missed
his father,” Barlow added. “At the end of every phone conversation Danny would cry. ‘How long before you come and get me?’ ”

Maybe it had never occurred to the Barlows just
why
Danny Stutzman had cried after every call. What was it that
Eli Stutzman had said to his boy? Was he threatening the boy?

Sam Miller said Danny knew about the murder in Texas—he was sitting in the truck when Stutzman confessed to it, and the boy showed no reaction—yet the Barlows maintained Danny never mentioned it.

Not a single word, they said.

Margie and Dean Barlow said they had liked Danny. “Danny was a cuddlebug. He would jump in our laps.” Indeed, he was so much of a “cuddlebug” that one of the Barlow children became jealous of the attention Danny got from his parents.

Wyant turned his attention to the events leading to the boy’s death.

“Eli told us and Danny that he’d be picking Danny up to take him to Ohio for Christmas.”

Barlow said Stutzman had called December 13 to tell them he was on his way to get Danny. That was the same day he had mailed the letter to Jorgensen telling him Danny probably wouldn’t be with him.

The Barlows had been surprised, they said, because Stutzman had changed his plans and would be taking the boy out of school before his third-grade class party.

But, as usual, Stutzman had a convincing reason.

“He said his mother had problems with her lungs,” Dean Barlow said.

“He felt that his mother would die,” Margie added.

Because Danny always got so excited, the Barlows said they waited until the last minute to tell him that his dad was planning to get him.

Stutzman showed up after dark, driving the Gremlin, the same day.

The Texas murder was on Dean Barlow’s mind, and he asked about it.

“He said that it was cleared up. The guy had been arrested and convicted. It was the fastest murder trial I’d ever heard of,” Barlow said.

Stutzman said he expected to be in Ohio in two days.

It was another lie, of course. Stutzman had planned to stay with Yost and Jorgensen before showing up in Ohio.

Wyant, unfortunately, didn’t know any of that. Jorgensen and Yost were unknown to the investigator and would remain so, though both men had read about the Little Boy Blue story in the paper when Stutzman was arrested. Neither man came forward.

“He was going to leave Danny with his folks for Christmas,” Barlow said.

That, of course, didn’t fit with what Stutzman had told others. He hated the Amish. He would never allow Danny to stay with his parents.

“He’s kind of gotten away from the language . . .” he had written in the letter to Jorgensen that he mailed the day before he and Danny left Wyoming for Ohio.

Wyant focused on the boy’s health. The Barlows had suggested numerous times to Gary Young that the boy had been ill.

Margie Barlow explained that Danny had complained of a sore throat and been diagnosed with hemopholis, a viral infection similar to strep, and had been given a prescription for Ceclor on December 11 for twenty-one pills, to be given over seven days.

When Stutzman got the boy, Margie Barlow had told him about the virus and its treatment. “I wrote instructions for the medicine, and made it clear that Danny needed another throat swab,” she told Wyant.

Wyant probed. “His general health . . . would you describe him as getting better?”

“Yes,” Margie answered quickly.

Wyant thought it was worth checking out. But he didn’t think Danny had died of a virus.

Father and son slept at the Barlows’, and left before 8:00
A.M
. on December 14. Before leaving, Stutzman gave Dean and Margie an Amish quilt as a thank-you for all they had done.

Later, around January, Dean Barlow said he and Stutzman spoke again. Barlow asked about Danny and about an
Amish china hutch Stutzman had said he would have made for them. Stutzman said he had enrolled Danny in a Mennonite school in Benton, Ohio, and was working at Troyer’s Cabinet Shop. Margie Barlow also got on the line and asked if Stutzman had had Danny’s school records forwarded from Wyoming. Stutzman said the Mennonites didn’t require any records.

“How did Danny like his gifts—the soccer ball and the Garfield?”

“Danny enjoyed them.
Loved them
.” Stutzman had said.

Wyant asked if the Barlows had heard from Stutzman after January.

They said they had, in April 1986.

Margie had wanted to know if the Mennonite school was doing anything for Danny’s speech.

Stutzman indicated that progress was being made and that the boy was improving.

Like the first time, when the Barlows asked to speak with Danny, Stutzman claimed he was at church or at the neighbors’ playing.

“Why hasn’t Danny written?”

“I’ll remind him,” Stutzman promised.

At the end of June 1986, the Barlows said Stutzman called to say that he and Danny were going to take a vacation trip to California, and that Stutzman would bring the hutch with him then.

“Have you heard from my in-laws?” Stutzman asked.

“No, why?” Barlow said.

“I just wanted to know.”

Barlow asked for Stutzman’s phone number, and the former Amishman gave the first three digits before stopping and saying he was very difficult to reach.

After hanging up, Barlow called his wife, who was out of town visiting relatives at the time. “I just got a really strange call from Eli,” he said.

The Barlows indicated that they had spoken with Stutzman a couple of times since his confinement in the Thayer
County Jail, but that they were reluctant to give any information about those calls. Wyant pursued it, and finally Dean Barlow agreed.

“There’s no information that I have that could hurt Eli,” he said.

Eli Stutzman had cried on the phone, telling them the story of Danny dropping dead in the middle of the night—the
second
day after he left Lyman.

Stutzman mentioned the blue sleeper.

“Eli told us the sleeper was a Christmas present for Danny,” Barlow explained.

Barlow had called Stutzman’s attorney and told him about Danny’s illness, but the attorney didn’t seem interested.

“He said he knew ‘the boy wasn’t sick enough to die.’ ”

The attorney said that people in Texas had the Gremlin and that it was the car’s faulty exhaust system that had killed Danny. The boy had died of asphyxiation related to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Barlow said the Nebraska attorney was getting his information through a man named Robinson, in Texas.

More than two hours had passed when Wyant got up to leave. The picture of Stutzman as a pathological liar and manipulator had become even more clear. Wyant felt that the Barlows had been honest, but had held something back.

“We don’t think there is any way on the face of this earth that Eli killed Danny. No way,” Dean Barlow said.

“We’re after the truth,” Wyant said. “I’m sure that if and when it goes to court you’ll be in court as a witness.”

“I hope not.” Barlow said, with an annoying burst of nervous laughter.

Wyant leaned forward. “If you have nothing to hide there is no reason to be nervous.”

He got the approval necessary for obtaining Barlow’s bank records and Danny’s medical records. The next day he picked up copies of Danny’s December 11 prescription from the drugstore in Lyman and paid a visit to Dr. Jane Wuchinich’s office at the Bridger Valley Health Services.
“Dr. Jane,” as they called her, was on vacation, but an associate provided records indicating that Danny’s throat had been swabbed for culture on December 10.

The medical records backed up what Dean and Margie Barlow had told him.

Wyant went on to Kemmerer and picked up microfilmed copies of the checks Stutzman had signed over to the Barlows. A trip to the bus station to find out where the money for “Susan Miller” had gone proved futile.

Wyant flew out of Salt Lake City thinking he didn’t have anything to make a case against Stutzman.

“By then I was getting to know Eli real good,” Wyant said later.

With the Danny Stutzman/Little Boy Blue mess out in the open and the rumors around Wayne County burning like a tire fire, Diane Swartzentruber took to her telephone again. This time she called Gary Cutler in Austin.

She and Chris had visited with Amos Slabaugh again, and the story of the Texas murder, mixed in with some wild innuendo, was being discussed at feed mills, barn raisings—anyplace the Amish gathered.

Diane told Cutler that Sam H. Miller, a young man from the Freeport/Newcomerstown area, had been in Austin around the time of Pritchett’s murder. He had since gone into the navy.

“He found bloody clothes in a closet, hidden under some things. He got frightened and left.”