by Gregg Olsen
There were no special prayers for Barbara. The Amish belief is that once a person has died, no amount of prayer will change how she met her Maker. Between themselves, Barbara’s Andy Weaver community discussed how she’d handled her heartbreak. Her friends and neighbors said she’d “never lost her faith” and “kept wanting what was right.”
Four men who were friends of the family carried the casket from the house to a black horse-drawn hearse, and took it to the graveyard. Barbara Weaver was buried in a small Amish cemetery in Salt Creek Township.
There were no flowers at the viewing or at the cemetery. Cemetery plots are usually left untended—no flowers, no landscaping, just a simple cement or concrete headstone made by an Amish man with the name, birth date, and death date carved into it.
Family members wear black for a period of mourning. Grief is private. The Amish do not usually show their emotions.
Scott Spidell, a second-generation undertaker, took charge of the funeral. He knew Barbara’s family because he had overseen her mother’s funeral in 2008. The sadness surrounding the murder stunned everyone.
“It was shocking,” Spidell said. “Everyone was speculating” about who might have killed Barbara Weaver. Since Eli was the surviving spouse, Spidell worked with him on funeral details.
Samuel Miller and his wife heard a story making the rounds after the funeral. Eli had reportedly said to his widowed father-in-law, “Now I know how you feel.” Barbara’s father replied with great emotion, “No! You do not know how I feel!”
It was the first murder among the Andy Weaver Amish in the area, although Spidell’s father, Waid Spidell, had handled funeral services for Ida Stutzman, victim of an alleged murder that was never prosecuted. She and her husband, Eli Stutzman, were Swartzentruber Amish, the most well known subgroup of Old Order Amish. Ida died from what her husband claimed was “a weak heart” during a suspicious barn fire in 1977. She was eight months pregnant. After her death, Eli Stutzman took to the road with his young son, Daniel, and began a series of affairs with gay men. He was later convicted of leaving his nine-year-old son’s body in a Nebraska ditch in 1985 and concealing his death. He served time in a Texas prison for an unrelated 1989 murder, was paroled in 2005, and remains a person of interest in the murders of two Colorado men. Stutzman committed suicide in 2007.
Detective Chuhi and Lieutenant Garrison attended Barbara Weaver’s funeral—to show the Amish community that the sheriff’s department cared and was serious about solving the crime, and to observe Barbara Weaver’s family and friends. The murder looked personal.
Lieutenant Garrison was contacted after the service by an Amish man who wanted to remain anonymous. There was something strange, he said. Eli’s good friends of many years, Barb and Ed Raber, hadn’t been at the funeral. The man said he’d been told the Rabers had chosen to drive to Illinois that day to drop off some equipment—something to do with Ed’s job. After speaking with him, Lieutenant Garrison wrote the following in his report:
He thought it was odd that they chose to be out of the area and miss the funeral. It was also strange that Barbara went with Ed when normally she would much rather remain in the area hauling Amish or just men in general talking dirty.
Eli and Barb Raber saw each other at the viewing, but there wasn’t time to talk. They texted and met up in Eli’s barn the day after the funeral.
They had to discuss cleanup.
18
Eli and Barb
I asked him, “If I’d die, would you actually cry?” He answered, “Oh yes.” I don’t believe he would because I’m so far from what he wants.
—BARBARA WEAVER, IN A LETTER FORESHADOWING HER OWN DEATH
Barb Raber was frazzled. She’d come undone. When she met Eli at the barn, she was a shell of what she had been, a broken dish, a cracked mirror. She shook as she stood there, fighting for composure. Eli later told investigators that the reason for the meeting was that he needed some feed delivered.
Just another one of his lies.
Those close to the case would wonder if he’d asked her there to calm her. Placate her. Ensure that she didn’t fall completely apart.
“Look,” said one person close to the case, “Raber was in love with Eli. She’d do anything for him. Sex when he wanted. Murder when he asked her to. I wonder how long she would have lasted once he saw that she was about to fall apart?”
Barb loved her .410 gauge shotguns. No one who knew her would deny that. She loved the light weight of the .410s. She loved the way there was almost no kickback when they were fired. She loved that they were ideal for close-distance shooting, anything under forty yards—even better, fifteen to twenty. It was the smallest-gauge shotgun made, perfect for a youth learning to shoot, or for a woman, even if she was an experienced hunter.
In the barn the day after the funeral, she teared up. Eli put his hands on her, stopping her from collapsing.
“Can you clean a shotgun so it looks like it hasn’t been fired?” Barb asked.
Eli offered his advice. But the moment wasn’t about offering tips to clean a shotgun. It was about keeping the secret. Barb had to get control of herself.
Despite the rumors that neither directly acknowledged, the pair had managed to keep their destructive sexual relationship quiet.
She performed oral sex on Eli in her Ford Explorer; they’d had intercourse at a motel the few times she drove him out of town for an overnight stay. The barn had been their main place for their illicit affair. She’d drop to her knees at his bidding and make sure he’d have the “happy ending” he’d begged her for.
It wasn’t about sex that day, or about Eli’s needs at all. Instead, she begged for help.
“I’m scared,” she said.
Barb probably knew guns as well as Eli. Yes, he said, it was possible to clean a shotgun so it would appear not to have been fired recently. Eli reminded her of the process. Get rid of gunpowder residue by cleaning the barrel with acetone and don’t forget to clean the trigger and hammer, too. Use a brush, an old toothbrush, steel wool, or a cleaning-polishing rod. Finish it off with a good wipe with a dry cloth.“What do I tell Ed if he notices the shotgun is missing?” she asked.
Eli knew they didn’t have to worry about Ed. He was blind to what had been going on with his wife. She’d been with Eli and other men. She’d lied to him time and again. And he fell for it.
Ed Raber was clueless. He’d been the perfect dupe.
* * *
BARB RABER WASN’T the only one having anxious days and nights.
Linda and Firman Yoder—who lived in one-half of Eli’s store, where Linda occasionally worked—called the sheriff’s office to say someone had broken into their home.
They thought it was Eli.
Detective Maxwell met them at a nearby Amish residence. They didn’t want Eli to see the detective at their house.
The day before, Linda had returned home on her bike from visiting a friend and found that someone had been in their side of the building. A door leading from the shop into the Yoders’ home, which Linda had left shut and locked, was open. Her windows had been unlocked.
Nothing appeared to have been taken, but it was as if the perpetrator were planning a return visit.
They were afraid of Eli and thought he might harm them. They knew about his relationship with Barb Raber. They knew about his having a cell phone. They knew all of Eli’s problems and faults. They even thought they knew what he had done with the murder weapon.
Three weeks before the murder, Linda had gone along on a fishing trip to Lake Erie with a group that included Eli. She overheard a man telling Eli how he had disposed of a rifle in the lake. Maybe that had given Eli the idea of how to get rid of the shotgun?
Detective Maxwell put a tap on the shanty phone and reassured them they were safe. An arrest was imminent.
19
Warrants
Why do I cringe every time I need to ask him for money? Am I not being submissive? I grew up with what was Dad’s was Mom’s, and what wa
s Mom’s was Dad’s.
—BARBARA WEAVER, LAMENTING THAT HER MARRIAGE TO ELI WAS NOTHING LIKE SHE’D HOPED IT WOULD BE
Edna Boyle studied the affidavit for a search warrant that was on her desk. As the assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute the case, she was looking through police reports and preparing a warrant to seize computers, phones, and guns from Barb Raber’s house, garage, and outbuildings. The thing about a search warrant is that you have to have a pretty good idea of what you’ll find before you find it and convince a judge of it.
Thanks to text messaging—still somewhat in its infancy when Eli discovered how easy it was for him to hook up with women—Boyle knew what she was looking for.
She was forty-three years old, married, and the mother of two young children. It didn’t escape trial watchers that there was an interesting equation about to play out: a woman with young children was prosecuting a woman with young children for the murder of a woman with young children.
As a feature story about her in a local newspaper stated, she’d leave you in the dust if you tried to catch her. Boyle was competitive, smart, and no-nonsense. By the time she came on to the Weaver case the day after the murder, she had been an attorney in private practice, a municipal judge in Akron Municipal Court, a certified fitness coach, and a marathon runner.
As an African-American, she was a bit of an anomaly in Amish country. She was an experienced attorney, but she knew little about the Amish. Just days before the murder, Boyle was working on a trial involving a case of felonious assault. She happened to be driving through Amish country with a detective on their way back from prison.
“He said, ‘Do you know how to tell an Amish house?’ I said, ‘No.’”
“‘No power lines.’”
Although she had spent most of her adult life in Akron, northeast of Wooster, she had had very little contact with the Amish. She saw Amish people occasionally as they passed through the juvenile court system—usually young people drinking. She said the Amish often confess, and don’t understand why they need an attorney.
“I tell them, ‘You need an attorney.’”
Boyle prepared for a trial the way she trained for a race. All out.
The affidavit she prepared cited the facts of the case to date, plus information gleaned from Cherie, Tabitha, and others who had heard Eli openly discussing wanting to be rid of his wife and knew of his close relationship with Barb Raber.
In order to justify the warrant, she included some of the text messages exchanged between her two best suspects recovered from Verizon after Mark Weaver supplied Eli’s and Barb’s phone numbers. From May 30 to June 2, Eli and Barb exchanged messages about methods of murder. Poison? Insecticide or nitrogen? Maybe an explosion? They even considered killing the children.
There were dozens of texts between 330-473-0453 (Barb) and 330-473-0392 (Eli) on Barb’s Verizon Friends & Family plan. Perhaps ironically, while there were hundreds of texts, phone records would show that Eli and Barb had used their phones for talking fewer than ten times in six months.
As a result, everything was there in their text messages: means, motive, and opportunity. And proof.
Evening, May 30:
Eli: Do you think 3 cc’s of that tempo would do it?
Barb: How would that ant stuff work?
Morning, May 31:
Eli: Morning. Any ideas how we could do it Tuesday morning?
Barb: I was thinking.
Eli: Thinking of what.
Barb: I was thinking of diff. ways.
Eli: Tell me!
Afternoon, May 31:
Eli: was just curious. What are you thinking of for Tuesday?
Barb: Don’t know? Be kind of hard with the kids in there!
Eli: Yeah, it would but we know they would go straight to heaven if it would happen that way.
Barb: I know!
Evening, May 31:
Eli: Just blow up the house or something Tuesday morning! Or come do her tonight.
Barb: I heard ya!
Eli: Okay. Thought you might be ignoring me. I don’t care at all how it’s done, just do it.
Late evening, May 31:
Eli: She’s going to wash again at 5 in the morn and I want you to do something in the morn, Barb, plz.
Barb: I’ll see what I can come up with.
Eli: 2 maro morning, babe, okay!!
Barb: What if I get caught?
Late evening, June 1:
Barb: Ed’s off tomorrow! So now what?
Eli: Why the fuck is he off? Tell him you have to haul somebody, please.
Eli: Please Barb.
Barb: What time are you leaving?
Eli: Three in the morning.
Barb: Is he picking you up first or Dave? I am so scared. What if I get caught? What if someone blames me?
Eli: Who would see you? Who would blame you?
Barb: Don’t know? David Weaver.
Eli: Not if we do it this way he won’t know. Don’t tell Ed you’re leaving, maybe you can sneak out and back in.
Barb: Do you want me to be there before you leave?
Early morning, June 2:
Barb: I shud just do it now. How am I supposed 2 see in the dark? Damn Eli I don’t kno if I can. Its 2 scary!
Eli: Morning! The bottom door is open.
Barb: You have no idea how I feel?
Eli: Take a light with you hon. M-w-h-a!
Barb: I’m so scared. Where are you?
Eli: We’re in Wooster … just don’t loose [sic] anything.
Barb: Do you think I can drive in behind the pines.
Eli: Yes.
Afternoon, June 2:
Barb: Whatever you do don’t give them your phone!! Please.
Barb: If someone gives the cops your number they can trace it down. The only way they can’t is if the number is changed.
And that’s what Barb did later that day. She got them new phone numbers.
Barb: I just feel so bad about everything. I just want to hold you! Do you think it would lead to this? I just don’t want to lose you or my boys.
Eli didn’t thank her or ask how she was—he was fixated on getting a different phone.
* * *
GETTING THE TEXTS was critical to solving the Weaver murder. It nearly didn’t happen. In fact, the texts were the only proof that Barb Raber was anywhere near the house the night of the murder.
“If we hadn’t requested the text messages right away, we would have lost the case,” Boyle said later. In 2009, phone companies, like Verizon, could retrieve only the five most recent days of text messages. Then they were gone. Police had gotten the phone numbers just in time.
In addition to contacting Verizon, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office requested records of Eli’s online meetups from MocoSpace. They also wanted a look at phone records between Barb and her friend David Weaver, and those between David and Eli.
David, father of five, had once worked for Barb Raber’s father-in-law. As with Eli, Barb had been his driver and they had been lovers. He left his Amish community in 2007 and married and drove trucks between Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the day of Barbara Weaver’s murder, his old friend Barb asked him to make a phone call.
Eli’s neighbor Firman Yoder—who had been the first to call Eli the morning of June 2 and tell him to come home—heard a suspicious phone message left on the shanty telephone’s answering machine the next day and told police. Fortunately, he did not erase it.
“Eli, we got the wrong person. You can run but not hide,” a man’s voice said. It was left at 7:36 a.m. on June 3.
It was a ruse, Barb or Eli’s idea to make it appear that Barbara Weaver’s murder was a “mistake” committed by some unknown men gunning for Eli. Verizon phone records confirmed that the call had come from David Weaver’s number. Detectives also learned from David that he had loaned Barb a .410 gauge shotgun a few years before the murder and never got it back.
It wasn’t just his women friends whom Eli tried to recruit
to kill his wife. Eli had reportedly suggested that Weaver take Barbara on a long truck haul to California—and not bring her back.
The next time Barb Raber contacted David, she seemed anxious, but not about any supposed calls made to the shanty. Barb was worried about possible evidence left at the scene.
“My tire tracks are probably all over there,” she told David. “I was there the night before.”
He told Barb not to worry. She had nothing to do with what had happened to Eli’s wife. Right? Neither of them did.
Boyle finished the search warrant to search the Raber house. Now it would go to a judge. Then it would be time to make some arrests.
20
Arrests
She was his driver, mailed out his catalogs, and that’s all I can think of.
—ED RABER, ON WHAT HE KNEW OF HIS WIFE’S FRIENDSHIP WITH ELI
It was so bad it was worth mentioning in court—twice.
When he testified about the search of Barb Raber’s home, Wayne County Sheriff’s Office deputy Alex Abel was asked if photographs taken inside the house on the afternoon of June 10—pictures of a cluttered kitchen, a cluttered home office, cluttered bedrooms, and a cluttered living room—adequately reflected the house he’d helped search. He said they did. Then he added a clarification.
“The house was a mess.”
Later in the trial, Barb’s defense attorney John Leonard acknowledged the state of the Raber house. “I think we all agree this house was kind of a mess, huh? Things strewn all over the place?”
The hours spent with search warrant in hand were challenging ones. Deputies looking for evidence that Barb Raber had played a part in a murder had to slog through the usual belongings of a family of five—but in a disarray that made the job harder.
The search of the home wasn’t the only reason the law was knocking at Barb’s door.
Just after 4:15 p.m., Abel and Detectives Chuhi and Maxwell arrived at the Raber house in Millersburg. Since the town is in neighboring Holmes County, their colleagues from the sheriff’s office there accompanied them. It had been eight days since Barbara Weaver’s murder.
Holmes County sheriff Timothy Zimmerly knocked for several minutes before Barb answered.