by Gregg Olsen
The man sighed. “Yeah, two of the boys were there. I think the cops called someone to come get them.”
Mark shook his head at the image. No one could have brought a greater disaster onto his family than Eli Weaver. He’d moved between Amish and English life with a kind of selfishness that few had ever seen. Amish friends heard of his conquests with English girls. They put up with his complaints that his wife wouldn’t submit to his every desire. And now this.
When Mark got off the phone, he felt a little relieved, which surprised him. He would have to tell Elsie and others in the family, and he dreaded that. But his kids would sleep more soundly.
Still, Mark was conflicted. Even though he had no doubt that Eli was guilty and that his dead wife deserved justice, it was unsettling, too. For years to come there wasn’t a day when Mark didn’t want to ask Eli, “Why did you do this?”
Eli’s arrest became a sort of “Where were you when you heard the news?” moment for the Amish of Wayne and Holmes counties. Mark was at work. Steve was driving between his jobs as an auctioneer.
The Amish gossip line didn’t reach the city in northeastern Ohio where Cherie Lindstrom and her daughter made their home.
She learned of Eli’s arrest by reading the Wooster Daily Record the next day. She was shocked but not really surprised. When she’d first heard about the murder, a dozen red flags had gone up. She knew that whatever had happened, Eli had been behind it. A couple of days after she read the news, he called. He was matter-of-fact—someone had killed his wife.
Like Steve and Mark, Cherie would be subpoenaed by the prosecution. She did not attend the trial but had to phone in every morning to see if she was to report to court. It was fine by her that she wasn’t called to testify. She’d been sleeping with a monster in Amish clothes. As the trial worked its way to a conclusion, Cherie learned there was much about her lover that she hadn’t known. She’d been played by a master manipulator.
She hadn’t known of his long affair with Barb Raber.
Or that he had many other English girlfriends.
Or that he had even fathered a baby with one.
Or that he had left his family twice, been shunned, and returned.
Cherie sunk into a depression, feeling like the fool. The Amish romance novel she’d thought she was living with Eli was a fraud. Her idea of their love bridging two different worlds was a schoolgirl fantasy.
“Most people wouldn’t understand,” she later said about her affair with the man who’d begged her to take him away from the Amish. “There were real feelings there. He swept me off my feet,” she said. “I always swore I wouldn’t be ‘the other woman.’”
21
Barb in Jail
He became emotional and at times his eyes teared up in disbelief at his wife’s involvement.
—FROM A WAYNE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE INTERVIEW WITH ED RABER
Barb didn’t like jail. The food. The isolation. The nosy woman in the next cell.
She thought that if she just said she was sorry, if she could just explain that the gun went off accidentally, she could go home.
Even house arrest wouldn’t be so bad.
“I just want to get out so I can spend time with my little children,” she told her husband in one of their many phone conversations from jail. She was worried that the local newspapers were writing about the murder. “People can treat me how they want. I already got treated like shit. They can keep treating me like shit. I just want to go home to my kids.”
On June 11, the day after his wife was arrested, Ed Raber sat at his kitchen table with Lieutenant Kurt Garrison. Ed’s brother, Daniel Raber, and his brother-in-law Roy Miller were present. During their conversation, the father of three cried and seemed in disbelief that his wife could be involved in the murder.
Garrison asked him what he knew about the last few days.
Ed remembered that Barb had left early Monday evening to pick up Eli and a couple of other men who had been fishing at Berlin Reservoir. She was home by 11:00 p.m. He saw her then, and a few hours later. At about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday he stuck his head into the bedroom to say good-bye. He said it was possible she’d left and returned during the several hours he slept.
Ed explained that he traveled all over Ohio and Pennsylvania for his employer, Miller’s Storage Barns, which manufactures garden sheds, two-story barns, A-frame cabins, tack rooms, and storage sheds.
Between 9:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Barb called him, crying, and told him Eli’s wife had been found dead in her bed. Barb kept him updated during the day, calling later to say that someone had gone into the Weaver house and shot Barbara.
Ed told the detectives that after the news of the murder, Barb had no appetite and cried often. She admitted to her husband that she was worried about texts she had sent Eli. When Eli had texted her about his frustrations with his wife, and said he felt like shooting her, Barb had in jest responded, “What shall I use?” She was relieved when a friend told her that the police would never be able to arrest her just because she had written some questionable texts.
Barb told Ed that if she went to prison—falsely accused, of course—she would kill herself. Ed tried to talk a little sense into her, pointing out that then she wouldn’t see her children or him again.
Ed told detectives that the four firearms found in the house during the search were the only guns they owned. He offered that Barb had borrowed a .410 shotgun from David Weaver to hunt with. He thought Barb had returned the gun, but he wasn’t sure.
Ed asked for one computer to be returned and some things from Barb’s wallet—the children’s health insurance cards, credit cards, and some cash. Lieutenant Garrison agreed.
Then Lieutenant Garrison had the unenviable task of asking Barb’s husband what everyone else knew—except Ed.
What about a sexual relationship between Barb and Eli? Was there one? He said no.
The husband sitting across the kitchen table from Lieutenant Garrison didn’t try to defend his wife, or claim she was framed, or speak in her defense. He seemed resigned.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” he told Garrison. “We’re all human, you know. I still can’t see how she could do it—have the heart to kill someone.”
The next day his wife was indicted by a grand jury on one count of aggravated murder.
* * *
THE TWO-HUNDRED-MEMBER CONGREGATION of Sharon Conservative Mennonite Church, which sits between Walnut Creek and Sugarcreek, was “mortified” and “dumbfounded,” according to one longtime member and friend of the Rabers. One of their own had been arrested for murder. Yes, she was a strange woman whom you would keep your distance from once you met her, but still.
Murder.
“You could tell she was different,” one woman said. “She made up stories, and kind of lied and twisted things. She exaggerated.”
One of her favorite topics to brag about was her girlhood, when, according to Barb, she had more gentleman callers than Blanche DuBois.
“She wanted attention,” the friend said. “People would back off when they got to know her.”
Some family members backed away from Barb, too. They had never visited the house. One relative by marriage said she had no idea the Raber home had become the house of a hoarder.
Immediately after her arrest, the church looked for ways to help Ed and his sons. They provided child care and meals. Prayers were offered.
As for why the formerly Amish, now Conservative Mennonite, woman would commit murder, many in the congregation saw a simple answer.
“They wanted to be together,” the family member said. “Barbara and that man wanted to be together.”
That might have surprised Eli, who never for one minute was planning a future with Barb. He wanted to be free of everyone.
* * *
DURING A JAILHOUSE phone conversation, Barb’s sister Susan Miller asked if their calls were being recorded. They were, Barb told her—that’s why she was speaking Dutch. The calls wouldn’t be und
erstood. “We have them that way,” she said.
Barb didn’t know about Joe Mullet.
Mullet had been a deputy in the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office for twelve years. As the community policing officer for the county, he talked at schools—both Amish and English—and to groups about everything from gun safety to child car seats. Wayne County borrowed him to translate recorded jailhouse phone calls between Barb, her husband, and her sister.
Mullet was raised Amish and his first language is Pennsylvania Dutch. He left home when he was sixteen, during the Rumspringa years. His wife is a schoolteacher in Berlin, the oldest existing village in Holmes County, where the Amish established a community in 1820. Berlin is just a few miles east of Millersburg.
Most of Mullet’s family is Amish. His sisters are married to Amish preachers. Both his and his wife’s family speak Pennsylvania Dutch. He had done translations for other criminal cases.
Wayne County gave Mullet CDs with the audio of phone calls. He played them on his computer and translated the calls into English. A secretary took his handwritten notes and typed them up. Barb’s defense attorney argued that Mullet didn’t translate everything, just what he thought was “relevant.” He admitted that, as a rule, he left out conversations about the couple’s children and some of their arguments about money.
During the calls, Barb offered to perform community service. Maybe her penance would be to warn others of the dangers of texting.
The calls were made and recorded the first few weeks Barb Raber was in jail, after she was indicted, as the case against her continued to be built, and as she awaited trial.
22
Jailhouse Talk
I wish they would come in here, take my cuffs off, and say I am innocent, you can go home.
—BARB RABER, COMPLAINING ABOUT HER NEW HOME
Barb Raber and telecommunications were a bad fit. While she knew full well that her sexting and texting with Eli Weaver had been the subject of keen interest among the detectives working the case, she didn’t think about the fallout that might occur from the jailhouse phone calls she made to her husband, Ed. All were recorded and shared with the prosecution as she awaited trial.
And poor Ed Raber. It was easy to hold a measure of sympathy for what he was enduring as the result of his wife’s affair. He tested her a few times during the calls, but he always circled back to her point of view.
She was innocent.
As soon as she’d calm him, placate him, she’d drop a mini bomb and move on.
Ed: Everyone is saying you did it.
Barb: I did not; that is why I need an attorney. Do they have my computer?
Ed: Huh?
Barb: Do they have my computer?
Ed: Yeah, they got everyone’s.
Barb: Yours too?
Ed: Yeah.
He didn’t ask why she was asking, and his jailed wife didn’t leave him any room to do so.
Barb: I got to get out of here, Ed.
Ed: I know, but I ain’t got a million dollars.
He kept pressing her for answers and she kept denying everything.
Ed: So what is Eli accusing you of?
Barb: I have no idea what he’s doing. I don’t know if David [Weaver] is involved. They are going on all the text messages. Did they take all the phones?
Ed: They did not get the boys’.
Barb Did they get the other phone?
Ed: Yeah.
Barb: Shit.
Another call showed how Barb didn’t understand that she was in the kettle and the heat was on high. When she called Ed, he told her he was at a friend’s house.
Barb: Do they think it was me?
Ed: Yeah, oh, no, no, nope.
Ed pointed out that the Amish gossip line was on fire and he was trying to figure out what was happening and who knew what. He told his wife there was a lot of talk about a man Eli had asked to murder his wife.
“Well, someone has to report that stuff so I can leave,” she said. “He also asked David Weaver to do it.”
Ed was incredulous and Barb went on with what she knew.
“David Weaver said he had someone to do it, but they wanted $5,000 now and $5,000 when it is done,” she said.
Ed couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was so far out of the loop on what his wife had been doing—and whom she’d done it with.
“No way,” he said.
Barb went on. Her husband was still in her corner and she couldn’t lose him.
“But they are giving me all the blame because of the text messages. They are sticking text messages together that don’t have anything to do with it,” she said.
Next, she gave him specific instructions, telling him to cancel Eli’s cell phone, and cancel hers too. She had already changed their phone numbers, but now she wanted everything gone yesterday.
“Because if I get out of here,” she said, “I don’t want a cell phone, then we will go from there. If I do want a cell phone, I don’t want any text.”
Ed agreed.
Barb told him to raise some money by selling the Explorer. When she got home—which she said she expected to sometime soon—she’d want to stay home with her children anyway.
* * *
ED RABER RECEIVED a lot of desperate calls from the county jail. Barb needed some TLC and she wasn’t going to get it anywhere but from him. There was an enormous irony to that. Those listening to the calls thought that Ed was a fool to listen to his wife.
Barb: I’m starting to get scared again.
Ed: You are afraid or what?
Barb: I’m scared.
Ed: Why?
Barb: That paper they gave me.
Ed: What papers?
Barb: Indictment for aggravated murder on the bottom. It says subject to life in prison.
Ed: Oh yeah. Don’t worry about that.
Barb: What are you gonna do if they put me in prison for life?
Ed tried to calm her. He reminded Barb that the state didn’t have any evidence against her. She hadn’t even been away from the house. He’d swear to that on the witness stand if asked to. She was home. He was home. She couldn’t have left to kill Barbara Weaver, could she?
* * *
BARB RABER WAS rattled. She had thought that Eli loved her, but she’d been duped. She knew a few days into her jail time that Eli had turned on her. She dialed her husband to discuss the importance of her alibi.
“If you talk to the lawyer, make sure you tell him you were home all night. I don’t care what it takes, I just want out.”
Ed listened. He was standing by her because he didn’t know what else to do. She was so insistent that she hadn’t done anything wrong. She assured him that there would be some good to come out of all of this. She’d be willing to go on the road to discuss the dangers of sexting.
“I will gladly stand in front of crowds of people and warn people of sending text messages that they don’t want people to see,” she said. “They can delete them, but they are still there.”
“He used you,” Ed said.
“Definitely.”
“You got framed.”
Barb, who’d had sex with any number of men, who had lied to her husband, lied to her children, and was accused of colluding with a man to kill his wife, told her husband she had had it up to there with the way the other women in the jail talked. They were so trashy and it was completely insulting.
“I am gonna go nuts,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because they cuss unbelievably bad,” she said.
“Huh?”
“They cuss so bad,” she repeated.
“Oh yeah, just be an example and don’t,” he said. “You don’t need to say nothing to no one.”
“I know,” she said. “They knew when I got up here that I was a murderer.”
* * *
THE TIMELINE was crucial. Barb Raber saw her only chance out of the mess as having a stalwart and believable alibi. That was Ed Raber’s job and Barb made no bones a
bout the fact that her life hung in the balance and he was the only one who could save her. She also needed Ed as a source of news.
“Did you tell him you were home all night and stuff?” she asked during a call, aware that detectives had been talking with Ed.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Somebody was talking up here that their mom saw on the news that they had not found the murder weapon yet,” she said.
Ed tried to put the brakes on.
“You’re not supposed to talk about it,” he said.
“I did not say anything, nothing at all. I just let them talk. They were talking about the Amish man. I did not say a word. I did not say anything, Eddie. I just let them talk.”
* * *
FINALLY IT WAS Ed Raber’s turn to talk. He’d listened to his wife spout off all sorts of reasons why she hadn’t been involved in the murder. How she couldn’t possibly have done any of the things the detectives and media were reporting. They had it all wrong. People in the community felt sorry for Ed. Many considered him a complete dupe. He just couldn’t take it anymore. He summoned the courage to ask her what was so very heavy on his mind.
“I don’t know how I want to ask this, uh, now I am only going to ask you once,” he said, stumbling through his words on a phone call with Barb in jail. “Now, uh, I will accept the answer, whatever you give me, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” Barb answered.
“I am still with you. Did you ever do anything, you know, do anything with him?”
Barb took a moment. She must have known that her husband would ask this.
“A long time ago, Eddie,” she said.
“Before you married me?”
“Yeah.”
He accepted her lie. Ed was always good at believing in her.
“I don’t know what he’s saying,” she added. “I have no clue.”
As the call wound its way to its conclusion, Barb promised she’d do her best to make things right in the eyes of the church. But there was only so much she could do.
“I am not going to sit here innocent,” she said, “if you know what I mean.”
“Stay by the truth,” Ed told her.
Barb said she would but “they [had] to blame someone.”