by Gregg Olsen
Nevertheless, referring to the creation of Adam and “his mate,” Eve, and their subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Amish historian Joseph Stoll argues that “scripture very clearly places the man in a position of responsibility as the head of the household, and his wife in a position of subjection.” Amish magazines and stories often cite the fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ also is the head of the church … Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24).
Yet this verse also commands men to follow Christ’s example. An article titled “The Husband’s Role” in the Amish magazine Family Life begins by stating, “The role of the Christian husband is summarized in the verse ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it’ (Ephesians 5:25).”1 As another Amish publication put it, “When a man vows before God to take a woman as his wife, he is accepting responsibility for her physical and spiritual well-being until death parts them.”2
Barbara Weaver attempted to be a good wife, but Eli Weaver was a horrible husband. A church community in which members trust one another to act in good faith and give themselves up to the teachings of the church and Christ’s example was no match for Eli’s selfish and pathological manipulation of family, friends, and lovers.
It’s not unusual for the Amish to talk to a counselor. Eli had refused to see the one Barbara was in touch with. Given that he had repeatedly left the church, it’s likely that the ministry would have wanted to be involved. But no one in the church could have told Barbara to leave her husband, for that would go against Biblical teaching. As it says in Matthew 19:6, “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” Encouraged by scripture to give the offender the benefit of the doubt, they probably trusted Eli when he returned home and made his confession, and they would have encouraged Barbara to give Eli another chance, forgive him, and remain committed to him.
In the popular imagination, the Amish are isolated from the world and its technology and live a simple life. In reality, there is great diversity in the Amish world, and while some Amish groups have held cell phones, computers, and other twenty-first-century technologies at bay, others have accepted them while modifying them or limiting their use. All Amish want to keep their distance from “the world”—how they do so is dictated by tradition and the Ordnung, or discipline of the church community.3
Eli and Barbara Weaver were members of an Andy Weaver Amish church community. The group differs from the Old Order in its stronger view of shunning, and it has remained more conservative technologically.4 Yet while the Andy Weaver churches in Ohio do not fellowship with their Old Order neighbors—meaning they don’t worship together or intermarry—they do fellowship with the technologically more progressive Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, leading some younger folks to question church leaders. One Andy Weaver Amish man commented that the behavior of the young folk was a factor in the decision by several families, his own included, to leave and start a new settlement. Too often, he noted, the young folk “just followed their own desires.”5
Certainly this was true of Eli. He was neither isolated from mainstream society nor naïve about what it offered him. He simply followed his own desires.
* * *
KAREN M. JOHNSON-WEINER is Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Potsdam. With Donald B. Kraybill and Steven M. Nolt, Johnson-Weiner is the author of The Amish, the companion to the PBS series of the same name. She is also the author of Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools; and New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State.
1 “The Husband’s Role.” Family Life, May 2004, pp. 9–11.
2 A God-Centered Marriage, The Husband’s Role. Pathway Reprint Series, #1. Aylmer, Ontario: Pathway Publishers, 2008, pp. 7–9.
3 For a good (and very accessible) discussion of the Amish and technology, see chapter 17 of The Amish, by D. B. Kraybill, K. M. Johnson-Weiner, and S. M. Nolt. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
4 Weaver is a very common Amish surname. For a good discussion of the Andy Weaver Amish, see C. E. Hurst and D. L. McConnell, An Amish Paradox. Diversity and Change in the World’s Largest Amish Community. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
5 This is discussed in more depth in K. M. Johnson-Weiner, New York Amish. Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
Acknowledgments
MORE THAN TWENTY-FIVE years ago I visited Wayne County while researching a book about the murders of an Amish wife and her little boy. I talked with dozens of Amish people close to the victims—friends, family members, neighbors. In fact, I formed a close bond with many of them. Most were Swartzentruber Amish, which casual readers may or may not know are considered among the most conservative subgroups of Old Order Amish that make their home in that part of Ohio.
The Amish people I got to know were devastated over the loss not only of Ida and Danny Stutzman, but of the man who’d caused the unspeakable hurt. Eli Stutzman was his name, and although he had brought great hurt to them, there was still a measure of compassion mixed with their anger, and disappointment in the justice system that had failed them.
Just as I was interested in learning about what had happened to Ida, Danny, and Eli, those I met were equally interested in me. My day-to-day life was a mystery of sorts. Back then the Amish didn’t watch TV.
Close family friends of Ida’s took the train cross-country to the Seattle suburbs where my wife and twin girls and I lived. I drove Elmer and Erma Miller of Fredericksburg to see the Pacific Ocean. I took them to Bellevue Square, a high-end shopping mall near our home. As we strode past shops selling things they’d never seen—and never wanted—shoppers gawked in their direction.
Elmer looked over at me with a sly smile. “They don’t see many like us, do they?” he said.
No, they didn’t.
My wife worked and brought home Kentucky Fried Chicken one night while the Millers stayed at our house. Both Elmer and Erma felt sorry for her—that she wasn’t able to make a home-cooked meal.
In the quarter of a century since I wrote Abandoned Prayers, the Amish have been integrated into our culture in ways that we could not have predicted when Elmer and Erma and I walked into that suburban mall. Today a visit to KFC or McDonald’s in Wayne County would surely include an encounter with Amish people. They don’t have time to make a home-cooked meal either. When Barbara Weaver needed a birthday cake for her son, she bought one at Walmart. Crime scene photos show it half eaten, still in its plastic package, sitting on the kitchen counter.
Amish Mafia, Breaking Amish, and other TV shows have made the Amish more than the subject of curiosity. Today, they’ve been transformed into a kind of inescapable sideshow. Twenty-five years ago, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was the primary Amish tourism mecca. Wayne and Holmes counties were just getting started. Now they’re catching up. Many Amish profit from the attention and interest, but on the days they’re bombarded by tourists, they surely must feel like creatures in a zoo.
I write all of this with a somewhat heavy heart. The Amish life that I glimpsed when I wrote Abandoned Prayers doesn’t exist in Ohio anymore except in my memory.
That brings me to the book you’re holding in your hands now. When law enforcement and many of the Amish that my coauthor, Rebecca Morris, hoped to interview declined, the excuse was that they didn’t want to “hurt the Amish” or “damage the reputation of the Amish.” What remained unspoken was that the hurt they wanted to avoid likely had less to do with the feelings of the Amish people than with the commerce that attracts people with their cameras and fat wallets, hoping to bring home something of the simple life to put on the foot of a bed, hang on a wall, or post o
n Facebook.
Rebecca and I persevered. If no one would speak for Barbara Weaver—if no one will look into how it was that a Mennonite woman like Barb Raber would find herself behind bars at the instigation of her lover, Barbara’s husband, Eli Weaver—then we would. Thousands of pages of information provided by the courts and the sheriff’s department, including heartbreaking witness statements, helped us tell this story. While not a single member of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office would provide any context or perspective, some outside the department did.
Rebecca and I are immensely grateful for those who broke ranks on both sides of the Weaver murder case. While many of the Amish, former Amish, and Mennonites who spoke with us did not want to be identified by name, they helped with the kind of courage and love that fueled the truth that was so important to Ida Gingerich’s family twenty-five years ago. They have our admiration, respect, and profound appreciation.
Two of them deserve special appreciation. We called them “our Amish and Mennonite detectives”—they provided materials, surreptitiously took photographs, and trusted us as we asked questions about the personal lives of the Amish. Both knew Barbara and Eli Weaver.
In addition, we could not have written this book without the cooperation of the brave women who’d been ensnared in Eli Weaver’s lie-filled quest for sex. We talked with them not out of some prurient interest in their affairs, but to better understand the man who billed himself as “Amish Stud.” They saw the need to alert other women that meeting men online can be dangerous, even if they cloak themselves in the garb of the Plain People.
We also wish to acknowledge Andy Hyde; John Leonard; Edna Boyle; Scott Spidell; Mark Weaver; Steve Chupp; Ella Kay Mast; Ruby Hofstetter; The Budget; The Wooster Daily-Record; Family Life; Ted Cook; Dr. Margaret Adam, Seattle Children’s Hospital geneticist and pediatrician, who helped us understand the deaths that colored Barbara Raber’s childhood; and the many people who asked to remain anonymous, or were given pseudonyms, who witnessed this terrible tragedy, one compounded by the sudden death of Ed Raber of an apparent heart attack at age thirty-nine on January 6, 2016.
Gregg Olsen
Olalla, Washington
Rebecca Morris
Seattle, Washington
January 2016
Also by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris
If I Can’t Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Also by Gregg Olsen
NONFICTION
A Twisted Faith
The Deep Dark
Starvation Heights
Mockingbird (Cruel Deception)
If Loving You Is Wrong
Abandoned Prayers
Bitter Almonds
The Confessions of an American Black Widow
FICTION
Now That She’s Gone
The Girl in the Woods
The Girl on the Run
Shocking True Story
Fear Collector
The Bone Box
Betrayal
Envy
Closer than Blood
Victim Six
Heart of Ice
A Cold Dark Place
A Wicked Snow
Also by Rebecca Morris
Ted and Ann: The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy
Bad Apples: Inside the Teacher/Student Sex Scandal Epidemic
About the Authors
GREGG OLSEN has been a journalist and investigative author for more than twenty years. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller of more than twenty books, most recently, A Killing in Amish Country. He has been featured on NPR, Good Morning America, and in USA Today, People, Redbook, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Olalla, Washington. You can sign up for email updates here.
REBECCA MORRIS is the New York Times bestselling author of If I Can’t Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children; Bodies of Evidence; and Overkill (all with Gregg Olsen). She is also the author of Ted and Ann: The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy and has been an award-winning journalist in New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. She lives in Seattle. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Dramatis Personae
Foreword by Linda Castillo
1. Thunderclap
2. The House
3. Sisters
4. The Letters
5. Fishing
6. The Knock
7. Waiting
8. The News
9. Temptation
10. The Taxi Lady
11. The Children
12. The Women
13. Amish Stud
14. Dancing in the Rain
15. Friends
16. The Go-To Attorney for Wayward Amish
17. The Viewing
18. Eli and Barb
19. Warrants
20. Arrests
21. Barb in Jail
22. Jailhouse Talk
23. Eli in Jail
24. Evidence
25. A Husband’s Questions
26. Too Much Information
27. Defense
28. Prosecution
29. Preparation
30. Trial
31. The Shot
32. Best Friends
33. It Was Lust
34. It Was Lust II
35. Doubt
36. Verdict
37. Aftermath
Afterword by Karen M. Johnson-Weiner
Acknowledgments
Also by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris
About the Authors
Copyright
A KILLING IN AMISH COUNTRY. Copyright © 2016 by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris. Foreword copyright © 2016 by Linda Castillo. Afterword copyright © 2016 by Karen M. Johnson-Weiner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Olsen, Gregg, author.|Morris, Rebecca T., author.
Title: A killing in Amish country: sex, betrayal, and a cold-blooded murder / Gregg Olsen & Rebecca Morris.
Description: First edition.|New York: St. Martin’s Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003974|ISBN 9781250067234 (hardback)|ISBN 9781466875241 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Weaver, Eli D.|Murder—Ohio—Wayne County—Case studies.|Amish—Ohio—Wayne County—Case studies.|Amish Country (Ohio)—History.|BISAC: TRUE CRIME / Murder / General.
Classification: LCC HV6533.O5 O47 2016|DDC 364.152/3092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003974
eISBN 9781466875241
Cover design by Danielle Fiorella
Cover photograph © Bill Miles Photography
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: July 2016
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