Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, And

by Gregg Olsen

  The Kidron Rescue Squad arrived then. Of course, they were too late to save Ida Stutzman, but they still had a role: the Amish would ride to the hospital in their van.

  Howard Snavely watched as the paramedics tried to revive Ida. After a few minutes, a young paramedic said softly: “She’s gone.”

  Stutzman didn’t hear the fatal prognosis. He was busy discussing with one of the firefighters the lightning bolt that he said had caused the blaze. His mind seemed to be on things other than his wife and the unborn child she carried.

  Stutzman’s seeming indifference to his wife’s death was considered by some a normal reaction to the most horrible of circumstances. It was a case of shock, some would later say.

  Some things were missed or went unnoticed. It was dark, investigators’ eyes alternating between the dark of night and the bright light of the fire. It was hard to see certain things. No one gave the marks on Ida’s face and mouth any consideration.

  Sue Snavely, who didn’t know that Ida had died, worried about the Stutzmans, although she barely knew them. The soft-spoken Amishman had been over to use their telephone a few times. Amish were hard to get to know. She wondered if their livestock had gotten out of the barn in time.

  Returning from the Gerbers’ place, young Eli ran up Moser Road and saw that Ida had been carried to the pasture on the other side of the road. Through the fence he saw her lifeless body. She looked exactly as she had when he’d first seen her slumped outside the milk house on the south side of the barn.

  The boy figured that the paramedics had carried her across the road. He didn’t know that it was Stutzman and Howard Snavely who had done it—after the boy had gone for help. He didn’t know that it was after he ran to Gerbers’ that a terrified Stutzman had screamed to Howard Snavely to help him get his wife out of the barn.

  Neighbors took Danny to Elam Bontrager’s home, a mile or so down the road. David Amstutz was dispatched to Fredericksburg to summon the Gingeriches to the hospital.

  The flames threatened a shed, but firefighters were able to save it. The farmhouse was undamaged. The cherry tree that was so beautiful and smelled so sweet in the spring was scorched and wilted.

  It took Wayne County sheriff’s deputy Phil Carr ten minutes to get to Moser Road from Kidron, where he had been on patrol. He arrived at the Stutzmans’ farm at 12:40 A.M. He was alone, although he knew from the radio dispatcher that Sheriff Frost had been alerted and was on his way. Carr, who had been with the department two years, was briefed by Mel Wyss. He conducted no interviews of his own. At the time, it didn’t seem necessary.

  As it had been obvious to Wyss, Carr knew that Mrs. Stutzman was dead. He observed the firefighting effort, which now focused on ensuring that the flames did not ignite the house or any outbuildings. Carr measured the distances from the barn to where the woman had been set that night. She now lay 103 feet west of the barn in the night pasture. Prior to that, according to where Stutzman said he had put her, Ida Stutzman had lain 56 feet from the barn.

  Stutzman, shaken and disoriented, initially estimated that he had put her 30 feet from the barn. Such a discrepancy was understandable given the stress of the fire.

  Wyss instructed Wes Hofstetter and another squadman to take Ida Stutzman to Dunlap Memorial Hospital. With as much grace as possible, the woman was put on a stretcher and covered to the neck with a sheet. Her husband didn’t ask about her and gave no indication that he knew she was dead.

  Although Stutzman’s reaction seemed inappropriate, he was an Amishman. Amish don’t show emotion.

  But his wife is dead, Hofstetter thought.

  The strobe of the lights flashed on the eight-mile drive to the hospital. No sirens wailed on the deserted roadway—no need for them at that time of morning. Stutzman sat in the front next to Hofstetter. Another squadman rode in back with Ida.

  Sheriff Jim Frost arrived at the fire scene and moved on, staying at the farm only a few minutes. He left word that he was on his way to the hospital to interview Stutzman.

  Another who showed up at the fire was Tim Blosser, the attorney who had been at the Stutzman house just before the fire. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he told one of the deputies at the scene. “I was here earlier in the evening helping the Stutzmans write their will!”

  Dr. J. T. Questel was a slight man with white hair and a penchant for belt buckles big enough to cut him in two. One buckle was the symbol of the NRA, and the Wayne County coroner made no bones about his affiliation. He was a doctor, a farmer, and a man who hated crime and criminals with an unwavering passion. As coroner, he had seen too often what criminals can do.

  Questel grew up on the Ohio–West Virginia border. After serving in the Air Force, he went to medical school at Ohio State, where he met his wife. Helen Questel was from Wooster, which was reason enough for them to settle in the Wayne County seat.

  The couple made many friends in Wooster, including Jim Frost. “We both consider Jim to be like a son,” Questel later said.

  Nearly every coroner has a case that haunts him long after he makes his ruling. Reasons vary. Sometimes a piece of evidence doesn’t fit. Maybe a statement doesn’t jive with the crime scene. When Dr. Questel was called in on the death of an Amishwoman from Dalton, he came face to face with one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  The fire was still smoldering when the coroner arrived at the scene. Dr. Questel was not required to inspect every death scene reported in the county. The woman was Amish, pregnant, and dead due to a violent situation—a raging barn fire. It warranted a look.

  Deputy Carr briefed him on the Amishman’s tragic story—his wife had died while rescuing milk cans. Stutzman indicated that his wife had a weak heart, the legacy of a bout with rheumatic fever when she was a teenager. She was unconscious when he found her and carried her outside the doorway of the milk house. Because it was too hot, he moved her again. Questel studied Deputy Carr’s sketches of the scene.

  The idea of a pregnant woman hauling milk cans from a burning barn in the middle of the night did not strike him as odd. Like other Englischers in Wayne County, Questel had always considered the Amish industrious and thrifty. If they could save something from ruin, they would.

  No one—not Sheriff Frost or any investigator—told the coroner about Stutzman’s history of violence and deception in Marshallville. No one mentioned that setups had been the Amishman’s forte.

  His headlights crudely slashed the darkness as David Amstutz drove up the drive to the Gingerich farmhouse. The car door slammed and Daniel was the first to answer the sound. He knew that a predawn visit could only mean bad news.

  “There’s been a fire at Eli’s. Ida is dead and Eli is in critical condition,” Amstutz called into an open window.

  The confused and shocked Gingeriches asked about Danny, but Amstutz had no information on the baby.

  Lizzie and Amos hurried out the door for a ride to the hospital. All they could do now was pray. God had chosen this time to take their daughter. Their son-in-law was near death. And no one seemed to know about the little boy.

  Where was Danny? Was he safe? they wondered.

  At Sand Hill, the Stutzman barn had been reduced to black ashes. Ida Stutzman was now only a memory, and her husband and son were alone. She was pronounced DOA, although it was clear to everyone that she had died hours earlier than 1:47 A.M., which was the time recorded for her death.

  The Gingeriches searched for answers to the tragedy. Of course, there needn’t be a reason beyond the ultimate truth: God had chosen her. On the way to the hospital, Amos told Lizzie of the time he had gone to Cherry Ridge School to warn Stutzman that somebody was out to get him. Amos speculated that the fire was a result of a vendetta.

  At the hospital, they met with Stutzman’s parents and Elam Bontrager. Stutzman sat on a chair, seeming disoriented and shaken—of course, no one would have expected anything else.

  “Ida woke me,” Stutzman told them.

  “Why did she wake you?
What woke her?” Amos Gingerich asked.

  “She heard something pop. Something exploded in the barn.” Stutzman added that he and Ida had run to get help. Later, when she didn’t return, he had gone to the milk house looking for her. “When I walked in a little, I kicked at something—it was her feet,” he said.

  Stutzman said that Ida’s heart had failed. She had probably had a heart attack in the milk house. It had been too much work for her, and too much smoke.

  The explosion that Stutzman said his wife had heard puzzled the Amish. Some wondered if Stutzman might have had some gasoline or kerosene cans in the barn. But young Eli, the hired hand, couldn’t recall seeing any gas cans in the barn. The same was true for kerosene. “Why would he have kerosene in the barn?” young Eli later said. “It wouldn’t make sense—it was stored in the shed.”

  In the basement morgue at Dunlap Memorial Hospital, the Wayne County coroner donned a striped white smock and began examining Ida Stutzman’s body. J. T. Questel drew blood for carbon monoxide analysis, and, since Sheriff Frost had said that the Stutzmans had Valium in the house, blood would be sent to a lab in Cleveland to screen for traces of the drug.

  Most of the woman’s burns were on her left side, the side closer to the barn. Ida’s left breast was exposed; Questel noted that her nipple had been burned to a parchmentlike hardness. Some of her chest had blistered like blow-torched house paint. The left side of her face was also severely burned—not from flames, Questel thought, but from the intense indirect heat of the fire. The left side of her abdomen was parched enough to cause slippage of some skin. Some burns were rimmed in white, then red.

  Ida Stutzman’s nylon head scarf had melted in a number of places; there the fabric had soldered itself to her neck. Her navy-colored jacket was also scorched. A more direct flame would have ignited it.

  When Dr. Questel loosened her dress he could see that the dead woman had suffered extensive burns underneath her clothing—which was not unusual given the extreme heat. Her cotton dress would have provided no protection. Questel noticed mud smears on her dress, which was not unusual since the milk house was a cool, wet place. Additionally, he noted that her right fingers had been scorched to a deep red, as was the base of her palm. The center of her palm, however, was still white and unburned. Her hand was frozen in a loose clench. It appeared to him that she had grabbed something extremely hot. But that was only a guess.

  Long scratches cut across her forehead from the bridge of her nose to just above her left eyebrow. A bloody laceration from the corner of her mouth was also noted in his report. Blood seeped over her gums and between her teeth.

  The coroner’s series of Polaroids were the only photographs ever taken of Ida, as her Order strictly forbade photography.

  If she hadn’t been Amish—Amish don’t commit murder—or if Frost had given Questel the critical background on Stutzman’s life in Marshallville, he might have looked at Ida’s death a little differently. Later, when he reviewed the case, some things proved puzzling.

  Ida’s left breast had been exposed, which would suggest that she hadn’t had time to pin her dress when she ran out of the house to fight the fire. However, if her husband had told her to go to the neighbors’, as he had stated to Wyss and Frost, the modest Amishwoman undoubtedly would have pinned it before leaving.

  Her clenched hand was also a concern. The burns covered the entire fingers—not just the obvious contact surfaces. The natural response to grabbing something hot is to let go quickly. But her fingers had been roasted.

  Most disturbing were the cut and scratches on her face and mouth. Ida Stutzman could have fallen and caused the cut. In fact, Stutzman had said that his wife had fallen in the milk house. But he was specific: She was on her back. How could she harm her mouth and scratch her forehead falling backward? In addition, the mud on the front of her dress was insignificant enough to suggest that she had not fallen or doubled over and then rolled onto her back.

  The mouth is a very vulnerable and tender part of the human body. It was more likely that she had been struck by something or, in the most chilling scenario, beaten. When a boxer bleeds from a blow it usually is one planted on the mouth, or above the eyes.

  The blood in her mouth and on her face was red enough to indicate to the coroner that the woman had been alive when the trauma that caused the cut occurred. As oxygen is depleted from blood, the color edges from cherry red toward dark brown.

  None of this, however, was noted, filed, or discussed at the time.

  A coroner’s job is to interpret the condition of the body and determine the cause of death. Inexplicably, the sheriff’s department did not report Stutzman’s history of violence. The information was glaring in its omission.

  Deputy Phil Carr did not know, nor did fire chief Mel Wyss. But Sheriff Frost knew it. It is unlikely that the events at Stoll Farms—the phony notes, the self-mutilation, the lies—would have slipped his mind.

  Dr. Questel ruled death by natural causes, primarily cardiac arrest—the cause Stutzman had suggested when he told them that she had a weak heart from rheumatic fever. Additionally, the doctor noted that the stress of the burning barn had been too much for her and had contributed to her death.

  The body was released to Wayne Spidell of DesVoines-Spidell Funeral Home in Mount Eaton.

  After Frost left the hospital, where he had interviewed Stutzman, he went back to his office in the Wayne County Justice Center and shut his door. Whether he had notes from the interview or typed the entry from memory is unclear. In either case, no one who knew him would question Frost’s accuracy. Additionally, those who read his reports knew Jim Frost was reliable in his recollections and unsurpassed in his details. Others envied his ability—Frost could build a case on paper and each word he used was a steel nail.

  On Case C950-77 he wrote:

  Eli related to me that this evening while he was coming home from Dalton, about late supper time, he thought he saw a flash of lightning strike his barn. He checked the barn and could not find any sign of fire. He then ate, milked the cows, and when he was done milking the cows, he went up to get some straw and found a spot on the top of the granary, which stores wheat, that appeared to have been burned by a lightning strike. Because of this, approximately every half-hour he checked the area on the west side of the barn, but never found any other evidence of fire. His wife, Ida, woke him in the night and stated, “There looks like there is a fire in the west end of the barn.” They both ran outside and he asked her to call the fire department. She went around one side of the barn and yelled something back to him, which he could not understand. He tried to get things out of the barn; however, the fire was too hot and intense. As he went around the side of the milk house, he saw many items out by the side of the road that had been in the milk house. Upon checking in the milk house, he found his wife with her feet toward the door, lying in somewhat of a curled position. Blocking the door was a large milk vat filled with items from the milk house. He indicates the milk house was full of smoke, but there was no fire and no intense heat. He dragged his wife out of the milk house to the other side of the road with her left side toward the fire. He attempted CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but was unable to revive her. After help began arriving, he noticed that the heat from the fire was apparently burning her face and arms. He got help to drag her further into a field away from the fire.

  Rather cryptically, at the end of the report, Frost had typed a postscript. It sat on the page by itself, either for emphasis or as an afterthought: “Eli Stutzman sees Dr. Kahn and gets prescriptions for Valium from time to time.”

  Dr. Kahn was with the Wayne County Mental Health Department. It seemed unlikely that the events in Marshall-ville had slipped Jim Frost’s mind, since he knew that Stutzman was seeing a psychiatrist.

  The sheriff filed the report and did nothing to further the investigation of Ida Stutzman’s death. Apparently, he felt that such an undertaking was unwarranted—at least that’s what those close to him beli
eved. None could ignore that the woman was of the Amish. Her husband was an Amishman, a farmer, a schoolteacher. Why should his story be doubted?

  This file was put away and would be archived after the coroner’s report made the cause of death official. Ida Stutzman’s is the skinniest file in Wayne County. She was faceless in life, anonymous in death.

  Eli Stutzman went to the Gingerich home at 8:00 A.M., disheveled and seemingly grief-stricken. Other than the pain on his face, there wasn’t a mark on his face or body. When Edna Gingerich saw Stutzman she was surprised that he appeared so well.

  “We thanked God that Eli and Danny had been spared,” Ida’s sister said later.

  As though Stutzman was searching for meaning or justification, he gathered the Gingeriches and told them: “It was such a funny thing that we had just finalized our will. God had sent me up to Dalton to take care of the will just before He called Ida home. He was watching out for me and Danny. Our Lord, the one who died for us on the cross, works miracles.”

  It was true that Ida had been called home to God, but they wanted to know what had happened.

  “Ida woke me at midnight, telling me the barn was on fire,” Stutzman said. “We both went out. I went to the upper part of the barn. I told her to call the fire department at the neighbors’. She asked if she could save some things out of the milk house first. I told her she could, but hurry. When I was done in upper barn, I found her. She was in the milk house trying to put the vats out and she was overcome by smoke. Her feet were under the vats.”

  Further, Stutzman told them he had tried to resuscitate her for twenty or thirty minutes. None of them would have tampered with God’s plan, but they could excuse Stutzman for his lapse. They knew he had learned CPR when he worked at Massillon City Hospital.

  Stutzman said he had dragged his wife out of the milk house to the night pasture across the road—by himself—and had put her gently on the grass and tried to awaken her to life, but he had failed.