The body of ex-Amishman Eli Stutzman – convicted of one murder, suspected in four others – lies in a Texas morgue, unclaimed by his former Ohio Amish community. Stutzman’s DNA may be the case-breaker in the 1985 deaths of two Colorado men. Gregg Olsen, author of Abandoned Prayers, commented on the case which has hounded him for the past 20 years. Olsen shares an interesting…
The stories are heartbreaking. You feel for the victims. It’s hard to imagine what they’ve been through. But at the same time, a 20/20 piece on Amish abuse from a few years back points to the generalizations that many journalists rely on to tell their story. The 20/20 folks lean heavily on cliches and misconceptions–from the ominous opening music, to the overplayed stories they trot…
Eli Stutzman, convicted murderer and father of ‘Little Boy Blue’, was an exile from the ultraconservative Swartzentruber Amish group. When you read words like ‘secretive’, ‘closed’, and ‘backward’ in the same sentence as ‘Amish’, the writer, rightly or wrongly, is often referring to this sect. Wayne County, Ohio, where Stutzman originated, has a high number of Swartzentruber members, with quite a few spilling over into…
Convicted murderer Eli Stutzman, formerly of the Amish of Wayne County, Ohio, has died. His death has been ruled a suicide. The father of “Little Boy Blue”, suspected in three other deaths in addition to that of his son, killed himself in a Fort Worth, Texas apartment last week. Gregg Olsen, who chronicled the case in Abandoned Prayers, says the story might not be over. “I…