True Crime Campfire - Left Where God Could Find Him: Amish Serial Killer Eli Stutzman Pt 1

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Comedian Simon Amstell said, “If you are somebody who is going to at some point be revealed as not like everyone else, then to be in an insular community is a problem.” Here Amstell was discussing how it felt growing up gay and going to a religious school. Insular religious communities shut themselves off from the world in order to keep their views unchanged by the outside. It’s extremely effective. The Amish are one such community. Most of their followers aren’t allowed to use electricity or have indoor plumbing. They view modern conveniences as threatening to their religious beliefs, which are at the center of their lives. Today’s case is about an Amish man who never quite fit in with his brethren. His sexuality, his disposition, and his work ethic all flew in the face of what his community believed. And maybe that’s why he fought so hard to prevent anyone from finding out who he really was, even resorting to murder.NOTE: We had some microphone issues on Katie's end this week--we apologize if the sound isn't as good as usual. Sources: Gregg Olsen, Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, and Amish Secretshttps://amishamerica.com/do-amish-believe-taking-a-photo-captures-their-souls/ https://www.ohiosamishcountry.com/articles/photography-and-the-amish https://www.ohiosamishcountry.com/articles/the-traditional-amish-youth-period-of-rumspringa https://language.mki.wisc.edu/essays/pennsylvania-dutch/#:~:text=While%20most%20Amish%20and%20Old,Lutheran%20or%20German%20Reformed%20affiliation.Investigation Discovery's "Murder in Amish Country," episode "Amish Serial Killer"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Comedian Simon Amstel said, If you're somebody who is going to at some point be revealed as not like everyone else, then to be in an insular community is a problem. Here, he was discussing how it felt growing up gay and going to a religious school.

Insular religious communities shut themselves off from the world in order to keep their views unchanged by the outside. It's extremely effective. The Amish are one such community. Most of their followers aren't allowed to use electricity or have indoor plumbing. They view modern conveniences as threatening to their religious beliefs, which are at the center of their lives. Today's case is about an Amish man who never quite fit in with his brethren. His sexuality, his disposition, and his work ethic all flew in the face of what his community believed in.

And maybe that's why he fought so hard to prevent anyone from finding out who he really was, even resorting to murder. This is part one of Left Where God Could Find Him, Amish serial killer Eli Stutzman. So, campers, we're in Chester, Nebraska, on Christmas Eve, 1985. Chester is the kind of small, rural town where everybody knows everybody. Chuck Cleveland was going on a Christmas Eve hunt and drove to his usual hunting grounds, a cornfield where pheasants could get a free meal. Chuck owned the local truck stop and another one a few towns over.

By small town standards, he was filthy rich. As he drove along the dirt road looking for a place to stop and start his hunt, he ruminated on how long his hair had gotten, wishing he'd gotten a haircut earlier in the week. Chuck's mind was a million miles away when he saw a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. That startled him enough to stop his truck and get out to take a closer look. Laying on the ground in the middle of the field, partially obscured by dead grass, was a corpse. He thought it might be a little girl, dressed in a blue set of four.

footy pajamas. It was later discovered that it was a boy. His hand was placed over his stomach. He'd clearly been dead for some time, his skin a ghostly pallor. His short blonde hair was neatly parted and his pale cheeks were dusted with freckles. Chuck, who had volunteered with the Chester's ambulance service to remove bodies, knew not to approach the body to preserve the evidence. He had a two-way radio in his truck, which he used to radio his bookkeeper at the truck stop. He said, Joyce, I think I found a dead body out here. Call the sheriff.

He took a moment, thinking of what to say next. Anyone that's lived in a small town knows that a report of a dead body would spread fast, especially since many people in town had police scanners, and there would be people coming to snoop around if they found out where exactly the body was. Oh, sure. Dead body retrieval. That's great. Christmas Eve entertainment. Something to do. It's better than watching the Texaco sign spin around. He told Joyce, I'll be on the high.

highway, a mile north of town. A strange hollowness took him by surprise as he drove to meet the sheriff. Like I said, he'd seen dead bodies before, but most of them were elderly people who'd passed away at home. Even when his mother died and he'd found her, he didn't react this way. He chewed on that feeling, bouncing around the cab of his red Ford pickup. He realized then that it was because of the placement of the body. He thought, you don't put a child's body out in a ditch unless you got something to hide. They are county, where Chester sits, is the kind of place where sheriff's deputies spend more time chasing drunk teenagers around than investigating serious crimes.

Occasionally, they got some drug dealing or light trespassing, which is what Deputy Bill McPherson was doing on that Christmas Eve. A woman had been asked to leave a local restaurant, and she refused, so Deputy McPherson went over to try and get her to go peacefully. He'd brought along Reverend Bill Anderson, who moonlighted as a jail chaplain, to see if the Holy Spirit could get through to this woman. The woman was clearly mentally unwell. She ranted and raved at the deputy and the reverend about her story.

She said she'd been picked up by a truck driver who sexually assaulted her and dropped her off at the truck stop. She also said she'd killed someone. Her clothes, hair, and skin were clean, though, and they couldn't get her to clarify who she'd killed. He paused when he heard a call come over his radio. Sheriff Young is 1097 with the coroner. wants 9-3-2-1 to meet them.

1097 meant that Sheriff Gary Young was at a crime scene. 9-321 was McPherson's call number. He left the Reverend behind and peeled out of the restaurant parking lot, lights and sirens blaring. Who had this crazy woman killed? Sheriff Young said about investigating the scene. The body had been there for at least a few days. It had snowed a few days earlier, and while much of it had melted, chunks of snow still clung to the little boy's pajamas.

pajamas. His nose and mouth were gone, probably eaten by wildlife. His eyes were shut and looked to be blue, though they'd clouded over with decomposition. His left hand was on his tummy, his right hand under his body. He had bruises all over his visible skin as well as marks around his neck. The child's primary and unique feature were a large set of buck teeth, made more prominent by the lack of lips. The feet of his pajamas were completely clean. so it was clear that someone had carried him here. The investigators assumed he'd been brutally beaten and strangled, but then why had somebody set him down so lovingly?

The pajamas he was wearing were new, and they noted that he hadn't been wearing any underwear under his sleeper. A trooper on horseback discovered a gray t-shirt under half a mile away from the crime scene with the words panther wrestling on the front, along with the art of the panther. When McPherson approached the body, he was struck by how strange it was.

It was his first time seeing a dead child in more than a decade with Thayer County. Must be something wrong with a kid, he told the coroner, Dan Warner. Werner asked him why he thought that. The one-piece sleeper. This kid is too big for jammies with feet. My girls wouldn't wear a sleeper like that

past the age of three or four. He could have an intellectual disability or be abused. Yeah, I'm guessing Bill didn't say that quite so sensitively as intellectual disability. certainly not no you are correct he used a much less piecey word and we didn't feel like we needed to repeat it to get the quote across our quotes by the way are taken directly from the book abandoned prayers by gregg olson it's fantastic and if you want to know more about this case you should read it we couldn't nearly fit everything in this episode yeah Greg olson's stuff is great generally mm-hmm anyway the sheriff knew that his department was in over their heads with this one so we called in the

Nebraska State Patrol for assistance. It was the NSP that assisted in removing the body, which hadn't been frozen to the ground. In fact, there was a slight indentation in the snow underneath, which indicated that the body had been warm when it was placed there. They discovered tire tracks from a large vehicle, probably a pickup truck, but they only went so far as the main road. There was no telling where the killer had gone after that. The county had no facilities for an autopsy, So they brought the little boy to the Adams-Tibet funeral home. The investigators started calling around asking if anyone was missing a child. They even brought in the school superintendent, but he didn't recognize the boy.

The biggest issue with performing the autopsy was that the body was frozen, so they had to bring it to a normal temperature without damaging the tissue further. So they put him in a fridge until he could thaw. News spreads fast at a small town. Anyone who's lived in one can tell you that there's nowhere. like it in the world. By lunchtime, Gene Samuelson, the local Methodist minister, heard about the little boy. She could sense the fear building within her congregation. There was a killer on the loose, someone who had no compunctions about killing a little boy, and they had no information.

During her 7 p.m. Christmas sermon, she said, here we are celebrating the birth of a child, and there's a dead child in our midst. The investigators returned home to their families, trying to leave the case at work, but something about the small, helpless boy stuck with them. As they greeted their families, their children running up to them filled with Christmas spirit, they could feel nothing but anger and despair. Some, like Bill McPherson, cried. Others, like Sheriff Young, dove into work, taking a break only for a short Christmas dinner and returning to the station. The autopsy was illuminating, if not exactly helpful. Dr. Porterfield, the medical examiner, reported that the bruises on the boy's body weren't the result of a beating, but the cold. In freezing temperatures,

fragile skin, especially in places where little or no fat exists between bone and skin, skin discolors rapidly. Okay, so what about the marks around his neck? Had he been strangled? Well, his hyoid bone was still intact. The hyoid is a fragile neck bone, and in cases of strangulation, it's often broken. So what was the cause of death? Well, unfortunately, it was ruled that the cause of death was undetermined, which is not exactly helpful for the investigators. Kids don't just die. The only thing the autopsy could say for sure was that the time of death was 36 hours prior

to discovery. The kid was clearly not suffering from malnutrition, and he was clean. He'd clearly been physically cared for, so why had he died? The sheriff delayed burial, just in case they needed to return to the body. Sheriff Young later set up a conference with another medical examiner to discuss the case. Dr. Blevins said that it was possible the little boy froze to death, but rather than gradually, it appeared that the cold had taken him really quickly. Blevins called the marks on his face freezer burns and said the body showed signs of rapid freezing.

Because victims of hypothermia often shed their clothes due to feeling overwarm, Blevins thought that maybe the little boy was unconscious when he'd been placed in the snow, his clothes were intact. That would also explain the divot in the snow where he was found. His warm body melted the snow a little while he died. The crime lab found no evidence of sexual assault on the boy. They did find hairs on the kids' pajamas that did not belong to him, and that the pajamas were new. They had the plastic tags still on the collar. The FBI was called in, and they were able to find the manufacturer and even the lot number. They reported that the pajamas were manufactured in a factory on the west coast and distributed to Kmart's all over the western part of the

U.S. But unfortunately, that's as much as they could find. They hired an artist to draw a portrait of the boy to help depict what he might have looked like before wildlife had gotten to his body. Without a nose or lips, though, it was difficult. There was no way to tell how those features looked. Did his lips cover his little buck teeth? What kind of nose did he have? The artist submitted a few options. and the investigators picked one to run in papers across Nebraska and eventually the entire country. That first week alone, the investigators got 150 leads. They were so flooded that they had to get another phone line installed. Unfortunately, nothing came of those leads.

Even the mentally ill woman that Deputy McPherson had come into contact with on Christmas Eve was cleared. She wasn't the kid's mother and she hadn't been the one to kill him. they were inundated with stories of missing children kids that had been gone for years some weren't even the same race as the little boy some were little girls families just hoping against hope that their little ones would be found but the investigators had to tell them that no this wasn't their little one reporters took to calling him little boy blue a year later in 1986 parishioners at jean samuelson's church felt more and more restless about the nameless little boy. He'd been put through three autopsies now, and some of the congregants felt that was too much. That poor child has been through several autopsies, one told her. If I were his mother, I'd die if my baby had been subjected to all that. Another minister had written to her, struck by the horror of the situation. He wondered about the little boy's name and suggested one that he could be buried with, Matthew, because it meant gift of God. The investigators decided that it was indeed time to let the little boy sleep. Samuelson would give the funeral service. She'd been haunted by dreams about the boy for months. The community came together to put the boy to rest.

Donations were sent in. Someone donated her son's suit. Someone else gave the church one of her family's burial plots, and the funeral home donated a headstone. It read, little boy abandoned found near Chester, Nebraska, December 24, 1985, whom we have called Matthew, which means gift of God. They made sure to leave room on the stone for his real name, just in case. We don't have time to get into the lengths that the investigators went in order to find justice for this little boy,

but I do want to acknowledge that the Nebraska state troopers and the Thayer County Sheriff did everything they could to find answers for this little boy. They consulted with the FBI, they went to several different pathologists, and they spent years trying to find answers. Their investigation is detailed in Greg Olson's book, and you should absolutely check it out. It was almost two years after the boy had been discovered on November 30, 1987, when a man named Abner, Petersheim, called the sheriff's office with information about Matthew. He was a Mennonite living in Ohio. Mennonites are followers of a sect of Christianity with a focus on separation from the the world, pacifism and social justice. They often get confused with the Amish because they wear similar pilgrim type clothes. But Mennonites are usually allowed to use technology like cars

and computers while the Amish are not. It's like decaf Amish. Amish light. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I saw a family of Mennonites once during a hike and I didn't know they were Mennonite and I was shocked when they all like hopped into a big old man. I was like, oh, they're not Amish. Okay. Abner had seen the story about Matthew in Reader's Digest and thought he closely resembled a little boy he knew named Danny Stutzman. Abner had known Danny's father, a man named Eli. Danny was born on September 7, 1976, and had the same blonde hair and freckles that Matthew did. When asked if he had a photograph, Abner said he did not. Danny and Eli were Amish. They didn't allow pictures. And this comes from a Bible verse prohibiting graven images. They actually don't mind if, they happen to be in a photograph, they just aren't allowed to pose for them.

According to their doctrine, this promotes vanity and individualism, which are Amish no-noes. Some believe that the camera would capture their souls, preventing them from getting into heaven. They aren't even allowed to have mirrors, which would explain the sideburns. I'm glad something does. Abner told Sheriff Young that Danny and Eli were supposed to visit during Christmas of 1985. Danny had been staying with friends of Eli's in Wyoming. The couple, Dean and Margie Barlow, said that Eli picked Danny up and had to do Ohio, but when Eli got there, Danny was nowhere to be found.

Eli later told his parents that Danny had died in a car crash in Utah. Abner told the sheriff that he was happy to talk more, but didn't want his name mentioned publicly. But let's put a pin in that for a minute and talk about the Amish. Yanish are a sect of Christianity rooted in the Protestant Reformation. They're considered anabaptists or rebaptizers because they don't believe in infant baptism and have their congregates get baptized as adults. They require adults to only wear black and white clothes. Women wear long dresses and caps to cover their hair and men wear long pants and hats.

Men cannot have buttons on their clothes because they're considered modern or like some of them say that they're militaristic. and they use hooks instead. Okay, hooks aren't modern. I didn't know. Some of this stuff just seems a little arbitrary to me. I genuinely do not understand why buttons are not okay and hooks are okay. Like, is it, is the criterion like stuff that a monkey could figure out? Is this okay?

If the monkey's going to be confused for a second, then that means it's modern. I am genuinely confused. Yeah, it's very, um, It's very strange, like the black and white, because little girls, little Amish girls are allowed to wear, like, colorful clothes. But they're like, they have to be like almost muted colors, like a dusty purple or like a sage green. That seems strange to me. And then, yeah, the button thing is insane. The button thing is crazy.

They're forbidden from using modern technology. Some sects even prohibit such conveniences as rubber tires for farm work. Most of them speak a German rooted language called Pennsylvania Dutch, which don't ask me why it's called Dutch. Actually, I do know it's because one of the founders of the Mennonite religion was Dutch, and the Amish broke away from them. So I'm supposed to call it Pennsylvania Dutch, even though it's German. The Amish consider animals' tools rather than pets, and many of their farm animals end up severely neglected. And because they don't believe in euthanasia, their horses are sent to killpins in horrific conditions. They're known to run puppy mills as well.

Yeah, and this makes me sick to think about it. Those poor babies, and I don't understand how it aligns with their beliefs either. I really don't get it. This is one thing about which I have no chill because it's so unkind. Like whether you consider an animal to have a soul or not, it's just so unkind to do that. And, yeah, it drives me nuts. I hate it. Yeah, and the Amish are pacifists.

I know, right? It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It's the buttons and the hooks all over again, except darker. Yes. Exactly. So don't get puppies from the Amish is the moral of the story. The Amish were actually founded after the Mennonites, like I was saying, due to disagreements between the founders about doctrine.

There are 40 sects of Amish in the U.S., all of which have different shades of belief. They're named after the founding bishops and varying conservatism. One of the sects called the Swartz and Troopers are among the most consistent. conservative of all of them. And that's the denomination Eli Stutzman was born into on September 28, 1950. He was the fourth of 13 children born to his parents, Eli and Susan. He was a shortish guy, only about 5, 6, and 140 pounds, but he was popular with the ladies of the Amish community. They liked his deep blue eyes and silky brown hair. Oh, and by the way, you're going to find that there are about 17 Eli's in this story. It's a very common Amish.

name. These people are just rolling in Eli's. Eli was clearly a smart kid, but he was a troublemaker, too. He hated farm work and loved being the center of attention. He had a stutter, but he had no self-consciousness about it. One cousin said, Eli always thought he was a little too good

for the rest of us. A neighbor told Greg Olson, he didn't seem to work as hard as the others when we were out in the field or at husking. Eli didn't feel well, or he had some excuse, or his mind was on something else. He was a liar and a good one. trouble, he could easily spin a tail that would get him out of it. The only person that he couldn't

seem to fool was his father. His dad, who the community called one-hand Eli, because he'd lost his hand in an accident and had been fitted with the hook as a prosthetic, was a minister. Yeah, we'll get to the hook hand in a second, but this is just a fun fact, but the Amish choose a minister by, like, random lottery. A bunch of bibles are set on a table and each man up for the position have to select one. And the copy containing a slip of paper with a verse written in it was chosen by God to lead the congregation. I really feel like we should choose every job this way. Why not? Don't worry about college. Wouldn't it be fun if your surgeon was just randomly selected out of a hat? I mean, I guess it makes a little bit more sense than the sword

and the stone, right? Anyway, because he was a minister, one-hand Eli felt a lot of pressure to keep his kids in line. He would not tolerate disobedience. And If they did disobey, he would beat them. It worked with his other 12 children, but his namesake was impervious to his attempts to control him. Rumspringa is a Pennsylvania Dutch word, meaning running around. It's a time where Amish youth, usually starting at around 16 years old,

can experiment with worldly behavior. Go nuts with the buttons. Woo! Because they're not yet baptized in the church, they're allowed to wear modern clothes, use technology, and drink. Eli and his buddies called themselves the Wild Westerns could often be found at a local bar called the doghouse. They drove buggies decorated with bumper stickers

and got up to the usual teenage boy activities like getting rowdy and destroying old buggies or pulling pranks on each other. Eli stole a kid's bike but explained it away as a joke when he was caught. Eli had grown into his body well and his devil-may-care attitude was pretty popular with the ladies. Ooh, even the Amish love a bad boy.

Ooh, did you see Jeremiah last night? He stole a buggy. Dating is also allowed, even in courage, during Rumspringa. During singings, boys and girls are allowed to mingle and sing and dance together. There, Eli Stutzman met 16-year-old Ida Gingrich. There are no available photos of Ida. She was Amish through and through, never allowing a picture to be taken of her. but her family described her as beautiful.

She had big hazel eyes and long blonde hair that she kept hidden under her cap. When she smiled, dimples appeared on her cheeks and she was deeply in love with Eli Stutzman. Where the Stutzman were severe and outwardly cold with one another, the gingriches were affectionate. They were close and clearly loved each other. For four years, Ida and Eli went steady. Eli worked as a teacher in the one-room schoolhouse at the Amish. were taught at. As a reminder, his education topped out in eighth grade.

Can you imagine being taught by an eighth grader? So many six-sevons. So much mewing. Oh, my God. Despite his respectable job and seeming stability, Eli's behavior continued to be rebellious at home. He was 20 now, and the charm of his bad boy streak was starting to wear a little thin. Desperate to prove he had control of his house, one-hand Eli, tried to get his son's paycheck, $140 a month, to be sent directly to him.

And because we know you guys love conversion math, $140 in 1971 is equivalent to $1,100 in today's money. It's not a ton of money, but it's certainly enough for a teacher in an Amish community. Eli moved out, and even still, one-hand Eli tried to convince him to move back. His son, he thought, was too worldly and too money-obsessed. If he was caught doing something against the church's teachings, he'd become furious. And as time went on, his misbehavior escalated. After Eli collapsed one day, one-hand Eli sent his son to a chiropractor. Right.

Are we just trying to see how many times we can say one-hand Eli in the episode? Yes, of course. And I think it's a little delightful because the Amish had so many Eli's that they had to start using fun little nicknames to narrow them down. And it's, you know, the one-handedness isn't fun. fun. But like, imagine if you were called a stigmatism Whitney or whatever. It's a little funny, okay? Also, he had a hook hand. We literally just talked about pirates. Anyway, the more conservative denominations of Amish don't really go to medical doctors. They're

mistrustful of modern medicine in general, so they use traditional remedies and chiropractors. You know how everything looks like a nail to a hammer? Yeah, that's how the Amish treat going to the chiropractor. Hey fever? Chiropractor. Menstrual cramps? Chiropractor. Behavioral issues that border on sociopathy? Yep. You guessed it. Chiropractor. Jeez, Louise. One hand, Eli, told the chiropractor that his son was out of control and he didn't know what else to do. The chiropractor that the Stutzman consulted referred him to a foot reflexologist who told them that his feet were far too fucked up to work on. Another chiropractor said that nerve pressure had tightened plates of his skull and caused them

to shift abnormally, which explained Eli's symptoms. The muscles of his neck are tight and sore and he could barely get out of bed. He was prescribed some pills, but the chiropractor couldn't do much more for him except to tell Eli to rest. Now, you know us campers. a Live and Let Live podcast. If you want to go treat pneumonia by going to a bone cracker, be our guest. But you cannot tell me that you can cure compulsive lying and stealing by foot massage.

As he recovered, Eli's behavior became more bizarre. He was living with an Amish couple, and when the husband, a man named Moes, found Eli crying in the barn one day, he asked what was wrong. Eli told him that since he'd collapsed, he'd had a constant erection that was painful. Whoa. Moes thought about telling an osteopath that was also treating Eli, but decided that it was too embarrassing to share. For God's sake. Moses' wife, Ada, found some notes written by Eli around the house.

They referenced hell and the devil. The notes weren't hidden, and instead of concern about Eli's mental state, she thought that the notes had been left for them to find specifically. And this is interesting, because as you're going to find out, Eli does a lot of things for other people's benefit. He's acutely aware of how he's perceived. So what reason would he have to leave these notes around? To scare Moes and Ada? To convince them of his insanity? Rumors spread that Eli was hanging around people outside of the community who they called Englishers. Some said they'd seen him in a car. He often invited Englishers to Moses' home while he and his family were at church. He lied repeatedly to Mose, which caused a rift with the only guy in the

community that seemed to feel bad for him. One hand, Eli was increasingly concerned with his son's behavior and freedom. He asked the osteopath that treated Eli what more he could do. The osteopath told them that if Eli agreed, they could send him to a hospital, but if Eli didn't comply, they could go through the sheriff's office, which is a little insane to me. Like, why would a doctor, who is treating a 21-year-old man gives someone who is not the patient in question advice on how to like involuntarily commit them. That's pretty wild.

Sheriff's deputies arrived at Eli's house to take him in shortly after one-hand Eli's conversation with the doctor. Three days later, Eli returned to Moses' home and swore that he was going to leave the Swartz and Trouber Church. Mose, who was from a different sect, invited him to church, and while he initially seemed engaged, Eli quickly started to chafe under the new church's teachings. Moes thought this was a clear symptom of Eli's mental problems.

On August 12, 1972, Moses' barn burned down shortly after Eli had gone into town. Moes never thought Eli had anything to do with it, but other people definitely did. It was during the summer of 1972 that Eli decided he wanted to leave the church. Several members tried to talk him out of it, but he was sure. He sold his buggy and bought a bicycle, and the church expelled him and put him under the bond. Bonn is how the church excommunicates their problem children. Those that are put under a bond are shunned, unable to see their Amish family or friends. It's such a cruel thing.

Scientology does it, too. It's one of the most powerful and, I think, cruelest techniques that a sect can use. Ida naturally was shocked to find out that the man she'd considered to be her future husband was no longer part of the community. their relationship was just like that over at the end of august eli found room and board with liz and learai chup the couple was new order omish meaning that they could have phones indoor plumbing and electricity as a result their farm was quite a bit bigger than any old order farms aided by electricity and other modern conveniences they agreed to let him stay if he'd do some chores around their dairy farm he told them that he'd been put under the bond because his father had caught him with a

radio. He also said that the men his age hated him, so much so that they hung a skinned cat from his buggy. Poor kitty. I mean, if the kitty ever existed. Eli told this story a lot, but no one had ever confirmed this, nor had anyone seen the cat. It's likely that Eli just told the story to garner sympathy. I totally think he made it up. He brought a lot of Englishers around the Chup farm. A sheriff's deputy named Jim Taylor often came around to go coon hunting, but the pair were clearly bad at it because they never caught anything. Eli bought a car and began dating again. He took one woman to KFC and bought one meal for them both to share. What a big spender. He also started talking a big game about Ida Gingrich. He told one friend that Ida let him do

everything when they slept together. The Swartz and Troubers participated in a practice called bundling during which a courting couple could share a bed. They were supposed to stay fully clothed during bundling, but like, come on. Of course they were having sex. Obviously. But one friend thought Eli was either lying or had forced himself on Ida. This friend had dated her too, and it didn't seem like she was the type of Amish girl to bundle that hard.

Just to confirm, we here at TCC do not think that Ida was wrong in any way, shape, or form, even if she did sleep with Eli, but that sort of thing was very much verboten in the Amish community. Eli could be incredibly charming. Most people that met him liked him, but he could also be unsettling. One time he was attending a birthday party for one of his ex-Omish friends, John, he presented the birthday boy with a gift, and when the guy opened it, he was. was shocked. Eli had gifted him a pair of men's bikini underwear in a lurid red color. Okay. The Amish don't wear underwear, so John seemed extremely inappropriate. But then, Eli sat right next to him on the couch, almost touching him, and kept pushing John to try the underwear on. Oh, boy. He kept cajoling John until John finally stopped being so nice about it and told him to fuck off.

Eli had taken a job building a silo on a farm but was fired the same day he started. When Liz Chup asked him what happened, he said that the foreman, one of Eli's ex-Omish cousins, was doing drugs. Liz knew this guy, and she knew he didn't touch drugs. So this story didn't make any sense to her. Later, she'd find out that Eli had actually been caught smoking weed on the job and was summarily fired. In September of 1974, Eli bought a buggy and started telling people he was going to go rejoin the Amish in the next 12 months. Strange, considering he still spoke about how much he hated the Amish in their strict rules.

In the meantime, Eli called up Earl, Lester, and Levi Miller's farm. The Millers had a substantial marijuana grow operation among the potatoes and the cornfields that they were currently tending to. When Earl picked up the phone, Eli told him that he was hoping to score some pot to help him with some headaches. One of his roommates, the dairy farm, smoked pot from the Millers, and he said it helped. Earl agreed to sell Eli some weed, and when Eli came to pick it up, Earl tried to give it to him for free because it wasn't really quality stuff. He said it was very green. But Eli insisted, he set the money down on the kitchen table and left the house. The next morning, the sheriff's department came knocking on the Miller's door with a lot.

warrant. Oh, my God. The warrant detailed that an anonymous person had purchased weed the night before. The Millers knew exactly who grasped on them, no pun intended. There'd only been one customer the previous day, Eli Stutzman. It turned out that for some god-versaken reason, the Wayne County Sheriff's Office recruited Eli to participate in a sting operation. Now, why they would recruit this loser? I don't know, but they sent him in and almost immediately blew his cover.

The Millers, who didn't even spend 24 hours in jail, knew who the rat was. Levi showed up to Eli's house where Eli was wrapped up in bed. So imagine this. This drug dealer comes in, and Eli's like in a blanket cocoon. Upon confrontation, Eli was a little pathetic. Levi was like, we want to know if you did this to us, and Eli kept his mouth shot, but shook his head, face growing redder. Levi continued, we've been treating you like a friend. We want to know if you screwed us. Eli still denied it, and the next day he told the sheriff that he was going to testify to the judge that he'd been pressured and tricked by the sheriff's department.

Then, like a light switch, he changed his mind again. He would testify against the Millers. would help the investigation. The Millers were furious, but until this point, hadn't escalated. Eli started telling people that the Millers were after him. He told the Chups that a friend had told him to stay away from the Miller's farm. Eli told his cousin that he'd been calling the Sheriff's Department for help because he was getting death threats. He showed a third acquaintance about a dozen threatening notes he'd gotten. One said, if you talk, we're going to get you. There's no place to hide. We're watching you closely. Another detailed Eli's daily activities. He told his

friend, look, he saw me unload, hey, they're close enough to see me. He took his roommate to the barn saying that some items had been moved around. His friend thought Eli was just paranoid, but the guy seemed genuinely scared. On November 19th, Eli's roommate, Ed Stoll, was finishing up his farm chores at around 5 p.m. The work took him longer that day, and and when he got back to the barn, he found it torn apart. Hay bales were knocked over, feed bags were ripped open and spilled, and there was blood all over the walls and the floors and the ceiling. At the back of the barn lay Eli Stutzman, nearly unconscious.

When Ed got to him, Eli asked him, What took you so long? He told Ed that two assailants tried stabbing him, and he tried to defend himself. Ed ran to the house to call 911, and Eli was transported to the hospital, close to death, with cuts all over his arms. When Eli was strong enough to tell his story, he told the investigators that he'd seen a car with out-of-state plates driving back and forth on the road in front of the farm.

In the barn, he'd been hit in the head with a rock, and soon after, he'd been attacked by two men with knives. He said he managed to stab one with a pitchfork, but afterwards they'd taken him down. The public opinion was strongly against the police department. They botched the investigation and then they couldn't protect their witness. The Millers were questioned, but they had good alibis. Meanwhile, Eli had another breakdown and had to be strapped to his hospital bed and sedated. The problem was that medical personnel and police know what defensive wounds look like. They're usually quite ragged and randomly placed.

Eli's wounds, on the other hand, were clean cuts and, very uniform. The police recovered a razor blade from the scene as well as a large cattle syringe, which had human blood on it. Further, the handwritten notes were all in Eli Stutzman's handwriting. He had done all of this to himself. While Ed Stoll was working his ass off doing farm work, Eli was replicating a Jackson Pollock painting in the barn, spraying the walls with his own blood. Remember what he said, to Ed when he was found? What took you so long? That was a genuine reaction. Eli literally almost died because he wasn't discovered in time for his little tableau to play out like he planned.

It's just so creepy, thinking of Eli drawing his own blood, spraying it everywhere, cutting himself all over, just to lay in wait to frame the drug dealers who he screwed over in the first place. There's something very sociopathic about that. It's the creepiest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Like the shit gave me nightmares. It's one of the creepiest details in the whole case and that's saying something. Of course, with their star witness displaying such antisocial behaviors, the prosecution had no choice but to not pursue charges against the Millers, which is maybe what Eli was hoping for in the first place. The police also did not pursue charges against Eli, deeming him too unstable. As he recovered, Eli's mask slipped even more.

He was often gone, not telling anyone where he'd been. When he left, his landlady would place his mail on his desk, of which there was a considerable amount. He got letters and magazines every day. His landlady, who was Amish, was disturbed by some of them. A lot were standard fair dirty magazines, but others confused her deeply. They portrayed men having sex with each other. In her shock, she burned them. Obviously, the Amish are incredibly sheltered, and they consider homosexuality of any kind to be a grave sin.

Eli Stutzman has referred to himself both as gay and bisexual. We're not reporting this as one of Eli's shortcomings, obviously, of which he has many. It does explain how he got so fucking weird about it, though. Being raised in such a repressed society will fuck you all the way up. No doubt. His sexuality will play a major part in his crimes, but he's not. a criminal because he's gay. He's a criminal who happens to be gay. Sure. Then in February, Eli got fired from another job. He told the chups that he'd seen his boss steal some things from a

store, and that was why he lost the job. Of course, this wasn't true. He got fired for legit reasons. He was a terrible worker and was super lazy. But maybe that was his sign. It was time for Eli to return to the Amish. The prodigal son returns. We're going to leave it there for part one, campers. You will not believe how much weirder it gets. And you know we'll have part two for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons.

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