Abandoned Prayers (7 page)

Information that the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department had gathered indicated that Earl, Lester, and Levi Miller were growing substantial quantities of marijuana among their potato- and cornfields. Gossip in town had it that the Millers’ beautiful new house had been paid for in cash—something unheard of in a farm community where money was as tight as a clenched fist. The Millers allegedly dried pot in their barn and packaged it for sale in the basement of their farmhouse.

The Wayne County sheriff was not about to let the Millers get away with it. An undercover sting operation seemed the perfect solution.

Throughout the late fall, Stutzman seemed more secretive and preoccupied than ever, but no one could have guessed what was going on.

Stutzman moved from the Chupps’ into Walter and Maryjane Stoll’s on October 20. He said he wanted to move so that he could watch television and listen to the radio. Later, the timing seemed remarkable.

On October 30, farmer and alleged pot-grower Earl Miller answered the phone; it was Eli Stutzman on the line, saying he wanted to buy some marijuana to cure his headaches. He told Miller that when he was sharing a room with Henry E. Miller at Stoll Farms he smoked some and his headaches went away. It was Henry E. Miller—no relation to the Miller brothers—who had suggested he call.

That night, Les Miller gave Stutzman a small bag of pot. Stutzman offered money, but Miller told him to forget it—the pot was as green as lawn clippings. Stutzman persisted and set some bills on the kitchen table.

From the Millers’, Stutzman rendezvoused with Jim Board, a Wayne County sheriff’s detective working the case with Frost. Stutzman gave Board the little bag and said one of the Millers had gone into the basement to get it.

Stutzman didn’t keep any of this secret. He told Liz Chupp what he had done at the Millers’ and, even more surprising, whom he had done it for.

“He said he had purchased some marijuana undercover for the sheriff’s department,” she recalled.

On Halloween Day, Stutzman’s friend from Stoll Farms, Henry E. Miller, was interviewed by Deputy Board.

Q.
Who was the sale made to last night?

A.
Eli Stutzman.

Q.
What kind of sale was made and for how much?

A.
He bought a small bag of marijuana for twelve dollars.

Q.
Did you help set up the sale?

A.
Yes, Eli called me, then later came to the farm and bought it.

Q.
Whose idea was it to grow and sell the marijuana?

A.
I don’t really know whose idea it was to grow it, but Earl did the selling.

Q.
Where is the unsold marijuana now?

A.
I don’t know.

Q.
Who hid the unsold marijuana?

A.
Earl Miller.

Q.
When was the last time you saw the marijuana?

A.
About two weeks ago, Sunday.

Q.
Where did Earl get the marijuana that he sold Eli Stutzman?

A.
He went down in the basement and came back up in about five minutes with it.

Stutzman’s name was not on the arrest warrant, but his connection was obvious. The warrant stated that marijuana had been purchased the night before the sheriff showed up to serve it.

“You mean that goddamn Eli Stutzman is what got you
out here?” Earl Miller said when Frost waved the warrant in his face.

“I’m not saying who it is,” Frost replied.

“What do you think we’re running here, a grocery store where everyone comes and shops? Stutzman was the only one here last night.”

Earl told the sheriff and his deputies to go ahead and look around. “You won’t find shit.”

Frost read the brothers their Mirandas and took them to the county jail in Wooster. Levi was released after questioning, but Les and Earl had to spend the night in a cell. It was not a complete loss: Earl Miller was glad that he didn’t have to get up at 5:00
A.M
. to milk.

The following night Levi Miller drove up to Marshallville to have a little chat with Stutzman. He found Stutzman in bed in his room. Miller wasn’t there for small talk, and the look on his face must have made that evident to Stutzman.

“We want to know if you did this to us,” Miller said.

Stutzman shook his head but said nothing.

“We’ve been treating you like a friend. We want to know if you screwed us,” Miller insisted, trying to keep his voice low.

Stutzman denied it. He said he didn’t know what Miller was talking about. His face went red and he kept a blanket wrapped around him as though it offered some protection.

Miller didn’t touch Stutzman, although he thought a little force might loosen his tongue. He left with no more information than he’d had when he arrived.

The Sunday after the Miller brothers’ arrest brought an unlikely visitor to their farm: Eli Stutzman. Stutzman complained that the sheriff’s department had forced him into going undercover. He said he was sorry and wished that he hadn’t done it.

“He said he was going to tell the judge he had been
pressured and tricked by the sheriff’s department,” Levi Miller said later.

Stutzman didn’t say why or how he had been coerced, and the Millers didn’t ask. Levi Miller thought Stutzman’s participation stemmed from his desire to join the department—if he did a good job, they’d hire him.

They get to wear uniforms and carry guns. It might be a big deal to an ex-Amishman like Stutzman
, he thought.

Later, when Miller gave it more thought, it all seemed so far-fetched:
How was Stutzman forced into making the buy? What did they have on Stutzman?

Stutzman changed his mind a day later and said he was not going to recant. Once again he was siding with the Wayne County sheriff.

When Levi Miller found out, he flipped. “When he’s talking to us, he’s with us. When he’s talking to them, he’s on their side. Eli Stutzman doesn’t have a mind of his own!”

On November 2, Stutzman told the Chupps that Henry E. Miller had called to warn him to stay away from the Millers’ farm. “They’re out for blood,” he said.

Stutzman seemed shaken by the threat. He told Abe he had been making calls to the sheriff for help. “Someone has been making death threats,” he said.

Stutzman showed Ed Stoll some of the dozen hand- and typewritten notes he’d received. The message on each was the same:
“If you talk . . . we’re going to get you. There’s no place to hide. We’re watching you closely.”

Ed Stoll called the sheriff to report the threats.

“Eli was scared . . . and he had proof they were after him,” he recalled.

The writer of the notes stated that he had seen Stutzman doing various chores around the farm—things that someone had to have seen. Stutzman was frightened. “Look, he saw me unload hay . . . they are close enough to see me!” he said.

The letters were postmarked Canton, but that didn’t
mean much. Even mail from Marshallville was sent to Canton to be processed.

“Eli said he had been talking to the sheriff’s department and they had just put him under protective custody. He was a witness in a drug case and the accused pushers were trying to force him to back down,” Ed Stoll recalled.

A few times Stutzman took Stoll into the barn and showed him things that had been moved or disturbed—proof that something was up. “The pushers did this,” Stutzman said. “I’m telling you, they’re out to get me.”

“You’re just spooked,” Stoll offered, trying to calm Stutzman. Deep down, the dairy farmer was also a bit worried.

November 19, 1974

Ed Stoll spent all day hauling corn from a barn to a storage building on the other side of the dairy. Stoll left Stutzman in the barn doing chores just after 5:00
P.M
., when he took the last load.

The final load took about an hour, instead of the usual half hour. Stoll returned at dusk and found that the barn had been ransacked—bags scattered, hay bales knocked askew, feed bags spilled, and, more horrifying, blood splashed everywhere. It looked as though a dozen chickens had been slaughtered by a blind man. Gruesome arcs of blood stained the walls.

Stoll found Stutzman at the end of the barn, lying in a puddle of blood and surrounded by bloodied rocks.

“What took you so long?” Stutzman muttered weakly, blood dripping from his arms. His blue eyes were glassy.

“What happened?” Stoll asked as he hurried to Stutzman’s side.

“Two guys jumped me and stabbed me. . . . I tried to fight them off. . . .”

In shock, Stoll ran to the house, cursing the Wayne County sheriff. Eli had as much as told them that this would happen.

“They are out to get me,”
he had said.

Abe was babysitting the Chupps’ little girl, Marie, when Stoll ran into the house to call the emergency squad and
the sheriff. By the time he made it back to the barn, Stutzman was on a stretcher. The color was drained from his face. Abe was sure that Stutzman was going to die.

For the second time in nine months, Sheriff Frost was on the scene, looking for evidence around Stoll Farms. Liz Chupp noted in her diary that Sheriff Frost had been out on January 29, investigating the theft of some hay bales from one of the neighboring farms.

Eli Stutzman was admitted to Dunlap Memorial Hospital, where he remained for five days.

By nightfall, a strange and frightening thing came to light. Before his attack, Stutzman said he had seen a strange car with out-of-state plates—West Virginia, he thought—driving up and down the road near the farm. Later, when he was in the barn, someone hiding in the hayloft threw a rock, hitting him in the head but not knocking him down. A second later, another man jumped from behind and cut him with a knife. Stutzman said that in the struggle he had stabbed one of his attackers with a pitchfork, but they had overpowered him.

Stutzman lost so much blood that he nearly died. Many said it was a miracle that Ed Stoll happened to be there to find him before it was too late.

The focus of the incident was immediately on the sheriff’s department and not on Stutzman, the poor victim of their botched investigation. Ed Stoll, for one, was incensed and let the sheriff know about it.

“This man was coming to you for help. He told you someone was after him. You were supposed to protect him. You let this happen.”

Rumors were confused and rampant. The story that emerged was that the sheriff’s department had told Stutzman to buy the marijuana and had assured him that they would not go after the Millers for at least a week. Instead, within a few hours of the drug deal, the sheriff’s department was at the Millers’ farm with a warrant.

“That’s how the Millers knew it was me,” Stutzman told friends.

When Abe went to see his cousin at the hospital, he felt like Eli’s big, protective brother.

Sheriff Frost, looking puffed up and important, stood in the hallway outside Stutzman’s room.

“You aren’t doing enough to catch the guys who hurt Eli!” Abe said, raising his voice. “You are just using him and throwing him out to the wolves. You’re doing a lousy job of protecting your people.”

Frost said nothing.

Some things didn’t seem to fit. Those who saw the cuts on Stutzman’s arms noticed that the wounds were clean, not jagged, as might be expected from a violent attack. Deep needle marks also marked his thin, white arms.

Chores were done and things were quiet at the Miller farm. Earl Miller noticed headlights flash in the lane at about 8:00
P.M
. Sheriff Frost was back, this time poking around the Millers’ cars, touching the hoods to see if the engines were still warm.

“Where have you guys been out to all night?” the sheriff asked.

They had just finished milking and were settling in for the night. “What’s going on?” Levi Miller asked.

“We’ve got an attempted homicide. We’re not fooling around here. Eli Stutzman was found up at Stoll’s bleeding to death.” Frost added that Stutzman had received death threats and was sure the Millers were behind it.

“So, like I said, where have you been tonight?” he asked again.

The Chupps saw Eli Stutzman at the hospital the day after the stabbing. Like a weakened, crumpled ball of a person,
Stutzman said two tall, long-haired men had attacked him. “They drove a Dodge Swinger,” he added.

Liz Chupp asked about the bandages on Stutzman’s wrists.

“I put up my arms to fend them off and they sliced me,” Stutzman explained.

The following day, Mose Keim—the man who had nursed Stutzman through his nervous breakdown in 1972—called the Chupps with a vague warning. “Don’t be too sure that what Eli Stutzman is saying to you is the truth. There were some strange things that went on when he lived with me,” he said. “A lot of what he told me was not the truth.”

Next, word came to Stoll’s that Stutzman had had a mental collapse and was tied to the bed by hospital personnel. Strong tranquilizers were being administered to try to calm him. The ordeal had been too much. Liz Chupp said a prayer.

On November 22, when the truth came out, it shook everyone who had been sucked into Stutzman’s carefully orchestrated tale of betrayal and brutality. Sheriff Frost went out to Stoll Farms, carrying the stack of threatening letters.

“Eli did this to himself,” Frost said, seeming satisfied in cracking a difficult case. “He even wrote the letters.”

Ed Stoll found the scenario hard to believe, but Frost compared the letters to some other writings made by Stutzman. The typed letters also matched a typewriter found in Stutzman’s bedroom at Maryjane and Walter Stoll’s house.

What kind of a man would do something like this?
Ed thought at the time.

Beyond Stutzman’s confession, there was more proof that it had all been a set-up. Investigators recovered a single-edge razor blade from the barn. In addition, they found a large IV needle used for cows. The needle had human blood on it.

Stoll felt used. The whole thing made him sick. “While
I was hauling my last load, Eli was running around the barn messing it up and squirting his own blood on the walls,” he said.