November 21, 2025 • 42 mins
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 Secrets
https://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"
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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 Secrets
https://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/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.com
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Comedian Simon Amstell 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
(00:45):
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
(01:06):
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 sterial killer Eli Stutzman. So campers were in Chester,
(01:34):
Nebraska on Christmas Eve nineteen eighty five. 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,
(01:55):
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 hair cut 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
(02:18):
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 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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Oh sure, dead body retrieval. That's great. Christas Eve entertainment.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Something to do. It's better than watching the Texico scigen's
been around. He told Joyce, I'll be on the 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
(03:42):
react this way. He chewed on that feeling bouncing round
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, the kind of place where sheriff's
deputies spend more time chasing drunk teenagers around than investigating
(04:05):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
her to clarify who she'd killed. He paused when he
heard a call come over his radio. Sheriff Young is
ten ninety seven with the coroner, wants nine three two
one to meet them. Tenney seve Evan meant that Sheriff
Gary Young was at a crime scene. Nine three two
one was McPherson's call number. He left the reverend behind
(05:08):
and peeled out of the restaurant parking lot, lights and
sirens blaring. Who had this crazy woman killed?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Sheriff Young set 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. His nose and mouth were gone, probably eaten
by wildlife. His eyes were shut and looked to be blue,
though they had clouded over with decomposition. His left hand
(05:38):
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 investigator assumed he'd been brutally
(06:01):
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,
(06:24):
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
the 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
(06:47):
be abused.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I'm guessing Bill didn't say that quite so sensitively
as intellectual disability.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Certainly not. No, you are correct. He used a much
less pac 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 Greg Olsen. 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.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Greg Olsen stuff is great generally.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
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
(07:38):
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 Tibbet funeral home. The
investigator started calling around asking if anyone was missing a child.
They even brought in the school super inten but he
(08:00):
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, Jean Samuelson,
(08:23):
the local Methodist minister, heard about the little boy. She
could sense the fear of 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 seven pm 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
(08:47):
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 spare. Some like Bill McPherson, cried, Others like Sheriff Young,
dove into work, taking a break only for a short
(09:08):
Christmas dinner and returning to the station.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
The autopsy was illuminating, if not exactly helpful. Doctor 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,
(09:34):
so what about the marks around his neck had he
been strangled? Well, his hyoid bone was still intact. The
hyoid is a fragile neckbone, 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
(09:57):
just die. The only thing the autopsy could say for
sure was that the time of death was thirty six
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.
(10:19):
Sheriff Young later set up a conference with another medical
examiner to discuss the case. Doctor 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.
(10:39):
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, since 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
(11:03):
did find hairs on the kid's pajamas that did not
belong to him, and that the pajamas were new. They
had the plastic tags still on the collar that 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 km arts all over the western part
(11:23):
of the US, 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 wild life 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
(11:45):
nose did he have? The artists 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 a hundred and fifty 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
(12:08):
that Deputy Macpherson 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
(12:29):
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 nineteen eighty six, 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
(12:51):
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
(13:14):
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,
(13:35):
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 twenty fourth, nineteen
eighty five, 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
(13:59):
have time to get into the links 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
(14:20):
in Greg Olsen's book, and you should absolutely check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It was almost two years after the boy had been
discovered on November thirtieth, nineteen eighty seven, 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 world, pacifism, and social justice. They often get
(14:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Not like decaf Amish Amish light.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yes, exactly, yea. 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, oh, they're
not Amish, okay. Abner had seen the story about Matthew
and readers digest and thought he closely resembled a little
boy he knew named Danny Stutzman. Abner had known Danny's father,
(15:21):
a man named Eli. Danny was born on September seventh,
nineteen seventy six 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.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And this comes from a Bible verse prohibiting graven images.
They actually don't mind if they happened 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 nos. Some believe that the camera would
capture their souls, preventing them from getting into heaven.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
They aren't even allowed to have mirrors, which would explain
the sideburns.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I'm glad some does.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Abner told Sheriff Young that Danny and Eli were supposed
to visit during Christmas of nineteen eighty five. 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.
(16:26):
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. They Amish 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
(16:49):
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. Some of them say
that they're militaristic and they use hooks instead.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Okay, hooks aren't modern. I don'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 is the criterion?
Like stuff that a monkey could figure out. Okay, if
the monkey's gonna be confused for a second, then that
(17:27):
means it's modern. I'm genuinely confused.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, it's it's very it's very strange, like the black
and white because the because like little girls, little amige
girls are allowed to wear like colorful clothes, but they're
like they have to be like almost muted colors, like
a dusty purple, like a sage green. That seems strange
to me. And then yeah, the button thing is is insane.
The button thing is crazy. They're forbidden from using modern technology.
(17:56):
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.
I actually, actually I do know. It's because one of
the founders of the Mennonite religion was Dutch, and the
Amish broke away from them to call it Pennsylvania Dutch
(18:18):
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 kill pins in horrific conditions. They're
known to run puppy mills as well.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, and this makes me sick to think about it
in 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
(18:54):
hate it.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, and the Amish are pacifists, I know. It just
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's the buttons and the hooks all over again, except darker.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yes, exactly. So don't get puppies from the Amish, is
the moral of the story. The Amish were actually founded
after the Mind of Nights, like I was saying, due
to disagreements between the founders about doctrine. There are forty
sects of Amish in the US, all of which have
different shades of belief. They're named after the founding bishops,
(19:25):
and veryan conservatism. One of the sects, called the Swarts
and Troupers, are among the most conservative of all of them,
and that's the denomination. Eli Stutsman was born into on
September twenty eighth, nineteen fifty. He was the fourth of
thirteen children born to his parents, Eli and Susan. He
was a Shortish guy, only about five six and one
(19:46):
hundred and forty pounds, but he was popular with the
ladies of the Amish community. They liked his deep blue
eyes and silky brown hair.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Oh, by the way, you're gonna find that there are
about seventeen Elis 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
(20:17):
a little too good for the rest of us. A
neighbor told Greg Olsen, he didn't seem to work as
hard as the others when we were out in the
field or at a 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. Anytime he
(20:59):
found himself in 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.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, we'll 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.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I really feel like we should choose every job this way,
and why not? Don't worry about college. Just 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
(21:56):
would not tolerate disobedience, and if they did disobey, he
would be them. It worked with his other twelve 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 sixteen
years old, can experiment with worldly behavior and go nuts
(22:18):
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
(22:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Oooh, even the awmish love a bad boy.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Ooh, did you see Jeremiah last night? He's still a
buggy who. Dating is also allowed, even encouraged during Rumspringa.
During singings, boys and girls are allowed to mingle and
sing and dance together there. Eli Stutsman met sixteen year
(23:18):
old Ida Gingrich. There are no available photos of Ida.
She was amished 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
(23:39):
love with Eli Stutsman. Where the Stutsmen 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 that the Amish were taught at.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
As a reminder, his education hopped out in eighth grade.
Can you imagine being taught by an eighth grader?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
So many six sevens, so much mewing?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Oh my God.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Despite his respectable job and seeming stability, Eli's behavior continued
to be rebellious at home. He was twenty now and
the charm of his bad boys 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 one hundred and forty dollars a month, to
be sent directly to him.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
And because we know you guys love conversion math, one
hundred and forty dollars in nineteen seventy one is equivalent
to eleven hundred dollars 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.
(24:53):
His son, he thought was too worldly and too money obsessed.
If he was caught doing something against the church's teaching,
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.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
All right, are we just trying to see how many
times we can say one hand elne the episode?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yes, of course, And I think it's a little delightful
because the Amish had so many elis that they had
to start using fun little nicknames to narrow them down.
And it's you know, the one handedness isn't fun, but
like it's imagine if you were called a stigmatism whitney
or whatever. It's a little funny. Okay. Also he had
(25:37):
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
(26:01):
the amie treat. Going to the chiropractor. Hey fever chiropractor,
menstrual cramps chiropractor, behavioral issues that border on sociopathy. Huh yep,
you guessed it. Chiropractor Geez 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
(26:24):
the Stutsman 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 necker tightened sore,
and he could barely get out of bed. He was
(26:45):
prescribed some pills, but the chiropractor couldn't do much more
for him except to tell Eli to rest. Now you
know us campers, we're a live and let live podcast.
If you want to go treat pneumonia by going to
a bone crack her, be our guest. But you cannot
tell me that you can cure compulsive lying and stealing
(27:07):
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 Mose, 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 Most thought about telling an osteopath that
(27:30):
was also treating Eli, but decided that it was too
embarrassing to share.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
For God's sake.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
MOSE's wife, Ada found some notes written by Eli around
the house they were friends Tell and the Devil. The
notes weren't hidden, and instead of concerned about Eli's mental state,
she thought that the notes had been left for them
to find specifically.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
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
Mose and Ada to convince them of his insanity. Rumors
spread that Eli was hanging around people outside of the community,
(28:10):
who they called englishers. Some said they'd seen him in
a car. He often invited englishers to MOS's home while
he and his family were at church. He lied repeatedly
to Mo's, 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
(28:31):
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 twenty one year old
man give someone who is not the patient in question
(28:53):
advice on how to involuntarily commit them? That's pretty Wilder'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 MOSE's home and swore that he was
going to leave the Schwartzentrouber church. Mo's, who was from
(29:14):
a different sect, invited him to church, and while he
initially seemed engaged, Eli quickly started to chafe under the
new church's teachings. Mos thought this was a clear symptom
of Eli's mental problems. On August twelfth, nineteen seventy two,
MOS's barn burned down, shortly after Eli had gone into town.
Mose never thought Eli had anything to do with it,
(29:36):
but other people definitely did. It was during the summer
of nineteen seventy two 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 bon. Bonn is how the church
excommunicates their problem children. Those that are put under a
(29:59):
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,
(30:24):
Eli found room and board with Liz and Leroy Chupp.
The couple was New Order Amish, 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
(30:46):
the bond because his father had caught him with the radio.
He also said that the men his age hated him
so much so that they hung a skinned cat from
his buggy.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I totally think you made it up. He brought a
lot of englishers around the Chuck 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
(31:33):
also started talking a big game about Ida gingrich. He
told one friend that Ida let him do everything when
they slept together.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
The Swartz and Troupers participated in a practice called bundling,
during which a courting couple could share a bed. They
were supposed to say 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
(32:06):
it didn't seem like she was the type of Amish
girl to bundle that hard.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Just to confirm we hear 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 of a boten in the
Amish community.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
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 Amish friends, John. He presented the birthday boy with
a gift, and when the guy opened it, he was shocked.
Eli had gifted him a pair of men's bikini underwear
(32:45):
in a lurid red color.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Okay, the Amish.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Don't wear underwear, so to 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. He kept cajoling John until John finally stopped
being so nice about it and told him to fuck off.
(33:10):
Eli had taken a job building a silo on a farm,
but was fired the same day he started. When Liz
Chuck asked him what happened, he said that the foreman,
one of Eli's ex Amish 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,
(33:32):
she'd find out that Eli had actually been caught smoking
weed on the job and was summarily fired. In September
of nineteen seventy four, Eli bought a buggy and started
telling people he was going to go rejoin the Amish
in the next twelve 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
(33:55):
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 Miller's and he said
it helped. Earl agreed to sell Eli some weed, and
(34:18):
when Eli came to pick it up, Earle 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 apartment came
knocking on the Miller's door with a warrant.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
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 stutsman.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It turned out that for some Godfor's sakered 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 in
twenty four hours in jail, knew who the rat was.
(35:19):
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. Okay. Upon confrontation,
Eli was a little pathetic. Levi I was like, we
want to know if you did this to us, and
Eli kept his mouth shut but shook his head. Face
(35:41):
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
(36:01):
would testify against the Millers. He 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 Chops 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
(36:24):
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 it 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.
(36:48):
His friend thought Eli was just paranoid, but the guy
seemed genuinely scared.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
On November nineteenth, Eli's roommate Ed Stole, was finishing up
his farm chores at around five pm. The work took
him longer that day, 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
(37:16):
Eli stutsman 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 nine
one one, and Eli was transported to the hospital close
to death with cuts all over his arms. When Eli
(37:37):
was strong enough to tell his story, he told the
investigators that he'd seen a car with out of Saint
plaits 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.
(38:01):
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 break down 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 are usually quite ragged and randomly placed. Eli's wounds,
(38:24):
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
Stutsman's handwriting. He had done all of this to himself.
(38:44):
While Ed Stole was working his ass off doing farm work,
Eli was replicating at 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
(39:06):
tableau to play out like he planned. 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.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
It's the creepiest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.
Like the shit gave me nightmares.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
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
(39:48):
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 land lady would play 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
(40:11):
were standard fair dirty magazines, but others confused her deeply.
They portrayed men having sex with each other. In her shock,
she burned them.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Obviously, the Amish are incredibly sheltered, and they consider homosexuality
of any kind to be a grave sin. Eli Stutsman
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. Yeah, being raised in
(40:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Then in February, Eli got fired from another job. He
told the 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
(41:16):
to return to the Amish. The Prodigal Sun 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.
(41:36):
And as always, we want to send a grateful shout
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Alana, Christina, Tea, Brittany and Susan. We
appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're
not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our
show get every episode ad free, at least a day early,
sometimes more, plus tons of extra content like patrons only
(41:58):
episodes and hilarious post show discussions, and when you join
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a free sticker, a rat enamel pin, or fridge magnet,
while supplies last virtual events with Whitney and me, and
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so if you can, come join us at patreon dot com,
Slash True Crimecampfire
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. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Comedian Simon Amstell 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
(00:45):
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
(01:06):
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 sterial killer Eli Stutzman. So campers were in Chester,
(01:34):
Nebraska on Christmas Eve nineteen eighty five. 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,
(01:55):
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 hair cut 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
(02:18):
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 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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Oh sure, dead body retrieval. That's great. Christas Eve entertainment.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Something to do. It's better than watching the Texico scigen's
been around. He told Joyce, I'll be on the 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
(03:42):
react this way. He chewed on that feeling bouncing round
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, the kind of place where sheriff's
deputies spend more time chasing drunk teenagers around than investigating
(04:05):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
her to clarify who she'd killed. He paused when he
heard a call come over his radio. Sheriff Young is
ten ninety seven with the coroner, wants nine three two
one to meet them. Tenney seve Evan meant that Sheriff
Gary Young was at a crime scene. Nine three two
one was McPherson's call number. He left the reverend behind
(05:08):
and peeled out of the restaurant parking lot, lights and
sirens blaring. Who had this crazy woman killed?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Sheriff Young set 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. His nose and mouth were gone, probably eaten
by wildlife. His eyes were shut and looked to be blue,
though they had clouded over with decomposition. His left hand
(05:38):
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 investigator assumed he'd been brutally
(06:01):
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,
(06:24):
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
the 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
(06:47):
be abused.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I'm guessing Bill didn't say that quite so sensitively
as intellectual disability.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Certainly not. No, you are correct. He used a much
less pac 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 Greg Olsen. 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.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Greg Olsen stuff is great generally.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
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
(07:38):
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 Tibbet funeral home. The
investigator started calling around asking if anyone was missing a child.
They even brought in the school super inten but he
(08:00):
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, Jean Samuelson,
(08:23):
the local Methodist minister, heard about the little boy. She
could sense the fear of 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 seven pm 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
(08:47):
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 spare. Some like Bill McPherson, cried, Others like Sheriff Young,
dove into work, taking a break only for a short
(09:08):
Christmas dinner and returning to the station.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
The autopsy was illuminating, if not exactly helpful. Doctor 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,
(09:34):
so what about the marks around his neck had he
been strangled? Well, his hyoid bone was still intact. The
hyoid is a fragile neckbone, 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
(09:57):
just die. The only thing the autopsy could say for
sure was that the time of death was thirty six
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.
(10:19):
Sheriff Young later set up a conference with another medical
examiner to discuss the case. Doctor 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.
(10:39):
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, since 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
(11:03):
did find hairs on the kid's pajamas that did not
belong to him, and that the pajamas were new. They
had the plastic tags still on the collar that 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 km arts all over the western part
(11:23):
of the US, 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 wild life 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
(11:45):
nose did he have? The artists 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 a hundred and fifty 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
(12:08):
that Deputy Macpherson 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
(12:29):
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 nineteen eighty six, 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
(12:51):
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
(13:14):
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,
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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 twenty fourth, nineteen
eighty five, 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
(13:59):
have time to get into the links 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
(14:20):
in Greg Olsen's book, and you should absolutely check it out.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It was almost two years after the boy had been
discovered on November thirtieth, nineteen eighty seven, 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 world, pacifism, and social justice. They often get
(14:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Not like decaf Amish Amish light.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yes, exactly, yea. 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, oh, they're
not Amish, okay. Abner had seen the story about Matthew
and readers digest and thought he closely resembled a little
boy he knew named Danny Stutzman. Abner had known Danny's father,
(15:21):
a man named Eli. Danny was born on September seventh,
nineteen seventy six 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.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And this comes from a Bible verse prohibiting graven images.
They actually don't mind if they happened 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 nos. Some believe that the camera would
capture their souls, preventing them from getting into heaven.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
They aren't even allowed to have mirrors, which would explain
the sideburns.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I'm glad some does.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Abner told Sheriff Young that Danny and Eli were supposed
to visit during Christmas of nineteen eighty five. 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.
(16:26):
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. They Amish 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
(16:49):
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. Some of them say
that they're militaristic and they use hooks instead.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Okay, hooks aren't modern. I don'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 is the criterion?
Like stuff that a monkey could figure out. Okay, if
the monkey's gonna be confused for a second, then that
(17:27):
means it's modern. I'm genuinely confused.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, it's it's very it's very strange, like the black
and white because the because like little girls, little amige
girls are allowed to wear like colorful clothes, but they're
like they have to be like almost muted colors, like
a dusty purple, like a sage green. That seems strange
to me. And then yeah, the button thing is is insane.
The button thing is crazy. They're forbidden from using modern technology.
(17:56):
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.
I actually, actually I do know. It's because one of
the founders of the Mennonite religion was Dutch, and the
Amish broke away from them to call it Pennsylvania Dutch
(18:18):
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 kill pins in horrific conditions. They're
known to run puppy mills as well.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, and this makes me sick to think about it
in 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
(18:54):
hate it.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, and the Amish are pacifists, I know. It just
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's the buttons and the hooks all over again, except darker.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yes, exactly. So don't get puppies from the Amish, is
the moral of the story. The Amish were actually founded
after the Mind of Nights, like I was saying, due
to disagreements between the founders about doctrine. There are forty
sects of Amish in the US, all of which have
different shades of belief. They're named after the founding bishops,
(19:25):
and veryan conservatism. One of the sects, called the Swarts
and Troupers, are among the most conservative of all of them,
and that's the denomination. Eli Stutsman was born into on
September twenty eighth, nineteen fifty. He was the fourth of
thirteen children born to his parents, Eli and Susan. He
was a Shortish guy, only about five six and one
(19:46):
hundred and forty pounds, but he was popular with the
ladies of the Amish community. They liked his deep blue
eyes and silky brown hair.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Oh, by the way, you're gonna find that there are
about seventeen Elis 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
(20:17):
a little too good for the rest of us. A
neighbor told Greg Olsen, he didn't seem to work as
hard as the others when we were out in the
field or at a 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. Anytime he
(20:59):
found himself in 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.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Yeah, we'll 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.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I really feel like we should choose every job this way,
and why not? Don't worry about college. Just 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
(21:56):
would not tolerate disobedience, and if they did disobey, he
would be them. It worked with his other twelve 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 sixteen
years old, can experiment with worldly behavior and go nuts
(22:18):
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
(22:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Oooh, even the awmish love a bad boy.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Ooh, did you see Jeremiah last night? He's still a
buggy who. Dating is also allowed, even encouraged during Rumspringa.
During singings, boys and girls are allowed to mingle and
sing and dance together there. Eli Stutsman met sixteen year
(23:18):
old Ida Gingrich. There are no available photos of Ida.
She was amished 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
(23:39):
love with Eli Stutsman. Where the Stutsmen 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 that the Amish were taught at.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
As a reminder, his education hopped out in eighth grade.
Can you imagine being taught by an eighth grader?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
So many six sevens, so much mewing?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Oh my God.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Despite his respectable job and seeming stability, Eli's behavior continued
to be rebellious at home. He was twenty now and
the charm of his bad boys 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 one hundred and forty dollars a month, to
be sent directly to him.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
And because we know you guys love conversion math, one
hundred and forty dollars in nineteen seventy one is equivalent
to eleven hundred dollars 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.
(24:53):
His son, he thought was too worldly and too money obsessed.
If he was caught doing something against the church's teaching,
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.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
All right, are we just trying to see how many
times we can say one hand elne the episode?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yes, of course, And I think it's a little delightful
because the Amish had so many elis that they had
to start using fun little nicknames to narrow them down.
And it's you know, the one handedness isn't fun, but
like it's imagine if you were called a stigmatism whitney
or whatever. It's a little funny. Okay. Also he had
(25:37):
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
(26:01):
the amie treat. Going to the chiropractor. Hey fever chiropractor,
menstrual cramps chiropractor, behavioral issues that border on sociopathy. Huh yep,
you guessed it. Chiropractor Geez 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
(26:24):
the Stutsman 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 necker tightened sore,
and he could barely get out of bed. He was
(26:45):
prescribed some pills, but the chiropractor couldn't do much more
for him except to tell Eli to rest. Now you
know us campers, we're a live and let live podcast.
If you want to go treat pneumonia by going to
a bone crack her, be our guest. But you cannot
tell me that you can cure compulsive lying and stealing
(27:07):
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 Mose, 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 Most thought about telling an osteopath that
(27:30):
was also treating Eli, but decided that it was too
embarrassing to share.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
For God's sake.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
MOSE's wife, Ada found some notes written by Eli around
the house they were friends Tell and the Devil. The
notes weren't hidden, and instead of concerned about Eli's mental state,
she thought that the notes had been left for them
to find specifically.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
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
Mose and Ada to convince them of his insanity. Rumors
spread that Eli was hanging around people outside of the community,
(28:10):
who they called englishers. Some said they'd seen him in
a car. He often invited englishers to MOS's home while
he and his family were at church. He lied repeatedly
to Mo's, 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
(28:31):
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 twenty one year old
man give someone who is not the patient in question
(28:53):
advice on how to involuntarily commit them? That's pretty Wilder'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 MOSE's home and swore that he was
going to leave the Schwartzentrouber church. Mo's, who was from
(29:14):
a different sect, invited him to church, and while he
initially seemed engaged, Eli quickly started to chafe under the
new church's teachings. Mos thought this was a clear symptom
of Eli's mental problems. On August twelfth, nineteen seventy two,
MOS's barn burned down, shortly after Eli had gone into town.
Mose never thought Eli had anything to do with it,
(29:36):
but other people definitely did. It was during the summer
of nineteen seventy two 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 bon. Bonn is how the church
excommunicates their problem children. Those that are put under a
(29:59):
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,
(30:24):
Eli found room and board with Liz and Leroy Chupp.
The couple was New Order Amish, 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
(30:46):
the bond because his father had caught him with the radio.
He also said that the men his age hated him
so much so that they hung a skinned cat from
his buggy.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I totally think you made it up. He brought a
lot of englishers around the Chuck 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
(31:33):
also started talking a big game about Ida gingrich. He
told one friend that Ida let him do everything when
they slept together.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
The Swartz and Troupers participated in a practice called bundling,
during which a courting couple could share a bed. They
were supposed to say 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
(32:06):
it didn't seem like she was the type of Amish
girl to bundle that hard.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Just to confirm we hear 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 of a boten in the
Amish community.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
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 Amish friends, John. He presented the birthday boy with
a gift, and when the guy opened it, he was shocked.
Eli had gifted him a pair of men's bikini underwear
(32:45):
in a lurid red color.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Okay, the Amish.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Don't wear underwear, so to 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. He kept cajoling John until John finally stopped
being so nice about it and told him to fuck off.
(33:10):
Eli had taken a job building a silo on a farm,
but was fired the same day he started. When Liz
Chuck asked him what happened, he said that the foreman,
one of Eli's ex Amish 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,
(33:32):
she'd find out that Eli had actually been caught smoking
weed on the job and was summarily fired. In September
of nineteen seventy four, Eli bought a buggy and started
telling people he was going to go rejoin the Amish
in the next twelve 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
(33:55):
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 Miller's and he said
it helped. Earl agreed to sell Eli some weed, and
(34:18):
when Eli came to pick it up, Earle 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 apartment came
knocking on the Miller's door with a warrant.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
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 stutsman.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It turned out that for some Godfor's sakered 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 in
twenty four hours in jail, knew who the rat was.
(35:19):
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. Okay. Upon confrontation,
Eli was a little pathetic. Levi I was like, we
want to know if you did this to us, and
Eli kept his mouth shut but shook his head. Face
(35:41):
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
(36:01):
would testify against the Millers. He 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 Chops 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
(36:24):
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 it 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.
(36:48):
His friend thought Eli was just paranoid, but the guy
seemed genuinely scared.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
On November nineteenth, Eli's roommate Ed Stole, was finishing up
his farm chores at around five pm. The work took
him longer that day, 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
(37:16):
Eli stutsman 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 nine
one one, and Eli was transported to the hospital close
to death with cuts all over his arms. When Eli
(37:37):
was strong enough to tell his story, he told the
investigators that he'd seen a car with out of Saint
plaits 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.
(38:01):
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 break down 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 are usually quite ragged and randomly placed. Eli's wounds,
(38:24):
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
Stutsman's handwriting. He had done all of this to himself.
(38:44):
While Ed Stole was working his ass off doing farm work,
Eli was replicating at 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
(39:06):
tableau to play out like he planned. 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.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
It's the creepiest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.
Like the shit gave me nightmares.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
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
(39:48):
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 land lady would play 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
(40:11):
were standard fair dirty magazines, but others confused her deeply.
They portrayed men having sex with each other. In her shock,
she burned them.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Obviously, the Amish are incredibly sheltered, and they consider homosexuality
of any kind to be a grave sin. Eli Stutsman
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. Yeah, being raised in
(40:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Then in February, Eli got fired from another job. He
told the 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
(41:16):
to return to the Amish. The Prodigal Sun 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.
(41:36):
And as always, we want to send a grateful shout
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Alana, Christina, Tea, Brittany and Susan. We
appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're
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