Jim Hillibish decribes tracking Eli Stutzman, father of Little Boy Blue, in this piece for the Canton Repository.
Authorities are to check Stutzman's DNA and fingerprints in connection with the 1985 murders of two Colorado men.
Ongoing coverage and commentary can be found at crimerant.com.
The body of ex-Amishman Eli Stutzman--convicted of one murder, suspected in four others--lies in a Texas morgue, unclaimed by his former Ohio Amish community.
Stutzman's DNA may be the case-breaker in the 1985 deaths of two Colorado men.
Gregg Olsen, author of Abandoned Prayers, commented on the case which has hounded him for the past 20 years.
Olsen makes an interesting point--if Ida (Stutzman's wife and supposed first victim) hadn't been Amish, there would have been a full investigation of her death.
We often perceive the Amish as above blame. As many Amish and ex-Amish insist, however, they are just like the rest of the world.
But not exactly.
Violent crime such as murder is extremely rare in Amish society. When it happens, we notice. Nickel Mines is one horrific instance of that.
But in the 250-year-old Lancaster County settlement, the only other killing in memory occurred when an Amish woman was murdered by a non-Amish neighbor in 1982.
Why does the Amish-violence mix get so much attention?
The Amish are famously pacifist.
They submitted to massacre by Indians in the 18th century.
They took physical and verbal abuse as conscientious objectors during the World Wars.
When faux-Amish Harrison Ford decked the bear-baiting goon in Witness, the real-life community went into uproar.
It's the seeming incongruities--like when we see an Amishman on a cell phone, or filling up a Big Gulp--that fascinate us.
Thankfully, the sight of an Amishman on Verizon or at the Quik-E-Mart is much more common than in the nightly crime round-up.
Former Amishman Eli Stutzman's death has been ruled a suicide.
The father of Little Boy Blue, suspected in three other deaths in addition to that of his son, killed himself in a Fort Worth, Texas apartment last week.
Gregg Olsen, who chronicled the case in Abandoned Prayers, says the story might not be over.
“I think it would be a pretty big thing to take to your grave, don’t you think?”, said the author.
A link to a haunting letter from a friend of Stutzman's at crimerant.com.
The stories are heartbreaking. You feel for the victims. It's hard to imagine what they've been through.
But at the same time, a 20/20 piece on Amish abuse from a few years back points to the generalizations that many journalists rely on to tell their story.
The 20/20 folks lean heavily on cliches and misconceptions--from the ominous opening music, to the overplayed stories they trot out--a people 'frozen in time', 'lives of complete secrecy', and so on.
Perhaps the greatest offense is that not once do they give the notion that this could be a localized problem. Instead, for most of the piece, the Amish are painted as a single-minded collection of child-molesting derelicts.
It is likely that most if not all of these Amish are from the Swartzentruber sect--the haircuts, clothing, and triangle-free carriage all point in that direction, plus the fact that it's Holmes County, Ohio, a Swartzentruber center.
There's also moving testimony from David E. Yoder, an outspoken critic and former Swartzentruber member.
At the end, Hugh Downs mentions something about human nature and growing up near some 'hardworking, honest' Amish. Deborah Roberts admits that many are 'happy with their lifestyle'.
But that's as close as this piece comes to anything resembling balance.
So how about a somewhat radical generalization in response:
The Amish are actually more sophisticated than you and I. After all, we gladly use just about any technology that comes along, without a second thought--ie, iPods--they're great fun, but are making us deaf and degrading social interaction.
The Amish think long term consequences before they decide to use new tech. They appreciate comfort, but realize it's not the ultimate reason for our being here.
The Amish make decisions with a higher purpose in mind. Most do live virtuous lives.
As seen with Eli Stutzman and the abuse cases, bad apples are
everywhere, even within the Amish. Yet at the same time, painting an
entire people with such a broad stroke is weak and irresponsible journalism.
Perhaps one of the few blessings of the Nickel Mines shooting is that, at least for awhile, programming execs won't be running anymore Amish stories as crudely one-sided and misleading as this.
Eli Stutzman, convicted murderer and father of ‘Little Boy Blue’, was an exile from the ultraconservative Swartzentruber Amish group.
When you read words like 'secretive', 'closed', and 'backward' in the same sentence as ‘Amish’, the writer, rightly or wrongly, is often referring to this sect.
Wayne County, Ohio, where Stutzman originated, has a high number of
Swartzentruber members, with quite a few spilling over into adjacent Holmes County. This is the heart of America's largest and arguably most diverse Amish and Mennonite area. Swartzentrubers actually make up a very small percentage of America's 200,000 Amish, but get a disproportionate share of attention. 
This is largely due to Swartzentruber custom.
The more mainstream Amish are actually quite dynamic, definitely not 'frozen in time' as often portrayed. They read the paper. They shop at Wal-Mart. Some of them even follow pro sports.
They also accept certain technologies.
Solar panels, cell phones, flashlights, Rollerblades, even hand held video game systems can all be seen in modern Amish homes, depending on the congregation. Sometimes computers even sneak in under the radar to find their way into Amish hands.
In fact, one enthusiastic horse-and-buggy Amishman showed Amish America some photos of a bear attack he had recently downloaded.
The Swartzentrubers, however, are stubbornly resistant to change--most famously in a number of disputes over the slow-moving vehicle sign, which almost all Amish use. The group earned the right in court to go without these orange triangles, using less-visible reflectorized tape instead.
With a little practice, it’s pretty easy to pick out the Swartzentrubers as
you drive through Holmes and other settlements.
Swartzentruber front lawns are typically less well-kept than those of Old Order Amish homes.
An Old Order fellow joked with Amish America about his Swartzentruber neighbor being 'more laid back' when it came to yard work. He pointed out the lack of hot water in the typical Swartzentruber home, as well as the outside toilets.
Shiny tin roofs and scrabbly dirt drives are also pretty typical.
The group’s style of dress stands out as well. A calling card of the group is the quirky bob-style haircut worn by males. In Abandoned Prayers, Gregg Olsen calls it the 'Prince Valiant' look, an apt description.
One scholar attributes the often unkempt Swartzentruber appearance to the group’s spiritual ideals, which downplay aesthetics and neatness in comparison with more mainstream Old Order churches.
Are the Swartzentrubers worthy of admiration for holding out so staunchly against the world, for carrying the vanguard of Amish practice? Or is there something insidiously destructive within this insular culture, as some believe?
The group has gotten national attention in some notorious cases of abuse. Some anti-Amish activists focus their disdain solely on the Swartzentruber faction.
Do elements of the Swartzentruber lifestyle really promote asocial behavior?
Or does the fact that they are so oddly reclusive and reluctant to change, combined with a few high-profile cases, make them particularly easy to paint as deviant?
Convicted murderer Eli Stutzman, formerly of the Amish of Wayne County, Ohio, has died.
Stutzman gained notoriety after his nine-year old son's body was found frozen in Nebraska in 1985.
Stutzman was never convicted of murder in that case, only of lesser charges. He was also suspected in his wife's mysterious death in a barn fire, as well as in two other deaths.
Stutzman was sentenced for the 1985 killing of a Texas man, and served thirteen years.
'Little Boy Blue' was the nickname given to the unknown boy by local residents.
The case got a lot of attention.
Reader's Digest covered it in a story in 1987. A book, Abandoned Prayers, by crime writer Gregg Olsen investigated the case in great detail. Another, shorter account of it can be found in Dorcas Sharp Hoover's House Calls and Hitching Posts.
Violent crime--and non-violent crime, for that matter--is so unusual among the Amish that any time it happens, it's bound to get attention.
When you are dealing with a people that as a whole are exceptionally peaceful and law-abiding, violent individuals and miscreant behavior stand out even more.
The Amish know that just being Amish is not a free pass. The individual and the decisions he makes are what count. They acknowledge that there is good and bad behavior within their own communities, just as the same is true in the modern world.
They also realize that by virtue of the way they live, the spotlight is on them even more. The Eli Stutzman story, as well as being tragic and unfortunate, is an extreme example of that.
