How an Amish man got away with murder again and again

It’s been more than 40 years since Ida Stutzman died, but crime author and amateur sleuth Gregg Olsen is still seeking justice for her.

“I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” the author of the new book, “The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free” (Thomas & Mercer, out now), told the Post. “I do believe — I know — Ida was murdered.”

In July of 1977, Ida, a 26-year-old pregnant Amish woman, was found dead at her family’s farm in Dalton, Ohio. Her husband, Eli Stutzman, claimed she’d collapsed while trying to save milking equipment from a fire. Ida’s death was officially attributed to natural causes, specifically a weak heart.

Within two years of Ida’s passing, Eli fled their Amish community, taking his young son, Danny, with him. More deaths followed.

Their travels took them from Ohio to Colorado, where Eli had affairs with numerous gay men, and was a prime suspect in several unsolved (as of this writing) deaths, including his former lovers David Tyler and Dennis Sleater.  

In May of 1985, Eli’s roommate, Glen Pritchett, was found dead from a gunshot wound to his eye. Later that year, young Danny was found frozen and dead in a field.

Eli was convicted of Pritchett’s murder and of abandoning his son, whose cause of death was deemed “inconclusive.” (Stutzman claimed his son had been sick with a respiratory infection and died in his sleep.) He was sentenced to 40 years in prison and released on parole in 2005. Two years later, he killed himself.

The new book delves back into the case and finds fresh evidence that Eli killed Ida.

“He wasn’t questioned as a suspect, despite suspicious circumstances,” Olsen writes.

He notes that Eli waffled as to what exactly Ida had gone into the barn to save — and why a pregnant woman had run into an active blaze alone. Then there was the fact that Ida’s own doctor had never heard of her heart issues.

Even with Eli dead, Olsen, who also covered the case with his 2002 book “Abandoned Prayers: The Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, and Amish Secrets” was nervous about investigating.

“Some people in their community wanted to keep a secret like this buried forever,” he said. Even Ida’s brother, Daniel Gingerich, was reluctant to speak with him. 

“I always said, all I want to know is the truth,” he told Olsen. “But I don’t need to know it. Most of my family would say, ‘Oh, Dan, don’t. Just let it go.’”

The Gingerich and Stutzman families belonged to the Swartzentruber Order, an ultraconservative Amish sect. They weren’t eager to talk with an outsider, certainly not a writer like Olsen who was digging up dirt.

“They don’t wanna be involved in our world, the ‘English World’ as they call it,” Olsen said. “They prefer to handle matters on their own.”

It also didn’t help that many of the people he’d first interviewed thirty years ago were dead, from Ida’s parents to the coroner who did Ida’s autopsy to Wayne County Sheriff Jim Frost, who, he claims, may have played a role in covering up Ida’s murder to protect his own clandestine sexual affair with Stutzman. Frost, like Stutzman, took his own life, in 1998.

But Olsen found some people willing to talk, including one potentially vital witness: Eli Stutzman’s cousin, who also happened to be named Eli Stutzman. The younger Eli, now 57, was a hired hand at his uncle’s farm, and one of the first to discover Ida’s body.

During a tense interview with Olsen, he revealed new details about the night of Ida’s death. The kerosene lamps on the home’s main floor were — suspiciously — all lit at some point after the barn fire was discovered.

“A fire is burning outside and there are livestock and equipment to be saved and either Ida or Eli takes the time to light the lamps,” Olsen writes. “I can’t make sense of it.”

Then there was the issue of Ida’s clothes. Despite having supposedly jumped out of bed and rushed to the burning barn, her body was discovered in her daytime togs, not a nightgown.

“Traditional Amish clothing is very complicated,” Olsen told the Post. “It can require anywhere from twenty to forty pins. It’s not something you can just slip into, especially if you’re scared and in a hurry.”

He also found that Ida’s autopsy report — which the coroner had resisted sharing with him back in 1989 — was covered in corrections. “There were big gaps where somebody had whited-out entire blocks of text,” Olsen told the Post. “And there was different handwriting on certain sections, like several people had made changes. It was all very weird.”

There were also rumors, long whispered among the locals but never shared openly until now, that Ida had plans to speak with a bishop about Stutzman, confessing about “something she either saw or found,” writes Olsen. “Maybe it was that she’d caught him having sex with another man.”

That would explain why Sheriff Frost, who had a relationship with Stutzman, would be so quick to accept the grieving husband’s version of events. Frost “knew that Eli was a liar, knew he was a fabricator,” Olsen said. “And yet, he looked the other way. He basically said, ‘Oh sure, this looks like an accident. Let’s call it natural causes and move on.’”

Olsen left Ohio last April without getting any conclusive answers. But, he writes, “I hold no doubt Ida was murdered. It is a strong case, though because of the passage of time, it is mostly circumstantial. There are no forensics to speak of.”

All he wants now is accountability, for the county to admit that mistakes were made, and a potential murder was never given a proper investigation

“This is about a conspiracy to cover up a crime and let a serial killer go free. That’s clear as day to me. I hope this book emboldens other people to come forward with information,” he said. “When or if that happens, the dominos are gonna start falling.”