Abandoned Prayers: An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, and Amish Secrets

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More About This Book

Overview

On Christmas Eve in 1985, a hunter found a young boy's body along an icy corn field in Nebraska. The residents of Chester, Nebraska buried him as "Little Boy Blue," unclaimed and unidentified— until a phone call from Ohio two years later led authorities to Eli Stutzman, the boy's father.

Eli Stutzman, the son of an Amish bishop, was by all appearances a dedicated farmer and family man in the country's strictest religious sect. But behind his quiet façade was a man involved with pornography, sadomasochism, and drugs. After the suspicious death of his pregnant wife, Stutzman took his preschool-age son, Danny, and hit the road on a sexual odyssey ending with his conviction for murder. But the mystery of Eli Stutzman and the fate of his son didn't end on the barren Nebraska plains. It was just beginning. . .

What People Are Saying

Cleveland Plain Dealer
A riveting and deeply disturbing chronicle of true crime. Olsen has done a superior job.
Omaha World-Herald
Abandoned Prayers is an absorbing, sobering, disturbing book.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312982010
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 6/16/2003
  • Format: Mass Market Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • Sales rank: 246,935
  • Product dimensions: 4.26 (w) x 6.82 (h) x 1.17 (d)

Meet the Author

Gregg Olsen
Gregg Olsen

Gregg Olsen has been a journalist and investigative author for more than twenty years. He is the recipient of numerous writing, editing, and photojournalism awards, including citations of excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi), the International Association of Business Communicators, Washington Press Association, Society of Technical Communication, and the Public Relations Society of America.

A resident of Washington state, Olsen has been a guest on dozens of national and local television shows, including educational programs for the History Channel, Learning Channel, and the Discovery Channel. Olsen also appeared several times on CBS's 48 Hours, MSNBC's Special Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Sally Jesse Raphael, Inside Edition, and Extra. He has been featured in USA Today, Salon Magazine, Seattle Times, and the New York Post.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE December 24, 1985

It was time for a haircut. Chuck Kleveland felt the annoying fringe of sandy hair crowding his ears and knew that with the approaching holidays he couldn’t let it go much longer. He kissed his wife, Kathy, swallowed his last bit of coffee, and put his shotgun in the gun rack of his ’83 Ford pickup. He planned to do a little hunting on the way to the barber in Hebron.

It was 10 A.M., Christmas Eve.

Kleveland, age 44, pulled out of the driveway of his ranch-style home in Chester, a dozen miles due south of Hebron. Chester, a tiny town whose skyline consists of a pair of grain elevators, is within spitting distance of the Nebraska–Kansas state line. To nonresidents, the town doesn’t seem like much, except maybe a good place to gas up or pick up a pack of cigarettes.

Hebron and Chester used to be the kind of nice, friendly prairie towns where people spend their entire lives. Now they are the kind of towns young people abandon for careers in Omaha—or, if they can bear to pull away from the heart and soul of their parents’ and grandparents’ birthright, they move away even farther, to one of the coasts. Family-owned farms have grown more scarce; a few are fallow.

Kleveland was of the generation—the last generation, some claimed—that still envisioned a good life on the bleak prairie of rural Nebraska. Although he had studied business at the university in Lincoln and lived in New York for a couple of years, Kleveland had returned to Chester, where he owned and ran Foote’s Truckstop in Chester and a similar business in Kearney, a couple of hours to the west.

Kleveland drove east on Harlan Street before turning north on U.S. 81, a trace of snow mottling the road’s shoulder. He could have stayed on 81 and been in Hebron in fifteen minutes, but instead he made a quick right on a farm road bordering a local corn grower’s spread. Kleveland knew the field was a good place to find orange and gold ring-neck pheasants—stray grain kernels littered the ground and provided fodder for game fowl. His wife had another Christmas menu planned, but she would make room for the pheasants on the holiday table. Kathy Kleveland liked the way her husband fixed them.

He took a left and drove north, squinting as he scanned the slightly hilly terrain. The icy earth bristled with hard, dead cornstalks, their frosty surfaces sparkling in the cold, even light. No birds were startled into flight by the noise or movement of the cherry-red pickup.

The jangly sound of steel guitars from a country music radio station broke the bleakness of the morning.

From the corner of his eye Kleveland saw a small bit of blue against the brown and gray field. The color was out of place in the dull winter landscape. He braked to a stop and backed up to get a closer look. When he stepped from the cab, the 30-below-zero wind chill slashed through his parka. Standing at the edge of the roadside drainage ditch, he looked into the field and immediately spotted what had attracted his attention. Partially hidden in a brambly nest, the spiky remnants of yard-tall prairie grass, was a dead body.

It appeared to be a little girl dressed in a blue, one-piece blanket sleeper. Her hand was glazed over with ice and her body lay flat and stiff on the frozen ground. The child’s dark hair was clean and neatly parted, but her head was tilted back, so Kleveland couldn’t quite make out her face. From his vantage point on the roadside, it appeared that the child’s hand had been placed over her heart.

Kleveland had seen enough. He did not move closer to the small corpse, which lay only fifteen feet from the roadside. He didn’t want to mess up any footprints or other evidence, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be part of any evidence. He studied the field, then looked down the length of the dirt road. He wondered if whoever had left the child was still around, watching, as he walked back to his still-running pickup. Picking up the mike of his commercial two-way radio, installed to communicate with his truck-stop fleet of tank wagons, he called his bookkeeper in the office at Foote’s.

“Joyce?” His voice was steady. “I think I found a dead body out here. Call the sheriff.” He stopped short of giving the exact location. There were plenty of police scanners in the small, neatly painted homes in Thayer County. Kleveland knew that if word got out—and in Chester and Hebron one could bank on that—bystanders would be out at the scene in five minutes.

“I’ll be on the highway, a mile north of town,” he said.

Kleveland stared at the corpse. He had seen dead bodies before; he had picked them up when he worked as a volunteer for the local ambulance service, and he had found his mother when she died at home. But this was different, and unsettling in a different way.

You don’t put a child’s body out in a ditch, he thought, unless you’ve got something to hide.

Kleveland drove back to the highway and waited for the sheriff on the northwest corner of the square-mile grid where he had found the body.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 79 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(17)

4 Star

(19)

3 Star

(24)

2 Star

(13)

1 Star

(6)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 81 Customer Reviews

  • Posted July 9, 2009

    Amazingly well written

    The author found a way to tell a true story in such a way it was hard to put the book down. I never felt like I was 'just reading the facts'. The research that was put into this is beyond measure. I continually kept asking....what next? This is one of the best books I've ever, ever read and have already highly recommended it to everyone I know. This is truly a gifted writer and I cannot wait to read more of his works. Just be prepared for the depth of reality he is able to bring to your mind with this book. You truly feel like you are there, at the scene(s) where things took place. I highly, highly recommend it.

    6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted January 24, 2010

    upsetting to read

    This author is not one I would read again, too much graphic details in the story, Also found it hard to follow the story line, because it jumped around too much. I skipped a lot of it, then threw the book away instead of sharing it with a friend.

    4 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 11, 2007

    A reviewer

    The book is well written and easy to read. Gregg delves into the mind of this crazed animal, can't get myself to call him a human, let alone a man, and puts into words how someone can do something so incomprehensible to their own child. A must read for true crime fans! This book will make you a fan of Gregg Olsen!

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 17, 2012

    My First Gregg Olsen book, and Im hooked!!

    Disturbing, DETAILED and an amazing read. Horrible, horrible acts of violence yet great writing. DONT read if you cant handle the details of a sexually perverted man, because Olsen left nothing out. Again, EXCELLENT writing!!

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 21, 2011

    Don't buy

    Could have been a very good book but the author felt the need to be very sexually explicit, beyond what was necessary. If able, I would give it 0 stars. This is the first book that I ever threw out...

    1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 21, 2011

    Do not recommend as an Amish Novel

    I did not enjoy this book. When I read an Amish novel I expect more about the Amish and their way of life, this book fell short of that. I found it too sexual in content and it seemed to focus on that aspect more than anything.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 18, 2011

    excellent writing

    I hated to put it down it was so good I tried to stay up late to read it but couldn't keep my eyes open.
    Finished it the next day.
    Really good book

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 13, 2012

    sad but true story

    olsen brought the horror and sadness of this story to full view in this book. interesting and well done

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted September 7, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Dated Subject

    Way too much detail about gay sex in this one. Gay sex or straight sex, when it becomes the story instead of the crime, then it is more porn than novel.

    The book is quite dated. The crime occurred in the mid 80's and the novel stops after the trial in 1989. Much has happened since that time that is not covered in the novel. It would be helpful if the author had included some sort of update to include the perp's death in 2007.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 10, 2011

    Wouldn't recommend

    Not impressed with the writing style. Jumped round, and you could easily eliminate about 100 pages in the middle and still understand that the suspect was a sick individual. So many names peppered throughout that I couldn't follow. I'm just glad it wasn't a terribly expensive book. Doubt I will be reading this author again.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 18, 2008

    Somewhat of a disappointment

    I found this book somewhat boring. It has really good parts, but it seem to be kind of longwinded for my taste.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 14, 2012

    PRETTY GOOD

    IT WAS PRETTY GOOD. NOT AS GOOD AS SOME NOT AS BAD AS OTHERS

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 1, 2012

    I thought this would be a good mystery. Far to much sexual cont

    I thought this would be a good mystery. Far to much sexual content. It seemed more like porn. I had to erase it from my nook that I share with my grandaughter.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 8, 2012

    Good...but...

    I had a hard time getting into it, and there are so many different people that are highlighted in the book that it is difficult to keep track of who is who.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 3, 2012

    A savage tale of abuse

    As an avid reader, this is worth the read. As a mother my heart was broken.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 6, 2012

    Anonymous

    Not worth reading...very disjointed and difficult to keep up with. Would not recommend this book. The more you read the more boring this book becomes, which is the author's fault. This crime was lost in this read.

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  • Posted June 28, 2011

    To disjointed,

    Too many characters were introduced in the story and it was all over the place. Might have been nice to add another epilogue about Eli dying in 1996, since this is a digital book andfairly easy to edir and release

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  • Posted June 22, 2011

    Good story

    This confirms that evil does exist and walks among us, was about 150 pages to long tho.

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  • Posted May 30, 2011

    recommended

    It was an unbelievable true story. However it became repetitious in some parts. Could have been told in less pages. I think Gregg Olsen writes better fiction. Those are excellent.

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  • Posted May 18, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    good read

    this book had me thinking about it for days after I read it. Seems impossible that a group of people could be so naive to not see a manipulator and killer for what he is. To kill his pregnant wife and take off with his son and expose him to the terrible lifestyle of Promiscuity and then abandoning him on the side of a road to die is horrible. Gregg Olsen, great true crime writer!

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