Murder & Merlot: The Amish Wife

Murder & Merlot is a true crime book club that meets from 6:00 - 7:00 pm on the second Tuesday of every month at Mimi's Retreat (125 East Ninth Street, Auburn). Join us for a glass and a discussion of classic and modern works of true crime. The books we read will be selected by members. All attendees must be over 21 and have valid ID On May 11th, we'll discuss The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free by Gregg Olsen. Description of The Amish Wife from Publishers Weekly: In this propulsive true crime saga, bestseller Olsen (If You Tell) revisits Amish country to solve a decades-old murder. Eli Stutzman was a gay, Amish-raised serial killer who murdered several men in Texas and Nebraska throughout the 1980s. Olsen previously chronicled Stutzman’s life and crimes in Abandoned Prayers, detailing the man’s sex-fueled, drug-addled murders and 2007 suicide. But as Olsen continued to rifle through Stutzman’s past, he stumbled on a series of chilling new questions: might Stutzman’s first murder victim have been his young, pregnant Amish wife, who supposedly died in a 1977 Ohio barn fire? Had she found out about his sordid hidden life and threatened to expose it? Which of their neighbors knew, or at least suspected, the truth? As Olsen plunged into the silent and often uncooperative world of the Ohio Amish for answers, he found discrepancies in the official accounts of Ida Stutzman’s death, and an increasingly ugly world of sex parties and possible cover-ups involving the county’s shifty coroner and gay alcoholic sheriff. The details of the case are gripping enough, but Olsen elevates them with sturdy prose, meticulous research, and admirable journalistic tenacity. This addendum to a once-settled story lands as much more than a footnote. ______________________________________ “The truth, of course, was much weirder: I was foregoing a fancy Hollywood party to return not to my sleeping infant but my laptop, to excavate through the night in search of information about a man I’d never met, who’d murdered people I didn’t know.” - Michelle McNamara, I'll Be Gone in the Dark