Justice is slowing turning its wheels in the Eli Stutzman case. My new favorite reporter, Duran
go Herald staff writer Shane Benjamin, wrote a follow-up piece on the two-decades-old Colorado murders tied to the former Amish Stutzman. It appears in today’s Herald.
Nothing moves fast enough when a case is so old, and you’ve been so hopeful for as long as I have. But I’m very grateful for the way things are progressing. This still doesn’t address Ida Stutzman’s death, or specifically how Danny died. But it is a good start.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has received evidence – including the fingerprints and blood sample of a deceased killer – that will be tested in the hopes of solving two Durango murders that are 22 years old.
The Durango Police Department reopened the cold cases earlier this year after receiving fingerprints and a blood sample from Eli Stutzman, who committed suicide Jan. 31 in Fort Worth, Texas.
For legal reasons, police were unable to obtain Stutzman’s fingerprints and blood sample before his death.
Since receiving the samples, investigators have gone through boxes of evidence preserved from the 1985 murders.
Police declined to identify the items that were turned over to the CBI for forensic study.
“We have some suspicion that it was Stutzman,” said Durango Police Investigator Steve Glaser. “Hopefully with the help of the CBI and the analysis they do, we’ll (be able to) link this.”
It is unknown how long it will take the CBI to do testing, but it could take several months beca
use new cases take priority over cold cases.
Stutzman spent 16 years in a federal prison for killing his roommate, Glen Pritchett, in Texas. While on the run for that murder, Stutzman lived in La Plata County in 1985.
During that time, two Durangoans – David M. Tyler, 36, and Dennis Slaeter, 24 – were killed.
Tyler was found dead Nov. 10, 1985, in a small utility trailer outside Automatic Transmission Exchange, a business he co-owned in the 1400 block of Main Avenue.
Slaeter was found shot to death Dec. 5, 1985, in the basement of Junction Creek Liquors, where he worked as a clerk.
Evidence suggests Stutzman and Tyler knew each other and possibly attended the same party two days before Tyler’s body was found. Both men were gay and used drugs, according to Gregg Olsen, author of Abandoned Prayers , a true-crime novel about the death of Stutzman’s son that hit No. 7 on The New York Times bestseller list in 2003.
It is unknown if Stutzman and Slaeter knew each other, although Tyler and Slaeter were acquaintances, Olsen said.
“I continue to hope that the 20-year journey to justice for David and Dennis comes to an end and that the world knows that Eli Stutzman was as evil a killer as any,” Olsen wrote Thursday in an e-mail to the Herald.
If police can prove Stutzman played a role in the 1985 murders, it could expose the Amish-born Stutzman as a serial killer.
Stutzman left Durango a few days after Slaeter’s murder to pick up his son, Danny, from 
Lyman, Wyo. Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, the boy’s frozen body was found in a ditch along U.S. 81 in Chester, Neb. He was nicknamed Little Boy Blue.
Stutzman was convicted of abandoning a body and concealing a death, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to 18 months in prison. During his trial, he claimed that Danny had died unexpectedly while they were driving from Wyoming to Ohio. Out of fear, he ditched the body along the roadside and covered it with snow.
For killing his roommate, Stutzman was sentenced to 40 years in prison, but he was paroled in spring 2005 after serving only 16 years.
He never faced prosecution for the 1977 death of his wife, who was eight months pregnant when she died in a suspicious barn fire.
Slaeter’s family has learned of the reopened investigation through a family friend who read about the case in this newspaper, said Investigator Glaser. Police have since contacted the family.
Police have not yet been able to locate surviving family members of Tyler.
“We’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the evidence at CBI,” Glaser said
murdering his wife is Gregg Olsen’s newest nonfiction book project. A TWISTED FAITH will be published in hardcover by St. Martins Press on March 30. Dateline NBC has taped a show on the case interviewing Olsen and others featured in the book. It will air on April 9.
For all of the doubters…Here’s a picture of the steelhead that I caught on the Snake River in Hell’s Canyon, Idaho, last week. The fish was so large, you’ll notice I had to crop this photo.
woman from Stark County, Ohio. At first blush, it seems like the tragic retread of the Lisa Mongomery case that Matt wrote about so chillingly in MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND.