Abandoned Prayers

An Incredible True Story of Murder, Obsession, and Amish Secrets (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

By: Gregg Olsen

Narrated by: Kevin Pierce

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....

Gregg Olsen's Abandoned Prayers is an incredible true story of murder and Amish secrets.

©1990, 2021 Gregg Olsen (P)2021 Gregg Olen

it's a shame

in reading this, it breaks my heart.. so many do so little to help a child. if only one person didn't think about themselves first , things could have been different. I learned a lot.

Really interesting and well told

I’m not sure why the need for seriously pornographic descriptions of man/man sex, it’s so ludicrous it will make you laugh out loud. Or I did anyway.
Besides that (or including it) it’s very well done.

Disturbing

I really did not care for the narrator, that really has an impact. The way this man lived and that nobody took a stand to help this boy is disturbing. I do realize it was the mid 80's and some things were very different then. I was in my 20s then. I listener to the entire book, because I paid for it, the narrator just didn't do it for me. There are many others who will disagree I'm sure.

Not his best.

I don’t love this narrator. He talks too quickly, and if I didn’t have the option to play the book at a slower speed I wouldn’t have finished it.

Story-wise, this doesn’t stack up to other true crime works by Olsen. Can’t put my finger on why, but it just doesn’t.

Not his best, but still worth a listen

This author/narrator duo can't be beat in the true crime genre. This isn't the best of their collaborations, but it's still a good story.