The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free

The #1 New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author Gregg Olsen solves a murder among the Amish and reveals the conspiracy to keep it a secret in a heartbreaking and horrifying true-crime story.

In 1977, in an Ohio Amish community, pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman perished during a barn fire. The coroner's report: natural causes. Ida's husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. But when he eventually rejected the faith and took his son, Danny, with him, murder followed.

What really happened to Ida? The dubious circumstances of the tragic blaze were willfully ignored and Eli's shifting narratives disregarded. Could Eli's subsequent cross-country journey of death--including that of his own son--have been prevented if just one person came forward with what they knew about the real Eli Stutzman?

The questions haunted Gregg Olsen and Ida's brother Daniel Gingerich for decades. At Daniel's urging, Olsen now returns to Amish Country and to Eli's crimes first exposed in Olsen's Abandoned Prayers, one of which has remained a mystery until now. With the help of aging witnesses and shocking long-buried letters, Olsen finally uncovers the disturbing truth--about Ida's murder and the conspiracy of silence and secrets that kept it hidden for forty-five years.

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Published Jan 1, 2024

395 pages

Average rating: 4.2

20 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

CarrieAnn17402
May 11, 2024
2/10 stars
I almost gave up reading this multiple times throughout the story. Now that I have finished, I can truly say I wish I had.
Jrose91
Mar 29, 2024
1/10 star
Kept referring to his first book that I had not read. Hard to follow without the background of the other book. Gave up and did not finish
LucyCarrillo
Dec 19, 2023
5/10 stars
True crime by a writer who wrote about the same story in a prior book. Now he goes back decades later and interviews people to uncover more about the murder of… An Amish wife. Intriguing, and interesting plot twists. Well it’s apparent that the writer tracked down every lead, his writing needed more editing and less editorializing about himself and his own work, and his assistant. For example, why did he include the anecdote about how his assistant was telling people she had gotten hurt, and then he needed to tell her how she should be telling the story. A lot of peripheral things that did not move the story along. and often the facts that he uncovered were so crammed together, they could’ve been edited down to be tighter. Overall, it was an interesting story, ultimately sad.

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