On the cold Christmas Eve of 1985, a splash of blue against the winter landscape of Chester, Nebraska, caught the eye of a passing motorist. This patch of color led to a heartbreaking discovery: the body of a young, White male child, Daniel Stutzman, age 9, dressed in blue pajamas. For two years, the boy's identity remained a mystery, and the community, deeply affected by the discovery, named him "Matthew," meaning "gift of God," and laid him to rest.
He became known as "Chester's Little Boy Blue."
The break in the case came in 1987 after a Reader's Digest article about the unidentified boy was published. A couple in Wyoming recognized the boy as Daniel Stutzman, whom they had cared for at the request of his father, Eli Stutzman. This identification led investigators to focus on Eli, a man with a troubled and suspicious past who had left the Amish community. Authorities located and arrested him in Azle, Texas.
Eli Stutzman claimed his son's death was accidental. He told investigators that he had recently picked up Daniel from a foster home in Wyoming, where the boy was being treated for a serious illness akin to strep throat. According to Eli, Daniel died in his sleep as they were driving through Nebraska. He claimed he panicked, leaving his son's body by the roadside for "God to take care of him." Due to the inconclusive nature of the autopsy, which could not determine a definitive cause of death, murder charges could not be proven.
While authorities in Nebraska suspected foul play, they could only convict Eli Stutzman on misdemeanor charges of abandoning a body and concealing a death, for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Eli's suspicious history included the death of his wife, Ida, in a mysterious barn fire in 1977. He was also the primary suspect in the Texas murder of his roommate, Glen Pritchett, who was found shot to death in a ditch in May 1985. Some investigators theorized that Daniel might have been killed because he witnessed Pritchett's murder. After serving his sentence in Nebraska, Eli Stutzman was convicted of Pritchett's murder in Texas and sentenced to prison. He was paroled in 2005 and died by suicide in 2007.
