Presenting Gregg Olsen, New York Times, best selling author. Join Gregg Olsen as he discusses his new book, "The Amish Wife: Unraveling the Lies, Secrets, and Conspiracy That Let a Killer Go Free."
Gregg Olsen is a New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of nonfiction books and novels, most of which are crime-related.
An impassioned voice for victims and their families, Olsen has been a guest on Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20, William Shatner’s Aftermath, Deadly Women, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Today, FOX News, CNN, Anderson Cooper, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight, Snapped, Forensic Files, Inside Edition, Nancy Grace, Extra, Access Hollywood, NPR with Scott Simon, and Biography, among dozens of other shows.
With more than one million copies sold, Olsen’s true crime book, If You Tell, was Amazon’s bestselling Kindle e-book in 2020.
His latest bestselling novel, THE HIVE was published on June 8, 2021.
As a true crime junkie and crime fiction fanatic, I was thrilled to chat with Gregg Olson about his amazing career, upcoming projects (like hosting a true crime podcast), and a lot more.
The AMISH WIFE
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.
ABANDONED PRAYERS
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....
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Author Visit |
TAGS: | true-crime | true crime | The Amish Wife | NYT | Gregg Olsen | #author |
In 1897, local public servant and storekeeper George Harsh willed $10,000 for “public library purposes.” The funds purchased nearly 10,000 volumes for Massillon’s first public library. Also in 1897, J.W. McClymonds announced his gift of an endowment of $20,000 for a library. The Russell sisters, Flora and Annie, who married the McClymonds brothers, donated the Nahum S. Russell home, located on Prospect Street (now Fourth Street NE), in memory of their parents. The McClymonds Public Library opened on January 1, 1899, and was funded by private subscriptions and an annual disbursement of city funds. In 1922, the McClymonds Public Library became the Massillon City School District Library and was now funded by tax revenue.
In 1930, Annie Steese Baldwin willed her home “as the site for a new public library.” Built around 1835, the brick home overlooking downtown Massillon from Hill Street (now Second Street NE) was first the residence of the city’s founder, James Duncan.
The current Massillon Public Library (Main Location), located at the corner of Lincoln Way East and Second Street NE, opened in 1937. Designed by Albrecht & Wilhelm and funded in part by a Works Progress Administration grant, the Duncan/Baldwin home was connected by a Jeffersonian portico and rotunda to a west wing Reading Room and Children’s Room. The Massillon Museum was also housed at this location until 1996 when it moved to its present location at 121 Lincoln Way East.
