The Case Of The Stray Bullet

     On Friday night, December 16, 2011, a 15-year-old Amish girl named Rachel Yoder, while on her way home in a horse-drawn buggy from a Christmas party at an Amish produce farm, fell dead out of the rig with a bullet in her head. She died not far from her central Ohio home in Wayne County. The girl's brother found her when he saw the horse walking around her body. The Summit County medical examiner, without the benefit of an investigation, ruled the death a homicide. This manner of death ruling caused speculation the girl was murdered at the behest of Bishop Sam Mullet, the cult-like leader of the band of renegade Amish outlaws who had been recently charged with a series of Ohio home invasions. (See: "Bishop Sam Mullet: Amish Outlaw")

     A few days after Rachel Yoder's death the local sheriff announced she had been killed by a stray bullet fired a half mile away by a young Amish man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle. (A rifle loaded through the muzzle end of the barrel. I don't know if this gun was a modern replica or an antique.) The Amish girl's death, according to the gun cleaning theory, was simply a freak accident. The sheriff said he had not ruled out a negligent homicide charge. 

     One could drive around the most violent neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit 24 hours a day for twenty years and never catch a stray bullet. While Rachel Yoder rode inside a buggy in the middle of nowhere, a single bullet fired from a half mile away not only found her, it killed her. Such bad luck is hard to believe. After traveling that far, a bullet, particularly one fired from a muzzle-loader, loses its velocity and the force to become deadly. This theory of Rachel Yoder's death was so farfetched a writer who put such a scene into a mystery novel would be laughed out of the business. 

     One of Rachel Yoder's Amish neighbors was quoted as follows: "We can't understand how it could happen, but I guess it was the Lord, maybe. Her time was up is what we think." 

   On September 11, 2012, 28-year-old Marion Yoder pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. The Holmes County judge sentenced the Amish man to six months in the county jail but suspended all but 30 days of the term. Since it's hard to imagine a jury convicting this man of negligent homicide, the guilty plea didn't make sense. The level of negligence in this case barely supported a civil wrongful death action, and certainly did not rise to criminal recklessness, the basis of a manslaughter charge. Putting a man in jail for a freak fatal accident is not criminal justice. 

Amish-Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller's Underground Railroad

     Lisa Miller, as a teenager and young woman in Virginia, struggled with an addiction to pills and alcohol. She also participated in self-mutilation. After a failed marriage and a suicide attempt, Lisa began dating women.

     In 1997, Lisa Miller met Janet Jenkins at an alcoholics anonymous meeting in Falls Church, Virginia. They became a couple, and in 2000 traveled to Vermont, the first state to offer homosexuals civil unions, to get married. The pair, after being civilly united by a judge, adopted the surname Miller-Jenkins and in 2002 bought a two-story house in a small southern Vermont town called Fair Haven.

     On April 16, 2002, after becoming pregnant through in vitro fertilization, Lisa, at age 34, gave birth to Isabella. But in September 2003 when Isabella was 17-months-old, Lisa and Janet split-up. After the break in the relationship a family court judge in Vermont granted Janet regular child visitation rights.

     In 2008, after trying but failing to terminate her former partner's visitation rights, Lisa Miller moved to Lynchburg, Virginia where a Christian anti-gay marriage activist named Janet Stasulli befriended her. Lisa, under Stasulli's guidance and influence, became a born-again Christian, and pursuant to her new religious beliefs denounced homosexuality as a sin. In October 2009, the family court judge in Vermont granted Janet Jenkins primary custody of Isabella.

     Kenneth Miller (no relation to Lisa), a 43-year-old Beachy Amish-Mennonite pastor from Stuarts Draft, Virginia, a town of 9,000 30 miles north of Lynchburg, conceived of a plan to get Lisa and Isabella out of the country to keep the 7-year-old out of the custody of a lesbian parent. On September 21, 2009, Philip Zodhiates, an evangelical leader and owner of a Lynchburg Christian direct-mail company drove Lisa and her daughter to Buffalo, New York. Shortly after midnight the mother and daughter crossed the boarder into Canada in a taxi. They were met on the other side by a Canadian evangelical pastor named Ervin Horst who drove Lisa and Isabella, disguised in long skirts and head scarves of the type worn by the Amish-Mennonites, to the Toronto airport. Later that day the fleeing mother and daughter flew to Managua, Nicaragua. 

     Pastor Kenneth Miller, indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in Burlington, Vermont for the offense of abetting an international parental kidnapping, went on trial on August 8, 2012. If convicted the Amish-Mennonite leader faced up to three years in prison.

     Fifty Amish-Mennonite supporters looked on as the Assistant United States Attorney, Eugenia Cowles and defense attorney Joshua M. Autry made their opening remarks to the jury. According to the defense version of the case, Pastor Miller did not know that by leaving the country Lisa Miller was violating a lawful child visitation order. Defense attorney Autry argued that his client, therefore, did not possess the requisite criminal intent to obstruct the court-order giving Janet Jenkins primary custody of the child.

     Federal prosecutor Cowles told the jurors that Pastor Miller selected Nicaragua as the point of destination because that country and the United States did not have an extradition treaty. Moreover, the preacher made sure to book a flight from Canada to Mexico that didn't touch down in America.

     Philip Zodhiates, Janet Stasulli and Ervin Horst, the evangelists the defendant called upon to carry out his anti-homosexual underground escape, took the stand as reluctant prosecution witnesses. Isabella's custody parent, Janet Jenkins, testified she hadn't seen the girl since January 2009, eight months before the evangelists snuck her out of the country. The government rested its case on August 12. 2012.

     Defense attorney Joshua Autry put on a pair of character witnesses then rested his case without bringing Pastor Miller to the stand to testify on his own behalf. On August 14, 2012, the jury, after deliberating four hours, found the defendant guilty of abetting international parental kidnapping. Outside the federal building a group of 100 Amish-Mennonite supporters stood around singing gospel hymns. Pastor Miller remained free on bail until his sentencing.

     Just hours after the verdict. Janet Jenkins filed a civil lawsuit against Philip Zodhiates, Ervin Horst and Janet Stasulli, the people who helped Pastor Miller kidnap her custody child.

     On March 14, 2013, the federal district judge sentenced Pastor Miller to 27 months in prison. The Paster would not, however, begin his sentence until a federal appeals court reviewed and ruled on the case.

     On October 8, 2014, federal prosecutors charged Philip Zodhiates with conspiracy and international parental kidnapping for his role in the abduction. Zodhiates pleaded not guilty to the charges.

     In March 2017, after being convicted as charged, the federal judge sentenced Mr. Zodhiates to 36 months in prison.

     Pastor Kenneth Miller lost his appeal in February 2016 and a month later was sentenced to 27 months in prison. In April 2018, after serving just under two years in federal custody, Pastor Miller was released from custody.

Parents Versus State: Control Over a Child's Healthcare

     In Ohio, doctors at Akron Children's Hospital in April 2013 diagnosed 10-year-old Sarah Hershberger with lymphoblastic lymphoma, an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Amish girl's parents, Andy and Anna Hershberger, when told that 85 percent of the patients treated for this illness survive, agreed to a two-year chemotherapy program. After the first round of the chemotherapy the tumors on Sarah's neck, chest and kidneys were diminished.

     In June 2013, after a second round of chemotherapy treatment made their daughter extremely ill, the Hershbergers decided to stop the treatment. They took this action against the advice of cancer doctors who warned them that without the chemotherapy Sarah would die.

     The hospital authorities, believing they were morally and legally bound to continue treating the girl, went to court to take away the parents' right to make medical decisions on their daughter's behalf.

     Andy and Anna Hershberger, in September 2013, took Sarah to an alternative cancer treatment center in Central America where doctors put the girl on a regimen of herbs and vitamins. When the family returned to the United States hospital scans showed no signs of the lymphoma.

     On October 13, 2013 an Ohio appellate court judge granted Maria Schimer, an attorney and licensed nurse, limited guardianship over Sarah Hershberger. The guardianship included the power to make medical decisions on her behalf over the objections of her parents.

     Shortly after the court ruling the guardian sent a taxi out to the family farm near the village of Spencer, Ohio to fetch Sarah and take her to the hospital in Akron for additional chemotherapy. When the cab arrived at the Medina County home, located 35 miles southwest of the Cleveland metropolitan area, the family was gone.

     A few weeks later, pursuant to a welfare check on Sarah Hershberger, deputy sheriffs went to the farm and found the place still unoccupied. No one in the Amish community seemed to know where the Hershbergers had gone. If members of this Amish enclave knew the family's whereabouts they weren't cooperating with the authorities. Attorneys for the Hershberger family appealed the guardianship ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court on issues related to religious freedom.

     If Sarah Hershberger's fate remained in her parents' hands and she died from cancer, Mr. and Mrs. Hershberger could face negligent homicide charges. Moreover, people who helped them avoid the authorities could be charged as accomplices to the crime. The right of religious freedom did not match the right of a child to receive life-saving healthcare. Being given vitamins and herbs as a cancer cure, while less painful than the immediate aftermath of chemotherapy, did not qualify, in the eyes of the medical profession and the law, as adequate healthcare.

     On December 6, 2013, according to media reports, the court appointed guardian decided not to force Sarah Hershberger to undergo further chemotherapy treatments. The family's whereabouts were still unknown.

     In October 2015 MRIs and blood work performed at the Cleveland Clinic revealed that Sarah Hershberger showed no signs of cancer and appeared to be in perfect health. As a result of these medical tests the family judge ended the court-ordered guardianship of the Amish girl. 

     As of this writing Sara Hershberger is still healthy and cancer-free.

Swindling the Amish

     Just when we think that elected officials have come up with every possible method of swindling the people who put them into office, some corrupt politician comes along and proves us wrong. Cases of petty public corruption involving local officials--embezzlement, payroll padding, feather-bedding, unauthorized use of government credit cards, per diem fraud and bribery--are such common occurrences they have become events that get little attention in the media. Most citizens, while disgusted by politicians in general, are no longer shocked by this kind of behavior. Maybe that's why so few of these bums are ever voted out of office. But every once in awhile one of these government crooks get caught doing something so outrageous it catches, for the blink of an eye, public attention.

     A constable in western Pennsylvania named Glenn Young Jr. pulled a stunt that qualified as a new low in public service. The story was picked up in a handful of area newspapers and was mentioned on a couple of local TV stations. Although the story cried out for in-depth reporting and perhaps some editorializing, it appeared for a day then was gone.

     In Pennsylvania, in addition to law enforcement officers who work for police departments, sheriff's offices and the state police, there is the little known county-wide office of constable. These uniformed peace officers, elected to six-year terms, usually work directly for judges and district magistrates on minor civil matters. While they carry guns, have badges and possess full arrest powers, most constables serve court papers and collect court-ordered fines. In a few jurisdictions they provide courtroom security and transport local prisoners. In Pennsylvania constables are on the bottom of the law enforcement hierarchy.

     In October 2011 John Young Jr., a 63-year-old constable from Beaver County was in Springfield Township in Mercer County investigating vandalism to an Amish school house. Why Constable Young was working in Mercer County some 60 miles north of his home in New Brighton was a mystery. Mercer County doesn't even border Beaver County and lies outside the constable's normal geographical jurisdiction. Also mystifying was why Young had taken it upon himself to investigate minor vandalism at the Indian Run school house. (This is where professional news reporting would have been helpful.)

     The eager constable (Barney Fife on steroids), after pulling over several Amish buggies to search for whoever knows what, met with a group of local Amish leaders. According to Constable Young, he had identified the 21 Amish lads who had vandalized the school house. Although it had only cost the Amish $92 to replace the broken windows and fix the broken desks, the constable informed the Amish elders that the youngsters had inflicted $4,000 damage to the school. This meant, according to Young, that the kids had committed a serious crime that could lead to big fines and possible jail time. This was a lie.

     Because he was a nice guy and had the best interests of the Amish people in mind, Constable Young would save the vandals a lot of money by simply collecting smaller fines from the family of each perpetrator. And this was what he did, collecting a total of $2,450 in fines that had not been levied by a court or any other governmental body. Someone in the Amish community suspected a swindle and notified the state police.

     Charged with theft by deception, official oppression and impersonating a public servant (not to mention a decent person), Constable Glenn Young was taken into custody by state troopers on August 29, 2012. At his arraignment he pleaded not guilty to all charges. Young later pleaded guilty in return for a sentence of probation.

     Compared to the average public corruption case Constable Young's breach of public trust didn't amount to much. However, that Constable Young possessed a badge and a gun and was invested with full arrest powers was more than a little disturbing.

Crimson Stain: "Murder in Amish County" was Re-Broadcast on the Discovery ID Channel January 28, 2015

     On Wednesday January 28, 2015, the Discovery ID channel re-broadcast "Murder in Amish County," the one-hour docudrama based on my book, Crimson Stain. The show, featuring dramatic re-enactments of the 1993 murder of an old-order Amish woman by her husband, Edward Gingerich, premiered in June 2013 as the first episode of the network's new series, "Deadly Devotions."

     The brutal murder, committed in front of two of the Amish parents' children, took place in the couple's northwestern Pennsylvania farmhouse. Found guilty of criminal homicide but mentally ill, Ed Gingerich went to prison for four years. In January 2011, seventeen years after he stomped his wife Katie to death, Ed Gingerich hanged himself in a barn.

     At the time of his death, the shunned Amish man was depressed, isolated from his family, and off his anti-psychotic medication. He was a man without a future. In a message scratched in dust near the suicide site, Ed asked for forgiveness. No one knows what he was asking forgiveness for--killing himself, or killing his wife, or maybe both.   

Horse and Buggy Crime: Robbing The Amish

Indiana

     Michelle Rodriguez lived in Berne, Indiana, a town of 4,000 35 miles south of Fort Wayne. The 42-year-old resided with her three teenage sons. In September 2012, Rodriguez informed her boys that she couldn't travel to Fort Wayne to buy cocaine because she had run out of money. (And probably food stamps as well.) To solve the problem, she asked her sons to climb into her faded green Chevy Malibu and drive the rural roads in the area's Amish country looking for buggies to pull over and Amish people to rob.

     The teenagers piled into the old car equipped with gas masks and baseball bats. Within a span of two hours they pulled over four buggies occupied by a total of five Amish persons. Four of the robbery victims were woman accompanied by children.

     Shortly after the buggy heists police officers took the mastermind and her sons into custody. In April 2013 Michelle Rodriguez and her boys pleaded guilty to robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, and criminal confinement. The judge sentenced the mother to 15 years in prison. Her 18-year-old son, Alezandro Lopez, received a 6-year sentence. The two juvenile defendants got off with probation.

Tennessee

     In southern Tennessee along the Alabama boarder, Lawrence County is home to a growing Amish enclave that has become a tourist attraction. On April 18, 2014, three men drove into Waterfork Park where they robbed an Amish man at gunpoint. A short time later, a few miles away, the same criminals held up a second Amish person.

     That night, as police officers conducted an investigation at the scene of the second robbery, they spotted the suspects' car as it sped by following a hit-and-run incident with another Amish buggy.

     The police chase that followed resulted in the arrest of three men in their thirties from the nearby towns of Lawrenceburg and Ethridge. A local prosecutor charged the three suspects with aggravated robbery. Their cases are pending.

Michigan

     Gladwin and Clare Counties in rural, central Michigan are homes to a growing settlement of old-order Amish. In this community, a man armed with a shotgun, from May 22 to June 4, 2014, committed a string of late night hold-ups of Amish people riding in their buggies on the area's rural roads.

     Detectives with the Michigan State Police believe that several Amish victims have not reported being robbed. (Many Amish people are reluctant to get involved with the authorities.) In an effort to identify the lone bandit, police officers asked members of the Amish community to come forward if they have any clues regarding the identify of the robber. In addition, Crime Stoppers posted a $1,000 reward in the case. The crimes remain unsolved.

Pennsylvania

     At 12:30 in the morning of Monday August 25, 2014, a masked gunman driving a white minivan robbed an Amish man of $11 in a park in Intercourse, a town in the heart of eastern Pennsylvania's massive Amish community. Ten minutes following that crime, the robber struck again in East Lampeter Township five miles outside the town of Lancaster. In the second heist, the gunman in the minivan forced an Amish buggy occupied by three people off a rural road. The robber jumped out of the vehicle, pointed a handgun at the victims, and demanded money.

      The three Amish victims facing the barrel of the robber's weapon tossed their wallets out of the buggy onto the road. As the robber turned his back on the victims to retrieve one of the wallets, the driver of the buggy drove it into an adjacent field. The robber, unable to negotiate the rough terrain in his van, drove off.

     The police in Pennsylvania's largest Amish community have not identified this robber.

Discovery ID's "Murder in Amish County" to be Rebroadcast

     On Sunday, August 18 at 11:00PM, the Discovery ID channel is rebroadcasting, as part of their Deadly Devotions series, Murder in Amish County. The episode features scenes from my book, Crimson Stain. The new, expanded edition of Crimson Stain is available from:

1. CreateSpace, and

2. Amazon.com.

A Kindle edition of the book will also be available soon.

Crimson Stain tells the true story of a tragic and brutal murder in an Old-Order Amish community in rural Pennsylvania.

The new edition of Crimson Stain includes an extensive epilogue featuring developments in this true-life Amish murder drama to the present time. 

Re-Broadcast of Discovery ID's "Murder in Amish Country"

     "Murder in Amish Country," episode one of the Discovery ID channel's new crime series "Deadly Devotions", is being re-broadcast on Friday, July 5 at five PM.

     The compelling one-hour docudrama is based on my book, Crimson Stain, a nonfiction account of the brutal, ritualistic murder of an old-order Amish woman by her husband, Edward Gingerich. Eighteen years after he murdered his wife Katie in the kitchen of their farmhouse in northwestern Pennsylvania, Ed Gingerich hanged himself in a barn not far from the murder scene. He is the only Amish man in history to be convicted of criminal homicide.

     The revised and expanded edition of Crimson Stain is now available in paperback on Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and through your local bookstore. The re-enactments in "Murder in Amish Country" are based on scenes described in the book.

     According to an employee of the production company that made the docudrama, viewer response has been overwhelmingly positive.

     

Amish Mafia: Real Gangsters or Social Misfits?

     Between 1693 and 1697, a Swiss Mennonite bishop named Jakob Ammon broke free of the Mennonites, bestowing his name on his followers--the Amish. Ammon's people fled to North America to escape religious persecution in Europe. They drifted in clusters across the continent, occupying parcels of land in some 26 states, concentrating in central Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania where more than one-quarter of this nation's 250,000 Amish reside.

     The Amish are honest, hardworking people known for their self-sufficiency and simple uniformity of dress. The women wear bonnets, shawls, heavy black shoes, black stockings, and plain, dark-colored dresses. The men grow beards (they do shave their upper lips) and dress in blues and blacks. The most conservative sects, referred to as Old-Order Amish, avoid the use of electricity and do not own motor vehicles or telephones. (Some use phones for business.) Their dwellings are unpretentious, furnished in spartan fashion and do not feature indoor plumbing.

     Members of this male-dominated society refer to those outside their faith as "the English." The Amish worship in clusters of 25 to 30 families led by an ordained elder called the bishop, the spiritual and cultural leader of the group. The bishop's authority is great, and his word, in matters of Amish life, is law.

     The Amish are stoical, keep their feelings to themselves, abhor violence, and loathe publicity. They do not abide departures from their principals of conformity, humility, devotion to God, and detachment from the modern world. Excommunicated transgressors are "shunned," sometimes permanently.

     The Mafia, a criminal syndicate that originated in Sicily, Italy, is a loose affiliation of professional thieves and killers involved in a variety of rackets and vices that include extortion, illegal gambling, drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, arson-for-profit, hijacking, and labor union corruption. A group that claims racketeering sovereignty over a particular territory is called a "family."

     Nothing could be more different than the Mafia and Amish versions of the family. The two subcultures are on the opposite extremes of American society. The Amish are quiet pacifists who shun materialism and conspicuous wealth. Mafia types are violent, vulgar, and ostentatious. The notion that there are Mafia types operating within old-order Amish society is not only shocking, it's hard to believe.

     One of this year's cable TV hits is a docu-series on the Discovery Network called "Amish Mafia." Set in the heart of Lancaster County's Amish country in southeastern Pennsylvania, the show, through reenactments, on-camera interviews, and the interactions of the series' main characters, chronicles the lives and adventures of Lebanon Levi and his three-man crew of Amish Mafioso.

     The star of the series, Lebanon Levi, is a tall, pudgy-faced, clean-shaven, soft-spoken Amish man in his late 20s or early 30s. (I presume he is from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, thus the name. I've never heard of a Mafioso with a name like Chicago Tony, or Brooklyn Paulie.) A roofer by trade who owns local real estate, the unbaptized godfather wears go-to-church Amish garb, and drives around in a Cadillac SUV. He conducts his "Mafia" business behind a desk in his barn.

     The mildly illicit business conducted out of Lebanon Levi's barn includes setting up and collecting "insurance" payments from local Amish businesses. (One owner of an Amish enterprise identified as one of Levi's premium payers has denied making protection payments.) Another source of income involves the operation of so-called "Hut Parties" where Amish and English kids gather, for a fee, to drink, dance, and do whatever. The godfather also organizes a small gambling operation connected to organized softball games.

     Lebanon Levi's bodyguard and right-hand-man is Alvin, a clean-shaven Amish man who dresses like his boss, drives a fancy pickup truck, and poses on camera with a baseball bat. No one can see the godfather without going through Alvin, Levi's most loyal and trusted soldier.

     Jolin, a tattooed Mennonite who drives a Mercedes, and poses a lot with assault rifles and pump-action shotguns, plays the role of enforcer. Notwithstanding his job description, Jolin is rather soft-spoken and mild-mannered. He comes off as too thoughtful to be violent. Like Levi, he has a minor arrest record featuring disorderly conduct type offenses. Like his boss, he has not spent time in jail, and none in prison.

     John, a tough-talking Amish man who spends a good deal of time getting advice from his sister Esther, functions as Levi's errand boy. Humiliated by the fact he has to get around on a foot-scooter, John wants desperately to take on bigger assignments and have access to a car. John wants more power, and to move up in the organization. But first he has to earn Levi's trust. John is also not above discussing, for the TV audience, the possibility of challenging Levi for control of the organization. He seems to have his sister's blessing on this issue. Eventually, by conducting business behind Levi's back, and associating with an Amish hood from Ohio who wants to expand into Pennsylvania, John gets into trouble with his former boss.

     Through his small squad of "Mafia" foot-soldiers, Lebanon Levi mainly functions as the enforcer of the Old-Order Amish code of conduct, an odd role for a man who doesn't even belong to the church. In one episode, Levi's men confront and photograph a high-ranking member of the church who's with a prostitute in a seedy motel. In another segment of the series, Levi's men confront an Old Order Amish man who has been taking advantage of an Amish woman whose husband has abandoned her. A member of Levi's crew, in a third show, visits the mobile home of an English guy involved in a buggy hit-and-run case. When the English fellow doesn't admit wrongdoing, and tells Levi's operative to get the hell off his property, the Amish Mafioso fires a shotgun slug through the windshield of the man's unoccupied parked car.

     It's what Lebanon Levi doesn't do that distinguishes him from a real Mafia leader. He doesn't sell drugs, run prostitutes, fence stolen goods, finance heists, or operate a loan sharking business. Instead of Mafia hits and severe beatings, Levi's men issue stern warnings, do a lot of tough-talking, and pose with high-powered weapons. "Amish Mafia" is not HBO's "The Sopranos."

     "Amish Mafia" is essentially a soap opera featuring four social misfits who aren't Amish, English, or Mafia. Since the show doesn't accurately depict the Amish or organized crime, I'm surprised it's so successful. Given the popularity of "Amish Mafia," next year we may be watching "Amish Housewives." 

Amish News: Smicksburg to Hollywood/Kentucky to Jail

The Big Makeover

     The "Los Angeles Times," on January 9, 2012, ran a puff-piece about how a former Amish girl has transformed herself into a quasi-celebrity who does hair and owns a salon in Echo Park, a trendy LA neighborhood not far from Hollywood. The article, in reflecting the author's utter revulsion of the Amish lifestyle when compared to the glitzy Hollywoodesque American dream, treats the story's protagonist as though she were a cold war East German who made it over the wall.

     Until she was 15, Miriam Jones (Is this her real name?) lived on an Amish dairy farm with her parents and five siblings near the western Pennsylvania village of Smicksburg, an old order enclave of 250-300 families 90 minutes northeast of Pittsburgh. Readers are not told why, in 1997, Miriam's parents left the Amish--for me the most interesting aspect of the story--beyond this: "But after losing his inheritance in what Jones described as a shady deal countenanced by old order Amish elders, her father lost faith." According to this Amish coming of age tale, Miriam's faher sold their homemade furniture, bought a car (he had a driver's license?) and hid it in the barn under hay until the family could make its escape. They settled in an unnamed town in Missouri where Jones and her parents "went through an intense spiritual and emotional crises. Overwhelmed by English life, Jones became depressed, and pregnant.

     Amish life, as described by Jones, is extremely primitive. Her younger siblings didn't speak a word of English, her parents were so uneducated they didn't "even know about wars that had happened," and "when we...saw white jet streams, we didn't kow they were planes. We thought they were clouds." (Give me a break.)

      A beauty makeover in a Missouri shopping mall changed Mirian's life, and put her on the road to success. The experience inspired her to acquire a high school equivalency certificate, and to become a hairdresser. In 2003, the beauty school graduate set out for Los Angeles with her daughter. She is now the proud owner of the high-end salon in Echo Park. She has been featured in a segment of the reality TV show, "Tabatha's Salon Takeover," has a license to fly a helicopter (huh?) as well as a hot-air balloon. Speaking of hot air, I feel an upcoming Miriam Jones TV reality adventure followed by a ghost-written memoir. I'll let you put a title to the show and the book.

     As to the whereabouts and fates of Miriam's parents and siblings, the "Los Angeles Times" reporter doesn't give us a clue. And why would she? That kind of information, although interesting, would spoil what is essentially a pitch for the TV and book deals. After reading this article, I'm tempted to get into my hot-air baloon and drift over to Smicksburg to get the real story.

Scofflaws or Shunned

     Recently, and over the past several years, members of the Swartzentruber Amish, a subgroup of old order Amish who refuse to mark their buggies with orange reflector signs, have gone to jail for not paying their traffic violation fines. These Swartzentruber Amish consider the orange relectors as fancy and worldly, therefore to display them is in violation of their religious doctrine of plain and simple. Several states such as Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania have allowed religious exemptions from the orange triangles, and the courts in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan have sided with the religious argument. Most Amish, however, even in these states, use the signs as well as battery operated lights as a matter of safety.

     In Kentucky, the orange triangle sign requirement is still the law, and last September, seven Swartzentruber Amish men from the western part of the state went to jail for refusing to pay their fines. On January 12, 2012, ten men from the same group in Graves County, Kentucky were put behind bars. According to one of the jailed men, Jacob Gingerich, if he and the others obeyed the Kentucky law, or paid the fine, they would be shunned by the out-of-state Swartzentruber clans. Gingerich and the other Amish men also use lanterns instead of the battery operated buggy lights, and reflective tape instead of the fancy orange signs.

     Legislators in Kentucky are considering exempting the Amish from these highway safety requirements.

    

Bishop Sam Mullet: Amish Outlaw

     Whenever an Amish man gets his name in the paper, or is seen on television, it's because he has run afoul of the law. That's because the Amish, unlike their English counterparts, avoid calling attention to themselves. The crimes that bring unwanted publicity to these private people are mostly petty, and usually involve alcohol and Amish boys in their teens.

     Edward Gingerich got on TV and in the regional press after he stomped his wife to death in 1993. My mass market paperback about the case, Crimson Stain, made him the most notorious Amish man in the country, perhaps the world. Earlier this year, when he hanged himself in a barn, he briefly popped up in the news. If his name comes up again in print or on TV, it will be as a deceased relative of an Amish law breaker.

     Sam Mullet, the 66-year-old bishop of an eighteen-family Amish enclave in and around the village of Bergholz, Ohio, has been in and out of the local news for almost ten years. The cult-like leader of a renegade group at odds with the larger Amish community in central and eastern Ohio, Mullet has been accused of beating and brainwashing members of his clan as well as having sex with a number of married Amish women. In September 2008, Mullet's son Chris pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful sexual conduct with two minors in 2003 and 2004.

     In my book, Swat Madness, I wrote about a 2007 SWAT raid on a Bergholz Amish school house. In that raid, Jefferson County Sheriff Frank Abdalia, a longtime Mullet adversary, seized the children of a Bergholz Amish man who claimed that members of Mullet's enclave had sexually molested his children. The complaintant's wife, Wilma Troyer, had refused to let her husband take their children to another community.

     During a three week period in late September and early October 2011, men from the Bergholz group, allegedly on Sam Mullet's orders, invaded Amish dwellings in Holmes and other Ohio counties where the intruders forceably cut the hair and beards off the men, and shaved the heads of the Amish women. These terroristic raids were intended to degrade, intimidate, and humiliate the targets of Sam Mullet's wrath. The bishop had allegedly asked his raiders to bring back photographs and clippings of his victims' hair as proof his orders had been carried out.  (According to author and Amish scholar Donald B. Kraybill, mens' beards and the uncut hair that married Amish women roll into buns are treasured symbols of religious identity.)

     On October 8, 2011, Sheriff Abdalia's deputies arrested Sam Mullet's sons, 38-year-old Johnny and 53-year-old Lester. The deputies also arrested Levi and Lester Miller. Johnny and Lester Mullet were charged with burglary and kidnapping in connection with the hair and beard cutting home invasions in Holmes, Carroll, and Trumbell Counties. Shortly after their arrests, the Amishmen were released after making bail.

     FBI agents and Jefferson County deputies, on November 22, arrested Sam Mullet, three of his sons, and three others from his clan on federal civil rights charges as well as a number of state violations related to the hate crime home invasions. The United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio said, "While people are free to disagree about religion in this country, we don't settle those disagreements with late night visits, dangerous weapons, and violant attacks."

     Articles about Sam Mullet that included photographs appeared in the New York Times and hundreds of newspapers across the country. CNN and Fox News aired segments on the FBI arrests. Suddenly Sam Mullet and his local band of Amish outlaws were national news figures, an extremely rare event in the Amish world. While the Amish abhor notoriety, the media loves it because people are fascinated with Amish culture. Although stories like this tell us virtually nothing about how the Amish really live, they provide the illusion of accessibility into the darkest corners of Amish life.

Terrorism: Amish Style

     Sam Mullet is the bishop of an eighteen-family Amish enclave in and around the village of Bergholz, Ohio in Jefferson County in the eastern part of the state across the Ohio River from the northwest panhandle of West Virginia. Mullet's group has been at religious odds with the main body of old-order Amish clustered in Holmes and other counties in the eastern half of the state. During a three week period in late September and early October, men from the Bergholz splinter group, allegedly on Sam Mullet's orders, invaded Amish homes in Holmes and other counties where the intruders forceably cut the hair and beards off the men and shaved the heads of Amish women. The attackes were intended to degrade the targets of the intruders' wrath. Bishop Mullet had allegedly asked his raiders to bring him clippings of his victims' hair as proof that his mission had been carried out.

     Frank Abdalia, the sheriff of Jefferson County and long-time Mullet adversary, claims that the renegade bishop has threatened his life. Sheriff Abdalia has called the 66-year-old bishop "dangerous" and out of control.

     On October 8, 2011, Sheriff Abdalia's deputies arrested Sam Mullet's sons, 38-year-old Johnny and 53-year-old Lester. The officers also arrested Levi and Lester Miller. Johnny and Lester Mullet were charged with burglary and kidnapping in connection with the hair-cutting intrusions in Holmes, Carroll, and Trumbell Counties. They are being held on $250,000 bond each.

     Bergholz bishop Sam Mullet has been in the news before. In September 2008 his son, Chris Mullet, pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful sexual conduct with two minors in 2003 and 2004. The judge sentenced him to probation. In my book, "SWAT Madness," I wrote about a 2007 SWAT raid on a Bergholz Amish schoolhouse. In that raid, Sheriff Abdalia seized the children of a Bergholz Amish man who claimed that members of the enclave had sexually molested his children. His wife, Wilma Troyer, had refused to let her husband take their children to another community. In "SWAT Madness," I criticized the sheriff for using a regional SWAT team to execute the court order. The Amish kids, having no ideal what was going on, thought they were all going to be killed by the heavily armed SWAT officers. Although I had no objection to the sheriff's mission, I questioned his methods.  

Crimson Stain Epilogue Update

     Early in 2010, Ed Gingerich's brothers Atlee and Joe, as well as their sons and Ed's boys, decided they wanted back into the old-order Brownhill Church and Bishop Rudy Shertler's good graces. The bishop agreed to accept the Gingerichs back into the fold, but under one condition. They would have to sever their ties with Ed. And this is what they did, leaving Ed alienated from his family and the Brownhill Amish community.

     In the summer of 2010, after being unable to find another Amish enclave that would take him, Ed moved in with his former attorney, George Schroeck and his wife on Miller Station Road outside of Cambridge Springs. Ed naturally felt alone and abandoned and slipped deeper into a depressed state. On Thursday, January 13, 2011, George, hoping to get Ed back on his medication to relieve his depression, took him to a local physician. The next day, Ed walked out to Schroeck's barn to feed the horse. Five hours later, Mrs. Schroeck went looking for him. She found Ed hanging from the end of a rope. Before taking his life, Ed had written, in the dust on a nearby bucket, "forgive me, please." It wasn't clear what Ed was asking forgiveness for--killing his wife Katie or killing himself. Perhaps he sought forgiveness for both.