A Killing in Amish Country: The Murder of Linda Stoltzfoos

When Linda Stoltzfoos disappeared on her way home from church in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in June 2020, it thrust into the limelight a community which is traditionally known to shy away from modern world influences like mass media and technology.

As you might have guessed, Linda was Amish. For this reason, there isn’t much information available about her, partly due to the resistance of Amish people to modern technology, but also the Amish belief in the importance of community over individualism.

Therefore, for the purpose of this article, I’m going to tell you a little bit about the community Linda was a part of. I always do my best to paint a picture of who a victim was in life, and in this case, Linda’s community was central to who she was as a person. I got a lot of this information from discoverlancaster.com, which I found gave good summaries of Amish history and their belief system.

An Amish buggy in Lancaster, PA (source: here)

I’d just like to say before I get started that I am in no way an expert on Amish history, beliefs or lifestyle. If what I’ve written here is inaccurate in any way, I welcome corrections. I realize there are differences between groups and communities that I might miss.

The Amish community of Lancaster County, PA, arrived in the United States in the 1720s, having emigrated from Europe (mainly Switzerland, France, Germany and Holland) to escape persecution for their Anabaptist beliefs. Specifically, Anabaptists believe that only those who make a conscious choice to accept God can be baptized, meaning they must be adults (i.e. they oppose the baptism of infants.) This earned them condemnation from Catholics and mainstream Protestants alike.

The Amish are closely related to the Mennonite and Brethren communities, which are also part of the Anabaptist movement. Today, there are over 25 different Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren church groups in Lancaster County, which differ slightly in their traditions and interpretations of the Bible.

Of the Amish, Mennonite and Brethren communities, the Amish are the most conservative in their beliefs; they keep the greatest distance from the non-Amish world and are more likely to reject using modern-world conveniences like electricity (although this isn’t absolute) and cars (they travel by horse and buggy). Many Mennonites, on the other hand, do use motorized vehicles, electricity and phones.

The most traditional groups are known as "old-order Amish".

The United States is now home to 98% of the world’s Amish population. Lancaster County has the oldest and largest Amish community, with around 38,000 people as of 2018.

Above all else, community harmony is the cornerstone of Pennsylvania Amish life. They believe that modern-world values, like individualism and pride, threaten community harmony. Their traditional, "plain" Amish dress is a notable part of their rejection of individualism.

To protect their way of life, they keep all activities, including work, play, worship, commerce and friendship within the Amish community.

Core to their faith is a literal interpretation of the Bible, and an unwritten set of rules that guide their everyday lives, known as the Ordnung.

“A Very Content Person”

Linda Stoltzfoos, who was 18 at the time in question, lived in the unincorporated community of Bird-in-Hand, in central Lancaster County. Bird-in-Hand is a small, peaceful place, of which the majority of the population is Mennonite or Amish.

The oldest of eight children, Linda was known for her shy and gentle nature. When she wasn’t engaged with family or church commitments, she tutored Amish children with special needs. Linda had never had a boyfriend.

Lillian Ebersole, a friend from church, described her as “a very content person who was happy with her lifestyle.”

Linda’s Disappearance

Around 12:30pm on Sunday, June 21, 2020, Linda began the mile-long walk home from church. As is common in the Amish community, the church service was held at a fellow congregant’s farm. Once she got home, she was going to change out of her church clothes and pick up a dessert she made for her youth group, which was having an extended meeting that afternoon from 2pm to 11pm.

In the early hours of Monday, June 22, Linda’s parents, Lloyd and Susie Stoltzfoos, went to her bedroom to check on her, only to find it empty. Her church clothes were not there either, which was when Lloyd realized that she had likely never come home from church the day before.

East Lampeter Township police arrived at the Stoltzfoos home at 2:23am on the 22nd, after Lloyd called the police to report her missing.

The Investigation

Once it was light enough, searches for Linda began immediately. A Facebook page was set up to keep the public informed of any news. Search teams aided by dogs and horses combed the area Linda would have walked the previous day, as well as surrounding fields and woodlands, but they found no sign of her.

Official police searches continued the following day, but were scaled down to include trained searchers only. The public also organized their own searches, involving both Amish and non-Amish volunteers.

Police expressed their heightened concern, stating that Linda "may be at special risk of harm or injury". She was classified as an endangered missing person. They added that they could not rule out foul play.

Detectives first spoke to Lillian Ebersole, the last person to speak to Linda before she disappeared. The two had talked outside the barn on the farm where the church service was held. Lillian described their conversation as a good one; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Linda said goodbye to Lillian, then she left. Lillian recalled that Linda was barefoot as she walked away, holding her shoes in her hand.

Three of Linda's friends from her youth group were also interviewed. They told the police that they had seen Linda in the days leading up to her disappearance, and she was in a good mood. When she didn't turn up to the youth group meeting, they assumed she wasn't feeling well. Linda didn't have a cell phone (I'm not sure how common cell phones are amongst the Amish) so they couldn't call to find out if she was okay.

They reiterated that Linda was happy and loved her family. She would not have just left without telling anyone where she was going.

By June 24, the FBI were brought on to assist the Pennsylvania State Police and the East Lampeter Township PD. FBI agents created a composite photo of what Linda might look like in street clothes with her hair down. When she disappeared, she was wearing traditional Amish clothing - a tan dress, white apron and a black head covering.

An FBI composite photo of Linda in street clothes with her hair down (source: amishamerica.com)

Searches conducted by police and the community continued. Interviews were carried out with anyone police thought might have information, but nothing significant came their way.

The lack of evidence, such as cell phone data, which would typically be available in the case of a missing teenager, was making the investigation that much more difficult.

On July 10, the FBI announced a reward of $10,000 for anyone who could provide information leading to Linda’s whereabouts.

A Significant Step Forward

On Saturday July 11, 2020, East Lampeter Township Police announced that they had charged 34-year-old Justo Smoker, of nearby Paradise, with felony kidnapping and misdemeanor false imprisonment in the case of Linda Stoltzfoos. He was arrested Friday night and arraigned on Saturday morning. Due to the nature of the charges and the ongoing investigation, Smoker was held without bail.

Smoker came to the attention of police after they received multiple tips from different individuals, reporting that on June 21, they had seen a man of his description driving in the area with a young Amish woman.

Investigators spoke to Issac and Sarah Stoltzfus (no relation to Linda), an Amish couple who had been walking in Gap, an area 15 minute drive east of Bird in Hand. Around 1:30 p.m., Issac and Sarah saw a beat-up, reddish-orange car drive by. It caught their attention because there was a young Amish woman sitting in the passenger seat.

Sarah made eye-contact with the young woman and waved, but the woman did not wave back. There were a few more things about the situation that struck the couple as strange. For one, they knew that Amish women in Gap did not wear black head coverings to church, indicating the woman was not from the area. Two, it was extremely unusual to see an Amish woman in a vehicle in her church clothing.

Issac Stoltzfus described the man driving the car as white or Hispanic, with dark hair and a dark beard and mustache.

Two more witnesses, Gideon King III and Amos Fisher, who had been driving their buggies in Gap that day, also shared what they saw with police. Their descriptions of the man and the young Amish woman were practically identical to those of Issac and Sarah’s. Gideon also expressed his surprise that the woman was riding in a vehicle in her church clothing, and about her black head covering.

The Red Kia Rio

Thanks to the tips from witnesses and surveillance footage around the area, police were able to put together a timeline of Linda’s movements in the early afternoon hours of June 21.

Isaac Esh, who lives on Stumptown Road, told detectives that he had been sitting on his front porch when he noticed a beat-up reddish car drive by, sometime between 12:30pm and 12:45pm. The car was traveling east, away from where Linda’s church service was held. The car then turned into nearby Red Lane and came back, this time going past Isaac’s house in the opposite direction, towards Linda's church. Isaac’s house is right on the road, so he got a good look at the car and the driver. The driver was alone in the car. He was white or Hispanic with dark hair.

Beechdale Road, between Stumptown Road and Bird-in-Hand, is where the police concluded that Linda had been abducted.

Detectives were quite sure that the abduction had been caught on a home security camera, located about 300 yards away. Although the video wasn’t the highest quality, they enlarged it and watched closely. They observed the red car pull off onto the side of the road, out of the camera’s view at 12:36pm.

Four minutes later, a figure wearing a white apron enters the frame. They believed this was Linda.

A second figure then appears in the video, coming from the area where the car disappeared from the frame. At 12:41pm, the figure walks across Beechdale Road, heading straight towards the person wearing the white apron.

It appears that the figure then places something over the head of the person wearing the white apron.

The two then walk towards where the car is parked out of the frame. The camera then catches the red car going south. In a matter of moments, it drives right past the camera.

The FBI Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory carried out an examination of the footage, determining that the vehicle was a red Kia Rio sedan. It had a few distinctive features, including a black trim, a rear spoiler and an “LCM” bumper sticker on the trunk. A “white object” is seen in the front passenger seat.

Detectives carried out a records check, learning that Justo Smoker owned a 2007 red Kia Rio sedan. He worked for a water treatment supplier in Gap. His driving license photo also matched the descriptions given by witnesses.

A board is displayed at a press conference, showing the red Kia Rio police believed was involved in Linda’s abduction (source: Penn Live)

Police went to Smoker’s place of work the same day, finding his car in the parking lot. A closer look at it showed the hubcap on the front passenger side was missing, and there was damage to the rocker panel on the same side. To be sure, they compared the car to the one caught on the surveillance footage; it was definitely the same vehicle.

Several other tips regarding the red car came in from the public. A group of teenage Amish girls came forward, saying that the night before Linda’s abduction (June 20), they had been walking along a road in Upper Leacock Township, just beyond Bird in Hand. A red car drove past them slowly, the driver leering at them. The car stopped on Hess Road and hovered there, flashing its lights. Police examined surveillance footage from a business on Hess Road. It was the same car that had been caught on camera on Beechdale Road the following day.

A Disturbing Discovery

I’m skipping backwards a bit here, but bear with me. On June 23, two days after Linda vanished, a man in Ronks, PA, just south of Bird in Hand and about three miles from where Linda was abducted, called the police to report a suspicious red car outside of his business. The vehicle drove onto the property twice that afternoon. Both times, it parked near the railway tracks behind the business.

The person drove away before the police arrived, but the witness did manage to take a photo of the license plate. As the police later found out, the car was registered to Justo Smoker.

On July 10, a forensics team was sent to conduct a search of the wooded area behind the business. It was then that they made a disturbing discovery: a bra and a knotted pair of dark-colored stockings, buried in a hole about eight inches deep.

The Stoltzfoos family recognized the clothing as Linda’s. She would have knotted the stockings to carry them as she walked home barefoot that day, they said.

The items were taken to the forensics lab for DNA testing. A DNA profile “attributable to Smoker” was detected on one of the stockings.

Smoker Is Interviewed

Smoker was first interviewed on Thursday, July 9. He told the police he didn’t know Linda, or anything about her disappearance. When they asked if he was in the area she was abducted from between 12:30 and 1pm on June 21, he said he was not.

He was interviewed a second time the following day. This time, he did eventually admit to driving in the area Linda vanished from on June 21.

The detective showed Smoker a still image of the red car caught on the security footage, asking if he recognised it. He acknowledged that it looked like his.

He also confessed that he had been drinking heavily while he was driving that day.

When asked if anyone else might have been driving his car that day, he said no, it had only been him. He denied that anyone else had been in the car with him. The security footage, however, showed evidence to the contrary.

Evidence Mounts Against Smoker

The FBI also obtained Smoker’s cell phone records, which lined up with the times witnesses said they had seen him driving in Gap with the young Amish woman. The phone records also placed him in Ronks, where the bra and stockings were discovered.

Detectives learned that the day before Linda was abducted, Smoker went to a Dollar General store in Paradise and bought two pairs of reusable, long-cuffed latex gloves. On a separate trip to the Dollar General the following morning, he bought eight pairs of nitrile disposable gloves, three pairs of black shoelaces and two pairs of black boot laces. After that, he went to a Walmart in Lancaster. On the surveillance footage, he was wearing a pair of gray sneakers with white soles.

When police later searched his apartment, car, storage unit and work locker, however, they could not find any of the items he purchased, or the sneakers he had been wearing in the surveillance footage. This indicated to detectives that the items were used in the murder.

Another witness came forward to police, telling them that he had seen Smoker washing his car around 3:30pm on June 21st. Smoker seemed particularly focused on cleaning the inside of the car, the witness added.

On examination of the vehicle, detectives could see that there had obviously been floor mats on the driver and passenger sides, but these had recently been removed. There was also an open bottle of bleach in the trunk.

A Murder Charge

East Lampeter Police Detective and lead investigator on the case, Christopher Jones, who wrote the probable cause affidavit detailing the evidence against Smoker, concluded the document by writing:

“Based upon the totality of the evidence obtained throughout this investigation and detailed herein, all evidence leads to the inevitable conclusion that Justo Smoker killed Linda Stoltzfoos during the commission of her kidnapping and discarded her body.”

The affidavit was filed on December 21, 2020. That same day, Justo Smoker was charged with criminal homicide. While searches were ongoing for her body, prosecutors felt confident that with the evidence, the amount of time that had passed, the lack of communication with family and friends, and the abrupt end to all her routine activities, they could conclude that Linda was deceased and that Smoker had killed her.

“Given the circumstances of Linda’s disappearance; specifically, that she was forcefully abducted by a stranger, we always feared she suffered a tragic fate,” Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said. “After careful consideration of all of the facts uncovered by the investigation as a whole, we are now in a position – legally – to charge Smoker with murder.”

Going to Trial Without a Body

Bringing murder charges is especially difficult without a body. However, on March 5, 2021, about two and a half months after Smoker was charged with homicide, a judge ruled in favor of prosecutors arguing that Smoker be tried for Linda’s kidnapping and murder.

After a 90-minute hearing in which Detective Christopher Jones testified to the evidence they had amassed against Smoker, District Judge B. Denise Commins sent the murder case on to county court.

At the hearing, First Assistant District Attorney Todd Brown asked Jones if they had found any trace of Linda during months of their investigation. Jones replied they had not.

Chief Public Defender Christopher Tallarico, hoping to have the homicide charge dropped, argued that there is a “significant gap” in the prosecution’s evidence.

“There’s no certainty that Ms. Stoltzfoos ever got in Mr. Smoker’s car that day,” Tallarico said.

Detective Brown acknowledged that Linda's DNA was not found in the samples they took from the car because the DNA profiles recovered were not sufficient to test.

Tallarico also argued that the surveillance footage was not reliable evidence, as the person with Smoker in the car could not be firmly identified as Linda due to the poor quality of the images.

Brown pushed back, asserting that the evidence points towards the scenario that Smoker killed Linda and discarded her body.

Linda's Remains are Found

On April 21, 2021, exactly 10 months after she went missing, Linda's remains were discovered during a search in eastern Lancaster County.

“The Lancaster County Coroner’s Office has been called to the scene,” prosecutors said in a news release. “The scene will be forensically processed, and the remains will then be released to the Lancaster County coroner for official identification and determination of cause and manner of death. We ask that the family be given privacy during this difficult time.”

Though an identification was not made official right away, Linda’s uncle, Mervin Fisher, confirmed to reporters that the remains were those of his niece.

“It’s not the news we wanted, but progress is moving forward to bring Linda to rest,” Fisher said.

Smoker Pleads Guilty

As it turned out, Smoker’s lawyers met with prosecutors in April to negotiate a plea deal. This came after Smoker told his defense team he no longer wanted them to fight the charges against him.

The defense and prosecution came to an agreement: Smoker would confess to Linda’s murder and tell them where Linda’s body was. In exchange, prosecutors would not pursue the death penalty against him.

The public learned of the plea deal for the first time at Smoker's July 23 sentencing hearing before Lancaster County Judge David Ashworth.

Smoker’s attorney, Chris Tallarico said that Smoker did not take the plea deal to avoid the death penalty or try to shorten his sentence. According to Tallarico, he wanted to do the right thing.

“It was a point where he could come forward….The solution has some redemptive value,” Tallarico said.

Smoker pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and possession of an instrument of crime.

Justo Smoker

At the July 23 hearing, Chris Tallarico outlined Smoker’s life up to that point.

Justo Smoker was born in 1986 in Costa Rica. Life was miserable for him from the beginning; his birth parents were neglectful, leaving him, his brother and sister alone for days at a time. They had to steal in order to feed themselves. Eventually the three children were put in an orphanage, where Smoker said he was physically and sexually abused.

While they were in the orphanage, their birth mother died. When Smoker was seven, Vernon and Deb Smoker of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, adopted all three siblings.

Smoker attended high school in Lancaster County, getting average grades and excelling on the wrestling team.

His parents said he developed a drug problem when he was in high school. At 21, he went to prison for committing a string of armed robberies with his brother Victor at stores and farmer's markets in Lancaster County.

In 2007, at his sentencing hearing for the burglaries, Deb Smoker told the court that Justo had caused her and her husband problems since they adopted him. But she emphasized that they loved him and would stand by him. She asked the judge for leniency.

Smoker received a sentence of 12.5 to 30 years in prison. He was paroled in February 2019 after serving 12.5 years. He would go on to murder Linda Stoltzfoos 16 months later.

Tallarico told the court that his client was “in a dark place” at the time of the murder. His sister had recently died, and he had just been evicted from his home the week before. He suffered from depression and alcoholism, often drinking until he blacked out. He had been drinking beer and liquor the day he abducted Linda.

Tallarico, who had developed a friendly relationship with his client, later said quote: “I still have a hard time coming to grips that the person I’ve come to know is the person charged with these heinous crimes.”

Locating Linda’s Body

The hearing also answered many of the questions that remained about the murder up to that point. The most important of these regarding the location of Linda’s body and what happened to her.

Smoker described the area where he had buried Linda’ to investigators. Specifically, she was next to some railway tracks on a piece of Amtrak property behind Dutchland Inc., the water treatment company in Gap where Smoker was employed at the time of the murder.

Justo Smoker buried Linda next to the railway tracks (pictured on the left of the photo) behind Dutchland Inc., where he worked (source: Google Maps)

He confessed to moving her remains from the original burial site in rural Ronks after he found out on the news how close it was to her home. He didn't notice that he left her bra and stockings, which were found by investigators in July 2021. After moving her, he went home and cleaned his car.

He discarded the clothing and shoes he was wearing when he killed her, as well as what he wore when he moved her body to the new burial site. He also got rid of the shovel and knife he used.

Investigators were unable to find the remains using the directions Smoker had given them, so they brought him to the scene. He led them to the exact location, where they found the body wrapped in a plastic tarp secured with duct tape, in a hole about three and a half feet deep.

In his confession, Smoker told detectives that several hours after he abducted Linda in his car, he strangled her under his arm and then with shoelaces. He then stabbed her once in the neck.

He committed the murder alone, he said, and never told anyone about it.

Linda’s Remains

Linda was in her church dress and cap when her remains were recovered by police. Shoelaces and zip ties were used to bind her ankles and tie her wrists behind her back. A thin rope tied her ankle and wrists bindings together, and had been looped around her neck.

Her sash and apron were tightly wrapped around her head and duct tape was plastered over her mouth.

The coroner concluded that her cause of death was asphyxiation, and the stab wound was a contributing factor. The blood in her esophagus was indicative of her being alive when she was stabbed in the neck.

There were indications from her autopsy that she had been sexually assaulted, specifically some injuries to her vagina. Smoker, however, denied sexual assaulting her. I find this hard to believe, especially since he gave no explanation for why he had removed her bra and stockings.

Due to the state of decomposition, her dental records were used to confirm her identity.

Smoker’s Sentencing

Judge Ashworth accepted Smoker’s plea deal, acknowledging that it was the best possible outcome in the end.

“Absent the plea agreement, in all likelihood, Linda Stoltzfoos’ body would never have been recovered and the outcome of a trial of the defendant would have been uncertain,” the judge said. “With the plea agreement, a conviction is certain, the community is protected and, perhaps most importantly, the family of Linda Stoltzfoos is afforded some measure of closure.”

Prosecutors aimed for a sentence long enough that Smoker would die in prison. He was ultimately sentenced to between 35.5 and 71 years.

On top of this, Smoker was also on parole for his 2006 armed burglary charges. By kidnapping and murdering Linda, he had violated his parole and would be sentenced accordingly. In August 2021, the Pennsylvania Parole Board sentenced him to 17 years and 5 months.

According to state law, he must serve the time for his parole violation before he starts his sentence for Linda’s kidnap and murder.

Keeping in mind both sentences, the minimum Smoker must serve is 53 years and the maximum 88 years. The earliest he can apply for parole is 2074, when he is 87 years old.

“We brought Linda home to her family, we secured a murder conviction against Smoker, and now we can confirm that he will never be able to harm another member of our community again – justice truly has been served.”

- Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams.

A Motive?

Smoker has never revealed a motive for the murder. I personally believe Linda was targeted at random, given that Smoker had no connection to her or her family.

I think that perhaps Smoker had been out looking for a girl to kidnap the evening before he kidnapped Linda. The teenage Amish girls who came forward to the police said they saw him driving around the area, behaving suspiciously. I think it's likely Smoker would have snatched one of them if they had been alone; they were saved by the fact they were in a group.

Rape would obviously be a motive, and as I mentioned earlier, Linda had injuries to her vagina. But Smoker denied having anything to do with this. Again, I find these denials hard to believe. For the sake of self-preservation, Smoker would definitely have reason to go to prison as “just a murderer”, as opposed to a murderer and a rapist. But there was not evidence to conclusively prove these injuries were caused by him.

It’s not clear how drunk Smoker was when he abducted Linda, but he did confess that he had been drinking. He also did have a tendency to drink until he blacked out. At his hearing, Judge Ashworth said to him that depression and alcoholism were not an excuse for murder. Smoker did not disagree.

“There’s really no logical explanation for what happened. He wishes he could take it back,” Tallarico said.

Apologies

Smoker was clearly remorseful at his trial, crying and apologizing both to Linda’s family and his own. He said:

“I thought I would know what to say, but what words can I say other than I am sorry? To Linda’s family, the community and my supporters. All I can say is I’m sorry and be a better man. I’m sorry to my brother, my mother, and father.
I know Linda was a light. Because of me, the world is dimmer. I can’t undo anything that was done. Even as I say these words, I don’t feel like it does any justice for the pain I caused.”

Samuel Blank represented the Stoltzfoos family at Smoker's sentencing hearing. Linda’s parents did not attend, but some of her other relatives were there. Blank told the court that the family were content with Smoker taking a plea deal. They were relieved not to have to go through a long, painful trial. Their main concern was bringing Linda home.

Linda with a group of Amish girls (source: amishamerica.com)

According to Blank, Linda's parents were not in court because they were too distraught. But he told Smoker that this did not mean they would not forgive him for the murder of their daughter.

"The family can and will forgive you, Justo. For some it will come soon, but others may need to work on it for some time and maybe daily. The Bible does teach us we are to forgive.”

- Samuel Blank to Justo Smoker