“Ruth stopped coming to quilting circles,” Esther Troyer recalls. “She’d always been there every week. But in April and May of ’92, she didn’t come. When I visited to check on her, she seemed nervous, distracted. She said everything was fine, but I could tell it wasn’t.”
In retrospect, the timeline became clear: after Benton’s final threatening visit in March, Jacob began construction on the hidden room. By April, it was complete. The family went into hiding.
“They were terrified,” Detective Martinez says. “So terrified that they chose to hide in a secret room in their own barn rather than face Benton’s threats. That tells you everything about what he’d said to them.”
But hiding could only last so long. With animals to tend, a farm to run, and children to care for, the family couldn’t stay concealed forever. By July, they made a different choice.
