His wife “Rebecca” and their children had moved shortly after his death, relocating to a Mennonite community in Kentucky, where record-keeping was even more sparse.
This meant Ruth Miller—if she’d survived—might still be alive.
Finding Ruth
Locating Ruth took another three months of investigation, working with Mennonite church contacts who connected Detective Martinez with progressive Mennonite communities in Kentucky.
In February 2013, Martinez found her.
Ruth Miller, now fifty-eight, was living in a small house near a Mennonite church in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She worked at a quilt shop, lived alone, and attended church regularly under the name Rebecca Stoltzfus.
When Martinez knocked on her door and gently explained that she knew Ruth’s true identity, Ruth’s response was immediate: she broke down crying.
“She’d been carrying this secret for over twenty years,” Martinez says. “She’d fled her home, lived under a false name, raised her children in hiding, buried her husband under an assumed identity, and never told anyone the truth. The relief of finally being able to tell her story was overwhelming.”
