Ruth agreed to speak with investigators. What emerged was a harrowing tale of intimidation, fear, and survival.
Ruth’s Story
Ruth Miller speaks softly, her English heavily accented with Pennsylvania Dutch inflections. Now sixty-two, she lives openly under her real name in a small Mennonite community, no longer hiding but still carrying the weight of those years.
“Jacob was a good man,” she begins. “A good father, a good husband. He worked hard. He tried to do right. But he made a mistake borrowing from Charles Benton.”
The loan, Ruth explains, seemed reasonable at first. Jacob needed equipment for his carpentry business—a new band saw, planers, tools that would allow him to expand beyond basic furniture into more elaborate pieces that brought better prices.
“We thought we could pay it back easily,” Ruth says. “Jacob’s work was popular. Orders came regularly. We had a plan.”
But when Jacob’s payment was a week late in December 1991—delayed because a customer’s payment had been late—Benton invoked the immediate repayment clause.
