“We left that morning’s breakfast on the table,” Ruth says. “Jacob said it would look like we’d just stepped out, like we were coming back. He didn’t want people to think we’d planned to leave. He wanted it to look like a mystery.”
The plan was for the family to travel by buggy to a prearranged meeting point several miles away, where an Amish man from a neighboring district—someone who owed Jacob a favor—would transport them by covered wagon to Indiana. From there, they would disappear into a new Amish community under new names.
“But when we left that night,” Ruth says, her voice dropping to barely a whisper, “Benton was there. He followed us in his truck to make sure we actually left. He wanted to see us go.”
Margaret Stevens’s testimony confirmed this account—she’d seen both the buggy and Benton’s truck that night.
