Sally Pfoutz

Dying to Live Sally Pfoutz

Based on a true story. Augusta, Wisconsin 1996. Late one night in small white frame house in a very strict Old Order Amish community that does not have electricity, running water, or telephones, a man starts a bloody trail across the bedroom floor next to the double bed where his young wife sleeps soundly. The blood trail snakes down the narrow staircase through the kitchen out onto the front stoop and onto the gravel drive where it ends in a pool, so that Levi Hochstetler, age 21, will appear to have been taken violently from his bed. After awhile something wakes up Levi's wife Rosanna. Perhaps it is the putrid smell of blood, or the barking dogs outside. She assumes her husband has gone to the outhouse but even in darkness she can see something on the floor. She sits up in bed, switches on the flashlight and discovers the blood trail leading to the stairs and down. Shocked and horrified, she climbs out of bed and steps cautiously over the splashes of blood, escapes outdoors, and races across the dark yard to the house next door where her in-laws hear her urgent cries for help. After tearing through his son's house to see the blood trail with his own eyes, her father-in-law, Joe, must run across a cornfield in the dead of night to call the police on the neighbors' phone. When the police arrive, the house and driveway are immediately strung with alien yellow crime tape. Levi's wife, parents, siblings, friends and neighbors are questioned exhaustively. At the break of day, police and bloodhounds search the farm buildings, grounds, and surrounding woods and cornfields. An aerial search ensues. Levi is missing and presumed dead.