Lancaster, USA - Stepping onto Aaron Hoover's farm at 449 W. Maple Grove Road on a recent Thursday was like stepping back in time.
Geese honked in the muddy lane. A buggy sat unhitched by the barn. But no one answered a knock on the front door.
The 47-year-old Hoover belongs to a small Mennonite sect that rejects modern trappings and immerses itself in the teachings of Scripture.
Recently, though, the group's loyalty to God's law got it tangled up with man's.
Police arrested Hoover in December along with Rachel Starr – his 54-year-old sister and a resident of the same rural community in Brecknock Township — for concealing a 15-year-old girl who wanted to join their church.
Police also took into custody 23-year-old Alda Martin, who stands accused of hiding the teen in a chicken coop on her property at 165 W. Maple Grove Road.
The Martins' 55½-acre steer and horse farm is up for public auction March 30; six or seven other farms in the vicinity are also for sale. Church members are in the process of migrating to Kentucky.
The defendants are presumed innocent as always, said Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman. However, he added in an e-mail, "the charges are extremely serious."
District Judge Rodney Hartman, of New Holland, said each defendant has been charged with criminal conspiracy/concealment of the whereabouts of a child. In addition, Starr has been charged with interference with the custody of children.
Hoover and Starr were each jailed two days in January, according to Hartman. Hoover was released on $150,000 bail, Starr on $250,000.
Martin remained free on $75,000 unsecured bail.
Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Franz is prosecuting the case.
A preliminary hearing has been set for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 15, at Hartman's office at 745-B E. Main St.
The three attorneys representing the church members did not return phone messages left with their offices Friday.
The defendants themselves have remained reclusive.
Hoover could not be located for an interview.
At the Martin farm, a young man who emerged from a barn wearing a headlamp identified himself as Alda Martin's husband, but politely refused to discuss the case. "I don't think [another story] really needs to be in the paper," he said.
The defendants' congregation is known as the Daniel Hoover group, one of many latter-day spinoffs from the Old Order Groffdale Conference.
Donald B. Kraybill, a local expert on Plain culture, said he believes the church is a tiny sectarian community "that is not representative of most Old Order Mennonites."
People who know the Hoovers and their friends describe them as good neighbors, but even more socially isolated and technologically backward than the better recognized Old Order Amish.
They drive horses and buggies and don't use phones, petroleum fuels or motorized farm equipment.
"They're people that live off the land," said a Hoover neighbor who resides near Fivepointville.
"They have little insight" into the larger society and are likely shamed by the way their case has been portrayed in the media, added the neighbor, who asked that her name not be used. "They have their own little world."
Strange case
Plain culture has long marched to its own passively resistant drum.
After religious freedom advocates sprang to their defense in the 1970s, for example, the Old Order Amish were exempted by the U.S. Supreme Court from sending their children to high school.
But the situation in Brecknock's placid, rolling farm country is a real oddity.
"I am not familiar with any similar case in Lancaster County," noted Stedman, who said state police worked at top speed to find the girl.
"They knew time was of the essence and the longer things went on, the less likely she might ever be found and restored to her family."
According to a Jan. 27 affidavit of probable cause filed in Hartman's office by state police Trooper Chad S. Roberts, the girl had been attending Aaron Hoover's church for several months before she disappeared in the middle of the night Dec. 9.
Her father, Douglas Ramsey, told police she'd left a note revealing her intent to run away. Ramsey, who had earlier forbidden the girl to continue going to church, worried that she was being hidden.
The girl's name has not been released by police.
The Ramseys were tenants of Aaron Hoover's and lived in a nearby house.
When troopers from Ephrata showed up at Hoover's door after Ramsey called them at about 5 a.m., Dec. 10, according to the affidavit, he wouldn't tell them anything.
Church members complained that the girl's parents were blocking her from practicing her faith; troopers told them it was illegal to conceal her.
"They wouldn't cooperate with us in any way," Trooper Roberts said.
The search led to Alda Martin's farm some 19 hours later. Troopers took custody of the teen from the woman after about 15 minutes.
In a Jan. 11 interview, police said, Starr confirmed corresponding with the girl about running away and said that she gave her plain clothes and took her to Martin in the wee hours.
Starr also confirmed that she wanted to take the teen with her when the church moved to Kentucky, the affidavit said.
The Ramseys, who have reportedly moved to Parkesburg, could not be reached for comment.
The family's name remained on the mailbox at 510 Pleasant Valley Road on a recent afternoon but a ramshackle house at the end of the lane appeared vacant. Advertising circulars in plastic wrappers lay scattered on the drive.
The saga has others in the Plain community scratching their heads.
"I don't know what they were thinking," said a Groffdale Conference man who would identify himself publicly only as the Hoovers' distant cousin. "I never heard of [anyone hiding a child] before."
The man said the church is headed by Aaron Hoover's brother-in-law, Daniel Hoover. The Daniel Hoover group includes 12 to 14 families.
"I enjoy visiting with them and talking," noted the cousin, who added that the Hoover clan worships every other Sunday several miles away in a meetinghouse at Martin and Reidenbach roads, Earl Township.
Another man close to the Plain community speculated that the concealment grew out of a personality clash, not church policy.
"They're not like the Moonies," added the man, who asked to remain anonymous.
The Daniel Hoover group is descended from the Reidenbach Mennonites.
The Reidenbachs, nicknamed the "Thirty-fivers" after the initial number of dissenters, split from the Groffdale Conference (Wenger Mennonite Church) in 1946 because they did not want their young men taking part in Civilian Public Service programs as an alternative to military duty.
Another major division took place in 1977 when a new generation of separatists renounced propane gas and motorized farm machinery.
The 15 or so Thirty-fiver splinters are clannish, family-sized units that embrace ancient Swiss and southern German Anabaptist traditions, according to "Horse-and-Buggy Mennonites," a book by Kraybill and James P. Hurd.
The Daniel Hoover group formed in 2007 over a disagreement about biblical interpretation, according to information from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.
Observers said the group is likely heading to western Kentucky to get farther away from it all.
First, though, three of its members are bound for court.
"This just doesn't happen very often," said one scholarly observer. "It really is strange."