'They need to pay for taking my son away,' Ethan Stacy's father says

GRUNDY, Virginia — Ethan Stacy was a quick learner.

"I could show him how to do something, he'd pick it up just like that," his father, Joe Stacy, told the Deseret News Tuesday. "He's just a very intelligent boy."

Stacy recalled how his son was "a great boy," how he loved to go to the playground, and how most recently he had developed a strong liking for PlayStation video games.

"He'd stay glued to it all day if I let him," Joe Stacy said.

Stacy fought back tears, and sometimes just let them flow, as he recalled happy moments with his son. He recounted these stories while standing in the Grundy Funeral Home's chapel. As he spoke of his Ethan's short life, behind him, just 20 yards away, rested a small blue coffin surrounded by flowers and teddy bears.

A church service was planned Tuesday night for 4-year-old Ethan on the eve of his funeral Wednesday. Ethan, the boy hardly anyone in Utah knew in life, has touched the lives of people across the nation following his brutal death, allegedly at the hands of his mother, Stephanie Sloop, and her newlywed husband, Nathan Sloop.

The Sloops remained in the Davis County Jail Tuesday pending possible aggravated murder charges.

Joe Stacy, who has been in constant contact with both Davis County prosecutors and victim advocates in Utah, said if they can file aggravated murder charges, he expects they will seek the death penalty against his ex-wife and her husband.

He said he is OK with prosecutors needing additional time before filing official charges.

"I don't want any mistakes made at all. Nothing. I don't want them coming out of this in any type of way. They need to pay for taking my son away," Joe Stacy said.

Ethan Jonathan David Stacy's obituary listed May 11 as his day of death. That was the day Layton police and the Weber County Sheriff's Office found his body buried in a remote area near Powder Mountain. Ethan had been in Utah only a few days, sent to live with his mother for the summer per a court order. Stephanie Sloop originally told police that Ethan had walked away in the middle of the night.

But investigators said the Sloops' stories began to contradict each other the longer the search went on. Eventually, the Sloops were arrested after allegations arose that Nathan Sloop beat Ethan, and neither he nor Stephanie Sloop took him to a doctor. They locked him in a bedroom while they got married because they were afraid of showing his bruised and swollen face in public.

After Ethan died, police say the Sloops tried to disfigure the young boy so police would not be able to identify him.


On Tuesday, Joe Stacy, with his fiance Becky Elswick by his side, said he had been online and seen the tributes and photos of the two vigils held in Utah and of the hundreds of people who showed up for them.

"It's a wonderful feeling," he said. "There's so many good people out there."

Many of the flower bouquets and teddy bears surrounding Ethan's coffin were donated by people from Salt Lake City. A card on one bouquet read, "From a concerned stranger that saw you on TV."

Another was from the Buchanan County (Virginia) Sheriff's Office that simply said, "Praying for you." While another card had the words, "Safe in the arms of Jesus."

The small town of Grundy is tucked in a hollow of the Cumberland Plateau in the lush green Appalachian Mountains. The directors of the funeral home said Ethan Stacy has touched people like they've never seen in their town.

The Grundy Funeral Home's website normally receives 3,000 hits a month. In the past four days alone it has received 7,000 hits. More than 450 e-mail messages were sent to the website for Ethan, said funeral home vice president Curtis Mullins, Sr.


For Joe Stacy, a tall, fit man who has served in the military and grew up in the Grundy/Richlands area of Virginia where he currently lives, part of him is feeling indescribable grief over Ethan's tragic loss, while another part of him still questions why it happened at all.

"I can't even imagine why a mother would stand by and let someone do that to her child," he said. "I would have found some way to stop him. Do something. Don't just stand there and watch. There had to have been something she could have done.

"There's just no excuse for it. None whatsoever."

A funeral service will be held Wednesday afternoon for Ethan, followed by a procession to the Clinch Valley Memorial Cemetery in Richlands, Va., about 30 miles away.