December 12, 2024 • 47 mins
This is a special episode of Wrongful Conviction, featuring guests Delia D'Ambra, host of Audiochuck's CounterClock, and Frances Watson, President of the Indiana Innocence Project.
In Lakeville, Indiana in 1989, Reverend Bob Pelley, his wife Dawn, and Bob’s step-daughters, Janel and Jolene were found shot to death in their home. Bob’s teenage son, Jeff Pelley, was a suspect due to ongoing tensions with his father, which were exacerbated by him restricting Jeff’s ability to attend prom night activities. Jeff claimed to have left home to pick up his girlfriend, but inconsistencies in his alibi and the timeline raised suspicions. Jeff was ultimately charged with the murders in 2002, over a decade after they took place, and convicted in 2006 based on circumstantial evidence. He was sentenced to 160 years in prison. Jeff Pelley has consistently maintained his innocence, and post-conviction litigation raised alternate theories, including alleged ties between Bob Pelley and organized crime from his past life in Florida, potentially involving his friends and the Hawley family who were implicated in various financial crimes. Testimony from a woman supported the theory that Bob might have been targeted for his past illegal financial activities. However, this evidence was deemed inadmissible, and Jeff's requests for a new trial have been repeatedly denied.
To hear more on this case, click the link below to listen to season 3 of Delia D'Ambra's CounterClock, from Audiochuck:
https://counterclockpodcast.com/season-three/
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://indianainnocenceproject.org/frances-watson-president/
https://www.justiceforjeff.org/
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
April twenty ninth, nineteen eighty nine, was prom night in
the small town of lake Ville, Indiana, and although high
school senior Jeff Pelly had been grounded, two of his
sisters and his girlfriend believed that his father's resolved had softened,
allowing Jeff to attend. But on the morning after the prom,
his father, stepmother, and two stepsisters were found fatally shot
(00:25):
in their own home. Then the state ignored the autopsy
findings his girlfriend, his sisters, and several other witnesses, along
with a compelling alternate suspect theory to argue that Jeff
had killed them simply to gain access to this teenage
right of passage. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to
(00:53):
Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the
LoVa for Good podcasts one week early and ed free
by subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have the story
of a teenager named Jeff Pelly who was accused of
(01:15):
killing his father, his stepmother, and two stepsisters in Lakeville,
Indiana in nineteen eighty nine. Unfortunately, Jeff was not available
to record, but this story needs to be told. So
to help us do that, we have one of my
absolute favorite investigative journalists, Delia Diambra, who dedicated an entire
(01:37):
season of her hit podcast Counterclock to this case. It's
going to be linked in the episode description. So Delia,
thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And with her we have Jeff's post conviction attorney, the
president of the Indiana Innisis Project, Fran Watson.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Fran welcome, Well, thank you for Carrie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, I can't shake this one. So this story acquires
quite a bit of background. So let's go back and
start where it all started. In Cape Coral, Florida.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In nineteen seventy Bob Pelly met his first wife, Ava
Joy Armstrong and they got married and then their first child,
Robert Jeffrey Pelly. He's born in nineteen seventy one, so
Carrie is his dad's name, but goes by Jeff and
then they have their daughter, Jackie. They have a large
community at the Nazarene Church. Bob was working for a
(02:29):
bank called Landmark Bank as a data analyst. They're living
happily in Cape Coral, Florida, which at that time was
sort of underdeveloped as compared to the city that it
is now, But back then it was sort of wild
West in terms of real estate development, and I think
a lot of people from other states and even other
countries saw that as an opportune time to capitalize on
(02:51):
Florida's growth.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It's also rumored that there were organized criminal interests in
the area, either coming in from Miami or even as
far away as Detroit, and Landmark Bank was processing a
lot of the land deals being made as Cape Coral developed.
Two of the players in the market were a developer
from Michigan named Derek Dawson, as well as another Nazarene
parishioner named Phil Holly.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
The Holly family attended the Nazarene church in Fort Myers
that the Pelly family also attended. The families knew one
another and spent time together.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Mister Holly called mister Pelly his best friend.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And yes, Phil Holly had several businesses, construction businesses, they
debt collection business some of which were later alleged to
be fraudulent businesses, and Phil had banking interests at Landmark Bank. Also,
Bob had done it work for Phil Holly.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
There isn't any doubt that mister Pelly knew a lot
about mister Holly's business, and I don't think there's any
doubt that the Hollys were up to criminal activity.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Fast forward to nineteen eighty five, Joy Pelly had been
diagnosed with cancer and after fighting bravely, she tragically lost
her battle. And later on that year, Bob met a
widow named Dawn who had three daughters of her own, Jesse, Jannell,
and Joe Lene, and they soon married. And to add
to this tumultuous situation, Bob abruptly uprooted this newly blended
(04:15):
family from a comfortable life in Cape Coral and moved
to a very different situation in Lakeville, Indiana. In nineteen
eighty six.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Bob Pelly was incredibly secretive and abrupt about the family's
move to Indiana. Jackie her words were, he showed up
in the middle of the night and said there was
money missing from the bank, and within either the next
day or the day after that, the family was gone
from Cape Coral and moved to Lakeville.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Later on, the pastor at Nazarene Church confirmed that Bob
was tormented by fraud that he'd uncovered at landmark, and
to add another twist, he didn't pick up another banking
or it job. He actually became a pastor at the
Olive Branch and I Brethren Church on Osborne Road in Lakeville, Indiana,
and the Pellys live next door in a ranch style
(05:06):
home owned by the church called the Parsonage. The kids
had to go to new schools, of course, and make
all new friends, all while still acclimating to new step
parents and siblings. So you know, they were in family
therapy and in April nineteen eighty eight, Jeff threatened to
commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
In the spring of eighty eight, when Jeff makes this
declaration that he was going to take his own life,
Bob gets all the guns out of the home. Thomas Kebb,
who's an individual who claimed to have received firearms from
Bob Pelly. Bob Pelly came to him and it's like, here,
take him out of our house.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Meanwhile, back in Cape Coral, the real estate developer from Michigan,
Eric Dawson, had gone deep into debt with the Hollys
and soon received cash infusions from their business on other
development deals. By late nineteen eighty eight, Dawson's body was
discovered in a Florida wildlife preserve.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Eric Dawson was shot execution style and then sunk into
a makeshift concrete grave in the middle of a cypress clearing.
With the Florida conditions the way they are, that concrete
sort of broke open and allows, unfortunately odors of decomposition
to escape, and then the wildlife, a lot of wild
(06:19):
hogs and boars and snakes came in and began to scavenge,
and that ultimately allowed his clothing and things to come
out of that and was discovered.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Eric Dawson had been shot with a twenty two caliber pistol. Curiously,
Bob Paley had given Thomas keb a twenty two caliber
pistol which came in and out of his possession around
the time of Eric Dawson's murder.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's back in the home by January of nineteen eighty
nine and then subsequently disappears again before the April twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty nine massacre in the home. So this twenty
two pistol, why was it going in and out of
the home? Where was it? And then when you look
at the case in late nineteen eighty eight in Florida,
(07:04):
with Eric Dawson. He was murdered definitively with a twenty two.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The Halies were suspected of that murder and police found
Landis that Dawson had signed over to the Hallies the
day before his disappearance.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
If you look at what's happening in Florida the month
of Pelley family is killed, that's when they serve the
search warrants, and that's where they find clear evidence that
ultimately convicts the Hallies forging those documents. They're never able
to charge the Hallies or anyone with the murder of
the business partner, but they were able to charge and
convict the Hollies of the fraud tied to taking the asset.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Meanwhile, Bob was in Lakeville and he was very much
aware of the danger. Just according to a person named
Tony Beeeler who was hired to take photographs for a
church directory, Bob made her swear on a Bible and
explained why he didn't want his picture taken and made public.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
He expressed to her there are people from my past
in Florida that we'll find us and harm us. And
he was very resistant to their identities being out there.
And then they're all massacred like what.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Curiously, the Pellies were in touch with the Hawlies, who
knew that they'd moved to Lakeville, but Bob was certainly
afraid of someone. Meanwhile, in Lakeville, the police were investigating
a string of petty thefts, and Bob discovered that his son,
Jeff and his friends the Herzogs, were involved, So he
took away Jeff's Mustang and forbade him from attending the
prom or any after prime activities, including a day trip
(08:33):
the next day to Six Flags Raided America.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That's definitely part of the story is that mister Pelly
had told many people that Jeff was grounded from the prom,
and the fact we always cite in responses, Well, if
Jeff wasn't going to the prom, then how did Jackie
know to tell the police he'd be at Great America
this pre date cell phone. She'd not been home since
Friday nine. So if Jeff wasn't going to the prom,
(08:56):
how does Jackie think he's at Great America?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
According to those closest to the situation, Jeff's sisters Jackie
and Jesse, and Jeff's girlfriend Darla, it appears that Bob
had softened his result as early as Friday, which was
the night before the prompt. Additionally, the Pellies had written
checks the week prior to cover Jeff's tuxedo and other
prom fees. Yet the state still contended that this punishment,
(09:22):
along with access to his mustang, was the motivation for
him to commit a quadruple homicide against his own family.
That happened sometime after five pm on April twenty nine,
nineteen eighty nine. So let's back up to earlier that
day so we can establish the timeline.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
He worked at McDonald's that Saturday of the prom, starting
at five am, and then when his father picked him up,
the dad stopped at the gun store. Now, the state's
theory was the dad stopped at the gun store because
he was afraid of his son.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But if you know the context about Florida, this stop
makes more sense. According to the store, Bob inquired about
a gun for Dawn, but he didn't purchase anything.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Mister Pelly's kicked his son up at noon brought him home.
They all had lunch together and watch baseball. People came
over to show their prom dresses.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
There was a girl named Kim and her date David.
A boy named Matt Miller came over at that same time,
so they're all there between four thirty and five o'clock,
maybe five after five at the most.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So the state's theory is that after this dear friend
and church people leave, he just goes into a rage
and kills everyone and then goes to the prom and
acts normal.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And according to the dear friend and church people, Jeff
had been wearing blue jeans and potentially a pink pin
striped shirt. And the promgoers left around five pm to
pick up Matt Miller's date.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Matt Miller forgets his corsage for his date, so he
goes back home. And as Matt is passing back on
Osborne Road headed to go meet Kim and David at
his date's house, he passes the parsonage and sees Jeff's
Mustang still park there. This is at right around five
point fifteen. And then there's I think one of Jeff's
(11:03):
friends that was mushroom hunting in the area. Here's Jeff's car,
the noticeable engine roar down Osborne Road a little after
five point fifteen. And then we have Dennis Nico Dimes,
who is the clerk at the Mco gas station, who
has an interaction with Jeff who says it's five p
seventeen when Jeff is at that gas station.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
From then on, Jeff is accounted for wearing a black
Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans, followed by his tuxedo. So,
according to the state, Jeff committed this quadruple homicide between
five and five sixteen pm. But there's the specter of
this black pickup truck, which wasn't mentioned by the promgoers
either while they were there as they left, or by
Matt Miller as he drove by, but rather by a
(11:46):
woman named Lois Stansbury who saw Bob Pelley after the
prom goers left and potentially after five sixteen PM.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
She's probably part of the reason Jeff wasn't charged in
eighty nine. She was a local, good standing citizen who
said she'd been to kmart. She came back up the
road to visit her father and saw mister Pelley talking
to someone in a black truck.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, her purchase at kmart was documented and on her receipt.
I want to say like four thirty to four forty,
and where that kmart was located the Osborne Road. I
think we drove it and it was like maybe ten
or twelve minutes, so based on her movements and that receipt,
and like one other pit stop she made on the way,
she's got to be seeing him to be generous a
(12:31):
little after five to five twenty.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And according to the witness, mister Pelly had a shovel
in his hand, and he looked a bit circumspect, in
other words, he wasn't his normal waving self.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And when she came forward to law enforcement a week
or so after the crime, she provides that receipt to them,
saying like, Hey, here's how I know when I saw
Bob from five to five twenty. So if Bob's alive
standing in his driveway talking, is someone in a black
pickup truck, He's not getting murdered by his teenage son
in the home.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Mysteriously, that receipt later went missing, and the state contends
that it must have been earlier and the prom goers
just missed it somehow. Now after this sighting, we aren't
sure what happened with the Pellies. At five point thirty,
Bob was expected at the home of another prom goer, Crystal,
Easter Day, but when he didn't show up, she and
(13:21):
her date came over to the parsonage between five pointy
five and six pm, and they found the Pelly station
wagon in the driveway and the curtains drawn, and there
was no response when they knocked on the door.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
She made later statements that the doors were locked in
her earliest statements, there's nothing that suggests she tried to
determine whether they were locked or not. But that was
a strong fact the state used because their claim was
that the Pelly family had already been slain inside that home.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Everything that happened after Jeff is accounted for by witnesses.
You don't know what's then happening with Bob and Don
and the girls. They're either already deceased or they're potentially
still at home for whatever reason, didn't fulfill their plans
for the night. Were they taken somewhere and then brought
back to the home. That's obviously a possibility, a little
(14:11):
bit more involved, because you would think that someone would
have seen that were they being held at their home
that evening, potentially through the early morning hours.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I think mister Pelly got in that black truck myself.
If mister Pelly's got some inklingess is going on. What
if mister Pelly left in the black truck and said
to the family, prom goings over. Lock the house, don't
answer the door.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
No one saw anyone coming or going for the rest
of the night, although there's mention of a limousine with
Florida plates nearby. Additionally, the next door neighbor, Sheila Saunders,
noted that the Pelly's basement light was on at nine
to fifteen PM and two am, but when Bob didn't
show up for Sunday service and the scene was discovered,
it was noted that the basement light was off.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So Sunday morning, April thirtieth, around nine fifteen, already in
the morning, a man named Dave Hathaway, who's sort of
like an elder at the church, realized that Bob wasn't
in the sanctuary. His stepdaughters weren't running around anywhere. Don
was not there, and so Dave eventually walks over he
(15:16):
needs a spare key. Dave walks in through the garage,
gets a couple steps in to go let the other
elder in, and before he even gets there, he kind
of looks over into this hallway that leads into the
bedrooms and sees what he recognizes as Bob Pelly's kind
of thicker glasses on the carpet, some blood, realizes something
(15:37):
is very wrong, and then obviously, law enforcement is called.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Dave Hathaway initially mentioned that the blood was still wet,
but he later recalled it differently and said that the
blood was dry. Now clarity on that would have been
very helpful when establishing the timeline. But let's go back
to the scene.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I think the thought always was initially by law enforcement,
that Bob Pelly died first in the hall way upstairs,
and then the killer or killers completed the crime downstairs
with Dawn and the girls unfortunately with their bodies sort
of positioned on or next to one another, and I
think that would indicate that they all died at the
(16:15):
same time or in very quick succession.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
There's also a gun shot in the stairwell heading down
into the basement that appears to have been a near miss,
which may support that theory of succession. Interestingly, the shooter
must have collected the shell casing, so all they found
were the spent twenty gage shotgun slugs, and watting, which
is either a paper or plastic part of the bullet
between the gunpowder and the slug.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
This watting usually falls or flutters to the floor, and
in this case some of it is in the wounds
or on the clothing of the victim, which just goes
to show how close in proximity the shooter was to them.
There is watting discovered from two different types of shotgun
shell casings by different manufacturers, which begins to open the
door of was there one shooter? Was there two shooters?
(17:00):
It just raises a lot of questions, and.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Establishing the time of death would have gone a long
way to answering them. Unfortunately, the coroner lost that information
when he refrigerated the bodies before determining it. But there
were some interesting findings at autopsy.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We do see popcorn in Bob's stomach. Jackie Pelly always says,
like her dad's evening snack before he'd had to preach
a message the next day, it was popcorn. So it's like, Okay,
why would he have been eating that in the middle
of the afternoon or late afternoon. He didn't really have
opportunity to do that because we know he was visiting
with parishioners all throughout the afternoon on Saturday, right up
(17:35):
until about four o'clock. And then all these kids come
over to get their pictures taken. So it's like, did
they eat those things either right up until they were
killed or later that night? But how could they have
eaten them if they were already dead? And so it
really begins to kind of throw off the timeline.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
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Speaker 2 (18:46):
When they first began processing the scene, there was a
Indiana State trooper who came to the scene and was
familiar with Jeff and Bob Pelly because he was in
a community club with Bob and had gotten to know Bob,
and Bob had opened up to him a little bit
about his sort of parental struggles with Jeff and some
(19:07):
thefts and people that Bob didn't like that Jeff was
hanging out with, and bad attitude and things like that,
the lamenting of a father of a teenage son, and
so the state trooper came into the crime scene investigation
with that sort of back history.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Even though the autopsy findings Lois Stansbury and Sheila Saunders
all suggest that the murders happened later on that night,
it appears that tunnel vision had already set in and
the state turned him into some sort of master criminal
with prowess that would be something out of a spy
thriller or something.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The lack of physical evidence says a lot in this case,
because it's not just someone would have had to clean
themselves up from the biological material, but they would have
had to get all those shell casings. Be careful not
to step in any blood, because there's no tracking of
blood or footprints or shoeprints or sock prints. There's no
smearing on the floor of any sort of transfer like that.
(20:03):
So this is someone who is being extremely careful, extremely methodic,
picking up shellcasings and then able to close curtains and
lock doors get rid of all incriminating evidence.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
All between five and five sixteen pm.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Law enforcement and even the prosecution over the years has said,
it's tight, it's a tight window, it is a hard cell.
We get that. But we believe that he did it
because we believe that he pre planned to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And so they located as surviving Pelly children. Jesse and
Jackie were each at their friends' homes, and they said
that Jeff was at Great America, so that dispels the
state's motive. But then Jackie and Jesse disagreed about whether
or not the family's twenty gage shotgun was in the home.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Jesse, she says that before she left for her sleepover
on Friday, that the gun was there, that the gun
was on the rack. That's her memory. She's obviously young, idea,
don't know how often she went in there and like check,
so I don't know if that's a memory from a
pre existing entry into her parents' room or not.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But according to both Jackie and Thomas Keb that shotgun
was not in the parsonage. Next, Lakeville PD went to
get Jeff near Great America. They searched his car, found
a paper grocery bag containing his black Hawaiian shirt and
blue jeans, which also had a dollar bill and thirty
four coins in the pocket, and there was also a
legible receipt in the bag. Jeff was then brought back
(21:29):
to Lakeville for an interview with the cops in the
company of his grandparents.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So five am Monday, he waives his rights and he
gives a statement. It's recorded. When they ask him, can
you think of anyone that would do this, he readily
says the only thing I can think of is it
could be the herse ags And I'm paraphrasing. My dad
was investigating a theft ring. These kids are mad at
my dad. You need to go talk to Detective Center.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Who confirmed what Jeff said. Now without a confession, police
began to say speculate about Jeff's reaction to the news,
which is never convincing evidence of guilt or innocence, but
people do it anyway. Now, they also inspected his body
for any injuries and they took pictures.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Those photographs show that Jeff has not a single mark
on his chest. So the theory is he took that
family twenty gauge and he fired it at least six
times within the confines of a small hallway in a
small basement area without at all one bruce. That's Monday morning.
So later the grandparents agree to bringing back Monday evening
(22:35):
for a polygraph. And at this point they agree they
purposely separating from his grandparents for the purpose of getting
him to admit this, and you know what, he didn't confess.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
But in between interviews they discovered something that Jeff hadn't
mentioned in his first that he'd stopped at two gas
stations on the way to Darla's house. So he explained why,
an issue with the car and access to tools that
he needed to work with the car, and they said
that discrepancy made them doubt his story that he must
have done it all while the threat of the death
(23:05):
penalty loomed large and importantly, the second interview was not recorded,
just some of his answers were jotted down, and the
detective alleged that Jeff said something that sounded incriminating.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They say, he says something like if I tell you
what I know, well I get the death penalty or something.
They testify at trial that he said that, Well, maybe
that's related to the her songs he told you about them.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I think that statement on its face is certainly like
what who would say that? But you also just have
to know where it's coming from, and also how people
respond to questions they're asked, and if only their response
is written down and the context of the question is
not included. I mean, I've done this with now multiple
wrongful conviction claim cases where it's like, wow, okay, now
(23:53):
that I know what was asked, that changes how I
see the response.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Without a recording, we don't even know what exactly was said,
let alone why. And it also seems that misrepresentations aren't
exactly outside the realm of possibilities in this case. And
I'm going to get to that later, but for now,
we do know that Bob Pelly and the Herzogs were
at odds.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
People in the beginning in the community thought it was
about this thievery. Mister Pelly was trying to shut down
at the funeral home. One of the her Sogs showed
up and if people got into a fight, we put
on Jackie. At the PCR hearing to say, the her
Sogs came over to our house to threaten.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Jeff, and we only raised the Herzogs to give potential
context around what was allegedly said in this unrecorded interview. Meanwhile,
in addition to the clothing from the paperbag in Jeff's car,
the police retrieved clothing from the Pelly's washing machine. According
to records they sent to the FBI, there was a
pink pin striped shirt and tube socks with no biological
material found, which became sort of a running theme.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I think the state they just kept hitting walls with
this physical evidence piece, even down to to the point
of analyzing the washing machine for blood and biological material.
The lumina went kind of wild on the floor or
in the retention of the washer, I think. But right
away the experts say it's probably from the detergent, which
like absolutely picture it.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Picture it. You go to a washing machine after killing
four people, trying to get out of those clothes to
wash away the biological material of the dead. You take
your clothes off. What happens. It falls where you're just
robing where was that. You'd have to clean it up
and that would leave a pattern when they sprayed that luminol,
there were no patterns, so nobody wiped anything up.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Also, importantly, if Jeff had done this, his blue genes
should have held onto some biological material. But the FBI
confirmed that there was no blood on the jeans and
that they had not been washed. The police even found
a bloody T shirt in a nearby field that they
asked the FBI to try to compare it to the
clothes found of the paper bag to try to find
a connection, but to no avail. And between Thomas cab
(25:59):
Lois Stansburg, Sheila Saunders, the autopsy findings, and the lack
of a confession or physical evidence, the state couldn't charge
Jeff the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
The subsequent prosecutors who were elected, none of them would
bring charges. The case, in their eyes, lacked what it
would need to have a successful prosecution, and so.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Life moved on for the surviving Pelly children. For now.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Jackie went to live with her grandparents in Kentucky, came
into adulthood, and got married, and she's kind of moved
all over with her husband and their family. Jesse goes
to live with I believe Don's family, and then kind
of just carried on life.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And remember, Jeff was fifteen when they left his friends
in Florida, and he had no clue about anything that
was going on between Phil and his dad. Plus he
was close with Phil's youngest son, Martin.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Jeff obviously was getting a little bit older. He graduated
high school. He then moved to Florida in the Fort
Myers area, he started working for Phil Hawley. Jeff then
married Phil Hawley's daughter so could have merit into that family.
And it was kind of throughout that mid nineties timeframe
that Phil Hawley and his sons are all on trial
(27:09):
for not Eric Dawson's murder, but the fraud that they
had committed against Eric Dawson.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Meanwhile, back in Lakeville, one of the assistant prosecutors from
nineteen eighty nine, Christopher Tough, ran for Saint Joseph's County
prosecuting Attorney, promising to open a cold case unit. He
was elected in November nineteen ninety eight and they began
reinvestigating the Pelly case. But the situation didn't really change
until two thousand and two, when the blue jeans from
the paper grocery bag with thirty four coins, a dollar bill,
(27:36):
and a legible receipt were viewed again, but this time
in a different light.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And as the court agreed, they clearly confused the blue
jeans and make an assumption that the blue jeans were
what were in the washing machine having been washed. When
that police officer made that assumption, he sent those blue
jeans away again for testing, and in two thousand and
two the FBI said they were heavily stained, found no
blood on them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
If it's established that the genes weren't in fact washed,
had coins in the pocket, and there's a receipt in
the bag that they pulled from an evidence storage, then
it means that law enforcement can't say he committed the
crime and then covered up and washed his clothes.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
They never asked themselves. Thirty four coins stayed in the
pocket of a pair of jeans washed off, thirty four
of them? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Not to mention that evidence, especially wet physical evidence, typically
would never be placed in a paper grocery bag. Now
it's unclear where exactly Detective Whitfield's belief falls on the
scale of honest mistake to pure evil, but either way,
no one along the way ever questioned the belief, and
(28:45):
he obtained an arrest warrant, which was executed at Los
Angeles International Airport. Jeff was arriving from a business trip
with his wife and Jackie, who then found him a
California attorney named Alan Baum to handle the arraignment. After
seeing the facts of the case, Allen State on board.
But even more information came to light after Jeff's arrest.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Tony Baylor, she comes forward once there's a trial date,
and she goes to the police department, not to mister
Pelly's lawyers, to the police department and they record her
statement and she describes this encounter with mister Pelly and
the church in which he expresses fear for his family's
safety from his experiences from Florida following him to Indiana.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Which obviously doesn't really point in Jeff's direction. So that's
like not super great for a prosecution.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And that particular tape of Tony Baylor never made it
into the jury trial because mister Pelly's lawyers never knew
of her.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I really don't think, based on what the records show,
that it was a reinvestigation to try and solve the homicides.
I believe it shows that the reinvestigation was to ultimately
clear or not clear Jeff Pelly as a suspect, and
those are two very different things. And ultimately I don't
think they pursued really avenues of clearing him. I think
(30:04):
they pursued more avenues of arrest.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
From two thousand and three, Jeff was held in pre
trial detention with no bond until his attorney finally got
one set in two thousand and five, and he wasn't
tried until two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
From nineteen eighty nine to like two thousand and three
is a huge delay.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
That's a very cold case, right.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think his attorneys have argued like that in itself
could have been prejudicial or was prejudicial? Do you then
have all the way until six before you get a
trial because of different clocks in the court going at
different speeds, and then you know, in that timeframe from
the arrest of the trial, the state pauses for like
over a year to say they need these family counseling records,
and then they get them and they never use them.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Maybe they were just stalling because the case was so weak.
The prosecutor, Frank Shaeffer, even admitted to the jury that
they had no physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
There's no blood found on Jeff for his belongings. There's
nothing of his found on the victims way in which
that would indicate he was present for the crime. They
don't find the firearm, they don't find the shellcas things,
they don't find a bundle of clothing and a dumpster
somewhere that was somewhere he made a stop. Nothing physical
evidence wise connects Jeff to the crime.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
It was a circumstantial case. The investigators described the scene
and then they established their timeline with the prom goers,
which was countered by Lois Stansbury. But her Kmart receipt
had mysteriously disappeared, just vanished, so the state was able
to explain her away, along with other aberrations like the
(31:36):
popcorn in Bob's stomach and the light that was on
in the basement at nine to fifteen pm and two am.
So then the stage was set for between five and
five sixteen pm.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The prosecution was relying on individuals that knew Jeff and
Bob Pelly to talk about their tumultuous relationship and the
issue of a prom Could he go, could he not go?
Could take a car? Could he not take his car?
And so even though the state doesn't really have to
prove motive. They knew that was the only way they
were going to be able to convince jurors that Jeff
(32:09):
had done it.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
The problem with that is Jackie and Jesse both testified
that Jeff was allowed to go, but they disagreed about
whether the family's twenty gage shotgun was in the house,
which could have been cleared up by Thomas Kebb.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Thomas Kebb never testifies at the trial. Obviously the defense
would have wanted to use him because he's saying, no,
there was no guns in the Pelly home. All the
guns came to me before the murder, which sort of
takes away the state's point of there was a shotgun
hanging on a rack in the bedroom and that's what
Jeff grabbed and killed his family with. Well, if the
gun isn't there, then Deff can't do the crime. But
(32:43):
Thomas Keb was problematic because I pointed out in the
show that the defense got into why he had the guns.
They had to go into the point that Jeff had
threatened to take his own life the year before, and
I think Jeff's trial attorney saw that as does that
paint Jeff as a stable.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
But an unarmed Jeff can't shoot his family, unstable or not.
And to make matters worse, that wasn't his team's only failure.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
The initial claim in the proble cause Affidavid says that
the blue jeans were washed. The defense attorneys never looked
inside the brown bag to know that the blue jeans
themselves were dirty.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He just accepted the prosecution's established fact that the jeans
had been washed.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So the state's misrepresentation that the jeans had been pulled
from the washing machine went unchallenged, and the jury was
left with the impression that Jeff covered his tracks by
washing those Jens.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
What I found absolutely unbelievable is that Craig Whitfield, the
investigator who took up the case that reinvestigated and ultimately
submitted the arrest affidavit and arrested Jeff Pelly, was never
called to testify at his trial. So the absence of
Craig Whitfield, I think says a lot as far as
how the prosecution potentially saw downfalls of his work.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
But it appears that the defense may not have prepared
cross examination anyway.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
The evidence was so weak that I think the defense
they weren't as prepared as they needed to be to
attack some of the state's points and totally missed the
Florida stuff. Totally missed that at the point that the
families killed is right when the Holy Famili's getting arrested.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
But it's not like the defense didn't try to raise
the specter of Bob's past.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
So at trial, the defense is trying to go into
the Florida facts without witnesses that have firsthand knowledge, and
so the defense attorney says someone saw a limousine with
Florida plates. The defense attorneys never found the person who
actually saw the limousine.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And without a witness with firsthand knowledge, the Florida facts
were denied. Unfortunately, Tony Bieler's video statement appears to have
been unavailable as well.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The defense attorneys testified at the post conviction hearing, had
they known about that statement, they would have talked to
that witness.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
So the jury never heard about the danger from Florida.
But the defense did continue down that alternate suspect road,
presenting the shotgun wadding evidence suggesting there may have been
multiple shooters.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And if there's more than one shooter, that kind of
takes Jeff off the chessboard, right, because it would just
be sort of illogical to think that he had a
co conspirator that's been quiet like all these years. So
the difference in the wadding types means two types of
AMMO were used, but same gauge. So either it's two
different shotguns or one gun is loaded with different types
(35:40):
of AMMO, same gauge, but you know, just different types
of AMMO, which like, okay, that's not impossible, but it
would be odd.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But again, it's not impossible that one shotgun was loaded
with the same gauge made by two different manufacturers. So
the evidence fell flat without the Florida facts. And then
the defense tried to raise doubt about the state's timeline,
put on an expert who had done studies on the
rate at which different materials dry and testified that the
washcloths which were alleged to have been used by Jeff
(36:09):
at five PM on the day prior would have been
drier by the time they were collected as evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Unfortunately, that really fell flat for the defense because their
expert that they had hired from out of state was
just not very thorough with his sort of recreation of
figuring out what rate they would have dried at and
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Plus, the expert had conducted his experiments in Arizona, a
totally different and obviously much drier climate than Indiana, which
made the evidence easy to impeach. The state also played
the recorded interrogation in which Jeff did not confess, but
then the state put on the stand the detective who
had conducted the second unrecorded interview, who testified that Jeff
(36:51):
had allegedly said, if I tell you what I know,
will I get the death penalty? And then the defense
didn't raise the context of that response and what it
could have meant about the Herzogs that, along with Tony Bieler,
the Florida facts, photos of Jeff's unbruised chest, as well
as the truth about the blue jeans, well, they simply
(37:11):
were not available to the jury.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And deliberations, and they're saying, hey, we need more on this.
We'd like to hear one of those.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It's the blue jeans and some curiosity about Florida and
Bob Pelly's past, which is super interesting that the jurors
at trial are.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Like, well, that seems like there's something there. Can we
know more? Can we hear a witness or whatever, and
of course, you know, it just that never happens. After
(37:49):
she was interviewed as an adult Jesse, she began to
look back on her experiences and memories about Jeff and
began to have serious doubts about whether or not someone
else committed the crime. And he did. And so by
the time she is that trial, you know, she was
very convinced that Jeff had committed the crime and that
(38:10):
he was trying to continue to get away with it,
so to speak. She was pleased by the verdict and
there was some closure, but you know, it was never
one hundred percent closure for her because she genuinely just
missed her sisters and her mother and she felt so
much had been taken from her. I know, for Jackie,
she never thought that Jeff did it. She had no
(38:31):
reason to think that he did. At his arrest and
at his eventual trial, she was one hundred percent supportive
of her brother. She thought he did not do this
and that he should not have been convicted for it.
She was obviously upset with the verdict, but she's also
a very determined individual. So really, from the moment it
was read, it was like, Okay, what's next. What's the
(38:52):
next phase, what's the next fight? When are we getting
back in court?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
If you recall, it took about three years to take
him to trial once he was finally arrested, thirteen long
years after the crime. So his direct appeal attorney argued
that a number of issues that caused that delay had
violated Jeff's right to a speedy trial, which was then
ultimately prejudicial.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed the four murder convictions
and said that there was a speedy trial violation, the
state had wasted too much time, And the Indiana Supreme
Court put those four murder convictions back and said that
there was no a speedy trial violation.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
So his sentence of one hundred and sixty years remained.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Then, after that decision, I agreed to represent him in
the post conviction action, where, for example, you allege an
effective assistants, a council, and constitutional speedy trial violations. Let
me say this to you that no one, not the
defense team and not the Saint Joseph County prosecutor, according
(39:54):
to the evidence, had the FBI file. I got the
FBI file because there's no way I believe you could
wash a pair of blue jeans sufficient to remove every
piece of blood, but leave thirty four coins in the pocket.
There's no way I'm going to believe that. Look at
the coins, they're dirty. Look at the jeans, they're dirty.
(40:14):
The FBI said they were dirty. So I start from
the premise this is not right.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Frand made it clear that the defense completely neglected to
explore how the blue jeans had not been retrieved from
the washing machine or how they were falsely represented as
evidence of guilt. Then the defense neglected to show how
photographs and a lack of bruising showed that Jeff had
not likely fired a twenty gage shotgun. Plus there was
the failure on the Florida facts.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
There were ways he could have gotten it in at trial,
even the judge threw him a bone, so to speak,
at times in sidebar conversations like well, you need to
do X, Y and Z. If you want to get
this in this way, you gotta do this. You got
to give me something to get these facts in that
you want to argue about Florida and Bopelly in an
ultimate suspect that didn't happen is also those that knew
his attorney and had hired him for Jeff said, he's
(41:03):
out in California, He's doing his thing. He's not as
engaged with the trial. He's doing other trials like those
sorts of allegations. And I think that his attorney has
even come bored and said, yeah, could I have done
a better job on all fronts? Absolutely, I did what
I thought was best at the time. But now that
I am being told and shown all these things, I
agree an IAC complaint is completely valid and let's go,
(41:27):
which is I think kind of rare.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
So they filed the post conviction motion raising ineffective assistance
of counsel and speedy trial violations, and they were granted
a hearing in twenty twenty two in which they presented
evidence of those claims, along with other evidence supporting his innocence,
including Tony Bieler.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So, she testified at the post conviction hearing that conversation
with mister Pelly was in the weeks before the family
was murdered, and she didn't come forward in eighty nine.
She was afraid, and she testified about that conversation with
mister Pelly. And if you look, the state didn't ask
her one cross question. We called a lot of witnesses
about the actual Florida facts. We believe that the jury
(42:07):
should have heard from the mouths of witnesses, including Detective Kopinski,
who believed that the Hawleys had murdered their business partner.
So we put in lots of evidence about what was
going on in Florida that would have caused mister Hawley
to want to foreclose any witnesses from coming forward. And look,
(42:27):
if you're a father and you've incloves your sons in
a business enterprise that's criminal, and you've ratcheted up to murder,
I imagine you'd do a lot to protect your.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Sons, laying the groundwork for the danger from Florida and
a potential professional hit. They also hired a cold case
investigator to take a fresh look at the crime scene evidence.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
We presented an expert, mister Sopoli. He testified about the
lack of proper investigation and how the state's theory wasn't
consistent with the forensics. I mean, there's a lot of
the crime scene, as our expert witness to Poli testified,
that would cause one to question whether it was the
(43:07):
actions of a seventeen year old on his way to
the prom.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Or where mister Sopoli lands that this crime was so
clean that it likely was a professional hit.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
So Poli says, they took big trash bags and they
just step in him to take their clothes off. That's
how professionals do it. But we tried the case and
then it took the judge well over a year to rule,
and the judge ruled on the anniversary of the murders,
which felt harsh. Jeff suffers the deaths of his family,
(43:38):
he mourns them. So we lost, and now we take
an appeal of the denial of state post conviction relief,
which if we lose, will be a prelude to federal
habeas and our hope is that the courts will see
that the constitutional speedy trial rights and the right to
the sixth Amendment effective assistance of council we're violated.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
In the meantime, we'll link ways to reach Jeff's legal
team in the episode description, So if anyone has information
about this case, please reach out. You just might be
the person that could make a difference here. So with
that and with a heavy heart, we're going to go
to closing arguments, where I thank you both for helping
us tell this harrowing story. And now I'm just going
to kick back in my chair and close my eyes
(44:22):
and listen to any closing thoughts you may have. We'll
start with Delia and then close it out with fran.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I've really landed, based on what I know and what
I've learned, if Jeff Pelly committed this crime, which is
a huge if based on what we know now, but
even if you look at that scenario, he did not
do it in any of the ways that the state
and investigators came to conclude that he did. It does
not hold up against what we know about the physical evidence,
(44:50):
and even with some of the circumstantial testimony, And so
then you really have to really switch gears and be
open to the possibility of Okay, let's take him off
the board. Now what do we look at? And in
most criminal cases, you would say, here, here, that's kind
of thin, that's hard. But in this case, there are
(45:10):
so many credible and legitimate pursuits of investigation that show
that other individuals or another individual could have committed this crime.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I would close by saying thanks for your interests, thanks
for the willingness to look at the facts without a
bias and with some neutrality. I think this is a
case of injustice in which the state pursued the charges
against Jeff without evidence that was truthful in terms of
(45:44):
the Blue Jeans and in terms of the allegations even
about the twenty gage. So I appreciate your audience and
their interest, and again, as you said, if there's information
out there that would help Jeff, I more than one
to know that the Pelly family cares that people believe
(46:06):
in his innocence, because that can be sustaining when you
have these court battles, and in all of these cases,
when we incarcerate the innocent, we let the bad guy
go free. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(46:47):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(47:08):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Love of for
Good
April twenty ninth, nineteen eighty nine, was prom night in
the small town of lake Ville, Indiana, and although high
school senior Jeff Pelly had been grounded, two of his
sisters and his girlfriend believed that his father's resolved had softened,
allowing Jeff to attend. But on the morning after the prom,
his father, stepmother, and two stepsisters were found fatally shot
(00:25):
in their own home. Then the state ignored the autopsy
findings his girlfriend, his sisters, and several other witnesses, along
with a compelling alternate suspect theory to argue that Jeff
had killed them simply to gain access to this teenage
right of passage. This is wrongful conviction. You're listening to
(00:53):
Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the
LoVa for Good podcasts one week early and ed free
by subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have the story
of a teenager named Jeff Pelly who was accused of
(01:15):
killing his father, his stepmother, and two stepsisters in Lakeville,
Indiana in nineteen eighty nine. Unfortunately, Jeff was not available
to record, but this story needs to be told. So
to help us do that, we have one of my
absolute favorite investigative journalists, Delia Diambra, who dedicated an entire
(01:37):
season of her hit podcast Counterclock to this case. It's
going to be linked in the episode description. So Delia,
thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And with her we have Jeff's post conviction attorney, the
president of the Indiana Innisis Project, Fran Watson.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Fran welcome, Well, thank you for Carrie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, I can't shake this one. So this story acquires
quite a bit of background. So let's go back and
start where it all started. In Cape Coral, Florida.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
In nineteen seventy Bob Pelly met his first wife, Ava
Joy Armstrong and they got married and then their first child,
Robert Jeffrey Pelly. He's born in nineteen seventy one, so
Carrie is his dad's name, but goes by Jeff and
then they have their daughter, Jackie. They have a large
community at the Nazarene Church. Bob was working for a
(02:29):
bank called Landmark Bank as a data analyst. They're living
happily in Cape Coral, Florida, which at that time was
sort of underdeveloped as compared to the city that it
is now, But back then it was sort of wild
West in terms of real estate development, and I think
a lot of people from other states and even other
countries saw that as an opportune time to capitalize on
(02:51):
Florida's growth.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It's also rumored that there were organized criminal interests in
the area, either coming in from Miami or even as
far away as Detroit, and Landmark Bank was processing a
lot of the land deals being made as Cape Coral developed.
Two of the players in the market were a developer
from Michigan named Derek Dawson, as well as another Nazarene
parishioner named Phil Holly.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
The Holly family attended the Nazarene church in Fort Myers
that the Pelly family also attended. The families knew one
another and spent time together.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Mister Holly called mister Pelly his best friend.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And yes, Phil Holly had several businesses, construction businesses, they
debt collection business some of which were later alleged to
be fraudulent businesses, and Phil had banking interests at Landmark Bank. Also,
Bob had done it work for Phil Holly.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
There isn't any doubt that mister Pelly knew a lot
about mister Holly's business, and I don't think there's any
doubt that the Hollys were up to criminal activity.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Fast forward to nineteen eighty five, Joy Pelly had been
diagnosed with cancer and after fighting bravely, she tragically lost
her battle. And later on that year, Bob met a
widow named Dawn who had three daughters of her own, Jesse, Jannell,
and Joe Lene, and they soon married. And to add
to this tumultuous situation, Bob abruptly uprooted this newly blended
(04:15):
family from a comfortable life in Cape Coral and moved
to a very different situation in Lakeville, Indiana. In nineteen
eighty six.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Bob Pelly was incredibly secretive and abrupt about the family's
move to Indiana. Jackie her words were, he showed up
in the middle of the night and said there was
money missing from the bank, and within either the next
day or the day after that, the family was gone
from Cape Coral and moved to Lakeville.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Later on, the pastor at Nazarene Church confirmed that Bob
was tormented by fraud that he'd uncovered at landmark, and
to add another twist, he didn't pick up another banking
or it job. He actually became a pastor at the
Olive Branch and I Brethren Church on Osborne Road in Lakeville, Indiana,
and the Pellys live next door in a ranch style
(05:06):
home owned by the church called the Parsonage. The kids
had to go to new schools, of course, and make
all new friends, all while still acclimating to new step
parents and siblings. So you know, they were in family
therapy and in April nineteen eighty eight, Jeff threatened to
commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
In the spring of eighty eight, when Jeff makes this
declaration that he was going to take his own life,
Bob gets all the guns out of the home. Thomas Kebb,
who's an individual who claimed to have received firearms from
Bob Pelly. Bob Pelly came to him and it's like, here,
take him out of our house.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Meanwhile, back in Cape Coral, the real estate developer from Michigan,
Eric Dawson, had gone deep into debt with the Hollys
and soon received cash infusions from their business on other
development deals. By late nineteen eighty eight, Dawson's body was
discovered in a Florida wildlife preserve.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Eric Dawson was shot execution style and then sunk into
a makeshift concrete grave in the middle of a cypress clearing.
With the Florida conditions the way they are, that concrete
sort of broke open and allows, unfortunately odors of decomposition
to escape, and then the wildlife, a lot of wild
(06:19):
hogs and boars and snakes came in and began to scavenge,
and that ultimately allowed his clothing and things to come
out of that and was discovered.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Eric Dawson had been shot with a twenty two caliber pistol. Curiously,
Bob Paley had given Thomas keb a twenty two caliber
pistol which came in and out of his possession around
the time of Eric Dawson's murder.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's back in the home by January of nineteen eighty
nine and then subsequently disappears again before the April twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty nine massacre in the home. So this twenty
two pistol, why was it going in and out of
the home? Where was it? And then when you look
at the case in late nineteen eighty eight in Florida,
(07:04):
with Eric Dawson. He was murdered definitively with a twenty two.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The Halies were suspected of that murder and police found
Landis that Dawson had signed over to the Hallies the
day before his disappearance.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
If you look at what's happening in Florida the month
of Pelley family is killed, that's when they serve the
search warrants, and that's where they find clear evidence that
ultimately convicts the Hallies forging those documents. They're never able
to charge the Hallies or anyone with the murder of
the business partner, but they were able to charge and
convict the Hollies of the fraud tied to taking the asset.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Meanwhile, Bob was in Lakeville and he was very much
aware of the danger. Just according to a person named
Tony Beeeler who was hired to take photographs for a
church directory, Bob made her swear on a Bible and
explained why he didn't want his picture taken and made public.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
He expressed to her there are people from my past
in Florida that we'll find us and harm us. And
he was very resistant to their identities being out there.
And then they're all massacred like what.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Curiously, the Pellies were in touch with the Hawlies, who
knew that they'd moved to Lakeville, but Bob was certainly
afraid of someone. Meanwhile, in Lakeville, the police were investigating
a string of petty thefts, and Bob discovered that his son,
Jeff and his friends the Herzogs, were involved, So he
took away Jeff's Mustang and forbade him from attending the
prom or any after prime activities, including a day trip
(08:33):
the next day to Six Flags Raided America.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That's definitely part of the story is that mister Pelly
had told many people that Jeff was grounded from the prom,
and the fact we always cite in responses, Well, if
Jeff wasn't going to the prom, then how did Jackie
know to tell the police he'd be at Great America
this pre date cell phone. She'd not been home since
Friday nine. So if Jeff wasn't going to the prom,
(08:56):
how does Jackie think he's at Great America?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
According to those closest to the situation, Jeff's sisters Jackie
and Jesse, and Jeff's girlfriend Darla, it appears that Bob
had softened his result as early as Friday, which was
the night before the prompt. Additionally, the Pellies had written
checks the week prior to cover Jeff's tuxedo and other
prom fees. Yet the state still contended that this punishment,
(09:22):
along with access to his mustang, was the motivation for
him to commit a quadruple homicide against his own family.
That happened sometime after five pm on April twenty nine,
nineteen eighty nine. So let's back up to earlier that
day so we can establish the timeline.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
He worked at McDonald's that Saturday of the prom, starting
at five am, and then when his father picked him up,
the dad stopped at the gun store. Now, the state's
theory was the dad stopped at the gun store because
he was afraid of his son.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But if you know the context about Florida, this stop
makes more sense. According to the store, Bob inquired about
a gun for Dawn, but he didn't purchase anything.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Mister Pelly's kicked his son up at noon brought him home.
They all had lunch together and watch baseball. People came
over to show their prom dresses.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
There was a girl named Kim and her date David.
A boy named Matt Miller came over at that same time,
so they're all there between four thirty and five o'clock,
maybe five after five at the most.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So the state's theory is that after this dear friend
and church people leave, he just goes into a rage
and kills everyone and then goes to the prom and
acts normal.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And according to the dear friend and church people, Jeff
had been wearing blue jeans and potentially a pink pin
striped shirt. And the promgoers left around five pm to
pick up Matt Miller's date.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Matt Miller forgets his corsage for his date, so he
goes back home. And as Matt is passing back on
Osborne Road headed to go meet Kim and David at
his date's house, he passes the parsonage and sees Jeff's
Mustang still park there. This is at right around five
point fifteen. And then there's I think one of Jeff's
(11:03):
friends that was mushroom hunting in the area. Here's Jeff's car,
the noticeable engine roar down Osborne Road a little after
five point fifteen. And then we have Dennis Nico Dimes,
who is the clerk at the Mco gas station, who
has an interaction with Jeff who says it's five p
seventeen when Jeff is at that gas station.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
From then on, Jeff is accounted for wearing a black
Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans, followed by his tuxedo. So,
according to the state, Jeff committed this quadruple homicide between
five and five sixteen pm. But there's the specter of
this black pickup truck, which wasn't mentioned by the promgoers
either while they were there as they left, or by
Matt Miller as he drove by, but rather by a
(11:46):
woman named Lois Stansbury who saw Bob Pelley after the
prom goers left and potentially after five sixteen PM.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
She's probably part of the reason Jeff wasn't charged in
eighty nine. She was a local, good standing citizen who
said she'd been to kmart. She came back up the
road to visit her father and saw mister Pelley talking
to someone in a black truck.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, her purchase at kmart was documented and on her receipt.
I want to say like four thirty to four forty,
and where that kmart was located the Osborne Road. I
think we drove it and it was like maybe ten
or twelve minutes, so based on her movements and that receipt,
and like one other pit stop she made on the way,
she's got to be seeing him to be generous a
(12:31):
little after five to five twenty.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And according to the witness, mister Pelly had a shovel
in his hand, and he looked a bit circumspect, in
other words, he wasn't his normal waving self.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And when she came forward to law enforcement a week
or so after the crime, she provides that receipt to them,
saying like, Hey, here's how I know when I saw
Bob from five to five twenty. So if Bob's alive
standing in his driveway talking, is someone in a black
pickup truck, He's not getting murdered by his teenage son
in the home.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Mysteriously, that receipt later went missing, and the state contends
that it must have been earlier and the prom goers
just missed it somehow. Now after this sighting, we aren't
sure what happened with the Pellies. At five point thirty,
Bob was expected at the home of another prom goer, Crystal,
Easter Day, but when he didn't show up, she and
(13:21):
her date came over to the parsonage between five pointy
five and six pm, and they found the Pelly station
wagon in the driveway and the curtains drawn, and there
was no response when they knocked on the door.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
She made later statements that the doors were locked in
her earliest statements, there's nothing that suggests she tried to
determine whether they were locked or not. But that was
a strong fact the state used because their claim was
that the Pelly family had already been slain inside that home.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Everything that happened after Jeff is accounted for by witnesses.
You don't know what's then happening with Bob and Don
and the girls. They're either already deceased or they're potentially
still at home for whatever reason, didn't fulfill their plans
for the night. Were they taken somewhere and then brought
back to the home. That's obviously a possibility, a little
(14:11):
bit more involved, because you would think that someone would
have seen that were they being held at their home
that evening, potentially through the early morning hours.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I think mister Pelly got in that black truck myself.
If mister Pelly's got some inklingess is going on. What
if mister Pelly left in the black truck and said
to the family, prom goings over. Lock the house, don't
answer the door.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
No one saw anyone coming or going for the rest
of the night, although there's mention of a limousine with
Florida plates nearby. Additionally, the next door neighbor, Sheila Saunders,
noted that the Pelly's basement light was on at nine
to fifteen PM and two am, but when Bob didn't
show up for Sunday service and the scene was discovered,
it was noted that the basement light was off.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So Sunday morning, April thirtieth, around nine fifteen, already in
the morning, a man named Dave Hathaway, who's sort of
like an elder at the church, realized that Bob wasn't
in the sanctuary. His stepdaughters weren't running around anywhere. Don
was not there, and so Dave eventually walks over he
(15:16):
needs a spare key. Dave walks in through the garage,
gets a couple steps in to go let the other
elder in, and before he even gets there, he kind
of looks over into this hallway that leads into the
bedrooms and sees what he recognizes as Bob Pelly's kind
of thicker glasses on the carpet, some blood, realizes something
(15:37):
is very wrong, and then obviously, law enforcement is called.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Dave Hathaway initially mentioned that the blood was still wet,
but he later recalled it differently and said that the
blood was dry. Now clarity on that would have been
very helpful when establishing the timeline. But let's go back
to the scene.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I think the thought always was initially by law enforcement,
that Bob Pelly died first in the hall way upstairs,
and then the killer or killers completed the crime downstairs
with Dawn and the girls unfortunately with their bodies sort
of positioned on or next to one another, and I
think that would indicate that they all died at the
(16:15):
same time or in very quick succession.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
There's also a gun shot in the stairwell heading down
into the basement that appears to have been a near miss,
which may support that theory of succession. Interestingly, the shooter
must have collected the shell casing, so all they found
were the spent twenty gage shotgun slugs, and watting, which
is either a paper or plastic part of the bullet
between the gunpowder and the slug.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
This watting usually falls or flutters to the floor, and
in this case some of it is in the wounds
or on the clothing of the victim, which just goes
to show how close in proximity the shooter was to them.
There is watting discovered from two different types of shotgun
shell casings by different manufacturers, which begins to open the
door of was there one shooter? Was there two shooters?
(17:00):
It just raises a lot of questions, and.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Establishing the time of death would have gone a long
way to answering them. Unfortunately, the coroner lost that information
when he refrigerated the bodies before determining it. But there
were some interesting findings at autopsy.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We do see popcorn in Bob's stomach. Jackie Pelly always says,
like her dad's evening snack before he'd had to preach
a message the next day, it was popcorn. So it's like, Okay,
why would he have been eating that in the middle
of the afternoon or late afternoon. He didn't really have
opportunity to do that because we know he was visiting
with parishioners all throughout the afternoon on Saturday, right up
(17:35):
until about four o'clock. And then all these kids come
over to get their pictures taken. So it's like, did
they eat those things either right up until they were
killed or later that night? But how could they have
eaten them if they were already dead? And so it
really begins to kind of throw off the timeline.
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Speaker 2 (18:46):
When they first began processing the scene, there was a
Indiana State trooper who came to the scene and was
familiar with Jeff and Bob Pelly because he was in
a community club with Bob and had gotten to know Bob,
and Bob had opened up to him a little bit
about his sort of parental struggles with Jeff and some
(19:07):
thefts and people that Bob didn't like that Jeff was
hanging out with, and bad attitude and things like that,
the lamenting of a father of a teenage son, and
so the state trooper came into the crime scene investigation
with that sort of back history.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Even though the autopsy findings Lois Stansbury and Sheila Saunders
all suggest that the murders happened later on that night,
it appears that tunnel vision had already set in and
the state turned him into some sort of master criminal
with prowess that would be something out of a spy
thriller or something.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
The lack of physical evidence says a lot in this case,
because it's not just someone would have had to clean
themselves up from the biological material, but they would have
had to get all those shell casings. Be careful not
to step in any blood, because there's no tracking of
blood or footprints or shoeprints or sock prints. There's no
smearing on the floor of any sort of transfer like that.
(20:03):
So this is someone who is being extremely careful, extremely methodic,
picking up shellcasings and then able to close curtains and
lock doors get rid of all incriminating evidence.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
All between five and five sixteen pm.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Law enforcement and even the prosecution over the years has said,
it's tight, it's a tight window, it is a hard cell.
We get that. But we believe that he did it
because we believe that he pre planned to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And so they located as surviving Pelly children. Jesse and
Jackie were each at their friends' homes, and they said
that Jeff was at Great America, so that dispels the
state's motive. But then Jackie and Jesse disagreed about whether
or not the family's twenty gage shotgun was in the home.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Jesse, she says that before she left for her sleepover
on Friday, that the gun was there, that the gun
was on the rack. That's her memory. She's obviously young, idea,
don't know how often she went in there and like check,
so I don't know if that's a memory from a
pre existing entry into her parents' room or not.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But according to both Jackie and Thomas Keb that shotgun
was not in the parsonage. Next, Lakeville PD went to
get Jeff near Great America. They searched his car, found
a paper grocery bag containing his black Hawaiian shirt and
blue jeans, which also had a dollar bill and thirty
four coins in the pocket, and there was also a
legible receipt in the bag. Jeff was then brought back
(21:29):
to Lakeville for an interview with the cops in the
company of his grandparents.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So five am Monday, he waives his rights and he
gives a statement. It's recorded. When they ask him, can
you think of anyone that would do this, he readily
says the only thing I can think of is it
could be the herse ags And I'm paraphrasing. My dad
was investigating a theft ring. These kids are mad at
my dad. You need to go talk to Detective Center.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Who confirmed what Jeff said. Now without a confession, police
began to say speculate about Jeff's reaction to the news,
which is never convincing evidence of guilt or innocence, but
people do it anyway. Now, they also inspected his body
for any injuries and they took pictures.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Those photographs show that Jeff has not a single mark
on his chest. So the theory is he took that
family twenty gauge and he fired it at least six
times within the confines of a small hallway in a
small basement area without at all one bruce. That's Monday morning.
So later the grandparents agree to bringing back Monday evening
(22:35):
for a polygraph. And at this point they agree they
purposely separating from his grandparents for the purpose of getting
him to admit this, and you know what, he didn't confess.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
But in between interviews they discovered something that Jeff hadn't
mentioned in his first that he'd stopped at two gas
stations on the way to Darla's house. So he explained why,
an issue with the car and access to tools that
he needed to work with the car, and they said
that discrepancy made them doubt his story that he must
have done it all while the threat of the death
(23:05):
penalty loomed large and importantly, the second interview was not recorded,
just some of his answers were jotted down, and the
detective alleged that Jeff said something that sounded incriminating.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They say, he says something like if I tell you
what I know, well I get the death penalty or something.
They testify at trial that he said that, Well, maybe
that's related to the her songs he told you about them.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I think that statement on its face is certainly like
what who would say that? But you also just have
to know where it's coming from, and also how people
respond to questions they're asked, and if only their response
is written down and the context of the question is
not included. I mean, I've done this with now multiple
wrongful conviction claim cases where it's like, wow, okay, now
(23:53):
that I know what was asked, that changes how I
see the response.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Without a recording, we don't even know what exactly was said,
let alone why. And it also seems that misrepresentations aren't
exactly outside the realm of possibilities in this case. And
I'm going to get to that later, but for now,
we do know that Bob Pelly and the Herzogs were
at odds.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
People in the beginning in the community thought it was
about this thievery. Mister Pelly was trying to shut down
at the funeral home. One of the her Sogs showed
up and if people got into a fight, we put
on Jackie. At the PCR hearing to say, the her
Sogs came over to our house to threaten.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Jeff, and we only raised the Herzogs to give potential
context around what was allegedly said in this unrecorded interview. Meanwhile,
in addition to the clothing from the paperbag in Jeff's car,
the police retrieved clothing from the Pelly's washing machine. According
to records they sent to the FBI, there was a
pink pin striped shirt and tube socks with no biological
material found, which became sort of a running theme.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I think the state they just kept hitting walls with
this physical evidence piece, even down to to the point
of analyzing the washing machine for blood and biological material.
The lumina went kind of wild on the floor or
in the retention of the washer, I think. But right
away the experts say it's probably from the detergent, which
like absolutely picture it.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Picture it. You go to a washing machine after killing
four people, trying to get out of those clothes to
wash away the biological material of the dead. You take
your clothes off. What happens. It falls where you're just
robing where was that. You'd have to clean it up
and that would leave a pattern when they sprayed that luminol,
there were no patterns, so nobody wiped anything up.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Also, importantly, if Jeff had done this, his blue genes
should have held onto some biological material. But the FBI
confirmed that there was no blood on the jeans and
that they had not been washed. The police even found
a bloody T shirt in a nearby field that they
asked the FBI to try to compare it to the
clothes found of the paper bag to try to find
a connection, but to no avail. And between Thomas cab
(25:59):
Lois Stansburg, Sheila Saunders, the autopsy findings, and the lack
of a confession or physical evidence, the state couldn't charge
Jeff the prosecutor.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
The subsequent prosecutors who were elected, none of them would
bring charges. The case, in their eyes, lacked what it
would need to have a successful prosecution, and so.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Life moved on for the surviving Pelly children. For now.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Jackie went to live with her grandparents in Kentucky, came
into adulthood, and got married, and she's kind of moved
all over with her husband and their family. Jesse goes
to live with I believe Don's family, and then kind
of just carried on life.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And remember, Jeff was fifteen when they left his friends
in Florida, and he had no clue about anything that
was going on between Phil and his dad. Plus he
was close with Phil's youngest son, Martin.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Jeff obviously was getting a little bit older. He graduated
high school. He then moved to Florida in the Fort
Myers area, he started working for Phil Hawley. Jeff then
married Phil Hawley's daughter so could have merit into that family.
And it was kind of throughout that mid nineties timeframe
that Phil Hawley and his sons are all on trial
(27:09):
for not Eric Dawson's murder, but the fraud that they
had committed against Eric Dawson.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Meanwhile, back in Lakeville, one of the assistant prosecutors from
nineteen eighty nine, Christopher Tough, ran for Saint Joseph's County
prosecuting Attorney, promising to open a cold case unit. He
was elected in November nineteen ninety eight and they began
reinvestigating the Pelly case. But the situation didn't really change
until two thousand and two, when the blue jeans from
the paper grocery bag with thirty four coins, a dollar bill,
(27:36):
and a legible receipt were viewed again, but this time
in a different light.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And as the court agreed, they clearly confused the blue
jeans and make an assumption that the blue jeans were
what were in the washing machine having been washed. When
that police officer made that assumption, he sent those blue
jeans away again for testing, and in two thousand and
two the FBI said they were heavily stained, found no
blood on them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
If it's established that the genes weren't in fact washed,
had coins in the pocket, and there's a receipt in
the bag that they pulled from an evidence storage, then
it means that law enforcement can't say he committed the
crime and then covered up and washed his clothes.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
They never asked themselves. Thirty four coins stayed in the
pocket of a pair of jeans washed off, thirty four
of them? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Not to mention that evidence, especially wet physical evidence, typically
would never be placed in a paper grocery bag. Now
it's unclear where exactly Detective Whitfield's belief falls on the
scale of honest mistake to pure evil, but either way,
no one along the way ever questioned the belief, and
(28:45):
he obtained an arrest warrant, which was executed at Los
Angeles International Airport. Jeff was arriving from a business trip
with his wife and Jackie, who then found him a
California attorney named Alan Baum to handle the arraignment. After
seeing the facts of the case, Allen State on board.
But even more information came to light after Jeff's arrest.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Tony Baylor, she comes forward once there's a trial date,
and she goes to the police department, not to mister
Pelly's lawyers, to the police department and they record her
statement and she describes this encounter with mister Pelly and
the church in which he expresses fear for his family's
safety from his experiences from Florida following him to Indiana.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Which obviously doesn't really point in Jeff's direction. So that's
like not super great for a prosecution.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And that particular tape of Tony Baylor never made it
into the jury trial because mister Pelly's lawyers never knew
of her.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I really don't think, based on what the records show,
that it was a reinvestigation to try and solve the homicides.
I believe it shows that the reinvestigation was to ultimately
clear or not clear Jeff Pelly as a suspect, and
those are two very different things. And ultimately I don't
think they pursued really avenues of clearing him. I think
(30:04):
they pursued more avenues of arrest.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
From two thousand and three, Jeff was held in pre
trial detention with no bond until his attorney finally got
one set in two thousand and five, and he wasn't
tried until two thousand and six.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
From nineteen eighty nine to like two thousand and three
is a huge delay.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
That's a very cold case, right.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think his attorneys have argued like that in itself
could have been prejudicial or was prejudicial? Do you then
have all the way until six before you get a
trial because of different clocks in the court going at
different speeds, and then you know, in that timeframe from
the arrest of the trial, the state pauses for like
over a year to say they need these family counseling records,
and then they get them and they never use them.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Maybe they were just stalling because the case was so weak.
The prosecutor, Frank Shaeffer, even admitted to the jury that
they had no physical evidence.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
There's no blood found on Jeff for his belongings. There's
nothing of his found on the victims way in which
that would indicate he was present for the crime. They
don't find the firearm, they don't find the shellcas things,
they don't find a bundle of clothing and a dumpster
somewhere that was somewhere he made a stop. Nothing physical
evidence wise connects Jeff to the crime.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
It was a circumstantial case. The investigators described the scene
and then they established their timeline with the prom goers,
which was countered by Lois Stansbury. But her Kmart receipt
had mysteriously disappeared, just vanished, so the state was able
to explain her away, along with other aberrations like the
(31:36):
popcorn in Bob's stomach and the light that was on
in the basement at nine to fifteen pm and two am.
So then the stage was set for between five and
five sixteen pm.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The prosecution was relying on individuals that knew Jeff and
Bob Pelly to talk about their tumultuous relationship and the
issue of a prom Could he go, could he not go?
Could take a car? Could he not take his car?
And so even though the state doesn't really have to
prove motive. They knew that was the only way they
were going to be able to convince jurors that Jeff
(32:09):
had done it.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
The problem with that is Jackie and Jesse both testified
that Jeff was allowed to go, but they disagreed about
whether the family's twenty gage shotgun was in the house,
which could have been cleared up by Thomas Kebb.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Thomas Kebb never testifies at the trial. Obviously the defense
would have wanted to use him because he's saying, no,
there was no guns in the Pelly home. All the
guns came to me before the murder, which sort of
takes away the state's point of there was a shotgun
hanging on a rack in the bedroom and that's what
Jeff grabbed and killed his family with. Well, if the
gun isn't there, then Deff can't do the crime. But
(32:43):
Thomas Keb was problematic because I pointed out in the
show that the defense got into why he had the guns.
They had to go into the point that Jeff had
threatened to take his own life the year before, and
I think Jeff's trial attorney saw that as does that
paint Jeff as a stable.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
But an unarmed Jeff can't shoot his family, unstable or not.
And to make matters worse, that wasn't his team's only failure.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
The initial claim in the proble cause Affidavid says that
the blue jeans were washed. The defense attorneys never looked
inside the brown bag to know that the blue jeans
themselves were dirty.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He just accepted the prosecution's established fact that the jeans
had been washed.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So the state's misrepresentation that the jeans had been pulled
from the washing machine went unchallenged, and the jury was
left with the impression that Jeff covered his tracks by
washing those Jens.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
What I found absolutely unbelievable is that Craig Whitfield, the
investigator who took up the case that reinvestigated and ultimately
submitted the arrest affidavit and arrested Jeff Pelly, was never
called to testify at his trial. So the absence of
Craig Whitfield, I think says a lot as far as
how the prosecution potentially saw downfalls of his work.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
But it appears that the defense may not have prepared
cross examination anyway.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
The evidence was so weak that I think the defense
they weren't as prepared as they needed to be to
attack some of the state's points and totally missed the
Florida stuff. Totally missed that at the point that the
families killed is right when the Holy Famili's getting arrested.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
But it's not like the defense didn't try to raise
the specter of Bob's past.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
So at trial, the defense is trying to go into
the Florida facts without witnesses that have firsthand knowledge, and
so the defense attorney says someone saw a limousine with
Florida plates. The defense attorneys never found the person who
actually saw the limousine.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And without a witness with firsthand knowledge, the Florida facts
were denied. Unfortunately, Tony Bieler's video statement appears to have
been unavailable as well.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
The defense attorneys testified at the post conviction hearing, had
they known about that statement, they would have talked to
that witness.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
So the jury never heard about the danger from Florida.
But the defense did continue down that alternate suspect road,
presenting the shotgun wadding evidence suggesting there may have been
multiple shooters.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And if there's more than one shooter, that kind of
takes Jeff off the chessboard, right, because it would just
be sort of illogical to think that he had a
co conspirator that's been quiet like all these years. So
the difference in the wadding types means two types of
AMMO were used, but same gauge. So either it's two
different shotguns or one gun is loaded with different types
(35:40):
of AMMO, same gauge, but you know, just different types
of AMMO, which like, okay, that's not impossible, but it
would be odd.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
But again, it's not impossible that one shotgun was loaded
with the same gauge made by two different manufacturers. So
the evidence fell flat without the Florida facts. And then
the defense tried to raise doubt about the state's timeline,
put on an expert who had done studies on the
rate at which different materials dry and testified that the
washcloths which were alleged to have been used by Jeff
(36:09):
at five PM on the day prior would have been
drier by the time they were collected as evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Unfortunately, that really fell flat for the defense because their
expert that they had hired from out of state was
just not very thorough with his sort of recreation of
figuring out what rate they would have dried at and
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Plus, the expert had conducted his experiments in Arizona, a
totally different and obviously much drier climate than Indiana, which
made the evidence easy to impeach. The state also played
the recorded interrogation in which Jeff did not confess, but
then the state put on the stand the detective who
had conducted the second unrecorded interview, who testified that Jeff
(36:51):
had allegedly said, if I tell you what I know,
will I get the death penalty? And then the defense
didn't raise the context of that response and what it
could have meant about the Herzogs that, along with Tony Bieler,
the Florida facts, photos of Jeff's unbruised chest, as well
as the truth about the blue jeans, well, they simply
(37:11):
were not available to the jury.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And deliberations, and they're saying, hey, we need more on this.
We'd like to hear one of those.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It's the blue jeans and some curiosity about Florida and
Bob Pelly's past, which is super interesting that the jurors
at trial are.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Like, well, that seems like there's something there. Can we
know more? Can we hear a witness or whatever, and
of course, you know, it just that never happens. After
(37:49):
she was interviewed as an adult Jesse, she began to
look back on her experiences and memories about Jeff and
began to have serious doubts about whether or not someone
else committed the crime. And he did. And so by
the time she is that trial, you know, she was
very convinced that Jeff had committed the crime and that
(38:10):
he was trying to continue to get away with it,
so to speak. She was pleased by the verdict and
there was some closure, but you know, it was never
one hundred percent closure for her because she genuinely just
missed her sisters and her mother and she felt so
much had been taken from her. I know, for Jackie,
she never thought that Jeff did it. She had no
(38:31):
reason to think that he did. At his arrest and
at his eventual trial, she was one hundred percent supportive
of her brother. She thought he did not do this
and that he should not have been convicted for it.
She was obviously upset with the verdict, but she's also
a very determined individual. So really, from the moment it
was read, it was like, Okay, what's next. What's the
(38:52):
next phase, what's the next fight? When are we getting
back in court?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
If you recall, it took about three years to take
him to trial once he was finally arrested, thirteen long
years after the crime. So his direct appeal attorney argued
that a number of issues that caused that delay had
violated Jeff's right to a speedy trial, which was then
ultimately prejudicial.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed the four murder convictions
and said that there was a speedy trial violation, the
state had wasted too much time, And the Indiana Supreme
Court put those four murder convictions back and said that
there was no a speedy trial violation.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
So his sentence of one hundred and sixty years remained.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Then, after that decision, I agreed to represent him in
the post conviction action, where, for example, you allege an
effective assistants, a council, and constitutional speedy trial violations. Let
me say this to you that no one, not the
defense team and not the Saint Joseph County prosecutor, according
(39:54):
to the evidence, had the FBI file. I got the
FBI file because there's no way I believe you could
wash a pair of blue jeans sufficient to remove every
piece of blood, but leave thirty four coins in the pocket.
There's no way I'm going to believe that. Look at
the coins, they're dirty. Look at the jeans, they're dirty.
(40:14):
The FBI said they were dirty. So I start from
the premise this is not right.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Frand made it clear that the defense completely neglected to
explore how the blue jeans had not been retrieved from
the washing machine or how they were falsely represented as
evidence of guilt. Then the defense neglected to show how
photographs and a lack of bruising showed that Jeff had
not likely fired a twenty gage shotgun. Plus there was
the failure on the Florida facts.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
There were ways he could have gotten it in at trial,
even the judge threw him a bone, so to speak,
at times in sidebar conversations like well, you need to
do X, Y and Z. If you want to get
this in this way, you gotta do this. You got
to give me something to get these facts in that
you want to argue about Florida and Bopelly in an
ultimate suspect that didn't happen is also those that knew
his attorney and had hired him for Jeff said, he's
(41:03):
out in California, He's doing his thing. He's not as
engaged with the trial. He's doing other trials like those
sorts of allegations. And I think that his attorney has
even come bored and said, yeah, could I have done
a better job on all fronts? Absolutely, I did what
I thought was best at the time. But now that
I am being told and shown all these things, I
agree an IAC complaint is completely valid and let's go,
(41:27):
which is I think kind of rare.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
So they filed the post conviction motion raising ineffective assistance
of counsel and speedy trial violations, and they were granted
a hearing in twenty twenty two in which they presented
evidence of those claims, along with other evidence supporting his innocence,
including Tony Bieler.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So, she testified at the post conviction hearing that conversation
with mister Pelly was in the weeks before the family
was murdered, and she didn't come forward in eighty nine.
She was afraid, and she testified about that conversation with
mister Pelly. And if you look, the state didn't ask
her one cross question. We called a lot of witnesses
about the actual Florida facts. We believe that the jury
(42:07):
should have heard from the mouths of witnesses, including Detective Kopinski,
who believed that the Hawleys had murdered their business partner.
So we put in lots of evidence about what was
going on in Florida that would have caused mister Hawley
to want to foreclose any witnesses from coming forward. And look,
(42:27):
if you're a father and you've incloves your sons in
a business enterprise that's criminal, and you've ratcheted up to murder,
I imagine you'd do a lot to protect your.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Sons, laying the groundwork for the danger from Florida and
a potential professional hit. They also hired a cold case
investigator to take a fresh look at the crime scene evidence.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
We presented an expert, mister Sopoli. He testified about the
lack of proper investigation and how the state's theory wasn't
consistent with the forensics. I mean, there's a lot of
the crime scene, as our expert witness to Poli testified,
that would cause one to question whether it was the
(43:07):
actions of a seventeen year old on his way to
the prom.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Or where mister Sopoli lands that this crime was so
clean that it likely was a professional hit.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
So Poli says, they took big trash bags and they
just step in him to take their clothes off. That's
how professionals do it. But we tried the case and
then it took the judge well over a year to rule,
and the judge ruled on the anniversary of the murders,
which felt harsh. Jeff suffers the deaths of his family,
(43:38):
he mourns them. So we lost, and now we take
an appeal of the denial of state post conviction relief,
which if we lose, will be a prelude to federal
habeas and our hope is that the courts will see
that the constitutional speedy trial rights and the right to
the sixth Amendment effective assistance of council we're violated.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
In the meantime, we'll link ways to reach Jeff's legal
team in the episode description, So if anyone has information
about this case, please reach out. You just might be
the person that could make a difference here. So with
that and with a heavy heart, we're going to go
to closing arguments, where I thank you both for helping
us tell this harrowing story. And now I'm just going
to kick back in my chair and close my eyes
(44:22):
and listen to any closing thoughts you may have. We'll
start with Delia and then close it out with fran.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I've really landed, based on what I know and what
I've learned, if Jeff Pelly committed this crime, which is
a huge if based on what we know now, but
even if you look at that scenario, he did not
do it in any of the ways that the state
and investigators came to conclude that he did. It does
not hold up against what we know about the physical evidence,
(44:50):
and even with some of the circumstantial testimony, And so
then you really have to really switch gears and be
open to the possibility of Okay, let's take him off
the board. Now what do we look at? And in
most criminal cases, you would say, here, here, that's kind
of thin, that's hard. But in this case, there are
(45:10):
so many credible and legitimate pursuits of investigation that show
that other individuals or another individual could have committed this crime.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I would close by saying thanks for your interests, thanks
for the willingness to look at the facts without a
bias and with some neutrality. I think this is a
case of injustice in which the state pursued the charges
against Jeff without evidence that was truthful in terms of
(45:44):
the Blue Jeans and in terms of the allegations even
about the twenty gage. So I appreciate your audience and
their interest, and again, as you said, if there's information
out there that would help Jeff, I more than one
to know that the Pelly family cares that people believe
(46:06):
in his innocence, because that can be sustaining when you
have these court battles, and in all of these cases,
when we incarcerate the innocent, we let the bad guy
go free. Nobody wants that.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(46:47):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(47:08):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Love of for
Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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