Deep Dive
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This is episode 13, Check the Bank.
In the mid-1980s, before being gunned down in the parsonage in Lakeville and before becoming a minister, Bob Pelley was somewhat of a computer whiz. I told you in the first episode this season that Bob once worked for a large financial institution in Florida called Landmark Bank. According to property records, the core data processing center for Landmark was located in Fort Myers, about a 20-minute drive from where the Pelley family lived in Cape Coral.
Bob was the facility's lead supervisor and oversaw thousands of banking transactions, investments, and transfers. He also monitored all computer activity between Landmark's statewide branches. Every day, Bob was privy to a lot of sensitive and confidential information involving millions and millions of dollars. Jackie Pelley has distinct memories of her dad's old job.
I know it wasn't a place that you like go in and conduct transactions at a bank. It was like where they sent all the checks and all of that to be processed. And it was out in the woods somewhere. My dad used to take people out there like when they'd come visit us to be like, hey, look, this is where it worked. And they would have helicopter drops at night where they just drop stuff through a chute on the roof. And that's what he did.
I haven't been able to find any pay stubs or tax records showing how much Bob earned at his job, but everyone I've interviewed tells me he made good money, enough to pay the bills and live comfortably. Bob used his computer processing skills outside of the bank, too, to earn side income. He often consulted for his good friend, Phil Hawley. Bob and Phil had become close while attending First Church of the Nazarene in Fort Myers, where Pastor Michael Ross worked.
Here's Jackie Pelley again. My dad was super close with Pastor Ross and Phil Hawley. I know that Phil's family was always in church. Like when I was a kid, I just remember them being there. At the Nazarene Church. I assume that they met at the church. I don't know where else they would have met. I know that my dad did some work for Phil on the side. So like on Saturdays, my dad would go over there and help with
I think the wiring for computers and stuff, but also help with the construction. I remember being over there, Jeff and I as kids on Saturdays and stuff, helping with that. At the Fort Myers Credit Bureau? Yes. As far as everyone knew, Bob's job at Landmark Bank and his consulting work on the side were going well as 1986 came to a close. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone except Pastor Michael Ross. ♪
In our interview last year, Pastor Ross revealed a secret he's kept quiet about for over three decades. In fact, he was so apprehensive to discuss it with me on the record that there were a lot of moments like this during our conversation. Could you turn it off just for a second? Yeah, absolutely. When we were back on the record, Pastor Ross eventually told me that Bob was a tormented man, tormented by something he'd uncovered at Landmark Bank.
criminal financial fraud. Bob came to me and told me that he had discovered this improper handling of funds and was not sure what to do about it. And we discussed it, and very shortly after that, he decided he wanted to go to Indiana to live. Do you think that he was scared? Yes, I know he was. And he was hoping to get away. He made it clear that he was concerned about who was involved locally.
And it was a lot of money that had been abused or misused or swindled or something. But I remember Bob was very scared for himself and for the kids. So, according to Pastor Ross, Bob confided in him instead of blowing the whistle to his employer. Pastor Ross says Bob was forced into a tight spot because the people he suspected of committing the fraud were his close friends. If it's work, just work.
He tells, blows the whistle, and that's involved people he knew, or that I knew, or we knew. I think, I assumed, rightly so, that it was church people. He knew these people, or this person. Pastor Ross believes this is the reason the Pelley family abruptly moved to Indiana after Bob and Don got married. Pastor Ross told me that Bob wasn't even an ordained minister when he took the job at Olive Branch United Brethren Church.
Just so I have a little bit of clarity here. So when Bob says, hey, I think I want to become a minister, I'm going to go work at this church in Lakeville. When he did that, was he actually an ordained minister or was he still in the process? No, I don't think he he wasn't even in the process. So how do you think he got that job? I don't know. Maybe someone in that church could tell you that.
But that's not pretty traditional, though, as it goes with pastors going from church to church. Like, normally you would verify they're an ordained minister. Yeah, that's the strange part of this. He wasn't trained. It was sudden. It was out of our tradition. It was rapid. It was strange and unnatural. Back in 1989, Jackie Pelley didn't know any of this about her father.
She told me in our interview that in the two and a half years her family lived in Lakeville before the murders, she remembers a few times where her father appeared to be paranoid.
He had three different instances that he felt someone had been in the church. There was one occasion, I remember he said he went through and in the kitchen there was water in the stainless steel sink and he felt like somebody had just recently been in there. But I remember an occasion that he was sitting behind me in the rocking chair while I was playing the piano and he was just weeping for a guy that raised his hand.
not to cry. That's huge. I would ride my bike and he would run and we'd just go through, you know, down the road or whatever. And he talked all the time about if something happened to him, what happens to us, who we would go live with and what was supposed to happen. As a kid, I don't know, as a kid, I think in one sense it gave me a little bit of comfort because we'd lost my mom. But as an adult, looking back, these are not normal conversations that you're having with
Fran Watson, Jeff Pelley's current post-conviction attorney, has interviewed Pastor Michael Ross a few times. She knows the same information that he told me.
Outside of her, though, I'm the only other person he's spoken openly with regarding Bob's revelation back in 1986. It took a lot of time for me to convince Pastor Ross to share what he knows. In the end, he agreed to be recorded for the show because he thinks it's time people know what was in Bob's past, the fraud in Florida, and everything in between. Fran has spent the better part of the last five years investigating what Pastor Michael Ross said.
She thinks Landmark Bank is vitally important to understanding what Bob uncovered, both on a local level and maybe international level. In the end, there was a whole lot of bad going on at that bank that never came to the light of day. So Bob worked in the central processing core of that institution that had those subsidiaries.
that used all those names and even transferred names, which did what? Allowed them to be less transparent, allowed this money to flow through. Do you see? So there isn't any doubt that there were numbers of institutions under one parent company, one banking parent company, and they had different names, but they processed all the money right through the central processing place where Bob Pelley was the computer man.
There was all this fraud going on through the very portal where he was the computer man. I didn't want to just take Fran's word for it, so I did some investigating of my own. According to federal court documents and some great articles I dug up from the Fort Myers news press, 1984 is really when things started going sideways for Landmark Bank.
That year, Landmark became Florida's fifth largest bank. By 1985, it had $3.8 billion in assets and almost 2,000 employees, one of which was Bob Pelley. Trouble was brewing beneath the bank's successful facade, though. Throughout the '80s, the FBI, IRS, and DEA had been monitoring the bank's records, transactions, and employees.
In an investigation known as Operation Greenback, the government began indicting bank employees and local clients, as well as drug traffickers from Columbia, South America, for using the bank's branches to launder money. The epicenter of a lot of the fraud was happening at Landmark's main branch in Fort Lauderdale.
Two men who worked there ended up pleading guilty to four different schemes that included creating fake loans worth millions of dollars, issuing cashier's checks to non-existent people, and producing fake property appraisals to boost the value of real estate for profit. Now, you're probably wondering why you should care about Fort Lauderdale. We're focused on Fort Myers and Bob Pelley.
Well, the core processing center that all of the fraud was funneled through was in Fort Myers and would have passed in front of the eyes of Bob Pelley. There's no way of knowing if Bob knew the depth or magnitude of all of this financial fraud, but it's clear, based on what he told Pastor Ross, that he at least knew about some of it.
In the wake of the government's flurry of indictments, Landmark sort of imploded. And by 1986, a company from Georgia called Citizens and Southern, also known as CNS, bought it and renamed it. In our interviews, Fran Watson isn't sure Bob's story to Pastor Ross was entirely accurate.
She's suggested that Bob didn't just stumble upon the fraud. She thinks it's possible he knew about it all along, and maybe even in a small way may have been complicit. It was an institution that allowed illegal activity in many forms. You know, the way the money was passed through. Now, his job allowed him, he was a central person, and so he had access to that knowledge and
You know, he would have been one of the people looking the other way. Fran doesn't think that Pelley's move to Indiana was Bob running away from confronting someone about a crime. He was running away, or perhaps being sent away, to save himself and reinvent his identity, job, and family. Bob Pelley left Florida because he knew he had his hands in some stuff at the bank he shouldn't know about or wished he didn't know about.
I think Mr. Pelley had a past in Florida he wished he didn't have. I think when he leaves Florida, it's to get away from that. So I think what he thinks is out of sight, out of mind. Maybe if I just get out of here, you see, and I move far enough away, I don't go into banking, and I just stay away from these people, I'll put this all behind me. Like, why do I feel so certain? Tony Beeler.
Toni Beeler, a woman whose story blows this case wide open.
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In 2006, Alan Baum, Jeff's defense attorney at trial, wanted desperately to use some Florida facts about Bob as a way to point to alternate suspects. But Alan didn't know the half of what I just explained for you in this episode. He didn't know everything Pastor Ross has told me and Fran. He didn't dig too far into Landmark Bank's history and Bob's exposure to the fraud.
Allen just wanted to use the idea of Bob's murky past in Florida as a way to create reasonable doubt. But the trial judge saw Allen's approach as weak, muddying the waters, and not well-formed. We tried to introduce some evidence, controversy in Florida,
might have led to bad feelings and revenge and the murders. Yes, it's surely it's speculation, but that sort of some other dude did it, evidence is allowed if it's got enough credibility for the judge to let it in. And of course, our judge wouldn't introduce that evidence. He thought it was too speculative.
So the court banned any mention of the Florida facts during Jeff's trial, which was a huge win for the prosecution, as you can imagine. Even if Allen could have gotten Bob's past in front of jurors, he knew he would have had to tread carefully, considering Bob was no longer alive to defend himself. And at the time, Jeff, Allen's client, was Bob's accused murderer. The last thing that I want to do in this trial is to cast aspersions to the victim.
I had no intention of going there in the trial unless it was in connection with some misconduct in Florida. I had to sort of apologize to the jury for bringing this up. That is for fucking ill one of the victims. Ladies and gentlemen, the murders occurred because events going back to his working at a bank in Florida and whatever evidence the judge would have allowed me to bring in.
So be it. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got to be fair here to my client. If what happened in Florida was the motive for these murders, at least Bob's murder, and then of course killing the other three is merely a pragmatic decision not to leave any witnesses. Bob was the target. If it was in connection with something to do with Florida,
Like I said, Allen's argument to include Florida facts in 2006 was denied, mostly because he didn't push it hard enough. But there's also another reason. He didn't have information the prosecutors had in their playbook. He didn't have Tony Beeler. This has been recorded with your knowledge, is that correct? And with your consent? Yes. The woman's voice you heard answering yes is Tony Beeler's.
The man asking questions is private investigator Gary Dunn. In 2007, on behalf of the Pelley family, Gary interviewed Toni in a recorded deposition. Her story is incredible. Toni says in February or March of 1989, she was a saleswoman for a company called United Church Directories. She and a photographer visited churches and offered to take pictures of members as a part of a package deal.
In spring of 1989, Olive Branch United Brethren in Lakeville was one of her newest clients. On the day she and her photographer showed up to take family pictures, Bob Peli pulled her aside.
Reverend Pelley called me aside and did not want the church directories made because he had a life before the ministry. He wasn't a minister. He had a previous life. And as much as I can remember what he said, because I was a little bit surprised about it, he was in finance and he wasn't in Indiana.
There were people, he didn't say who, but people were looking for him. And if they found him, they would kill him, his wife, his children, and a cat and a dog. They would wipe them out. That was their goal. And I distinctly told him that I asked if he killed people for a living. And he said no. He moved their money. And for that, he wasn't doing it, and he was hiding out as a minister at a country church in Lakeville, Indiana.
Matter of fact, he was matter of fact. He was looking at me through his glasses, standing there with his hand on the Bible, and he wanted me to know that this was the most sincere thing he'd ever said. He wanted me to know.
And I was standing there going, "I don't want to hear this. Why is he telling me this? If he wants out of the directory, I won't put the directory." And like in any sales position that you're in, you don't have the final call. I went ahead and told my people, my manager, I didn't want to do the directory and I had to do the directory anyway.
Documents state that the church's board of elders had already voted to purchase a directory package from Toni's company. So that's why it was a done deal and Toni's bosses made her go through with the photo shoot.
The Pelley family picture for the directory was taken, and it's an image that's gone on to be iconic and the most widely seen photo associated with this case. According to Tony, the directory it was featured in came out in early or mid-March of 1989. It's one of the last known formal family photos of the Pelley's before the murders.
Toni explained to Gary that she'd come forward with her story in 2003 after news of Jeff's arrest in 2002 hit headlines. She felt like law enforcement needed to know what she knew. What's interesting is that according to St. Joseph County records, in May of 2003, an investigator from the Metro Homicide Division named Timothy Decker interviewed Toni for a total of 23 minutes.
Tony remembers their conversation well. We were sitting in a small room and it was relatively dark in there. He was on the other side of the desk. I was sitting in the chair. You know, I'm a middle-aged mom, you know, and I really had the distinct feeling that he didn't believe me.
He thought I was just some wacko mother who was probably drank too much or watched too many soap operas. Did you tell this detective that Pelley said that if people found out where he was located, that they would kill him? Right. And his family? Right. And I think you also indicated that Pelley said that no one would know who did it? That's right. And did you tell that detective that? I did. Okay. What was his reaction? He just sat there and looked at me like, why are you telling me?
I was like, I very seldom tell anybody that my father was in the police department. But I told him that. I go, it's very important for a citizen who has the information that I have to tell the police. He was like, so? I said, so I was there and Reverend Pelley had told me in the church with my hand on the Bible that he wasn't a minister. How long did this interview last, Toni? Maybe about 25 minutes, maybe.
During the years that Allen was putting together Jeff's defense and receiving discovery from the prosecution, he never heard a word about Tony Beeler.
A memo prosecutors filed in 2003 states that their staff sent Tony's interview to Allen, but the document is not dated and the items never made it to Allen's office. Fran Watson alleges the state's failure to give Allen Tony's videotaped 2003 interview and coinciding report before trial was a huge error.
The state claimed, I can show it to you, that they filed the Tony Beeler memo, right? They claim they filed it and mailed it sort of in a document that's of record, but the actual document never made it to BOM. How do we know it? Well, we have what he received in these nice, organized folders, and it's not in there. To date, Fran is still trying to obtain Tony's 2003 videotaped interview from the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office.
Tony is living proof that Bob Pelley was fearful of much worse people than his 17-year-old son, Jeff. That's a pretty serious statement for a small-town minister to make to this woman he barely knows. I circled back with Alan Baum about whether or not he knew about Tony Beeler before going to trial. Is that a transcript that you ever received? No. And if you had, what would you have done with it?
Are you kidding? I would have offered it in evidence. I would have interviewed her again to confirm the report that led me to her and presented her as a witness.
If the prosecutor knew that they had this interview that was done in 2002 or 2003, and yet they decided to exclude it from the discovery that they sent you, does that constitute... Now you're talking Brady, and of course, it's a clear Brady violation. If that can be shown in this post-conviction arena, then that should get them a new trial right there.
By the time 2007 rolled around and Toni was having her deposition with Gary Dunn, she'd heard nothing from police. And at that point, Jeff was already convicted and serving time in prison. During her interview, though, Toni explained she didn't come forward to protect Jeff or even claim he was innocent. She just wanted someone to know what a burden the information she knew was for her. I'm carrying something so large,
And I know that there's a kid that probably didn't kill his parents. I'm worried about the people who may have been hunting for Reverend Pelley. If they find this out about me, then they find me. All I can say after listening to it is Tony's fear is palpable in that 2007 recording. To this day, she's still as adamant as ever about her story.
Because Fran Watson will call her as a witness for Jeff's future post-conviction proceedings, Tony has hired a lawyer and declined to do an interview with me. Does that make her story less credible to me? No. Does it make me want to vet her even more? Yes. One thing I know for sure is that her story is not information jurors deciding Jeff's fate got to hear.
It's a puzzle piece that up until now has been excluded from a very large, complicated narrative. A narrative that leads back to Southwest Florida. And as I've been investigating more into Bob's past, I've uncovered another murder. A man in Fort Myers who had deep connections to what Bob was caught up in and ran in the same Fort Myers crowd.
It's almost beyond belief in some ways. But sure enough, if you turn over enough rocks, it's there. It's there. Something else strange that's pointed me in this direction was a bizarre conversation I had with Steve Diller, the man who sold Bob a 20-gauge shotgun in 1987.
"When I spoke with Steve on the phone last year, he went on and on about the 1987 transaction he had with Bob and the fact that he saw Bob in his gun store on the morning of Saturday, April 29th. I expected Steve to stop there, but he didn't. Instead, he ended our phone call by telling me he wasn't sure Jeff was guilty."
He paused for a long time, then told me that what I was looking for, the truth, was in Florida. I asked him to explain, but he responded by saying I was a smart girl and would figure it out. Then he hung up and has never answered since.
I think it's human nature that we like the spectacular, the mysterious. And some things are very plain, that it's not a mystery, that there's more to it. I'm convinced more to this. Me too, which is why I've kept going, looking closely at a Florida family that connects so much together. You can listen to the next episode, Finds and Grace, right now.
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