Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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So far this season, I've been focusing entirely on the murders of Bob, Dawn, Janelle, and Jolene Pelley. I've laid out a lot of information for you about the investigation into the crime, Jeff's trial, and the aftermath. Part of understanding all of that meant I had to investigate the Pelley's backgrounds, their lives, before moving to Indiana. Most importantly, Bob's life.
What I found is that in the late 1980s, Bob Pelley wasn't the only person connected to Landmark Bank in Fort Myers who died a violent, execution-style death. There was another man named Eric Dawson who had all of those things in common with Bob.
For the next few episodes, I'm going to tell you his story, and I promise it ties back to the Pelley family. So just stick with me, because Eric's story is incredibly important to understanding the big picture and all of the characters involved. In the mid-1980s, Fort Myers, Florida, the neighboring city of Cape Coral, and all of Greater Lee County was booming.
Developers from across the country were racing to the area to build condos, golf course communities, and strip malls. The frenzy to find land and transform it was at an all-time high. One man who had his sights on getting a piece of the pie was Clarence "Eric" Dawson, who everyone called Eric. In 1983, Eric was 38 years old and wanted to make a name for himself as a land developer.
Eric's background was in insurance, estate planning, and selling securities, but his real passion was real estate. He knew South Florida was prime for buying land, but the area also offered rounds and rounds of his favorite hobby: golf. After serving in the military in the 1960s, Eric had picked up the sport and by the '80s was a semi-pro golfer.
Eric's endgame was to move his wife Susan and their three kids from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan to sunny Southwest Florida before the end of 1983. He'd been thinking about the idea long before that though. In 1981, Eric started raising capital to build a hotel in Lee County. His plan was to put it near Southwest Florida International Airport and call it the Airport Sheraton Hotel.
Eric and five other men from Michigan took the plunge and formed a company called Green Tree Properties. They put $815,000 of investors' money into the hotel project, but within a year, things went south. Eric and his crew struggled to pay the hotel's $4.3 million mortgage, and the bank foreclosed on it. A few months later, another developer ended up buying the hotel at auction and renamed it the Airport Ramada Hotel.
When the dust finally settled, Eric and his friends were left in financial ruin. They argued and eventually disbanded their investment firm. By the time Eric and his family moved to Lee County in late 1983, he'd filed for bankruptcy, the bank had taken their home in Michigan, and to make matters worse, the National Association of Securities Dealers had fined Eric $30,000 for selling securities he misrepresented to investors.
Eric didn't let this slow his dreams down, though. In 1985, he created his own company called Enterprising Developments Inc., and he was determined to succeed in Florida. By 1986, Eric had raised enough capital from investors to get a half-a-million-dollar mortgage on a 72-acre tract of land on a major thoroughfare in Fort Myers called Winkler Road.
The area is just a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico, posh Sanibel Island, and back in the '80s was ripe for residential development. One by one, Eric continued collecting properties, taking out million-dollar mortgages on large parcels of land. He promised his investors double return when the projects were completed. By spring of 1987, Eric held the deeds to three major properties in southwest Florida.
One was the Winkler Road project, which I just told you about. The second was land on Fort Myers Beach slated to become a condo complex called Back Bay Health and Racquet Club. Eric's third property was a swampy patch of land off of Corkscrew Road in South Lee County. He had plans to develop that into a Christian residential community called Family Land. Things were looking good for Eric, except for one thing.
he still had that $30,000 fine from the National Association of Securities Dealers looming over him. He'd been dodging it like the plague. Which brings us to the summer of 1987, when Eric Dawson met Philip Hawley. I've already explained in the show how Phil ties into Bob and Jeff Pelley's lives, but now I need to tell you about how Phil connects to Eric Dawson. Trust me, it's vitally important to this investigation.
In 1987, Phil's business, the Fort Myers Credit Bureau, had been hounding Eric to pay his fine. For months, Phil and his sons who worked at the credit bureau had been trying to get Eric to pay up or at least schedule payments. Tired of the nonstop calls, Eric eventually went to the credit bureau office in person to address his debt.
Phil and Eric struck up a friendship. Eric agreed to make small payments, and over time, Phil became interested in investing in some of Eric's land projects. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. According to court records, by summer 1988, Phil claimed to have invested $2 million with Eric to develop two large properties.
According to financial records filed with the Lee County Clerk of Court, between 1987 and 1988, at least three of Phil's sons, Danny, Paul, and David, invested money with Eric too. $10,000, $20,000, and even more than that. The Hawley family also owned a construction company, and so as part of this mutually beneficial relationship, Eric drew up documents ensuring that the Hawleys would be an official contractor.
When construction got underway in early 1988 on the Back Bay project, Pierre Hawley, Phil's eldest son, actually lived in one of the property's condo units while overseeing the build-out. It wasn't just finances and promising investments, though, that brought Eric Dawson and Phil Hawley's lives together. They were both devoutly religious.
Both men claimed to be Christians with good character who were active in their communities and churches. They both were viewed as honest men when it came to their business dealings. Phil and his family attended Fort Myers Church of the Nazarene, where they were close with the Pelley family. Eric and his family attended McGregor Baptist Church in Fort Myers. Both churches still exist today and draw in hundreds of members each week.
According to court documents and interviews with Eric's former secretary, Eric was very charismatic about his faith. He often prayed with potential investors before sealing deals and would often promise people that their decisions were the Lord's will. According to financial records, a majority of Eric's investors were from his church or other religious organizations in Lee County.
He also had clients living in nursing homes that invested thousands of dollars of their estates. Phil, on the other hand, has been described to me by multiple people as not really mixing his religion with his business. And I should actually say businesses, because according to Florida Sun Biz records, Phil Hawley and his sons operated 17 registered entities or businesses in the state of Florida, three of which are still active today.
Most of the entities were collection agencies, construction firms, investment companies, corporations, and a private investigation firm. Phil's main business, the Fort Myers Credit Bureau, would pursue debtors for delinquent accounts. For every payment they received, the business earned a commission. Like a lot of creditors, it wasn't a trade of grace or mercy.
According to a lawsuit Phil filed in the 1970s, his private investigations business allowed him to wiretap and surveil people. Not a very compassionate or popular line of work. But just because Phil and Eric had different approaches to their careers didn't mean their two families weren't close. Phil's sons, Pierre, Paul, Danny, David, and Martin, were close to the same age as Eric's kids.
Eric's oldest son, Robert, was 19. Then there was Barbara and Jason, who were a few years younger than that. Jason Dawson is now an adult and still lives in Lee County. I cold-called him last year to talk about his dad. Just minutes into our first phone call, he invited me to he and his wife's house for an interview. Right off the bat, Jason explained the Dawson family makeup. I'm technically the only child. My father adopted my brother and my sister.
Susan marrying Eric after already having two kids explained the eight- and six-year age gap between Robert and Barbara and Jason. Jason says from the moment Eric adopted his siblings, though, he considered them his and made sure to show it. We would attend church Sundays, Wednesdays, so very active. And my parents were involved in the Sunday school with others.
He was always involved in coaching. If he wasn't coaching, he was coming to the basketball games. So, yeah, he was always there. But on September 9th, 1988, Eric wasn't there for his family. He wasn't there for anybody. Eric Dawson vanished. It was a Friday night. I had come back from playing basketball at a neighbor's house. He was supposed to come home.
that evening and go to dinner with some friends of the family. And 7 o'clock came, 8 o'clock came, 9 o'clock came. I think at probably 10 o'clock, that's when you knew something. Just the atmosphere was very dark, and it was something that we knew wasn't right. Jason remembers vividly the panic that set in next. That evening, my mom called the Lee County Sheriff's
And they said, "We can't file any reports. It has to be 24 hours before we file a missing persons report." That's a common line law enforcement agencies tell people who are trying to report a missing person, especially a missing person who's an adult. A lot of agencies today tell people that, but it should not be that way. Unfortunately for Susan Dawson, back in 1988, that is what happened.
She had to wait until Saturday evening, September 10th, to report her husband missing. Despite the 24-hour delay in getting Eric in the system, the family spared no time in launching their own search efforts. Susan called Eric's car phone over and over again, but didn't get an answer. After a while, she decided to stay put with Barbara and young Jason, hoping Eric would come home.
19-year-old Robert went looking for his father, accompanied by members of the Hawley family. The next morning, my brother contacted the Hawleys and actually went riding around with one of the Hawleys, one of the boys. Susan and the family had last seen Eric around 4:30 p.m. on Friday. He'd come home from work, quickly changed his clothes, and told Susan he had a business meeting.
He said that earlier in the day, a man had called his office interested in buying the corkscrew roadland. Eric didn't tell Susan who the guy was, but insisted he had to meet the potential buyer at the property at 5:45 for a showing. He promised to be back before their dinner plans. Jason remembers hugging his dad goodbye and watching his dark-colored Datsun 280Z sports car zip out of the driveway.
Fifteen hours later, Robert and the Hollies were searching for Eric. The group looked for him at his office in Fort Myers, but neither he nor his car were there. Next, Robert and the Hollies looked for Eric at the Corkscrew Land. It was a completely undeveloped parcel with nothing for miles in either direction. Back then, Corkscrew Road was a glorified dusty trail in the middle of cypress swamps and palmetto brush. The search group looked around for a bit, but didn't see Eric's car.
Because the property was so close to the local airport, Jason says his older brother Robert made a suggestion. They went out to the corkscrew land and then my brother was like, "Hey, why don't we check the airport?" And bingo, just like that came a critical clue.
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The day after Eric Dawson vanished, his son Robert and a few members of the Hawley family found a major clue. They eventually went to the airport and that's where they found my dad's car. Within hours of that bizarre discovery, Lee County Sheriff's deputies finally stepped in and began investigating. Eric's sports car being at the airport pretty much told them all they needed to know. Eric had clearly left Southwest Florida.
One look into his current business dealings confirmed, at least for police, why the 43-year-old father would want to disappear. According to court records, in the spring and summer of 1988, Eric's investment deals and projects were falling apart.
By all accounts, Susan Dawson and the rest of the Dawson family had no clue that multiple people had filed lawsuits against Eric leading up to his disappearance, and that old investors from Detroit were hounding him. They also didn't know that Eric defaulted on the mortgages to all of his Florida properties. Eric was very much in debt. So right away, investigators looking at his disappearance figured he was on the run.
That's when the rumors started, you know, he skipped town because he owed so much money. He was involved in something with the mob. So all of those different stories were formulated in that short period of time. And for months, that's what everyone assumed happened. Everyone except Susan Dawson. She insisted to anyone who would listen that Eric would not leave her and the kids. He loved his family. Jason felt the same.
He loved his family too much to do that. He would not have left on his own free will, you mean? No. No. I mean, he had a beautiful family. He had no reason to leave. He had no reason to live. In the weeks that followed Eric's disappearance, news articles and reports detailed his questionable investment strategies and how much money he'd allegedly swindled from investors. Unfortunately, Robert, Barbara, and Jason bore the brunt of the community's judgment.
I would go to someone's house to play basketball and I was questioned, you know, who I was. A lot of people were fearful of, you know, whatever they were fearful of. So questioning, are you Eric Dawson's son? Thinking that whatever happened to him bad is going to follow the children and the family. That's tough. Yeah, I mean, 11 years old and you're just trying to play basketball. And you lost your dad. Right.
It was a pretty sh*tty experience. Law enforcement kept Eric's case open, but weren't really working it. The more and more bad news that came out about Eric, the more deputies became certain he'd skip town and he was gone from Florida forever. But as fate would soon reveal, Eric Dawson was much closer to home than anyone thought. I remember that initial scene, it was kind of like a cypress head.
and realizing that we've got some digging to do. In the next episode, Hogs and Snakes, Eric Dawson's missing person investigation turns into a homicide. Listen right now. Want the same expert advice you get from the pros in the store while shopping online at DiscountTire.com? Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell by Discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
Today's top story, the flavor merger of the century between the peanut butter group and Chocolaty Corp. Joining me is a PBC executive. Thanks for having me, Barry. Now, how did you know the merger and the byproduct of it, Jif peanut butter and chocolate flavored spread, would be a success? You know, it was a gut feeling, a rumbling, if you will. Besides, they're two titans of taste. Very true. Goes great with pretzels. And pancakes. Apples too, I bet. Try Jif PBC today.