Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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This is episode 17: Frauds and Fakes. In January 1992, when Lee County Circuit Court Judge Elmer Friday typed up his final ruling for Phil, Danny, David, and Paul Hawley's sentences, the news shocked a lot of people sitting in the courtroom. Despite the jury finding all of the men guilty of multiple felonies worth years in prison, Judge Friday doled out extremely lenient sentences.
According to records I pulled from the Lee County Clerk of Courts, Phil was sentenced to 120 days in jail, which he served mostly on the weekends and was required to be on probation for 20 years. But according to the documents I found, the probation was officially terminated in 2004. The judge gave Danny, David, and Paul no prison time. This news bewildered Lee County Sheriff's Detective Tom Cantinos.
At some point, if Eric stayed alive, he would have found out this property was taken out from underneath him through a crime, through criminal activity. By the Hawleys, it was proven they were found guilty of stealing this guy's piece of property. When you go to trial and you're found guilty, you're going to prison. I mean, it's not like there's a plea deal where it says, okay, I'm going to plead to this, that, and less or something. You go to trial and you're doing prison time.
And when the sentence came down, we were shocked at the extremely lenient sentence. Almost immediately, Tom says investigators with the state attorney's office became suspicious that Judge Friday was partial to the Hawley family. Someone from the state attorney's office, the chief investigator at the time, had made reference that they received information that something nefarious may have happened involving the judge. That's the last I heard of it.
Judge Elmer Friday isn't alive for me to ask him, so I'll never really know why, contrary to state sentencing guidelines, he gave the Hollies such light sentences. But it's safe to say, for most people looking on from the outside, Judge Friday's ruling was strange, so much so that even reporters like Sheldon Zoldan at the Fort Myers News Press were questioning it.
In your knowledge and experience of proofing stories and seeing coverage, to see people convicted on multiple accounts of fraud and forgery charges to not get significant jail time, was that surprising at all to you or the paper? I think it was surprising to everybody. Yeah, I think, you know, everybody sort of
He said, whoa, why is that happening? And again, it's a white-collar crime, maybe. And it just doesn't get, you know, some of the sentencing that if it would have been something else. But I think it did raise some eyebrows. Jason Dawson, Eric Dawson's youngest son, was devastated that the Hawley men never served significant jail time for the crimes they were convicted of committing. Just a slap in the face to my family.
It's a joke. I mean, when you're well-connected in a small community, you have advantages, and that's exactly what happened. According to property records, to this day, Phil, David, Danny, and Paul still have homes and businesses in Southwest Florida. Every now and then, Jason bumps into them. Being at Lowe's or Home Depot, running into one of the sons or running into Phil and his wife...
And I don't believe they know what I look like as an adult. And if they do, they're pretty good actors, of course, because I've run into them on a multiple amount of times in public. Jason is convinced the Hawley family had some connection to his father's murder, a crime for which they have been the only named persons of interest by local authorities.
Though they've never been named official suspects or charged in connection with Eric's murder, Jason still has questions for them. Just tell the truth. You'll be judged one day, but while we're on this earth, you claim to be people that you are, and walk the walk and talk the talk. You know, it's God's will, and His will will be done.
Tom says as each year and decade has passed, he's realized Eric Dawson may never get justice. Someone committed the perfect crime at this point because no one's been prosecuted for it. And the suspects are right there in front of us. They're right there. We know who they are. I know who they are. Because Eric's murder is still labeled as unsolved, the Lee County Sheriff's Office and the medical examiner claim it's an active case and have sealed all of the files related to it.
The sheriff's office also declined my request for comment on the status of the Cole case. Every few years, Tom and Jason request updates, but the sheriff's office hasn't responded to their inquiries in the last few years. A journalist who briefly attempted to reinvestigate Eric's case in 2018 ran into the same closed doors. His name is Michael Braun.
Michael and I have known one another since my days as a TV news reporter in Fort Myers. He's a veteran journalist who still writes for the Fort Myers News Press. Back in 2018, Michael spent eight months looking into the case and collected as many news clippings from his employer's archives as he could. He published a long article about Eric's case on the 30th anniversary of the murder. Last year, Michael agreed to meet with me in downtown Fort Myers to discuss his quest for answers.
Jason, his son, in 2018, in January, February 2018, sent me an email asking if we would look into it. And I didn't know anything about this case whatsoever. Nothing. So I started looking into it, and the more I looked into it, the more interesting it started getting. And from that point on, until November when the story appeared, I started digging into it, looking at old stories, trying to get a hold of people. And I got a hold of every facet involved in the story in some way, shape, or form.
He interviewed Jason, Tom Cantinos, and even briefly spoke with Phil Hawley on the phone.
He disavowed any knowledge of the murder. He claimed that it was likely a mob hit, that Eric had connections to the mob. None of that stuff could ever be confirmed. Of course, I'm not sure you can confirm a mob investment in anything. But that was his take on things. And we signed off, you know, amiably. There was no anger. He said he was framed for the fraud stuff only because he had been an investor in the Dawson case.
Right before publishing his article, Michael, Jason, and Tom decided to visit Corkscrew Road. They wanted to try and find the cypress clearing Eric had been buried in. In 1988, Corkscrew Road was remote wilderness, and even today, no one really knows exactly where the location is that Eric was found. But Michael hoped taking Tom Continos out to the general area would jog his memory.
We had no idea. We were going to go out four miles from I-75 on Corkscrew Road where the body supposedly, not supposedly, where the body was found. Being 30 years later, things had been built up out there quite a bit. And we really had no specific information on the exact placement where the body was. So we drove out there. We were on this one road, I think it was Gardner Road, I believe it was.
And we're sitting there, just kind of got out of the car. We're walking around, talking about the case. And all of a sudden, this car drives up. And we're all kind of looking at each other going, what's this? What happened next made each of the men stop dead in their tracks.
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In 2018, while newspaper reporter Michael Braun, former LCSO detective Tom Cantinos, and Jason Dawson were standing on a dirt road near the woods where Eric Dawson's body was buried 30 years earlier, a man came out of a house about 100 yards away. The guy pulled up in a pickup truck and approached them.
He acted as if there was a disruption in front of his home, which I'm sure anybody normal would do. Checking things out, you know, what is this guy with a recorder doing at the end of my driveway? Let's check it out. And the person comes up to us and says, hey guys, may I help you? He was very polite. And Mike said, yes, I'm Mike Braun for the news press and this is Tom and we're just doing a
a segment on a murder case. And that's when I piped in and I said, "How long have you lived out here?" Guy goes, "I've lived out here for like 20, 40, 30, all my life almost." I think he said like that. I said, "Oh, really?" I said, "Do you remember a body being found out here back in the '80s?" It was kind of a big case back then. I said, "Do you know where that was? Do you remember the location or are we close to where it is?"
And there was this huge silent pause. And a smirk came across his face and he goes, "Maybe we should start this conversation over again and let me introduce myself." I was kind of curious then. He goes, "My name is David Hawley." It was odd. It was unusual. It was... Tom Kantinas and I just kind of looked at each other like, "This is surreal." It's almost like a Twilight Zone episode. It...
It's really hard to describe when somebody who's a principal in a murder case from 30 years ago all of a sudden shows up when you're looking for the body, the site of the body where it was buried. It's one of the wildest stories I've ever heard. I checked out Lee County property records, and sure enough, David Hawley owns a home on Acreage off of Corkscrew Road, not far from where Tom remembers Eric Dawson's gravesite being.
When I learned that, I was forced to ask the obvious question: Why would someone who was convicted in court of stealing from Eric right before his murder live on land so close to where his body was found? If it was me, I'd want to be as far away from Corkscrew Road as possible. But Tom says David owning that home and stumbling upon the group that day in 2018 doesn't surprise him at all.
They're a very, they're an in-your-face kind of family. They're not afraid of anything. They're really not. It's almost like, yeah, we got away with it, and I'm living on the property that we did it. I mean, it's just, that's how they are. In the end, the only thing that is provable and was proved in court is that Phil, Danny, David, and Paul were involved in stealing land from Eric and forged his signature on a fake land deed.
But I have to agree with Tom a little bit. Living on Corkscrew Road is still a bold move. Jason feels the run-in with David was more than a coincidence, too. I think God works in mysterious ways. So I think that was meant to happen. And for whatever reason, it happened. And am I glad that it happened? I really don't have any either way to say.
The sheer oddness of the story really struck a chord with me. So I decided to look into the Hollies' background more and figure out what Phil, David, Danny, and Paul have been up to since their conviction. I met with Tom Continos again because he's a licensed private investigator. We combined our resources and information and combed through public records. Now this is suspicious to me that he's used these social security numbers in the past for some reason.
After a few minutes on Sunbiz, a database that houses records for registered Florida businesses, we made a significant discovery. You can see here, Family Land Foundation. So Philip Hawley owns a foundation called Family Land? Isn't that the same name Eric Dawson was going to name his development? Yep, and that's the recent. So you can view the LLC on that and find out.
Wow. Family Land Foundation was a filing date of January 24th, 2020. So that's recent. I pulled the records for that LLC, and here's what I found. Eric Dawson filed for the business name Family Land Foundation, Inc. in November of 1987. After Eric's death, it went dormant. And in April of 1996, Martin Hawley, Phil's youngest son, reinstated it.
The Family Land Foundation Company shows annual reports as recent as 2020, and the current registered agent is Phil Hawley. Again, I have to ask, why would someone who's been a person of interest in Eric's murder want to have control over his dormant business name? Especially the name Family Land, the very name Eric was going to call the Corkscrew Road property if it had been developed. It just seems so odd.
It doesn't mean anyone in the Hawley family is responsible for Eric's murder. I'm not suggesting that at all. But it makes me have so many questions for them. Something else Tom and I noticed in a data report we pulled for Phil and his sons was an all-too-familiar name. Likely Associations, Robert Jeffrey Pelley. That's Jeff Pelley who is sitting in prison for the murder of his family from 1989. You're going to ask me,
How does this get associated with this? I don't know the answer to that. I do. Remember, Jeff Pelley worked for the Hollies in the early 1990s and remained good friends with the family for years. I explained Jeff's case to Tom and the fact that the Pelley's were murdered in Indiana five months after Tom began his homicide investigation into Eric's death in Florida.
Tom says back in April of 1989, when he was trying to build a case against the Hollies for Eric's murder, he had no idea the Pelley family had also been murdered. Do you think it would have been of interest of you to know that a family who used to live here that was also close to the family that you're investigating were murdered? Yeah, that would have been interesting to us. And we didn't know that. What would you have done with that?
Probably, first thing we've done is contacted the Indiana authorities to find out, you know, what the motives, what the circumstances of that killings were. We certainly would have been interested in that. And maybe if, and law enforcement is like this, they don't communicate. At least they are better now, not back then. You know, they knew what they knew. We knew what we knew. We probably should have gotten together and shared that information.
Discussing Indiana triggered Tom's memory as we talked. He told me that he remembers at one point in his investigation into Eric's murder and the Hawleys, he and an investigator from the Florida State Attorney's Office took a trip north to chase a lead. And that would have happened in late 1988 or early 1989. I know that Jim and I went to Indiana for something. Jim and I went there
I pulled up a map to try and help Tom remember more.
So you said you stayed in Louisville, right? Correct. And there's the river. Mm-hmm. Do any of these towns leading up to Indianapolis look familiar? No, we went right across. I think the border is right here somewhere. Mm-hmm. We went across the river and we met, went to the PD office there. I can't remember. I really, it was just across the border. But was it in Indiana or still in Kentucky? It was in Indiana.
So we have just these towns. Any of those? Charlestown, Sellersburg? Because my goal is... Clarksville sounds familiar. And where is that? So it was pretty close to the Indiana-Kentucky border. It was right across the border, yep. And you say you don't remember what led you guys there. Do you think it had anything to do with looking into any business entities or information related to the Hawley family or to Eric Dawson?
I'm sorry, Dolly. I can't remember for the life of me why we went there. It wasn't a conference. It was work-related. Work-related to your investigation in Dawson. I don't know if we were looking for somebody, because I don't remember it being productive. Yeah. Because our bosses were kind of like, well, we spent that money. Can you bring back anything? Well, you know. Obviously, it was important for us to go to expend those monies.
for an investigation. So it was important for us to go rather than do a correspondence or a phone call. We didn't have email back then or anything like that. Because you went to a police department. We went to a police department. There's something in my mind that says, I'm thinking Clarksville, Clarksville, Indiana. I've contacted the Clarksville, Indiana Police Department and asked if they have any traffic tickets, arrests, or any reports related to members of the Hawley family or Eric Dawson.
The clerk there told me they checked two database systems and found nothing. They have a microfilm room with records prior to 1990, but the department doesn't have the manpower to check each film. They told me I'd need to have a report number for them to perform the search.
Now, if I could access Tom's case file that's sealed from public record, I'd be able to find his report from decades ago that explains what the lead was that prompted him and his colleague to go to Indiana. That report likely contains the information that would allow Clarksville police to narrow down a search in their records.
But because Lee County won't unseal Eric's murder case documents, I'll never be able to know for sure what led Tom to Indiana regarding Eric's murder. I find the fact that Tom went there at all, though, incredibly interesting, especially when you think about the timing of his trip. You see, in December 1989, Tom was building his case against the Hawley family for crimes against Eric. He thought he was going to be able to nail them for his murder.
On April 1st, Tom raided Phil's home and office. What was it that Tom found between December 1988 and April of 1989 that would have made him travel to Kentucky or Indiana? After doing some digging, I think I found something that might explain it.
After Phil Hawley was convicted of forgery and land theft regarding Eric, he filed for bankruptcy. And those bankruptcy records contained hundreds of pages of overdue expenses and bills. I got a hold of all of those documents from the Lee County Clerk of Courts, and I went through them line by line. I found a statement for a credit card registered to Phil and his wife in 1989.
According to the card's transaction history, in '89, someone used it in Louisville, Kentucky, three times. One charge was for $420 at a mobile gas station. Another was for $570 at a Super America gas station. And the third transaction was for $2,500 at a Saks Fifth Avenue store.
The credit card statement doesn't specify what month the purchases happened. But because I know Tom Cantinos arrested Phil and three of his sons in July of 1989, I'm going to assume that they weren't taking any trips out of Fort Myers after that. Their bail most likely forbid them from leaving Lee County. So, reasonably, the credit card transactions in Louisville likely occurred before July 1989.
My question is, who had Phil's credit card in Louisville, Kentucky in early 1989? And why were they spending so much money at gas stations and a department store? I remembered that Martin Hawley had told the Fort Myers news press back in May of 1989 that he'd been in Chicago the weekend the Pellys were murdered.
Maybe the credit card swipes happened when Martin was driving to Chicago. But again, the charge amounts are for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. That's too much money for a car, or even snacks for a car full of people. Then I thought, maybe the charges are a result of the Hollys driving to Indiana to attend the Pellys' funerals in Lakeville. But according to Jeff and Jackie, and Pastor Michael Ross, no one from the Holly family came to the Pellys' funerals.
So I'm literally stumped by these credit card records. Something just doesn't add up about them to me. There's only one way to get to the bottom of it. And while I'm at it, get some answers about just how close the lives of Phil Hawley, Bob Pelley, and Eric Dawson were. Hi, is this Phil? That's next on episode 18, Factually Based. Listen right now.
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Toyota, let's go places. A more colorful life starts at an Ashley store. From earth tones to vibrant colors, Ashley stores have an array of eye-catching furniture for every room in fun and trending hues that will leave a lasting impression. So it's easier than ever to express your personal style and design a vibrant home that feels just like you. Your more colorful life starts at an Ashley store. Shop in-store or online at ashley.com.