Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Throughout my investigation into Bob Pelley's murder and Eric Dawson's murder, I've uncovered information that proves the men had four things in common. One, in the 1980s, Bob worked as a supervisor in the Core Computer Processing Center for corrupt financial conglomerate Landmark Bank, which became Citizens and Southern Bank.
During the years Bob worked at the bank, Eric Dawson ran a majority of his business' transactions through the same institution. Both men were murdered in cold blood less than seven months apart. And four: In 1988 and 1989, both men had close personal friendships and business relationships with Phil Hawley.
Phil adamantly believes that Jeff Pelley is innocent and said that in his opinion, the evidence in the Pelley murders doesn't point to Jeff.
I asked Phil why he didn't attend the Pellys' funerals in Indiana in 1989, and he said he just didn't. He told me one reason Martin, his youngest son, who was a teenager in 1989, may have been in Chicago the weekend the Pellys were killed was probably because the Hawley family had business interests there.
I've been unable to tie any of the Hawley businesses to Chicago, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. We're talking about 30-plus years of records, a family that filed for bankruptcy multiple times and held 17 business names in Florida alone. Finding a paper trail for every one of their business interests from decades ago across multiple states is next to impossible, even for me.
While we talked, Phil also revealed that on several occasions before Bob and Don were killed, some of his sons drove to Lakeville to visit the Pellys. That, I can prove, happened at least once. During my interviews with Jackie Pelly, she and I went through some boxes of old photos. One picture stood out.
The image is from spring 1988, and it shows Jolene Pelley sitting in a red wagon on the porch of the church parsonage reading children's books with a little boy. That little boy is Nathan Holley, one of Phil Holley's grandsons who's since passed away. So the fact that Nathan was photographed on the porch in Indiana proves that the Holleys maintained a close friendship with the Pelley's and knew where they lived in Lakeville.
Phil told me that he regularly stayed in touch with Bob, and they called each other about once a week. I decided to look into the Pellys' phone records to find out if Phil and Bob had been communicating regularly in the months before the murders. I mean, after all, at that time, there would have been a lot happening in the two men's lives that would have been important topics of conversation.
In March of 1989, 17-year-old Jeff had planned a spring break trip to Fort Myers to spend a week or so with the Hollies. He said as much during his May 1st, 1989 police interview. I used to live in Cape Coral. We were staying out in Fort Myers. And I decided to go drive around the Cape, looking at the house and stuff, and looking to see what all they'd done, drive by the high school, everything like that.
According to Jackie, Bob knew about the spring break trip and that Jeff would be staying with Phil's family. Jackie herself went on a Disney World trip to Florida with some of her friends that same week.
But something I think would have been of even more importance during Bob and Phil's supposed weekly phone calls in spring of 1989, other than Jeff and Jackie's spring break plans, would have been the fact that Phil and three of his sons were in the middle of being criminally investigated, right?
I mean, if Phil and Bob were so tight back then, as Phil tells me, I would think at some point the topic of Eric Dawson's murder and Lee County authorities raiding Phil's business and home may have been something Bob and Phil would have at least spoken about. But I didn't get the chance to ask Phil more about this. The second time I called him, he said he wasn't feeling well. Two days later, when I called him a third time, he said he didn't want to mess with it and for me to just let it go.
I've also reached out to Danny, David, Paul, Pierre, and Martin Holley about my investigation for this show. Some of them spoke with me but declined a recorded interview. Others, I'm still waiting for a call back to get their side of things. So, with nothing coming in from the Holleys, I decided to go back to what I originally wanted to know, the last time Phil and Bob spoke on the phone before Bob's murder.
I went through the Pellys' home phone records page by page. The only document that still exists is one of the Pellys' phone bills, buried about 700 pages down in the trial discovery. The statement only shows calls during the billing cycle from April 20th through early May of 1989. This includes the timeframe of the murders.
When I looked through the records, I uncovered that in fact someone using the Pellys line had placed calls to Phil Holly's home in Fort Myers during that time frame. But the calls weren't placed when the Pellys were alive. They were placed after Bob, Dawn, Jalene and Janelle were already dead.
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According to the Pellys' last phone bill, on May 2nd, 1989, two days after the murders, someone used the Pellys' number to call Phil Hawley twice in the same day. And just so you know, the phone number for the Pellys went to both their home phone and an office line next door inside of the church.
On May 2nd, 1989, at 12.30 p.m., a phone call to Phil lasted for three minutes. At 3.40 p.m. that same day, another phone call to Phil lasted for four minutes. As I was investigating this case, I figured out what Phil's home phone number was back in 1989, thanks to his forgery arrest.
You see, when Tom Cantinos arrested Phil in Lee County in July 1989, the jail filled out a booking sheet. Listed on that sheet was Phil's home address and phone number. The phone number he put down is what shows up on the Pelley's phone records. When I initially made this connection, I called Frances Watson, Jeff's post-conviction attorney. Hey, Frances, it's Delia. Do you have a second? Okay, let me do it. Sure.
I wanted to know if Fran was aware someone made these phone calls. I didn't know if that had been something that you guys knew. Fran has spent a lot of time evaluating the Pellys' phone bill, but she never pulled the public records in Florida that I did. She'd had a hard time positively identifying who the two Florida phone calls had gone to. Well, now we both know.
To be fair though, it makes sense that someone would call the Hollies to let them know about the murders. I mean, after all, they were good friends with the Pellys. But who, that was still alive on May 2nd, 1989 in Indiana, would have even known to call the Hollies? The only person I can think of is Jeff. On May 2nd, everyone in Lakeville was gearing up for the Pellys' funeral the next day.
So, the logical thought is that Jeff called to break the bad news and see if the Hollys wanted to fly up for the funeral. When I spoke with Phil the first time, he told me that he believes it was Jeff who called to inform him that the Pellys had been murdered. Phil told me that when he spoke with Jeff, he told him to make sure police tested him for gunpowder residue and to not let the cops pressure him into incriminating himself.
But the strange thing is, I've asked Jackie and Fran to confirm with Jeff if he remembers making these two phone calls to Phil, and Jeff says he's unsure. He told Jackie he doesn't think he was the one who informed Phil about the murders. He thinks Phil knew about the murders when everyone else in Florida found out, sometime on Sunday or Monday. Jeff told Fran it's possible he did tell Phil, he just can't remember.
The question I can't get out of my mind is if it's a scenario where Jeff didn't make the phone calls to Phil, then who the heck did? The answer is something Fran is still trying to sort out with Jeff to figure out if maybe he's misremembering. The reason Fran absolutely needs to know is because in her post-conviction relief petition, she suggests that the Hawley family is somehow connected to the Pelley murders.
Yes, I know it's an incredibly bold accusation, one that, if true, helps her. But if it's not true, it's harmful to the Hawley family. Fran says Jeff and his wife Kim, who is also Phil Hawley's niece, are on board with the defense argument. In parts of Fran's 70-plus page amended petition, she claims there aren't just alternate suspects responsible for killing Bob, Don, Janelle, and Jolene.
She goes as far as arguing that Bob's death was a result of something he discovered going on at Landmark Bank, and members of the Hawley family were involved somehow. I always find the timeline that they did the search of the Hawley home the first week of April, and Mr. Pelley dies. Mr. Pelley and his family died the last week of April, and I don't see that as a coincidence at all. I think that Phil Hawley knew the game was afoot.
You know, how many degrees of separation here? There's none. You know, Pelley's tight with Hawley. Hawley's tight with Dawson. It's all through the Pelley bank, right? And it's all fraud. I remembered back to what Tony Beeler had said, though, that Bob was running from someone in Florida from his past and was afraid of them.
If you believe that story, then the Hawley family can't be who Bob was supposedly trying to get away from, because there's proof that they were still friends after the Pellys moved to Indiana. Still, Fran plans to present witnesses and evidence at a hearing likely this year to attempt to prove her theory.
At this point in my investigation, with what I know about the history in 1989, Jeff's conviction, and Fran's claim regarding the Hawley family, I decided it was time a professional crime scene investigator weigh in on the case. Someone who could examine the Pelley murders and break down what the evidence points to. Not what one side wants it to point to, but what the evidence actually points to.
My expert's name is Patrick Zerpoli, and he's a retired Pennsylvania state trooper who now consults on homicide investigations across the country. He has decades of experience evaluating and working homicides. Patrick had zero knowledge about this case when I asked him to come on board. Prior to me emailing him, he hadn't watched any TV programs, seen any crime scene photos, or read any police reports about either the Pelley murders or Eric Dawson's murder.
He was a fresh set of eyes. Patrick spent a few weeks reviewing the case material for the first time, and we met at the Audiocheck headquarters to discuss his findings. In our interview, he explained some really interesting observations.
The crime is very pre-planned, period. This is a high emotional crime, no matter who commits this crime, whether it's an outside offender or someone from within the household who commits this crime. There's a lot of emotion at that period in time. So there's a lot of pre-thought put into this crime because you're taking the shotgun shells out.
from the crime scene. And you already planned that in your mind that you were going to. So that emotion of that crime occurring isn't taking you away from picking up that evidence. So I think in their mind, the plan here was to eliminate everyone in that house. That was at the end of the day, you know, it's a very power assertive crime that the offender's life is going to be better if all of those people aren't there anymore.
So to a level, it's very organized. To a level, the crime scene, the crime itself was committed is a very organized crime. But also there's a lot of evidence there that tells you that the person who committed this crime has to have some type of intimate knowledge of that family and intimate knowledge of inside of that house. You know, one of the very telling things is
Where Bob Pelley is in the hallway and he's deceased, but he's shot from within the house. He's not shot from outside the house. So whoever shoots him is actually down the hallway where the bedrooms are versus coming in the back door or coming in through the kitchen. So that tells you a lot about your offender.
That tells you that the offender is associated somehow with that family, whether it be a family member or be a close friend, that they're able to get into that house that far to be able to then shoot him. According to Patrick, the order of the Pelley murders went like this. You know, the sequence is that Bobby shot first,
"Mom is in the basement with the kids, probably then cowering and protecting them. That's why you have that multiple injury to her in her digits and in her, you know, when she puts her hand up to kind of block the shot and then the children are shot afterwards. And then the offender just leaves and takes everything with him." He says the fact that the murder weapon and shell casings have never been found is important to understanding the offender's state of mind.
Patrick's assessment is that all of the evidence indicates the Pelley shotgun was the murder weapon.
He says because it disappeared after the crime, that indicates it is of significant importance, and the shooter knew it would be too incriminating to leave behind.
I think it's the 20-gauge shotgun that was in the... If it wasn't, there's no reason to get rid of it. If that's not the murder weapon, there's no reason to then go back in that bedroom, over that body, to get that gun, to dispose of the gun. If that's not the gun, you know, why would you do that? So I think that's definitely the firearm that was used here. If it was me, I would have just walked back upstairs, dropped the shotgun by the father and walked away.
Because when you look at their initial reaction, everyone thought it was a murder-suicide. Everyone went in there, and again, this is that thing that always happens to everybody. They're told by everybody this is a murder-suicide until they realize there's no gun on scene, then it wasn't a murder-suicide anymore. If the offender would have just walked upstairs and dropped that shotgun in the hallway and walked out the front door, we wouldn't be here today.
Despite there being two kinds of shotgun shell wadding found on both floors of the parsonage, Patrick is sure only one person murdered the Pellys. It's hard enough to find one person who's going to do something like this, but then to find a second person who's going to buy into it, especially when you kill two little kids, is something completely different.
And I always say, especially, like, just think about it. It takes you an hour to figure out where you're going to have lunch. If two people are discussing where we're going to go have lunch today, to make, to get someone to buy into something like this, a second offender, I don't think that's, you know, those shells make that difference that show it's two separate guns or two separate shells were used on either floor. I just think it's a mixture of what they had. So you think it's a single offender, single shooter? I do. I think it's a single offender, yeah.
Patrick emphasized that the single offender had to act quickly, but was still operating with a heightened sense of rage. In your right state of mind, are you going to go and kill a six and eight year old? That's the biggest question. You have to get yourself almost seeing red to that level of anger and that hatred towards them to be able to pull that trigger. If Jeff is the offender here, killing the children has to happen.
Period. If it's a close relative of the family, killing the children has to happen. If it's an outside offender who's just pissed off at Bob Pelley, killing the children is not going to happen. And I think that's one of the biggest things here, because you get an outside offender come from wherever, the wandering psychopath, he's not going to be worried about these two little kids identifying him. You know, this is somebody who is afraid of being identified by these children or afraid of something he may have done.
After reviewing all of the reports regarding whether or not Jeff's blue jeans were washed, Patrick confirmed the state's theory that his clothing was washed just doesn't add up.
And you think it points to Jeff Pelley? I do.
So there it was, a neutral homicide expert's opinion: Jeff Pelley likely murdered his family. The investigation has problems, but the conclusion was right. But that's not Patrick's final verdict. In his opinion, there's also evidence that indicates someone else close to the Pellys could have committed the crime.
He faults law enforcement in 1989 and in 2002 for leaving so much reasonable doubt around the investigation, enough to where asking the question, could someone else be guilty, is completely fair. Patrick doesn't support Fran Watson's claim about the Hollies, but he does understand why she's making it.
Those individuals there also fit in that, in those parameters. They also, Jeff fits in there, but they also fit in there too. I mean, if this was presented on a fair plane to me right now, this is the case. Those individuals are presented at the same time Jeff Pelley is presented to me. I would give them the equal amount of attention, if not a little bit more attention than I would Jeff if it happened today.
One person who says he knows from personal experience that the Hawley family could be capable of violence is Pastor Michael Ross. He knew both Bob Pelley and Phil Hawley very well while they attended his church in Fort Myers. At Phil and his son's 1992 sentencing in Lee County, Pastor Ross told me he was asked to be a character witness for the family but wouldn't take the stand.
I had a good rapport with that family until they wanted me to testify of the character of one of them, and I refused. Then I became the enemy and actually had to carry a gun, and my life was threatened. They were capable of doing the worst, and Bob knew that. I don't have any evidence or suggestion that anyone in Fort Myers was involved with Bob's death. I do know that this family...
To be fair, I can't get the other side of the story. Because members of the Hawley family haven't agreed to interview with me, I can't provide you with what they think about being accused in Jeff's post-conviction relief petition. I imagine they don't like it. I wouldn't either.
But the document has been filed. It's in the court record in Indiana. Me reporting on it doesn't mean I believe it's true. And honestly, neither should you. At least not without weighing all of the evidence first. What I do know is true are the four facts I told you about at the start of this episode. That Eric Dawson and Bob Pelley had four specific things in common.
Associations with Phil Hawley. Ties to Landmark Bank. They lived in Southwest Florida. And both men died horrible deaths. Those things could all be completely independent of one another. But they also might not be. What I needed to do was keep digging further into Bob Pelley's background to find if there's something else that I was missing. And of course, there was. A missing person.
That's coming up next on Episode 19, Name and Face. 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.
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