Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Telling words straight from the mouth of 17-year-old Jeff Pelley back in 1989. In his May 1st interview with St. Joseph County Police Detectives, it was Jeff's tone and his answers that rubbed investigators the wrong way.
Teenage Jeff was known to be sort of surly or cavalier. I guess that's the best way to describe it. But then again, what teenage boy who's independent and has already graduated high school isn't? Jeff was smart. He knew mere minutes into the interrogation that police were looking squarely at him for his family's murders.
As John Bowditch and Mark Senter began building their timeline of where Jeff had been on Saturday, April 29th and Sunday, April 30th, they relied a lot on Jeff's own words and what Jeff's girlfriend Darla had remembered. After all, she'd been with him Saturday night and up until the moment he was brought back to Indiana early Monday morning.
Darla is someone I've tried to contact multiple times for an interview for this show, but she's never returned my messages or requests. So my next best option is reading all of her depositions and statements in the decades since 1989. And there are a lot.
According to her first statement to police, Darla vouched for Jeff's whereabouts from 5:30 p.m. on Saturday through Monday morning. She said he acted normal the entire night at prom and was never unaccounted for. She also said that at the theme park, he was never out of her sight. The only thing that stuck out to her as odd was something Jeff had said to her while they were inside of Great America.
Darla said around 11 a.m., Jeff became sad while they were waiting in line for a ride. She said he told her that he felt like something wasn't right. Here's Jeff explaining that moment in his 1989 interview. I just had a feeling inside that something wasn't right, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. After a while, I don't know, I started feeling like something was wrong, and I talked to Darla about it.
I told her that I just felt like something was wrong. Inside, I just had this feeling that something was wrong. John Bowditch and Mark Senter had their own interpretation of what Jeff meant by that statement. I think it was like 11 o'clock. He's acting really goofy and Darla says, "What's the matter with you?" She says, "I really think something bad happened." She goes, "Like what?" He goes, "Well, I don't know, but don't worry about it. It's okay."
I mean, because he knows. This is like great America. Yeah, he knows that they bobbed and show up for church and they found the bodies. That's what he knows. Bottom line, John and Mark didn't believe Jeff's I had a weird premonition feeling. They believed he was smart enough to know it would be around 11 a.m. on Sunday that someone would finally discover his family's bodies inside of the parsonage. Jeff's weird feeling in their eyes was his guilt starting to set in.
Other circumstantial evidence John and Mark believed pointed to Jeff was the fact that the Pelley family had owned a 20-gauge shotgun. That gun wasn't in the parsonage after the murders. And neither was 20-gauge ammunition. Documents I read for this case proved that Bob did buy a 20-gauge pump-action Mossberg Model 500 shotgun in December 1987.
I tracked down the man who sold that gun to Bob, a guy named Steve Diller, and Steve spoke with me on the phone. He didn't want to be recorded, but he told me that yes, he sold Bob Pelley a 20-gauge Mossberg shotgun on December 23rd, 1987. Bob told Steve the gun was going to be a Christmas present for Jeff that year. I have a copy of the federal firearms form Bob filled out to make that purchase.
At the time of that transaction, Steve was dealing firearms from his home business. He later opened up a shop in Lakeville called Lakeville Guns and Ammo. Steve told me the only gun Bob ever bought from him was the 20 gauge. Bob paid for the shotgun by trading in a .44 caliber handgun that he'd purchased from someone earlier that year.
Steve told Bob that the shotgun was going to cost about $200, but the .44 caliber gun Bob was putting down as payment was valued much higher. So Steve took the .44 caliber and paid Bob $90 back as the difference. A few months after buying the shotgun, Steve said Bob returned to his house and bought a trigger lock for the 20-gauge.
Fast forward to April 1989. Steve learned that the Pellys were murdered with a 20-gauge shotgun. So he called the Indiana State Police to tell them he'd sold a 20-gauge to Bob and it might be the possible murder weapon they were looking for.
According to police records, Steve Diller's records, and Jeff's own testimony, the family's 20-gauge had two barrels that could be interchanged on the end. One barrel was for shooting birdshot ammo, and the other was for shooting deer slugs. The problem police faced was that the location of this shotgun wasn't so cut and dry. You see, whether or not that gun was in the Pelley home at the time of the murders depends on who you talk to.
Jeff and Jackie told police that their dad had removed the shotgun from the parsonage sometime in 1988, about a year before the murders. I'm not sure if he gave the shotgun to somebody else to keep also or not. I haven't seen it in a while. Do you know what kind of shotgun it was? I think it was a Mossberg 20 gauge. I think it was a pump. It held like five shots or something. I don't know. It's been quite a while since he's had it hanging up.
But Jessica Pelley doesn't believe the shotgun was removed from the house prior to the murders. She remembers the shotgun hanging on a rack in Bob and Don's bedroom on Friday, April 28th, before she left for her weekend sleepover. When was the last time or that you remember seeing that gun on that gun rack? The night that I left. Friday night, the 28th. Friday night, the 28th. And you're positive on that? I'm positive. Police believed Jessica's word.
So, if the gun was there on the 28th, as Jessica said, then that lines up with police's theory that Jeff could have used it to shoot his family on the 29th, but quickly ditched it somewhere along with the spent shell casings. That's why the gun wasn't in the house on the 30th. Supporting that theory was Dr. Rick Hoover's amateur blood spatter interpretation.
Remember, like I mentioned in an earlier episode, Hoover had determined that the blood spatter and position of Bob's body in the upstairs hallway meant that the shooter had to have been standing deep within the house. The shooter had either come out of Jeff's bedroom or Bob and Dawn's room with the shotgun raised when they shot Bob. According to police, the only person who could have gotten that far into the home and had access to his shotgun was Jeff.
During the investigation, we all believe that Bob confronted Jeff. His bedroom was right there and Bob's bedroom was right there, also Bob and Dawn's. I believe Jeff came out. You know, there's no other reason. He wanted to go to prom. I know I've told people, Mark's told people, why do you think this happened? He wanted to go to prom. That's his only reason for doing it. To try and prove this theory, investigators checked Jeff's body for one very important clue.
When police got Jeff alone on the morning of May 3rd, they wanted to check his body and shoulder for signs of bruising. According to affidavits, Dr. Rick Hoover told police, in his opinion, whoever the shooter was would likely have bruising or marks on one of their shoulders if they'd fired a 20-gauge shotgun. This mark would have come from the kick or recoil after firing so many times.
17-year-old Jeff was short, thin, and really for a lack of a better word, shrimpy. Mark Senter and John Bowditch got a search warrant and stripped him down to his underwear inside of the parsonage. The photos of this are pretty awkward to look at, but they're important because nowhere, and I mean nowhere on Jeff's tiny body and shoulders was there a single bruise, not even a red mark or anything.
Something that really stood out to me is that police put so much effort into checking for bruising, but they never tested Jeff's hands for gunpowder residue, which seems like an obvious thing to do. When I asked Mark and John why that hadn't been done, they told me there had been too much time between when they believed Jeff committed the murders on Saturday evening and when they examined him. So traces of gunpowder wouldn't have remained on his hands, and that's why they didn't even run the test.
As an investigator myself, I find that very strange. I mean, in my mind, why not even try to do the test? Like, instead of saying it probably won't work, why not just try and see? Either way, they didn't test for gunpowder residue, and their pursuit to nail Jeff for the crime based on bruising evidence was a complete bust. The next thing they turned to was evaluating a few other items found at the crime scene.
One big red flag was a book that investigators found on Jeff's bed when they processed the house. It was a photo album titled Our Baby's First Seven Years, and it was laying out in the open in the middle of Jeff's comforter. There's a picture of this on our website if you want to check it out.
Police believed that Jeff had put the album on his bed prior to committing the murders. They thought that it indicated he had taken one last look at his life and memories from when his biological mother was still alive, then coldly annihilated his family in order to go to prom. Because Jeff had appeared and acted normal with Darla and his friends at prom, police believed he'd likely taken a few minutes after shooting the victims to wash up and compose himself.
What most convinced them he'd washed up were three small but very important items on investigators' evidence list.
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If you remember from an earlier episode, I told you that among a lot of evidence taken from the parsonage were three damp washcloths. Tex had found them draped over the upstairs hallway bathtub. The rags were hanging on the side of the tub, and the basin itself had one small water droplet in it. St. Joseph County Police Officer John Pavlikovich listed the washcloths in his evidence log and pointed them out in the VHS tape of the crime scene.
There are various towels and washcloths throughout the bathroom area. However, they all appear to be dry and stiff with the exception of the two washcloths on the edge of the tub, the one with stripes and the one to its immediate left, which are fairly wet. There is also water inside the tub area on the tan colored mat.
The washcloths being damp was just another thing that indicated to police Jeff had done a cleanup. They figured if he had to wash his body, then he probably had to change out of whatever clothes he wore while committing the murders. But at no point during the videotape of the crime scene does the camera pan over a pile of bloody clothes or show any articles of clothing that look like they'd been washed.
The only reference police ever make to clothing evidence is in written reports. Detectives working the case strongly believed, just from the sheer volume of blood and brain matter in the crime scene, that whoever committed the murders would have been covered in biological debris. Investigators were convinced that there had to be bloody or dirty clothes somewhere.
The first time St. Joseph County police officers even bring up clothing evidence, though, is on May 16, 1989, 17 days after the murders. Detective Pavlikovich wrote a letter to the FBI. He was requesting the feds use their lab to help test several items of suspect clothing. He wanted to know if they had blood or brain matter on them.
In the letter, Pavlikovich mentioned that at some point, clothing was collected from the Pellys washing machine in the basement. The clothing was believed to be Jeff's, and it appeared to have been through a wash cycle. Pavlikovich didn't provide the FBI with a date, time, or name of an officer who collected that clothing. And I haven't been able to find any visual confirmation of where or when clothing was recovered in the home.
No pictures of any clothing from the home appear in any crime scene photos, and the washing machine is never filmed on the crime scene video walkthrough. All Pavlikovich wrote was that the clothing had, quote, been recovered, end quote. He said that the clothing that was removed from the washer was, quote, two white socks and one black and pinkish striped shirt, end quote.
Pavlikovich also told the FBI that a black Hawaiian print shirt was found in Jeff's trunk when he was apprehended, and that would need to be tested too. Now, that statement about the Hawaiian shirt contradicts two previous police reports made in the first days of this investigation.
If you remember, the Gurney Police Department and St. Joseph County Police Detective John Bodich wrote in their initial reports that nothing of evidentiary value was located in Jeff's car trunk when they impounded it in Illinois. I can't explain why there's a contradiction between what Pavlikovich told the FBI and what St. Joseph County Police put in their reports, but the more I've investigated, I think I've figured it out.
For now, though, what's important for you to know is that on May 1st, 1989, Jeff told police during his interview what he wore all day Saturday while at home. And it lined up with what Pavlikovich would eventually submit as clothing evidence. In his interview, Jeff told John Bowditch that on Saturday, he'd worn dirty black McDonald's uniform pants with pink sweatpants over them while outside washing his car after lunch. A pair of pink sweatpants.
I had my McDonald pants on because I had just gotten off of work. I had my black McDonald pants on, and then I had a pair of pink sweatpants over that, and I had a flannel shirt over top of that. By 3 o'clock, Jeff said he'd showered and changed into another outfit. I had a pair of black pants on and a pink and gray shirt, checkered-type shirt. I just loafed around the house for a while in that.
It was comfortable. And then when I went to go to Lynette's house, I changed into a pair of blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. So, blue jeans and a black Hawaiian shirt was Jeff's third outfit for the day. It's what he said he wore out of the parsonage when he left to go meet Darla at Lynette Greer's house. So, just to drive a point home here, if Jeff wore the blue jeans out of the parsonage, then they couldn't be what police found in the washing machine.
Police believed that Jeff was lying, though, about his entire timeline for Saturday. They believed that he put his bloody clothes in the washer to destroy and hide evidence. When Jeff's blue jeans and Hawaiian shirt were actually seized, and just exactly where they came from, is something I'll examine much closer in an upcoming episode.
What can't be ignored is the fact that nowhere in police reports does a single St. Joseph County police officer say that they personally collected Jeff's blue jeans from the parsonage's washing machine. With all of this clothing evidence to chew on, police were convinced more than ever that Jeff had access to a 20-gauge shotgun and that he'd showered and ran a load of laundry on the evening of Saturday, April 29th.
This was grounds for suspicion, but not enough for an arrest warrant. The county prosecutor at the time, a man named Michael Barnes, repeatedly denied detectives' request to arrest Jeff. Michael said there wasn't enough evidence to show that Jeff was the shooter and he wouldn't file charges. In the meantime, police kept on with their theory about Jeff.
They returned to the parsonage and sprayed luminol on the basement floor to look for traces of blood or biological material, specifically near the washing machine. But the results were a bust. We had some technicians from South Bend Police Department come down there and spray luminol around. Well, of course, there's a lot of blood in the scene area, which lit up. We sprayed it in around the entrance.
washing machine lit up like a Christmas tree. Wow, that's blood. Well, then we find out, in our infamous wisdom, that the soap used back then had phosphates in it, and phosphates react to lumino. So, I mean, you know... It's an iron in the water, too. Right, an iron in the water. So, you know, you're going to get them false positives. Investigators moved on, unable to prove blood had ever been in the washing machine. They decided their best approach to build a case against Jeff was by watching him.
Officers staked out the family's funeral at Olive Branch United Brethren Church. They photographed Jeff's every move during the ceremony and at the graveside memorial. I have a file folder full of these images, but most of them are blurry or Jeff is too far away to even really see. More than a hundred people attended both services, including the Pellys' former pastor from Florida, Michael Ross, and Jessica Pelley's cousin, Jamie Collins.
It's a small church, but it felt really big that day. And it was packed to capacity. There were people literally everywhere. There were people standing around every edge of the room. I mean, it was filled to capacity. So it's
And everybody's grieving and crying and wailing out. And so you've got the caskets at the front and the two little white ones were just heartbreaking. And then you've got the pictures, you know, on the easels of them. But I remember sitting behind Jeff and Jackie and Jackie was upset and audibly crying at times and looked upset.
But when I looked at Jeff, that's not what I got. And it wasn't just like being kind of emotionally removed or maybe you're in shock. It just felt off. And I think everyone who was around him that day felt that. Jackie Pelley says Jeff grieved in his own way, in private. It wasn't in his nature to cry in public. But John Bodich felt validated when none of the images that detectives took showed Jeff looking upset.
John was sure of it. Jeff was a cold, calculated killer. And he was going to prove it by using eyewitness statements and the 17-year-old's personality against him. I dive into that next in Episode 7, Time and Place. You can listen right now.
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