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No matter how much time has passed, the story of the 1989 Pelley family murders hasn't gone away. Well, it was 30 years ago this week at a church parsonage in Lakeville that a minister was murdered along with his wife and two children under the age of 10. Two years ago, I started reinvestigating the case. Right now we are inside the Olive Bridge United Brethren Church that's still here in Lakeville, Indiana.
What I discovered was pretty unbelievable. He had a life before the ministry. He wasn't a minister. He had a previous life. I absolutely believe the police in Indiana should have been looking into Florida. Over the course of Season 3's 20 episodes, you learned about contradictory police accounts. Five shotgun blasts killed four members of the Pelley family.
How many shots were fired? I think at least six. Contradictory theories. His motive, he was 17 at the time, he was grounded, and he wanted to attend prom. Bob promised he will not be going. He'll take them to the prom, but Jeff will not be going himself. Jeff was allowed to go. I knew that he was allowed to go.
and contradictory evidence. -If you look at the evidence about the washing machine, that's all made up. So are you telling me that at a quadruple murder scene, they took a pair of blue jeans out of a washing machine wet? Wet. -My work on the case didn't stop when season three released. I've stayed in touch with witnesses, family members, and Jeff's legal team. -All of it is Jeff. This is all Jeff. These are the old files of his lawyers.
After more than a decade of delays in the Indiana court system, Jeff's lawyer, Frances Watson, now has the opportunity to prove two bold claims. One, that Jeff Pelley did not receive a fair trial back in 2006. And two, he did not murder his family 33 years ago when he was 17. Fran's hope is to convince a judge of four post-conviction legal claims. Ineffective assistance, prosecutorial misconduct,
speedy trial and newly discovered evidence. Weeks after millions of listeners streamed Counter Clock Season 3, the state of Indiana responded to the legal filings Fran had submitted in late 2019. In a matter of weeks after the podcast aired, the state also conveniently found troves of physical evidence that authorities had previously said was lost.
Last week, the stage was set for the notorious quadruple murder case to go before a judge, and 50-year-old Jeff showed his face in a courtroom for the first time in years. This is CounterClock. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. You're listening to the special bonus episode covering the evidentiary hearing of Robert Jeffrey Pelley versus the state of Indiana.
If you listened to Counter Clock Season 3 and the Q&A episode that came out a few weeks afterwards, you know that a lot has happened in this case. I can't recap it all for you in this one episode, so I encourage you, if you haven't yet, go back and listen to Season 3 to refresh your memory, and definitely listen to the Q&A episode, since things were literally happening in real time as I produced that content last summer.
What I'm going to cover in this episode is everything that's happened since September 8th, 2021. That was the day an Indiana Superior Court judge officially granted four-time convicted murderer Jeff Pelley a post-conviction evidentiary hearing. Basically, the judge listened to what Jeff's attorney, Fran Watson, had to say about all the ways the trial court and Jeff's first attorney back in '06 made mistakes and agreed that the matter needed to be reevaluated.
Post-conviction proceedings can make your head spin because they're really complicated. But the short and sweet of it is, despite St. Joseph County prosecutors arguing that Jeff didn't deserve an evidentiary hearing, the judge granted Fran's motion anyway. Shortly before the September ruling, the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office finally found several pieces of physical evidence they long said was lost.
This evidence included a video-recorded police interview of a critical witness named Tony Beeler that had never been disclosed to Jeff's defense attorneys back in 2006. On March 14, 2022, the court blocked off four days for the hearing. No recorders were allowed inside the courtrooms, so you won't hear any audio from the actual proceedings. It's against Indiana law to rebroadcast it.
During the hearing, Jeff's defense team set out to prove four things occurred during his original trial. These things are what are called post-conviction relief arguments, aka PCR claims. The first argument was that Jeff's former attorney, Alan Baum, was an ineffective and incompetent lawyer for not probing whether a piece of the state's evidence, Jeff's blue jeans, were washed or not. Alan admitted in a prior interview with me that he failed in this area.
Did you know whether to really dig hard at that blue jeans point? And did you try and say, hey, I don't think these were washed? Or did you just think that what the prosecution was saying, that they were washed, was accurate? Well, if we look back on how I handled it, I guess we would have to conclude that I didn't make that factual connection an argument.
and that I could have questioned that blue gene issue more or even, or let's say better. So, I mean, you know, it's hindsight, but it's hindsight sometimes is 20-20. I can't change history. The way it was handled was the way it was handled. If it was
wrong or weak or ill-conceived, so be it. I mean, not so be it like I don't care, but that may be one of the areas that I could have hit harder and didn't. The ineffective assistance of counsel claim Fran made also alleges that Allen did not investigate Bob Pelley's past in Florida better and fight harder to get it introduced during Jeff's trial.
Andre Gamage, the Indiana-based attorney who represented Jeff alongside Allen, testified at the hearing. He said that back in 2004-2005, while preparing for trial, the defense team as a whole did not dedicate a lot of time to exploring Florida and Bob's background. Andre also said there were times he questioned Allen's motives for wanting to be associated with the Pelley murders case. At one point on the stand, Andre said, quote,
"I had a concern relative to his commitment to representing Jeff. At times it seemed that he was more interested in the publicity of the case than the case itself." Andre went on to say that before the trial in 2006, the defense was given a dozen VHS tapes of witness interviews, and Allen wanted to give some of that footage to national TV programs, to which Andre advised him they should not.
So, needless to say, Andre felt Allen might have been trying to get some press from Jeff's case due to its high-profile nature, and that Allen was not fully committed to doing the best job as he could as a lead defense lawyer. The second argument Fran Watson made in her PCR filing was that prosecutors back in 2006 knowingly misrepresented the blue jeans as a piece of evidence when they told trial jurors Jeff wore them to kill his family and then put them in the washing machine.
Here's Fran's explanation of this from a previous interview.
The jury was told that the blue jeans had been taken from the washing machine having been washed. The jury believed, from the way the evidence was presented, that he'd washed his clothes after he murdered these people. He left, didn't go straight up the stairs, turned and went into the laundry room, went this way, took off his pants, socks, shirt, put them in the washer and started it.
Out of the presence of the jury, the prosecutor says, "Well, I can take it all back to my office tonight and package it so they can view it." And Baum says, "Okay." Now, here, without any doubt, I'm not making this up, is what the jury saw. They saw no coins. It was packaged so that the Anna's Grocery Store bag is turned inside out. You can't take it out of the exterior bag and turn it over and see the actual coin.
The jury never knew because of the way in which it was packaged and the way in which it was distributed during this that it was an Anna's Grocery Store bag. I've alleged it's a Brady violation, that they knew or should have known they were presenting it in such a way that it was false evidence. Franz subpoenaed half a dozen former law enforcement investigators, including former St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office cold case detective Craig Whitfield.
Last week when Craig took the stand, Fran asked him to explain how he came to the conclusion that Jeff's blue jeans were washed, and why despite no police report ever saying an officer physically pulled them from the washing machine, Craig determined Jeff's blue jeans were what he wore to kill his family. In 2006, neither the defense nor the lead prosecutor ever called Craig to testify as a witness at trial.
Fran alleges that Craig was never asked to take the stand because the prosecutor knew Craig's logic about the blue jeans being washed was flawed, but hoped jurors wouldn't be paying close enough attention. And Alan Baum, well, he never called Craig as a witness either because the blue jean facts just went over his head entirely. Before Craig took the stand in the evidentiary hearing, the prosecution pulled a move no one anticipated.
The lead attorney attempted to argue the entire FBI file from 1989, the one that contained the forensic test results proving Jeff's blue jeans were soiled and not washed, should be thrown out. The head prosecutor argued the file contained hearsay, meaning he wasn't sure if what was in it was legitimate evidence.
He claimed that in order to authenticate what was in the file, he needed the opportunity to question all of the FBI lab techs from 30 years ago who produced the report. After a lot of back and forth, the judge ultimately ruled against the state for two important reasons. One, she said the FBI file had to be allowed because it was extremely relevant to the defense's case.
And it was a document the state provided to the defense under a former prosecutor. So because the state gave it to the defense as a true and accurate document of the discovery, it was obviously authentic and credible. After that lengthy conversation about the FBI file came to an end, Craig Whitfield's testimony got underway.
While being questioned, he admitted that prior to ever investigating the Pelley murders for the cold case unit at the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office, he had many conversations with the former lead detective on the case, John Bowditch. You'll recognize John's name. I interviewed him for CounterClock Season 3.
Craig said that he and John talked extensively about the crime and evidence, including Jeff's blue jeans, shirt, socks, and the washing machine, well before Craig took on the case in 2002. He insisted, though, that those discussions did not affect his independent investigation that resulted in Jeff being charged with the crime.
When asked why he stated in his probable cause affidavit that Jeff's blue jeans were taken from the washing machine with coins and a receipt in the pocket, Craig replied, "That's what the officers back in 1989 wrote in their reports." So he believed it. Despite being shown that not a single police or investigative report states blue jeans were taken from the Pelley's washing machine, Craig doubled down on his previous statement.
He said that he read an FBI report that said when the feds went to originally test the blue jeans, their techs found the stuff in the pockets. But when Fran questioned Craig about where that FBI report existed, he said he didn't know. All he knew was that he remembered reading it.
Fran told the court that if that alleged report Craig was referring to wasn't in the full FBI report, then she doesn't have it. It's not in the original discovery. So that would mean perhaps another Brady violation occurred. She kind of said this in jest, though, because she doesn't believe Craig at all. While he was on the stand, a bailiff actually brought in the blue jeans, coins, the Anna's grocery store bag, and the receipt.
But something strange occurred. Fran explained to the judge that since the last time she was allowed to view those items, someone at the prosecutor's office had clearly repackaged them. The judge stopped the proceedings and was puzzled by this. The prosecutor couldn't explain what had happened either, but the proceeding had to go on. Craig wrapped up his testimony emphasizing that he thought the ink on the receipt was smudged, indicating it was washed with the jeans.
His response to Fran asking him how it would be possible for 34 coins and a paper receipt to stay in the pocket of a pair of washed pants was, quote, it didn't make any sense to me at that time, and it still doesn't, end quote. Former Detective John Bowditch and Police Officer John Cooney testified, too. As expected, they also doubled down that they believed Jeff's blue jeans were what he wore to kill his family, and that he washed them to destroy evidence.
Bowditch denied ever seizing clothing from Jeff's trunk when Jeff was picked up at Great America the day after the crime. According to him, there was no way the blue jeans came from Jeff's trunk. Officer Cooney swore under oath that he looked into the washing machine while processing the crime scene, and he saw blue jeans with a few other articles of clothing in the basin.
However, Cooney said he never took the clothes out, and he could not remember who his supervisor was that he told about them. All he knows is that he did see the blue jeans, and he believes another officer took them as evidence. It should be noted, though, that Officer Cooney never said he saw blue jeans in the washing machine when he was called to testify at Jeff's 2006 trial. He said it specifically for the first time during the evidentiary hearing.
The third argument Fran and her team made is that Jeff's constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated. Basically, delays prompted by former prosecutors caused years to pass by between 2002 and 2006. And during that time, Jeff never got any closer to his day in court. Under federal law, a person has the right to have a trial by jury within a set amount of time after their arrest.
Back in 2008, an Indiana appeals court actually agreed that Jeff's right to a speedy trial was violated, and it overturned his conviction. But when the case made it to the Indiana Supreme Court in 2009, justices there reaffirmed the conviction.
The last major claim Fran argued in the hearing was that the defense had newly discovered evidence related to Bob Pelley's background in Florida that they believed contributed to the murders. Of the four post-conviction arguments, Fran told me that this last one is the most important, but also the hardest to prove.
This is where the recently unearthed physical evidence from prosecutors, as well as a prior police interview with Tony Beeler, a former church directory photographer who had an odd conversation with Bob Pelley before the murders, came into play.
For the past 33 years, the only documented proof that Tony Beeler existed and gave a statement to the authorities was a short one-page interview transcript of a conversation she had with a prosecutor's office investigator in 2003. This was shortly after Jeff was arrested.
The transcript was generated by that investigator, named Timothy Decker. He wrote it up after his conversation with Tony ended, so it's very basic. The full videotaped interview was said to be stored in evidence. A few weeks after season three released, St. Joseph County prosecutors found that interview tape after years of telling Fran they couldn't find it.
Once Fran got a hold of it, she said it opened up the door to introduce in court a lot of information about Bob Pelley's past and his relationships he had with people in Florida. Essentially, the interview opened up the door to the alternate theory that it was not Jeff who killed his family, but perhaps other people who wanted Bob gone. On the second day of the hearing, Tony's 2003 videotaped interview was played in court.
But a few minutes into the tape rolling, large chunks of it went black, words were missing, and the audio quality was garbled. Fran told the judge that the copy she was given by the prosecutor's office in June of 2021, not long after they agreed to turn it over, was much better quality and had no redactions.
When the judge asked the prosecutor why the tape that was played in the evidentiary hearing was not the same as the one given to the defense last year, he said he didn't know, but agreed that a better version should be admitted for the judge to view later. After that sketchy moment, Toni took the stand in person. She remembered being interviewed by investigator Timothy Decker in 2003 and explained that Bob Pelley told her shortly before his death that he was not an ordained minister.
He had a prior life where he moved money for bad guys and wanted out. Toni explained that Bob told her, quote, They're sending people and I don't know when, but they're going to kill me and my family. They're going to kill each member of my family and make me watch, and then they're going to kill me, end quote.
Tony said she tried to alert police to what she knew back in 1989, and she tried several more times leading up to 2003. But nobody reached back out to her, and she never heard from any attorneys before the 2006 trial. Fran argued that the prosecutor's office either mistakenly or intentionally withheld Tony's videotaped interview from Alan Baum, which violates the rules of discovery.
The reason Tony's testimony would have been so important at Jeff's trial is because her claim points away from Jeff being the guilty offender. It indicates Bob was fearful of something or someone tied to his former job and relationships in Florida. Most important of all, what Tony said points to someone else having strong motive to kill Bob and members of his family.
An additional witness at the evidentiary hearing who supported this idea was Kathy Hawley. You probably recognize her last name. Kathy is the ex-wife of one of the Hawley sons from Florida that was convicted of financial crimes against Fort Myers land developer Eric Dawson. At the time of the Pelley murders, Kathy was not Kathy Hawley yet. She was still in a previous marriage and had a different last name. She didn't marry a Hawley until the 1990s.
Kathy testified that she and Bob worked together at Landmark Bank's data center in Fort Myers in the mid to late 80s. She was a document clerk and Bob was a lead programmer. He was responsible for writing code and instructions for the computers and machines that processed all banking transactions for Landmark's branches.
Kathy and Bob interacted on a daily basis. She said they ate lunch together nearly every day, and when they weren't at work, their families attended the same church and hung out together. She said that shortly before Bob and Don and the kids moved to Indiana, he told her that he discovered something illegal going on at the data center and the bank.
He said he'd copied incriminating information related to what he'd found onto several floppy disks and then hidden them at his home in his TV stand under some magazines. According to Kathy, what Bob said he found was so big, he was worried if he told anyone about it, he'd not only lose his job, but his family would be in danger. Now, this is where my mind went wild.
In the case file, there are several statements from Jackie and Jeff from back in 1989 during their interviews with police. They said their dad banned them, or anyone, from using the computer in his office in the Parsonage's basement. And when I say banned, I mean banned. Jackie said in one of her interviews that no one was allowed to use the home computer except Bob.
In addition to that, there's a police report written by former investigator Mark Senter in which he's interviewing Ed Hayes, Dawn's father. That report states that Ed told police in 1989 that when family members got back into the parsonage after police released the crime scene, they found a computer in Bob's office in the basement with the power cord cut, like with a pair of scissors.
Now, if you know anything about computers back in the 80s, you know that if the power cord was cut, it couldn't power on, which was exactly the case with the Pellys computer. Ed said he was told the cord was cut by police investigators when they processed the scene, but nowhere in the investigator's reports does it state a police officer cut that cord.
On top of that, Ed also told police that the first thing Jeff went for when the kids were allowed back into the house were three computer disks. One labeled church, one labeled parsonage, and one that Ed didn't see the label for. Eventually, Jeff was asked to give these disks to investigators, but to this day, no one knows what was on them or if Indiana police ever reviewed their contents.
Now, if this story is true and Jeff did take those discs, that might indicate he knew something important was on them. But why hasn't he come forward with that? To me, if he thought there was something on there or his dad told them about them and to take them if something ever happened to him, that means that Jeff has something that points to someone else wanting to kill the family. Jeff has never interviewed with me for this podcast, so I can't ask him for myself.
Just the fact that these statements exist, though, in the 1989 interview transcripts from the case file, makes me wonder if the reason that computer cord was cut, and the reason Bob was so serious about him only using the computer, and why Jeff took those three random disks, if they're related at all, was because there was something stored on those disks, or on that computer, that was related to what Bob told Kathy Hawley about. It all just seems so sketchy.
After Kathy's testimony ended, the defense called an expert witness who testified that police's bias in only initially looking at Jeff caused them to exclude Bob's Florida connections as a possible avenue of investigation. Tom Cantinos, the former lead detective in charge of investigating Eric Dawson's murder in Lee County, Florida, a few months prior to the Pelley murders, also took the witness stand.
Tom's purpose was to detail the link between Eric Dawson and the Hollys, the details of Eric's unsolved murder, and how if police back in 1989 in Indiana had known he was investigating Phil Holley and his sons for criminal activity in Florida, that may have impacted Indiana authorities' avenues of investigation into Bob Pelley and his family's murders.
Bob's employment at Landmark Bank and everything Kathy Hawley and Tom Cantinos testified to has never been associated with the Pelley case in any legal proceeding prior to the evidentiary hearing. So the fact that it now exists in the Indiana court's official record is huge. But testimony from the one person who likely knew the most about Bob's ties to Florida, the bank, and members of the Hawley family was noticeably absent.
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Pastor Michael Ross, Bob's longtime friend and former minister from Florida, was supposed to testify, but unfortunately, he died in December of 2021 at the age of 75.
From what I've been told, it was from natural causes. Losing Pastor Ross as a witness potentially hurt Fran in court, but in the end, some of the things he may have known about what she calls the Florida facts could have been dismissed as hearsay anyway, or at least that's what she believes prosecutors were planning to argue. It's impossible to know if Pastor Ross' testimony would have packed as much of a punch as the defense had hoped it would.
Two other people, though, who knew the Pellys well and have seen the inside of St. Joseph County Superior Court once before are Sheila and Irish Saunders. They were the Pellys' next-door neighbors on Osborne Road. Sheila and Irish still live in the same house that they did back in 89. They look out their kitchen window every day and see the Olive Branch United Brethren Parsonage and Church.
I spoke with the couple not long before the evidentiary hearing. I wanted to catch up and get their thoughts about the podcast and everything that's happened since it came out.
You brought a lot to light that I didn't know anything about with Rob, you know? It was just like all the stuff that he had going on down south and in Florida, and I'm like, wow. And then Sheila and I jokingly were like, you know, when he came up here, he wasn't a minister, right? And I'm like, hey, Sheila, we might not even be married. He married us. We might not even be legally married, you know? But it was quite interesting what you brought to light, that's for sure. And I have a different outlook on
on this thing to hear what they really have to say. I can tell you myself, I mean, I had an opinion of what happened, but once I listened to the whole podcast, I have changed my opinion somewhat, right? And I think it's going to be very interesting to see what happens.
So many people have listened to it too. And I think they've all changed. Their mind is, it's wide open now then. But, you know, like I said, with Rob doing what he was doing and even like when he was, his wife passed away and of course her husband passed away. So I never had a clue of that, you know? And, you know, that's the thing that gets you is because being close to family or, you know, to them as a family and they never once made mention of that, you know? And I guess we never said nothing either, but it was like,
I mean, even before we got married, you know, they had invited us over for dinner and we sat down and ate dinner and stuff. And it was more of, you know, asking about us. But it's the thing, we never really knew that much. Sheila and Irish don't regret testifying as witnesses at Jeff's trial in 2006. But in light of everything they've learned, they now feel certain prosecutors back then intentionally withheld important details from them.
They're confused why prosecutors in '06 asked them to get on the stand if not all of the facts and evidence were going to be presented to the jury. When you're there testifying, you only have so much information, right? And you can only tell what you know. But then when you start putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, the picture gets a lot clearer.
Did it surprise you guys at all to learn that, you know, some of those items of evidence that had kind of been, oh, no one knows where they are, nobody's seen them, Bob's camera, you know, all that stuff is suddenly found after a spotlight's been put on it. Like, what's your interpretation of that, just as citizens, but also people of this story? You know, it just makes you wonder, where was this evidence? Why could nobody find it? I mean, that's the whole thing you look at, and it's like, you know...
"You don't understand." Something else Sheila doesn't understand is an interaction she had with St. Joseph County investigators back in the very beginning, during the first few days when authorities were conducting what they referred to as extensive ground searches. These searches were attempts to locate the murder weapon in peat moss bogs and woods on Osborne Road.
Sheila remembers seeing several searchers focused on a swampy bog across the street from her house and the parsonage, which at the time was filled with water and vegetation. It would have been an ideal place to try and get rid of a shotgun and spent shell casings.
And, you know, it's like I told them, I said, you know what, I'll get a sump pump, we'll pump this water over further so we can go in and, you know, dig down to see if we can find a weapon. They had no interest. I was like, don't want to do that. No, it's all right. You know, it could be here. Well, I understand that. But what if it is here? You know? If Sheila is right, that means police's efforts to locate the shotgun they believed Jeff used to kill his family weren't as thorough as they claimed after all.
I mean, if police weren't even willing to pump out the swamp across the street from the crime scene, what else were they unwilling to do? I think it's a fair question to ask in light of Sheila's statement. Over the past year, I've received similar stories from people who live near the parsonage. One tip in particular stood out from the rest, and it's something I've followed up on since the release of season three.
It came from a man named Jim Colonies, who lives on Maple Road, about two minutes driving distance from the crime scene. We moved here in the fall of 88. And we lived here, what, six months then, at that time. At that time, my wife was working the night shift, third shift at the hospital. She's a registered nurse.
So I was home with the kids, but I get VCR movies. So I was watching a VCR movies about 1:30 in the morning. And it was it was pretty warm that night, as I remember it, because I had the windows open. Well, of course, I was sitting there and all of a sudden I heard this car from racing down the street past our house.
At the time, I didn't think much of it. It drove down there and it made a sudden stop and it sat for, oh, maybe 15 seconds or so. I'm not sure. And then all of a sudden it turned around and come racing back, doing the same thing, going 60 or 70 miles an hour. All I could see were headlights and taillights go flashing by. And that was about it, you know. And at the time, I just thought it was some kids just hot rodding around. Who knows what they were up to.
until the next day when I heard about the murders. When Jim first contacted me with his story, I was skeptical at first. So what? He heard a loud car roaring down his street in the middle of the night. It stopped near a swamp, then drove off. It could have been anything. It was prom night for crying out loud. There were probably a lot of speed demons rushing around the area. Except, what if what Jim saw and heard wasn't just coincidence? I had to at least look into it.
First, I asked him to break down the specifics of what he claims to have witnessed in the early morning hours of April 30th, 1989. This would have been between late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. What did it sound like? It didn't sound like a loud race car. You know what I mean? Like some kids would allow it. Just the car going fast. And, you know, of course, the engine always kind of...
Screams a little bit when you're going fast in any car, but it wasn't like a hot rod would allow muffler or something like that, if that's what you mean. I mean, it wasn't like that. It was like standard car just racing fast. And it wasn't like a diesel truck or a pickup truck? No, it wasn't a truck. It definitely was a car, like I said. And it just made the noise of your engine always winds up, you know what I'm saying? But not like there's no muffler or anything like that. It wasn't loud, like a regular car just driving fast.
I'll be honest, it didn't seem feasible to me that the person behind the wheel of that car was Jeff Pelley.
Here's why. We know Jeff was accounted for by more than a dozen witnesses from the time he left the parsonage for prom at quarter after five until the morning of April 30th, when he and his friends left for Great America theme park. So I highly doubt it was Jeff zooming in and out of his neighborhood at 1:30 or 2 o'clock in the morning down Maple Road. He was said to be with the rest of his prom group for a sleepover.
But let's just say, hypothetically, it was Jeff. Why would he drive so close to the crime scene to dispose of evidence in a swamp in the middle of the night? If he was smart, he'd have tossed incriminating evidence as far away from Osborne Road as possible. Not in his neighborhood. Why would he risk being seen so close to his house, knowing his family was dead inside? It just doesn't make logical sense to me.
I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying on the scale of probability, feels like a bit of a stretch. That then leaves the question: Who was driving the car Jim saw and heard? And why did they stop in front of a swamp in the middle of the night on Maple Road, just minutes away from a bloody crime scene?
Jim hasn't sat on this information for 30-plus years, either. He says he went to police with what he knew a day or two after the murders were discovered. He thought the information might be helpful to them.
I can't remember exactly if it was Monday I called or Tuesday I called, but I started in my mind putting two and two together, which it could have meant nothing. But to me, I thought, I just wonder, that just sounded suspicious. And, you know, especially because at that time, you know, they talked about couldn't find a gun or anything. So I called the county sheriff and, you know, reported what had happened that night. They said, OK, we'll pass it on, we'll pass it on.
I do know that the county did come down this road, but I don't think they went in the swamp. I had seen them and they were walking along the edge of the swamp on the road. What's weird is that nowhere in the entire case file, and I mean nowhere, is there any mention of Jim's tip to police. His name isn't in any reports. I'm sure of it.
And what's more, Fran Watson says she's also confident Jim's statement is not in the case files. She and her law students have gone through the paperwork for years and never found him. It would seem that his story about the racing car was never taken down. In the end, I don't know if what he witnessed is related to the crime, but I think the fact that his story is missing from the official record is a bad look for initial investigators and could come back to haunt prosecutors now.
Jim himself isn't sure either if what he saw is related, but he says after listening to the podcast, he thinks the possibility is there that whoever was driving the mystery car could have been getting rid of evidence. Had I known that this would be something, of course, I would have stood up, I would have stepped out on the porch, and then I could have identified the car. You know, at the time, I just thought, oh, some kid's screwing around. Like Sheila, he says he never saw law enforcement search deeply in the swamp.
He's always wondered if there's anything important still sitting there, waiting to be unearthed. Knowing what you knew of that area in '89, would it be the type of landscape, if I were to throw something into it, that it would stay on the surface or would it sink? It probably would. You know, it's hard to say. Mostly it probably would sink, but you don't know where it would hit.
When the judge in this case will make a final ruling is a bit open-ended. In Fran's experience, judges that preside over post-conviction cases of this magnitude can take months to issue their final ruling.
It could come in 60 to 90 days if Judge Stephanie Steele wants to get it off her plate quickly, or it could take her a year or more. Fran told me she's had other cases as big and as complex as Jeff's that took a year and a half to get a ruling on after an evidentiary hearing was held. Whenever the ruling comes in, though, the outcome can only be one of two things:
Outcome 1: The judge agrees with one or all of the defense's PCR arguments and issues an order for Jeff to get a new trial. At that point, St. Joseph County prosecutors would have to decide to retry the case from square one. If they chose not to do that, then Jeff's charges would be dropped and he could be set free. Outcome 2: The judge disagrees with all of the defense's PCR arguments and things stay as they are.
"Jeff Pelley continues to serve a 160 year sentence for his crimes." Someone who's probably the most nervous to learn what the ruling will be, second to Jeff, is Jackie Pelley, his younger sister. Jackie was called to testify during the evidentiary hearing, and she mostly spoke about her family's life and relationships before moving to Indiana.
Jackie and I have gotten to know one another since she agreed to do an interview with me for season three. We stayed in touch, and I knew I needed to sit down with her leading up to the proceeding last week. The people in Lakeville, their opinion does not matter to me. The people in Indiana, their opinion does not matter to me. What matters to me is what the judge's opinion is. I don't care about anybody else's opinion.
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Visit iXL.com/clock to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. For Jackie, the evidentiary hearing was a deepening of an old wound, a wound that she lives with every day as one of the three surviving children of the Pelley family massacre.
It's there every day for us, but I think there's different levels too. Like there's that emotional aspect of I've lost my family, I've lost my brother. And then there's the digging in and let's fight. It's brought to the forefront. This isn't something that goes away for us. It is there when you wake up, it's there when you brush your teeth, it's there when you go to bed at night. It's not something that comes and goes.
She's been fighting in her brother's camp since day one. She runs the Justice for Jeff website and remains a staunch believer that Jeff was wrongfully convicted. That bookshelf behind you is pretty much all Jeff's stuff, all Jeff's
trial transcripts, every police report, everything that I have. And they're all out in binders because they're frequently used. You know, you're constantly looking for something or Fran or one of her students or somebody else has another idea and it's back to the, what's the report say? What was reported on before? How does that compare to what was testified to in court?
Seeing her brother out from behind prison walls and in a courtroom in person for the first time in over a decade was a surreal moment for Jackie. Honestly, it was a surreal moment for everyone, which included the handful of South Bend journalists and national media networks that attended the hearing. I don't know that he has been in person in court since sentencing, honestly.
He would rather not have his picture and image all over everything. He would rather just be able to, you know, listen and hear what's happening and be able to confer with counsel on how to pursue things. Like Sheila and Irish Saunders, Jackie knows Counter Clock has put her family's case in the spotlight. But she's not sure if the show alone is what prompted St. Joseph County prosecutors to start producing important evidence they claimed they couldn't find all these years.
I believe we've been aware of every single one of those since the day that we got the discovery after Jeff was arrested. It's shown on evidence logs. They've just never, ever produced it. We've had investigators go in to the evidence room to see this stuff and they can't figure out where it is or anything. So to know that it's been there
and they just won't hand it over is really frustrating. And again, I don't know, is that podcast? Is that a new judge? Is that who knows why it's been coughed up, but I'm thankful that it has been coughed up. It gives us, I guess, perspective on some things and leads us with a whole new batch of questions now that we've seen some of it.
To her, it was extremely important to see that many of the former law enforcement investigators who worked Jeff's case testify at the evidentiary hearing. I think Fran being able to take the time with each of them to say, this report says this, and this one says this, and it completely contradicts what you were saying. I think that's a huge...
opportunity for her to get down to, was something fabricated here? Was it the original police report? Was it you interpreting it? Where did that come from? I think that's huge. If the judge does not rule in Jeff's favor, this go-around in court will be where the case ends in the Indiana court system. Jeff's next shot at arguing his case could move forward to the federal level. What are you most nervous for?
I don't know that it's a nervous thing. I think it's just how much longer do we have to wait?
You don't want to get your hopes up too much because we're sitting around waiting and we could be waiting for a year or more for an answer. And then, you know, what happens from there? Is the state appealing the answer? If not, we're appealing the answer. You know, it's going to be a long road still, I'm afraid. Do we feel like it's right around the corner or do we feel like it's another few years off? And then there comes into play things like
you know, what's the state going to do on some things and if they were to make an offer or something and I don't know what that looks like. Is he willing to take that offer? Is he going to sit it out and make sure it's done right so that they're held accountable? That's a whole other thing. I fully anticipate if the judge rules and says he gets a new trial, that's going to be a long time coming too because you better believe the prosecution is going to run down every clock they possibly can
just to delay it because they don't want him out. So I hope that we're on the home stretch. I can't say that we are. We may have many years ahead of us still, depending on how things play out from this decision and any that follow.
I think that he's got like five lawyers now and I know they've all got big plans. So each one of them has a key part to play. And depending on what this ruling is will depend on who steps up to bat next and appeals or whatever we need to do for the next portion of it. When it comes to whether or not the podcast has impacted the public perception of her family's tragedy and how people view her brother's conviction, Jackie says it has. I've told people myself,
Don't be defensive. Just listen with an open mind and sit with it. You don't have to make a decision off of every episode that you listen to or the whole thing collectively. Listen to it, let it sink in, wrestle with it, and then see how you feel. Like you said, from the beginning in 1989, there were fingers pointed and
I think it's hard for anybody to probably say, "Oh, maybe I was wrong."
The amount of people that have reached out to me after listening from Counter Clock, and I can tell the difference between people that have listened to Counter Clock or just watched something or heard one silly podcast that was regurgitated from something else. There's definitely a difference in the people that reach out to me through the website. And the amount of support that has come through the website rather than hate mail lately,
It's different. And there are people that are like, you know, we just want you to know where we support you. We're praying. We feel horrible for Jeff or if there's anything else we can do. I've had several lawyers reach out to me. I know. I think we have at least two new lawyers working pro bono on the case that have reached out to France since the podcast. So the bottom line is this.
When I used to get on social media, I felt like I was the lone soldier defending my brother. And I feel like there's a whole army. And that hasn't really happened since the trial. No, that is definitely podcast related. As far as whether or not Jackie thinks her family's murders are truly connected to her father's past in Florida or are tethered in any way to the murder of Eric Dawson, she remains adamant that there could be something there.
She thinks investigators in both states need to be working together and trying to figure out if someone involved in the circumstances in Florida was behind her father, stepmother, and stepsister's murders. And I do believe that there is still connection. Which Florida connection it is, got me. But I definitely think that
Things should be followed up on, but can they really be at this point? I don't know. Because it's been, what, 33 years now. Is there any rock to turn over still? I just, I don't know.
And I don't know that we're ever going to get anybody. That can't be us. That can't be the lawyers. That has to be investigators. That has to be law enforcement that does that. But again, I don't know that they care. In their mind, they have their guy. So I don't know that they care.
As of right now, I can report that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement State Crime Lab is currently in possession of some firearm evidence related to this investigation. I can't go further into detail about it, but just know that things are happening.
What could come of that testing may become public knowledge. Heck, it may even lead to some bombshell revelations in this case. But until investigators get to that point, I don't want to compromise anything or put any information out there that might be damaging or cause confusion. In the meantime, we're all left to wait. Time will tick by and this story, it won't end. I have to accept that.
Whatever you believe about Jeff's guilt or potential innocence, you have to accept that this thing is still unresolved in many ways. Turning back the hands of time is the only way to see that. Until we know the judge's ruling in Jeff's case, I don't plan on releasing any more episodes related to Season 3's story. While I was working on everything that went into this bonus episode, I began investigating the unsolved murder of a teenage boy from Florida.
That story is the focus of CounterClock Season 4, which drops as a 15-episode binge in May. So keep an eye out here on the feed, and I'll be back in a few weeks. CounterClock is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Voters know that bad weather, like storms, lightning, and wind, can turn a fun day on the water into a challenge.
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