Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb.
And I'm Shelby.
And Shelby, I can already tell you feel better.
I feel so much better.
Good, good, good. I'm so glad.
So much better. I think I might have had a strand of the flu or something.
I don't know. I was not doing so well last week.
Oh, well, welcome back.
Thank you.
We are on episode number 49 of Dying to be Found.
And if you, our listener, have hung out with us this long, you are just as amazing as my sweet daughter, Shelby.
And Shelbs, I'm so glad you're here today to help me wind down season one.
We only have two more episodes.
Wow, that is so awesome.
It is. And I couldn't do without you.
So and I can't think of a better person to help me out during these months, Shelby.
It has been cold.
It has been dreary.
I'm under a blanket right now, but it's just one of those really good days to just be under the blanket and watch old movies.
Oh, yeah.
So I'm excited that you're here.
Thank you.
It's very rainy and dark and cold here today, too.
I walked out of work at five o'clock this afternoon and it looked like it was seven.
I know. As soon as that sun goes down, I'm a hibernator in the wintertime.
It feels like 10 o'clock already.
And the sun's only been down for probably 45 minutes.
And it feels like 10 o'clock.
Right.
Isn't that crazy?
Yes.
Yeah.
All right, shelves, I have a question for you.
And as always, I have an answer.
I don't really remember this.
Did you go to the prom a lot, even in your senior year?
I mean, I don't really remember you going to the prom.
I did.
I did my senior year, but that's it.
I wasn't impressed.
Just one time?
Yes, I wore a twenty dollar dress.
With a lot of jewelry.
It was fun for a little while and then I was gone.
There you go.
I think most people feel that way.
You go in, you check everybody out.
They have lovely clothes on and then you leave.
You make your appearance.
Yeah, that's right.
OK, I don't even know you if you know this.
Back in my day, it was a really big thing to go to the prom.
Like you had to go to the prom.
That was everything.
If you were not a cool kid, if you did not go to the prom.
Oh, we did.
We dressed up in those old timey down to the floor.
They look like Gone with the Wind dresses and we just had a really good time.
I remember seeing pictures of you in a few different dresses because I know you went
to several different proms.
You went to way more than I did.
I did.
I went to four in one year.
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
I remember you had this pink one and it was, you know, obviously wasn't fitting me at the
time, but it was one that you would let me try on.
Oh my gosh.
I forgot about that.
That was in your dress up box.
Yes.
Yeah, I didn't go to proms just because I had four different boyfriends.
I went because we were just a group of friends that would just go out and spend a lot of
time together.
It was so much fun.
I just love that era.
Yeah.
I do too.
I think if I lived during that time, I would have gone.
I feel like as the years go on, the shorter the dresses get.
Yeah, but they are getting along again, believe it or not.
They're trends, but right now they are getting along again.
I did see some people floor length.
They're really definitely not the Gone with the Wind, really puffy.
You have to wear those, what do you call those, coily things?
What do you call those?
Oh, the little underskirt things.
Yeah.
I can't remember what those are called, but I totally would have gone to four different
proms if that's how they dressed when I went.
Oh, goodness.
Well, we're going to talk about the Pelley family today.
It's a blended family living in Lakeville, Indiana, who unfortunately, Shelby, were brutally
murdered in 1989 just as Jeff Pelley, the eldest son, had made plans to go to the prom.
It was on prom night that everything happened back in 1989.
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about Jeff.
He is the oldest and he was born on December 10th, 1971 to Ava Joy and Bob Pelley.
He and his younger sister, Jackie, grew up in Cape Coral, Florida,
where Bob was a computer program and a pastor.
Now, Bob raised the family with strong Christian upbringing, but unfortunately,
Shelbs, Joy died of cancer in February of 1985 when her son, Jeff, was just 14 years old.
That's tough.
Oh, cancer is a terrible thing.
That is tough.
Yeah.
I don't know what I would do if I lost a parent that young.
Well, just nine months later, Bob remarried a woman named Dawn who came into the family
with three daughters of her own.
So Jeff, who was 14 years old, had just lost his mother and almost immediately,
just nine months later, he was thrown into a blended family.
I know that in itself is a transition.
That was very fast.
It was, but you know, there are people who just can't live alone.
And I don't know if you know that,
but there are definitely some personality types of people that just have to have somebody.
And Dawn's girls were Jesse, Janelle, and Jolene.
And these girls were very young, but I'll tell you a little bit about that
because I'm really bad at math and I'll try to do some calculations in just a little bit.
Now, in late 1986, Bob abruptly moved the family 1,238 miles away, or 1,992 kilometers,
from Lake Coral, Florida to Lakeville, Indiana, where Bob became a pastor of a very small
community church that was called the Olive Branch.
And Shelby, get this, back in 1986, the church itself only had 50 members.
And that in itself, I'm going to say is pretty darn small.
Very.
And just to give you a perspective on where they moved to between these two towns,
I wanted to kind of tell you what the population is today.
And this is in 2023, or at least in the last census, Lake Coral, Florida has a population
of 850,000 people.
Wow, that's a lot.
It is. Yeah, that's pretty big.
And Lakeview, Indiana has 960, less than 1,000 people in the population.
That is a huge difference.
And I think that's probably smaller than the town you live in, my dear.
Pretty significantly.
Mm-hmm.
I know that when I lived in North Carolina, this town here of Lakeview, Indiana is just
one quarter of the size of the town that I lived in when I lived in North Carolina.
So I imagine there's probably a little bit of a culture shock for the kids moving so far.
Maybe not for the younger ones, but definitely for Jeff.
He's a teenager, he's hormonal, he just moved schools, he moved far, far away from what he
was used to.
He lost his mother.
He had a lot going on.
Yeah. Oh, I couldn't imagine at that age.
Yeah. And honestly, Shelbs, that's pretty similar to my circumstances when I moved from
Canada. I had a lot going on too.
And a lot of this, I'm going to say is somewhat similar.
And I was thrown into a blended family, moved very far away.
Your mother turned out okay.
Or at least I think I turned out okay.
Well, I'm going to talk about Jeff and his adult life because after he graduated from
high school, so he was 14 when he moved there, he was probably in ninth or 10th grade.
And so he probably just had three years in Indiana because he decided as an adult, he
graduated from high school and he moved back to Florida and he followed in his dad's footsteps,
actually, because if you remember, I had told you his dad was a computer programmer and
Jeff also got into the techie business by becoming a computer consultant for IBM.
Right.
Yeah. So life went on.
He seemed to be very well-rounded until the day that Jeff was arrested in 2002 at the
age of 30 for the murder of his family members.
Oh, that just gave me goosebumps.
Yeah. Now, Shelby, I do believe that his sister is still alive, his blood sister, but the
step-family did not make it out, his dad, his stepmother and his two stepsisters.
So we're going to rewind a little bit.
We're going to go back to when Jeff was in high school.
On April 30th, 1989, Jeff's dad, Bob, failed to show up at the church one day where he
was a pastor and he had a sermon to speak that morning at the church.
One of his parishioners got worried, of course, because the pastor did not show up to church
that day and he went to check on him.
And Shelby, in the 1980s, when people could live with their doors unlocked in a small
town, they were one of them.
Nobody locked their doors.
And this, of course, struck the parishioner at odds because he found the doors locked,
but the Pelley family didn't usually lock their doors.
So he used a spare key to get in because the Lakeville, Indiana community is really trusting
like that, they give each other house keys.
The parishioner entered the Pelley home to check on things.
And Shelby, when he walked in, there lay Bob, age 38, his wife Dawn, 32, Janelle, age eight,
and Jolene, age six.
They were all in the house deceased.
Wow.
I know, right?
Bob was in the hallway and the rest of the family was downstairs in the basement.
There did not appear to be any forced entry to the home.
But remember now, the parishioner that found the Pelley's said the doors were locked, which
was quite unusual.
Police say that it did not look like a burglary had occurred either.
However, there was a shotgun missing from a gun rack in the family's home.
And I believe that was in Bob's bedroom hanging on the wall.
And police do believe that was the murder weapon that was used.
Wow.
Bob had died of two gunshot wounds to the head.
Dawn and the girls had also died the same way, but it was very evident, Shelbs, that
Dawn was trying to protect the girls from whoever was attacking them.
Of course she was.
They were so young.
I know.
She's not much older than me at all.
Mm-mm.
And I'd do the same thing.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Well, the rest of the kids were not at home.
Jeff did have one step-sister, Jessie, age nine, who was sleeping over at a friend's
house.
And Jeff's sister, Jackie, who was 13 at the time, was at a church camp.
So Jeff and his sister were away.
One of his step-sisters was away, and the rest of the family was in the house.
Jeff, on the other hand, he was 17 at this time.
Remember, he moved there when he was 14.
So three years later, he was actually enjoying the day.
He was actually enjoying the day at the Great America Amusement Park near Chicago, Illinois,
after attending the prom the night before.
I mean, nothing unusual about that, right?
It's great.
It's like Six Flags.
You've been there before, and I believe it's actually part of the same franchise.
Mm-hmm.
So he just went to a theme park the day after prom.
He got dressed up, went to the prom the night before, and then he went and hung out with
his friends the next day.
Wow.
Could you imagine being at that park and investigators walking up to you while you're just hanging
out with your friends?
They track you down at a park.
Could you imagine getting news like that?
No, not at all.
I know.
No, and that's crazy because it's not like they really had the cell phones back then.
So I wonder how quickly they were able to find out that's where he was.
Yeah.
Well, I'll bet his sister told them probably.
Oh, possibly.
Yeah.
So the police conducted an investigation and came to some pretty swift conclusions, being
how small that town was.
Oh yeah.
Well, somebody knew where he was.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Small town.
Everybody knows everybody.
And when they interviewed Jessie, the nine-year-old, she believed that Bob had committed murder
or suicide murder.
Now, these are my grownup words, Shelves, because nine-year-olds wouldn't know how to
say that.
But she did tell police that she thought Bob did it because he was a mean, mean stepdad
and he spanked her a lot.
Oh wow.
So that's coming from the mouth of babes, you know?
Yeah.
Oh.
I know.
Police quickly dismissed this idea though, because number one, they never found the murder
weapon.
Number two, they also interviewed Jeff.
And during their conversation with him, police discovered that Jeff had gotten to a little
pickle at home just the night before the murders.
According to Jeff, Bob had restricted him for stealing some money and some CDs and forbade
Jeff to drive his date to the prom on April 29th.
So basically Jeff was grounded and he was not permitted to attend any social events
with his friends, including that trip that they planned to the amusement park the next
day.
Oh, I would say there's the motive right there.
Oh yeah.
Well, I just wanted to mention too, there's a difference between being grounded and being
restricted.
I'll tell you what though, when I first moved to Georgia, oh my gosh, the lingo here, Shelby,
it was crazy.
It was like a different foreign language to me.
I had no idea what half these people were saying around here.
What's the difference between being grounded and restricted?
Well grounded means that you can't go anywhere.
Restricted means that obviously you have restrictions.
You can still go somewhere.
I'm not going to let you drive your date to the prom, but I'll be happy to escort you
there son.
I'm sure at 17 that's a little embarrassing too.
Yes.
Being chaperoned to the prom with dad.
Yeah.
Well, that's what happened.
And don't forget he was a pastor, so he was probably a little stricter.
Right.
Yeah.
So Bob never said that Jeff couldn't go to the prom.
He just said, yeah, you're going to leave your Mustang parked in the driveway and I'll
be happy to drop you off.
So Jeff also openly admitted that he and Dawn, his stepmother didn't always see eye to eye.
Again, Shelbs, I've kind of been there.
I've been in a household where it's his boys and her girls and everybody was split down
the middle.
So there's obviously tension, especially if you're thrown into that blended family.
There's nothing wrong with it.
I have wonderful stepbrothers.
I had a really wonderful stepfather, but when you're first thrown into all that, it really
takes a lot of time to adjust to that.
For sure.
It's not an overnight process.
No, not at all.
Naturally Jeff became the prime suspect behind the Pelley family murders and the police believed
that Bob and Jeff had gotten into an altercation where Jeff ended up killing his family members
before getting dressed in his little white tuxedo and showing up late to pick up his
date who went to the prom with him that night.
Wow.
Seems to me like the reason maybe why he locked the door was because he was coming back to
where he had it in his mind that he didn't want anybody coming in and he had planned
to do something with the bodies later.
Wow.
Yeah.
Gosh, that's a great concept.
You're probably right.
I could be a detective.
They have an opening here.
Do they now?
Yes, they do.
Well, you never know until you try.
You can tell them you have experience because you're a true crime podcaster now.
That's right.
All right.
So Jeff's girlfriend had been interviewed by the police and she stated that she was
actually kind of surprised when Jeff came to pick her up because she knew that Bob had
restricted him from driving that day.
And Jeff told her that Bob had a change of heart and he indeed would drive himself.
So that's kind of where that went.
She was surprised that he was coming to pick her up in the Mustang and everyone else the
police talked to said that Bob was very adamant that Jeff would not be driving himself to
the prom.
So lots of conflicts.
Yeah, for sure.
After reviewing all the evidence, the district attorney decided that there was not enough
evidence to prosecute Jeff and all charges were dropped.
There was no murder weapon, no forensic evidence at the time.
Remember this is back in the 80s and Jeff certainly did not confess to any of the murders.
So life went on, right?
Right.
Police backed off and did not pursue Jeff in his family's murders and Jeff, like I
said before, eventually grew up, moved away to Florida, got married, had a child and life
was good.
So life went on.
What do you think so far?
It's a very crazy story.
It's kind of like double jeopardy.
They didn't want to charge him yet because it was, I don't know, did they have that double
jeopardy law in the 80s?
Yeah.
If anything, they probably dropped the charges because you can't charge him and then him
be acquitted and then charge him again.
If they didn't have enough evidence, they were definitely going to just drop it and
there is no statute of limitations on murder.
I don't even think there was back in the 80s.
So yeah, I think they felt that it was a better idea just to kind of drop it.
Didn't say they closed the case.
They just dropped the charges.
Have you ever seen that movie, Double Jeopardy?
Oh my gosh, that's a good movie.
Oh, it's such a good movie.
Yes, that was a really good movie.
Really good.
I loved it.
Oh yes, me too.
A new prosecutor reopened this case in 2002.
So 80, 90, it's about 22 years later, Shelbs.
Yeah, really good with math here, but it's about 22 years later, the new prosecutor in
town reopened the case.
Jeff was officially arrested and charged with four counts of murder on August 10th, 2002
and he remained behind bars until his trial began on July 10th, 2006.
That is a long time for somebody to sit behind bars.
Very long time.
I mean, I guess they were still gathering evidence, but holy cow.
Jeff's step-sister, Jessie, who was nine at the time that her mother and sisters had been
murdered said that Jeff was a bully back in the 80s and firmly believed that he had something
to do with their deaths.
Jackie, his blood sister on the other hand, is still standing by her brother and is working
even today, Shelbs, to help Jeff have all murder charges dismissed.
Wow.
And when I say today, I mean, he's still behind bars.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I mean, you always hear of people that are behind bars, innocent people behind bars or
cases such as that.
I mean, there's really no closure right now, but I'll tell you the surviving children,
Jessie, Jackie and Jeff are all in agreement of one thing from an adult perspective, because
remember they were all kids when this happened and the blended family they belonged to in
the 1980s was not the Brady Bunch.
If you've seen that show ever, they're all just happy, go lucky, they love each other,
they sing together.
You know?
Oh, too bad.
That's not what it's really like.
Nope.
It's really not.
The older Pellie siblings did not always get along with Dawn, like I had mentioned, because
she had a different idea on how to raise her daughters from what they were used to.
Remember now, their father was a preacher.
They probably had a little bit stricter upbringing and she was probably a little bit more lenient.
Plus her kids were younger, you know?
Yeah.
And Jessie also felt the same way about her new stepfather.
She states that Bob was much more strict on her than what she had been used to.
He had lots and lots of rules and if anybody broke those rules, they'd get a spanking.
That was not unusual back in the 80s, but it is if you're not used to getting spanked
for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
Now, we're going to talk about some theories here.
After this case was opened, prosecutors developed a timeline of events that placed Jeff at the
scene of the crime.
They believe that there was a 45 minute window between when Bob was last seen to the time
that nobody could get in contact with him, which is somewhere around five o'clock in
the afternoon.
This is when prosecutors believe that the murders took place because what time do you
usually get ready for the prom shelves towards the late afternoon, right?
Right.
Based on the position that Bob's body was found in the hallway, investigators believe
that whoever had shot him had just come out of the bedroom and I had mentioned that that
was where the gun rack was at.
So somebody probably knew where that was at, went straight for it, came out and caught
Bob in the hallway.
And that's pretty much it.
That's what got Jeff convicted was that theory right there.
Oh wow.
Yep.
I would have liked to see how he was reacting or acting when they were interviewing him.
Yes.
I did not find any videos online every now and then I can come up with the police video
on YouTube or something, but I did not see any of that because you're right.
He would have been 14.
No, he would have been 17 at the time.
Right.
But in today's age though, Jeff as an adult has theories of his own.
He believes that Bob was involved in illegal mob activities that got him killed.
And there was a witness from the original investigation that actually supported this
claim.
According to the witness, they had tried to sell an electronic membership directory to
Bob at that olive branch church that I had mentioned, but he did not want his photo published
because he said, quote, I had another life prior to becoming a minister and do not want
to be found unquote.
Ooh, that's eerie.
Right.
Bob also told his eyewitness that he quote, moved money for bad guys and wanted a life
and more family unquote.
So you know, according to the witness that is kind of corroborating the fact that there
could have been some illegal mob activities.
You know, why did they move to Indiana so quickly and why so far from Florida?
Yeah.
That's definitely a cause for concern, I would say.
Or at least a flag, right?
Might not be a red flag, but it's definitely a flag.
According to Jeff, this eyewitness testimony was dismissed by Indiana police during the
1989 investigation and police turned their focus on Jeff at that time as a prime suspect.
Prosecutors also did not subpoena the eyewitness for Jeff's 2006 trial because their statements
were considered at that time, Shelby, just hearsay.
I mean, it's like me telling you something that I saw.
Okay, well, that's what I saw, but was it true?
Was it factual?
Could you prove it?
Yeah.
Jeff's defense originally filed a motion for his case to be dismissed because his rights
to a speedy trial were violated.
And what did I just say?
He spent four years behind bars before his trial even started.
Yeah, that's quite a long time.
Well, this notion was denied.
Jeff's defense lawyers then asked for a camera that was placed into evidence that they believed
contained photos of Jeff with his prom date that were taken before the prom.
I mean, you know how that goes.
You go out with your date, you go into the garden, you go to wherever it is, you go get
pictures taken and you get a lot of pictures, right?
Yes.
The defense states that the camera was never released, which could be a matter of showing
proof regarding Jeff having permission to go to the prom.
So if he was all dressed up to go, who took those pictures, right?
Exactly.
Could have been his dad.
17 years after the Pelley family murders, Jeff Pelley was convicted on four counts of
murder and sentenced Shelbs to 106 years behind bars at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility
in Terrahot, Indiana.
Wow.
And the earliest that Jeff will be released is 2082.
Oh my gosh.
Isn't that something?
Wow.
Jeff appealed his sentencing to the Indiana Supreme Court and on February 19th, 2009, the
conviction was upheld.
So basically he's still sitting behind bars.
In 2010, the wrongful conviction clinic at Indiana University took on Jeff's case to
assist in freeing him from prison based on his innocence of the family murders.
According to Jeff's attorneys, a law went into effect after the Pelley family murders
that stated counselor or client records were subject to disclosure.
And in this case, the records were requested after this law took effect, which if you think
about it, Shelby, the law wasn't in place when Jeff was placed behind bars.
So that really does compromise his civil rights.
Because when you say subject to disclosure, it just basically means that there are certain
things that you can either hold in counselor client confidentialities and that wasn't the
case for him.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Please tell me if that is correct.
I think I explained that right, or at least that's what I was looking at when I was doing the
research.
I'm pretty sure we have some legal listeners out there.
If I did not get that right, go ahead and email me.
I'd love to know.
Additional appeals and petitions are still active today.
And if anyone is interested, there's a ton of legal motions found on the internet pertaining
to this case.
As of April 2022, Jeff continues to file motions for post-conviction relief, which includes
filing motions for charges to be dismissed, motions for a new trial, and motions to lessen
his sentence.
So Jeff continues to be quite active in his own defense here.
And his sister, Jackie, stands behind her brother and has a website set up at justiceforjeff.com,
which I will put in our show notes.
And I actually went to that website.
It was pretty good.
Yeah.
I'll have to go check that out.
Yeah.
Well, that is the ongoing case of the Pelley family murders.
We love feedback from our listeners on this storyline, so make sure you DM us and there
you go.
That's our story.
Very interesting.
Thanks for sharing.
I'll have to go check out the website.
So what's your teachable moment for us today?
I'm glad you asked me that, Shelves, because you kind of mentioned this a little while
ago that what was Jeff's demeanor like when he was being interviewed when he was 17 years
old?
My teachable moment is lawyer up.
Not one article that I read stated that Jeff had legal representation when he was questioned
by the police.
And, Shelves, I do work with adolescents frequently.
They are just little children in grown up bodies.
So you know, I know our brains are scientifically proven not to be completely developed until
we're in our mid 20s.
I mean, think about some of those choices that you made before you were 25 or 26 years
old.
I don't like to think about that.
I wonder what year it was that the Miranda rights came out.
Oh, the Miranda rights?
Oh, gosh, I think that was a long time ago.
I don't know for sure, but it was it was quite a while back.
I don't know.
That's a good one.
1966.
Wow.
So I'm wondering why he didn't have a lawyer.
I mean, I'm sure he had one.
I just didn't find anything in when I was researching to say he had one at all.
I'm sure he did.
But there was not a whole lot of information on that.
And so if he was being questioned, I mean, they did drop the charges there for a hot
minute.
Right.
Yeah.
So in this case, he was only 17 when he was first looked at for his family's murders.
And honestly, Shelbs, you can't convince me that any 17 year old is going to know what
to do when investigators place you in an interrogation room and put that pressure on you to tell
them everything you know, especially if you don't have counsel.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah.
And as a parent, honestly, Shelbs, you need to tell your children if they are ever
put into this position of being questioned, they need to ask for a lawyer.
Think about it.
You got kids that are driving age.
If they get pulled over for the wrong thing and get toted off to jail, you need to tell
them to get a lawyer.
And obviously, just circumstances are extenuated.
But it doesn't matter if a kid is pulled over for driving and then they end up at the police
precinct.
Ask for a lawyer because if Jeff had, then maybe things might have turned out a little
bit differently.
Absolutely.
So there you have it.
That's my teachable moment.
Well, that was a good story.
Thank you for sharing.
You are so welcome.
And thanks for indulging me this week for all your feedback and thanks to our listeners.
And I guess this is a good time to say talk to you next week.
See you next week.
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