Prom night murders: Jeff Pelley maintains innocence in Lakeville killings, seeks new trial

SOUTH BEND — For 32 years since his father, stepmother and two stepsisters were killed, and for 15 years since his conviction for the crime, Jeff Pelley has maintained his innocence.

Now for the first time since a 2009 Indiana Supreme Court ruling, Pelley will have the chance to present evidence on his behalf. He hopes to get a new trial for the murders on the night of his 1989 LaVille High School prom. 

Earlier this month, St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Stephanie Steele set a hearing in Pelley’s post-conviction relief case for March, where Pelley’s legal team will argue the 49-year-old deserves a new trial. They claim prosecutors lied about evidence at trial, and that new testimony suggests Pelley’s father’s illegal financial dealings in Florida may have been the motivation for the murder.  

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Convicted of the killings in 2006, Pelley filed a direct appeal and his conviction was briefly overturned by the state appeals court before being upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court. Pelley filed for post-conviction relief shortly after and has waited for more than a decade to have his case heard by a judge in what will effectively be his last chance at a new trial.  

Frances Watson, an attorney who works at the Indiana University law school’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic and is representing Pelley in his case, said the hearing has been a long time coming because of delays in receiving public records requests, court transfers and COVID-19.  

“This is kind of it. He's in prison for life for these murders,” Watson said. "We took our time and did the discovery we needed to do."  

In court filings from earlier this week, Pelley argues that prosecutors engaged in “blatant falsehoods” during his original trial by telling jurors a pair of blue jeans, which had been entered into evidence, had been washed in the washing machine at the Pelley house.  

The filing also centers around the testimony of a woman named Toni Beehler, in which she indicates Jeff Pelley’s father was afraid for his life because of illicit financial transactions when he worked for a bank in Florida.  

Prosecutors say a video and transcript of Beehler’s interview were given to Pelley’s lawyers before the trial. However, Pelley argues his defense team was not aware of Beehler during his trial and that the jury should have heard her story. 

“We’re going to focus on what we believe are egregious forensic flaws and evidence that the jury should have heard,” Watson said.  

‘Prom night murders’ 

Bob Pelley was found dead in an upstairs hallway of his house in Lakeville on April 30, 1989. Dawn Pelley, Bob’s wife and Jeff Pelley’s stepmother, was found dead in the basement of the house along with her daughters (Jeff Pelley’s stepsisters) Jolene and Janel. All four were killed with a shotgun believed to belong to the family.

The case quickly garnered media attention, as Bob Pelley was the minister of Olive Branch Church in Lakeville and the murders occurred on the night of Jeff's high school prom. Bob Pelley had reportedly grounded his son, prohibiting him from attending activities with his friends surrounding the upcoming prom.

Investigators believed the friction around the dance could be Jeff Pelley’s motive for killing his family. 

Jeff Pelley would testify he told his girlfriend at the time that his dad had relented and would let him go to all prom activities, though other witnesses testified Bob Pelley had only indicated he would let Jeff Pelley go to the dance itself.  

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Around 4:35 p.m. on the day of the dance, some friends of Jeff Pelley’s stopped by the Pelley house to take pictures and noticed the 17-year-old was wearing a pink shirt and blue jeans.  

The friends left shortly before 5 p.m. and Jeff Pelley was next seen at a local gas station around 5:20, where he got help fixing his car. Jeff Pelley then drove to his girlfriend's house to change into his tuxedo and go to the dance.

Meanwhile, a friend of Bob and Dawn Pelley’s drove by the Pelley house sometime after 5:30 p.m., when the couple did not show up to a pre-planned gathering. The friend testified the Pelleys' cars were in the driveway, but all the curtains were shut and the doors were locked.  

The next morning, the day after the prom, Jeff Pelley’s girlfriend’s mother commented how she was surprised his dad was letting him go with his friends to the Great America amusement park in Chicago. Pelley responded he had a “two-day pass from Pelley prison.” 

The bodies of the Pelleys were found later that morning in Lakeville by parishioners and the murder investigation began. Police found no sign of forced entry to the house, but they did find a small load of clothes, including a pink and blue shirt and blue jeans, in the washing machine. A luminol test of the washing machine cylinder failed to determine whether it was reacting to blood or phosphates found in laundry detergents in 1989.  But prosecutors never should have told jurors the jeans were washed, the filing claims, because initial police reports indicated the jeans were in fact dirty, meaning they hadn’t been washed, and were not found in the washing machine.  

Police also learned Bob Pelley kept a 20-gauge shotgun, the presumed murder weapon, on a gun rack in the master bedroom, but no shell casings or the gun itself were ever found. Pictures taken of Jeff Pelley in the days after the killings do not show any bruising around his shoulder, which would be common for someone firing a shotgun multiple times. 

Police found Jeff Pelley at the Great America park and took him back to Lakeville for questioning. A detective testified Pelley, pressed about an inconsistency in his story, “slumped down in his chair, lowered his head, covered his eyes, and asked ... whether he would go to jail that night, and whether he would get the electric chair,” but detectives could provide no recording of the alleged statement.

No physical evidence directly connected Jeff Pelley to the crimes, though investigators noted he had motive, access to the presumed murder weapon and was unaccounted for for approximately 20 minutes on the evening of the prom. 

Though the murders happened in 1989, Jeff Pelley was not charged until 2002 by newly elected St. Joseph County Prosecutor Christopher Toth. Pelley was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 160 years in prison.

‘Egregious forensic flaws’ 

The 13-year gap between the crimes and charges being filed, as well as the “deceptive” and “reckless” actions of prosecutors, led to a wrongful conviction, Jeff Pelley says in his recent filing.

“In truth, confirmation bias, illogical extrapolation, mishandled evidence, and blatant falsehoods were behind the prosecution’s claim that the pieces of the puzzle fit thirteen years post-crime,” the brief says. 

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One key piece of evidence Pelley believes prosecutors mishandled is the testimony of Toni Beehler and the potential for an alternative motive for the killings. 

According to court documents, Beehler came forward to police in 2003 when she saw Jeff Pelley was charged with the murders. In an interview, she told investigators she contacted Bob Pelley about a photographic church directory for his parish.  

She said the church board voted to hire Beehler’s company, though Pelley didn’t like the idea because he didn’t want to have his picture published “as he had another life prior to becoming a minister.”  

Beehler said Bob Pelley didn’t tell her what his past life had been or what he did, court documents say, but her statement potentially gives credence to an alternative theory that the Pelleys were killed by members of a criminal organization as retribution for Bob Pelley’s illegal financial dealings with a bank he worked for. 

Pelley’s recent brief says prosecutors never told his defense team about Beehler’s statement, which would be a violation of trial conduct, and that the recording of the Beehler interview is now missing. 

The St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the case, but in previous court filings, the state maintains it did provide the interview to Pelley’s attorneys. Even if they hadn’t, the state wrote, Beehler’s statement is "hearsay" within hearsay” and would not be permissible at trial. 

Had the defense known about Beehler’s statement at the time of the trial, they would have been able to provide a more compelling case, said Alan Baum, one Jeff Pelley’s trial attorneys. 

“Of all the grounds of newly discovered evidence, [Beehler’s statement] is the most outrageous violation and the most hopeful avenue of getting Jeff justice,” said Baum, who has a private practice in California.

According to Jeff Pelley’s recent filings, Bob Pelley lived in Fort Meyers, Fla., until 1986 and worked as a data analyst for Landmark Banking Corporation, which federal investigators had been looking into for fraud and money laundering.  

The filing further states that one of Bob Pelley’s business partners was killed in November 1988 in a murder that is still unsolved. 

Baum said the defense knew a little bit about Bob Pelley’s potential involvement in criminal activity in Florida prior to his moving to Lakeville, but the judge hearing the case, Roland Chamblee, ruled the evidence was too speculative to present to the jury. 

“It seems unbelievable to me that a 17-year-old kid did this and then went to the prom and acted normal. But then it would also seem unbelievable to people that it was somehow the ‘mob from Florida.’” said Watson, who was also involved in the post-conviction relief case for a mentally disabled Elkhart man who was recently freed. 

Prosecutors argue many of the matters Pelley raises have already been adjudicated by the Indiana Supreme Court and that, even if they were allowed to be re-examined, would not result in a different result at a new trial. 

“The state wholly denies the allegations that ‘false’ and ‘misleading’ evidence was presented to the jury. These claims are simply without any merit and appear to be merely another attempt by which [Pelley] is erroneously attempting to assert ‘actual innocence,’" prosecutors wrote. 

The hearing is scheduled for multiple days in March, after which Steele could grant Pelley a new trial. If she does not grant a new trial, Watson said, he will likely seek relief in federal court.

Email Marek Mazurek at mmazurek@sbtinfo.com. Follow him on Twitter: @marek_mazurek