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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 1989, four members of the Pelley family from Indiana were gunned down inside their home. Without any leads or forensic evidence, the police decided they had their suspect.
The Pelley family's 17-year-old son, Jeff. And the motive was simple. Jeff murdered his family because he wasn't allowed to go to the prom. But is Jeff Pelley really guilty? Or is he innocent? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 223. The Pelley Family Murders. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases that
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When Robert Lee Pelley, who went by Bob, and Don Huber met in the 1980s, they were both widows. Bob had recently lost his wife Ava after she was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1984. Before she died, they had two kids together, Jeff, who was born in 1971, and his sister Jackie, who was born a few years later in 1976. Don was also in a similar place in life.
Her husband suddenly passed away, leaving her three daughters, Jessie, Janelle, and Jolene, without a father. He had been accidentally killed by carbon monoxide poisoning while working on a car. So when they got together and started dating, they did their best to figure out how to blend their families together and just try to move on with their lives. After dating for about eight months, Bob and Dawn got married.
They married so fast that the first time Bob's two kids met Dawn's daughters was after the wedding. Dawn and her three daughters all moved in with Bob and his kids into their home in Florida. Not long after that, they both adopted each other's respective children so that they could all become an official family together. Dawn's three daughters were just five, four, and two years old at the time. And Dawn herself was just 27 when she became a widow.
So it was almost like Bob was her knight in shining armor. He would take her and her children in like they were his own. The new Pelley family eventually moved from Florida to Lakeville, Indiana in 1986. It was in Lakeville that Bob became a pastor and led a congregation of up to 50 people at the Olive Branch Church in town.
While Bob's passion was always religion and being a pastor, he also made a living working as a computer programmer. On the outside, the Pelley family really looked like the all-American Brady Bunch family. Bob was a well-respected pastor in town, and Don was also really well-liked. They might have recently experienced tragedy with the loss of their spouses.
Still, they really were the textbook definition of a blended family who just seemed to make it work. At least, that's what people on the outside looking in saw. On the inside, the Pelley family wasn't necessarily all that perfect as they seemed. Trouble was brewing. Trouble that not even the Pelley family could see coming.
According to some accounts of some of the Pelly children later on, both Dawn and Bob had strict ways of parenting. Bob was described as the disciplinarian one in the family who wasn't afraid to take a belt to one of his kids if they were acting up. And Dawn was described as being a little old-fashioned. Her beliefs were that a woman's place was inside the home cooking dinner and taking care of the children.
something that Bob's oldest daughter, Jackie, didn't necessarily agree with. And Dawn's three daughters definitely weren't used to having such a strict father like Bob. But having a blended family isn't easy. Bob's kids were expected to accept Dawn as their new mom, and Dawn's daughters were expected to do the same with Bob, something that not every kid their age wants to do right away.
One of the Pelley kids who seemed to be really struggling with everything was 17-year-old Jeff Pelley, Bob's oldest son. By the spring of 1984, Jeff was 17 and a senior in high school. And he really wasn't much different than any other teenage boy his age. He sometimes got into trouble. He spent a lot of time in his bedroom. And he was stuck between still being a teenager and wanting to become an adult.
But according to Jeff's stepsister, Jessie, it was a lot more than that. In the TV show Evil Lives Here, Jessie said Jeff was quiet when she, her mom, and her siblings moved in with Bob and his kids. He kept to himself and didn't really seem interested in getting to know his new family. He had no interest in calling his new stepmom his quote-unquote mom.
According to Jesse, Don would always try to be nice to Jeff and try to talk to him, but he didn't really want anything to do with her. Now, this behavior might not be so surprising from a 17-year-old teenage boy, but now, decades later, many wonder if that was just a sign of what would come. Jesse also talked about how Jeff used to basically torture her and her two younger sisters.
There was even one time when she and the girls were having a makeshift camp out in the backyard, and Jeff put on a mask to scare the girls into thinking they were being kidnapped. There was another incident where Jessie claimed Jeff used a BB gun to shoot her cat Mickey in the backyard. By the spring of 1989, Jeff was a senior in high school, and prom night was one event that everyone looked forward to at his school.
For many high schoolers, prom is the last big party before graduation. It's a night when everyone in school comes together and have a good time. It doesn't matter whether you're the most popular kid in school or not. Almost everyone goes to senior prom night, especially in this part of Indiana. But not Jeff Pelley. Before prom night, Jeff got into trouble and was arrested for stealing CDs and cash from another home in the neighborhood.
He had been in trouble for different things in the past, but this was the first time that he had ever been arrested for something. So this was a really big deal in the house, mostly because Bob Pelley was the town's pastor. He had a certain image he wanted to maintain, and having a son be arrested for stealing wasn't the image he wanted. He felt like his son's behavior reflected badly on him as a church leader.
So when Jeff was arrested, Bob took it very seriously. Whenever Jeff acted up or got into trouble, his dad usually hit him once or twice with a belt, or he would have to spend the evening in his bedroom. But this time was different. Jeff was immediately grounded for what he did. And being grounded meant that he wasn't allowed to go to the prom with all of his friends and his girlfriend. Now, just like how stealing was a big deal to Bob Pelley...
Not being allowed to go to a senior year prom was just as a big deal for Jeff. It was a two-night event that started on Saturday night with the actual prom itself and then the after parties. And then on Sunday, April 30th, the whole school planned to go to Six Flags Amusement Park. These were events that no 1989 graduating senior wanted to miss out on. Now Bob eventually changed his mind and said that Jeff could go to the prom, but that was it.
He wasn't allowed to go to any of the after parties or the amusement park the next day. He couldn't even drive himself or his girlfriend to the dance. The only way Jeff was allowed to go was if Bob dropped him off and picked him up himself. This was the only way that he could make sure that Jeff didn't go anywhere else but to and from the dance that night.
According to Jeff's half-sister, Jessie, Jeff was really upset about this. Yes, he was happy that he could still go to the prom with his girlfriend after all, but he certainly didn't want to have his dad drop him off and pick him up. He would basically be the only senior who didn't get to drive there himself. Plus, he would miss out on everything else that was happening, the fun after parties, and the theme park to Six Flags the next day.
It was hardly the senior experience he wanted to have, but just how angry was Jeff Pelley? That's a question that's been debated for decades. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Churchgoers at Olive Branch Church in Lakeville, Indiana, patiently waited for their Sunday service to begin on April 30th, 1989. But their pastor, Bob Pelley, never showed up.
Even the rest of the family was noticeably absent that morning. As the service went on, several members kept an eye out to see if Bob and his family would eventually show up. Maybe they all got sick or they went out of town. But it was a little strange for Bob not to make arrangements for service that morning if he planned to go anywhere. Once the service wrapped up for the morning, a few of the church members decided to go to the Pelley's house and go check on them and just make sure that everything was all right.
but they sensed something might be wrong when they got to the house. At first, they tried peeking in through the windows to see if they could see anyone, or at least see if a light was on like someone might be home. But all of the windows to the house were drawn completely shut, and you couldn't see a thing. So then they tried knocking on the front door. No answer. They knocked again, louder this time, and still no answer. By this point, something had to be wrong.
So that's when one of the church members decided to use the family's spare key to open the front door. He knew where the family kept it, and it would just bring them some peace of mind knowing that everything was okay or not if they could just get inside. But as soon as he put the spare key in the lock and opened the door, he was confronted with a nightmare.
Bob, his wife Dawn, and their two daughters were all found dead inside the home, lying in pools of blood. The first person he saw was Bob. He was lying right there in the middle of the hallway, completely covered in blood. According to the coroner, Dr. Rick Hoover, when Bob was killed, he was fully dressed. He had been shot twice with a shotgun and faced his killer when he died.
Based on the bullet holes, Dr. Huber theorized he had been shot with a 22-gauge deer slug because the wounds were, quote, round and distinct. He didn't believe he was shot with a shotgun that sprayed pellets. The first shot was to his chest, which severed his spinal cord, but he could have still been alive.
The second shot, the one to the face, Dr. Hoover theorized was done at close range when Bob was already on the ground. This is the shot that would have likely killed him almost instantly. Based on where the blood was found, Dr. Hoover believed the shot to Bob's face came second, and the shooter had to have been standing deep in the house when he fired the gun, most likely at the end of the hallway between the bedrooms.
No drugs or alcohol were found in his system. Further in the house were Dawn and the two daughters. They were all found in the basement with Dawn tucked in between Janelle and Jolene like she was killed trying to protect them. Dawn was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. The bullet entered at close range near her right temple and she probably died within seconds. Like Bob, no drugs or alcohol were found in her system.
and she had two missing fingers, like she had raised her hand to try to defend herself. Six-year-old Jolene and eight-year-old Janelle were next. Both girls were killed almost in the exact same way their mother was, with fatal gunshot wounds to the head. And based on the blood spatter, the coroner believed Dawn was killed first, and then Janelle and Jolene. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. This was no accident.
News about the quadruple homicide spread quickly throughout this part of Indiana. Not only was it unheard of for an entire family to be slaughtered with a shotgun inside their own home, but it was also impossible to imagine this would happen to a pastor's family. This was the Pelley family, a family that portrayed themselves as the perfect blended Brady Bunch family. Who would want all of these people dead?
Word also spread quickly about the details of the crime itself. No signs of forced entry were found. No windows were broken. The curtains were neatly drawn closed so that no one could see inside. The front door was locked like it always was. And nothing seemed to be missing from the home, like this was a robbery gone wrong. So this all led the police to come up with their first theory. This was a murder-suicide.
Maybe Bob Pelley himself was the one responsible. He took the shotgun and killed most of his own family, his wife and his two youngest stepdaughters. And then he turned the gun on himself in a murder-suicide. But that theory quickly fizzled out because none of it made any sense and nothing added up. If that's what happened, the police should have found the murder weapon in or around Bob's body after he shot himself.
but they never found the shotgun. In fact, the murder weapon was never found anywhere, not inside the house, not anywhere else. Investigators even searched a nearby pond looking for the gun, but it wasn't there either. Besides, Bob had been shot not just once, but twice with a shotgun, so this definitely couldn't have been a murder-suicide.
In the very early part of the investigation, the police feared the other Pelly children might have been kidnapped. Maybe whoever did this to Bob, Dawn, and the girls also did something to the other Pelly kids, Dawn's oldest daughter and Bob's two kids. They were all initially unaccounted for, so they couldn't rule out the possibility of a kidnapping or abduction.
But of course, once the police figured out where they were and they were all safe, they moved on from that too. As it turned out, Dawn's oldest daughter, Jessie, was staying the weekend at a friend's house. And Bob's two children, Jackie and Jeff, were also accounted for. Jackie was away visiting a friend at college, and Jeff went to the prom and amusement park. Back at the house, the police went up and down looking for clues.
Maybe the killer left something behind that could make everything make sense. But there wasn't really much. Next to Bob's body, they found his glasses. Then they saw that a shotgun was missing from a gun rack on the wall, which led them to believe that the Pellys' own shotgun might have been used in the murders. But where was it now? Each of the surviving Pelly kids was interviewed by the police.
Jesse, who was only nine years old and one of Dawn's daughters, was at a friend's house that weekend. And when her friend's mom dropped her off at home that Sunday morning, that's when she found out that her two sisters, mom and stepdad, had been murdered. Now, obviously, at nine years old, and with no evidence she ever left her friend's house that weekend, she was ruled out as having anything to do with it. Bob's older daughter, Jackie, was also ruled out.
She was out of town visiting a friend at college when her dad and stepmom were murdered. It was essentially an airtight alibi because she was miles away and couldn't have been in two places at once. But then there was Jeff Pelley. What did he say to the cops about where he was that weekend? Well, shortly after the murders, Jeff, accompanied by his grandparents, was brought down to the police station for an interview.
At this point, the police already knew about Jeff's previous run-ins with the law, and they knew about his recent arrest for stealing CDs and cash from a neighbor. However, what interested them more was what they learned from a few of Bob Pelley's fellow church members. According to them, Jeff was grounded and couldn't go to the prom that weekend on his own. Bob was going to drop him off and pick him up.
So when they found out that Jeff really did drive himself and his girlfriend to the prom that Saturday night, they were extremely suspicious. They didn't think Bob would have just given in so easily and let him go alone. Even more than that, they told the cops that Bob even went as far as to remove some of the parts on Jeff's car so that would be physically impossible for him to drive it.
He didn't want to take any chances with Jeff trying to sneak out and do something like that. Now going back to the crime scene, the cops already knew there weren't any signs of forced entry, so they thought the murderer had to have already been inside the house. And now they felt like they had their first suspect who might have had a motive, Jeff Pelley.
At the police station, Jeff denied any involvement in the murders. He even appeared genuinely shocked when he discovered what had happened to his dad, stepmom, and sisters. When detectives asked him about what he did that weekend, he insisted that his dad had changed his mind about the punishment and he was allowed to go to the prom and amusement park by himself that weekend.
The cops also asked him about his relationship with his dad and stepmom to see if there was anything there to suggest another possible motive. And while Jeff admitted to having a problematic relationship with his stepmom, Dawn, he said he had no reason to want her dead. Sure, he didn't want to call her mom, but that doesn't mean he's a cold-blooded killer.
and the same could be said about his dad. Yes, his dad grounded him, and he was the disciplinarian one in the family, but that doesn't add up to murder. He even claimed to really love his two younger half-sisters and was very protective over them. Plus, the girls had nothing to do with him being grounded, so where's the motive there? But the cops weren't too sure about his story. Did Bob Pelley really change his mind that quickly?
And could Jeff have gotten so angry about not being able to drive himself to the prom that he decided to kill almost his entire family? After the interview, Jeff was free to go home with his grandparents. And detectives were basically stuck at square one. They couldn't find the shotgun used in the murders. There was no forensic evidence found inside the house that led them anywhere. And there were no eyewitnesses.
None of the Pelley's neighbors heard or saw anything that weekend. The only thing the police knew for sure was that the murders likely happened sometime Saturday afternoon or early evening, and they were all shot at close range with a shotgun. That was virtually it. Not a great starting point to try and solve a quadruple homicide.
Slowly, some of the pieces of what happened between Saturday, April 29th and Sunday, the 30th, started to come together. On Saturday, Kim Oldenburg, one of Jeff's friends, stopped by the Pelley's house with her mom and date before going to the prom. Later on, Kim told detectives that she felt a lot of tension inside the house, and Jeff seemed angry with his parents.
Later on Saturday night, Jeff called his girlfriend Darla to let her know he was on his way to pick her up. When he got to her house, Darla said Jeff was alone. He wasn't with his dad like she originally thought he would be. Before going to the dance, they stopped at a local Amco gas station where Jeff asked to use a wrench because his car was idling funny.
After that, Jeff went back inside the store to return the wrench to the attendant, and they were on their way again. Around 5.30 p.m., Jeff and Darla went to dinner before eventually ending up at the prom. And according to Darla, everything seemed fine. They had a good time together, and once the dance was over, they headed to a local bowling alley with a couple friends to hang out for a bit.
Once they were done bowling, they went to their friend Kim's house for a post-prom slumber party. Around the same time Jeff went to pick up Darla for the dance, Crystal Easterday wondered where Bob and Don Pelly were. They were supposed to come over and see her in her prom dress, but they never showed up. Crystal even decided to stop by the house on the way to the dance, but no one answered the door, and she couldn't see through the closed curtains.
Around 6 o'clock p.m., one of the Pelley's neighbors went outside to mow the lawn. He also noticed that the front curtains were closed all the way, which he thought was a little strange. The basement light was also left on past 9 o'clock p.m., but he didn't think too much about it and continued cutting the grass without going over there to check on them. Jeff, Darla, and most of the other graduating seniors headed to Six Flags Great America the following day.
Nothing seemed off except a comment that Darla later on told detectives. According to her, Jeff made a comment while at the theme park that he thought something might be wrong back at home, but he didn't go into any more detail after that, and she never asked. Although the police kept investigating, they found themselves stuck on one suspect, Jeff Pelley.
He was the only one who seemed to have a motive and was angry at his dad and stepmom. He had access to the family's missing shotgun that usually hung on the wall. He certainly had access to the house and wouldn't need to break in. And he seemed to be the world's luckiest kid whose dad suddenly changed his mind about being grounded and was allowed to drive himself by himself to the prom and all the other activities that weekend.
Plus, the cops really didn't have any other leads or theories. No DNA was found inside the home, no unknown fingerprints, again, no signs of forced entry, and no murder weapon. Then there was the question of motive. According to the police at the time, they never found anyone with a motive to want four people in the same family dead. The only one they thought had the motive was Jeff Pelley.
But how was a 17-year-old kid supposed to get away with a quadruple murder? Well, according to detectives, the story probably goes something like this. Jeff took the shotgun that was usually hanging in the living room wall off the wall and loaded it. The first person he shot and killed was his dad in the hallway. The dad was really the main target in all of this because he was the one who grounded him.
But his dad wasn't the only one in the house. So that's when Jeff went after his stepmom and his two step half sisters who were in the basement. That's where he shot and killed all three of them before going around to the rest of the house collecting all the shotgun shells. After he cleaned up, he went to go take a shower himself, washed some clothes in the washing machine to get rid of the blood and go get ready for the prom.
It was as simple as that. Now, the time frame that Jeff supposedly did all of this was extremely small. Based on everything we know about the murders and what Jeff did that night, he would have had only about 15 to 20 minutes to do all of this. That's because we know Jeff left the house sometime after 4.30 and around 5 o'clock to go pick up Darla to head to the prom.
We also know when he showed up at the gas station to borrow the wrench to fix his car. So the time frame to commit four murders, clean up the shotgun shells, do laundry, and get dressed and ready to go to prom was really, really small, 15 to 20 minutes. So could a 17-year-old high school senior pull something like that off in such a short amount of time?
Despite a possible theory and timeline, the case against Jeff was extremely weak. Again, there was no forensic evidence tying him to anything. And the motive was thin. Could a fight about a prom night really set him off like that? So without any real tangible evidence, the police had no choice but to keep investigating. And that's when the case seemed to turn cold. After the murders, life moved on for the surviving Pelly kids.
Jackie and Jesse grew up. Jesse bounced around from one family member's house to the next. And Jeff eventually moved back to Florida, got married, had a child, became a Sunday school teacher, and landed a job working for IBM. For many years, it seemed like the murders of his parents and sisters were past him. And so was the suspicion about his involvement. Until years later, in 2002.
Between 1989 and 2002, the Indiana police in D.A.'s office were under a tremendous amount of pressure to solve the Pelley family murders as they became known. But for years, there was never enough evidence to arrest Jeff Pelley or anyone else. Until 2002, when Jeff turned 34 years old.
On August 2nd, 2002, Jeff Pelley was arrested and charged with murdering his dad, stepmom, and two half-sisters. It may have taken 13 years, but an arrest was finally made. But what did prosecutors now have against Jeff all these years later that they didn't have in 1989? Well, some people say it's because of politics. According to Jeff Pelley's supporters and many people online,
St. Joseph County District Attorney Christopher Toth was at risk of not being re-elected. A lot of his constituents were dissatisfied with his job performance, and they specifically pointed toward the unsolved Pelley family murders. Both Christopher Toth and the county's district attorney before him refused to bring any criminal charges against Jeff Pelley, citing a lack of evidence.
But now, DA Christopher Toth might have seen the case as a way to get himself re-elected. So as part of his re-election campaign, he promised to get justice for the Pelley family and get an indictment from a grand jury against Jeff. Then on August 2nd, 2002, he was arrested and charged with the murders. But Christopher Toth's campaign promises may have come a little too late.
That's because DA Toth's opponent, Michael Dorvich, took over as the county's DA in January 2003. But just like Toth, he also ran his campaign on the promise that an arrest would be made in the Pelley family murders case. And he kept his promise. The Pelley family murders would be solved. After Jeff was arrested, he was extradited back to Indiana.
Prosecutors believed that the murder weapon was one of Bob's own shotguns that was usually hanging on a wall in the family room, even though the gun was never found. So prosecutors wanted one of the Pelley's surviving children, Jessie, to testify that the shotgun was on the wall the weekend she left to stay at her friend's house.
This was important because Jeff told detectives that the shotgun had been out of the house for at least a month before the murders happened. But if it was still in the house, like Jesse remembered, then prosecutors believed Jeff was lying and took the shotgun off the wall to commit the murders. And then he got rid of it.
During the trial, the state relied heavily on the circumstantial evidence. They had to because that's pretty much all they had. So they brought countless people to testify that Bob Pelley would have never gone back on his punishment of Jeff that night. And the fact he still went to the prom, the after parties, and the amusement park the next day was proof of his involvement.
Ultimately, the prosecutor argued Jeff was angry about missing out on senior activities and decided to seek revenge against his dad, and his stepmom and half-siblings were simply collateral damage. Despite a very circumstantial case with virtually zero forensic evidence, Jeff Pelley was found guilty of the murders on July 21, 2006.
Then three months later, in October, he was sentenced to 160 years in prison, 40 years for each of the murders. But that's not the end of this story. He immediately filed an appeal seeking a new trial, and in April 2008, the Indiana Court of Appeals reversed and remanded his conviction.
allowing him the opportunity to prove his previous defense attorneys mishandled the case and that the state misrepresented evidence. If true, this meant his constitutional rights were violated during his original trial, and he should be given a new one, which is a huge win. Now, what evidence was Jeff saying the state misrepresented? Well, it came down to a pair of denim jeans.
According to Jeff's defense, the prosecution misrepresented or potentially lied about finding a pair of his jeans in the washing machine back when they were originally searching the house. This claim suggested that Jeff was attempting to clean up after the murders. There was also a pink and blue shirt in the washing machine with a pair of jeans.
A luminol test was done on the shirt and jeans, but no blood could be detected back in 1989. But according to Jeff's defense, there was no evidence that the jeans were found in the washing machine, especially since a perfectly legible receipt was found in one of the pockets. If the jeans had been washed like the prosecution presented, the receipt would have been destroyed.
His defense also argued that jurors in the original trial didn't hear important testimony from a woman named Toni Beeler. According to her, Bob Pelley was involved in illegal financial dealings in Florida before his death, and these illegal dealings might have had something to do with the murders. Essentially, it offered a new motive that didn't include Jeff.
This woman allegedly told the police that Bob was afraid at the time of his murder, and he had a lot of enemies in Florida who may have wanted to hurt him or his family. However, none of this information was turned over to Jeff's defense at his trial. A former Pennsylvania State Police officer turned private investigator also testified for Jeff's appeal.
In his testimony, he challenged the prosecutor's entire theory of the case, saying he found it very unlikely for a 17-year-old teenager would have had enough, quote, criminal intelligence to kill four people, pick up all the shotgun shells, clean himself up, and dump all the evidence before being seen at the gas station in about 15 to 20-minute time window.
He just didn't think that a 17-year-old could pull something like that off. But despite all of these arguments, the Indiana State Supreme Court ruled in favor of prosecutors and reinstated the jury's original verdict. There would be no trial. Fast forward to 2023. In 2023, Jeff was back in court with his attorneys, still pushing for a new trial.
This time, they argued that his original attorneys failed to investigate suspects and motives and pointed to what they described as a exculpatory interview that prosecutors failed to turn over during discovery. This, of course, referred to Toni Buechler's testimony about Bob's alleged financial troubles in Florida. In one part of her testimony, she allegedly said Bob had told her, quote,
This was reportedly said just days before the murders happened. So if this woman is telling the truth, is all of that a coincidence? Or did Bob Pelley have enemies who said that they would kill him and his entire family?
As of the time this episode airs, there haven't been any significant updates in Jeff's appeals. As of today, he's currently serving his prison sentence at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana. According to the Indiana State Parole Board, he won't be eligible for parole until 2082, when he will be 110 years old. But Jeff hasn't wavered this entire time.
Since 1989, he has maintained his innocence in his family's murders. So is Jeff Pelley innocent? A wrongfully accused person who's become a victim of our criminal justice system? Or did the jury get it right and he's guilty of everything he's been accused of? We know the case was decided on circumstantial evidence alone. No forensic evidence has ever been introduced in this case. No DNA, no fingerprints.
We don't even know where the murder weapon is, and we can't say for sure if that missing shotgun that Bob owned was actually used or not. We don't really know the motive. We know the police and prosecutor say it's because Jeff wasn't allowed to go to the prom on his own that weekend. But is that motive enough to kill almost your entire family?
Then what about the timeline? Did Jeff have enough time to commit the murders, collect the shotgun shells, clean up, and get ready to be at prom on time? But if Jeff really is innocent, who actually did it? Is there any truth to what this witness allegedly testified to about Bob's enemies back in 1989? Did someone or a group of people get away with the Pelley family murders?
Without any solid forensic evidence, really on either side, it's impossible to know for sure the answers to any of these questions. So I ask you, who do you think committed the Pelley family murders? To share your thoughts on this story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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