1 of 20: Establishing Base

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This season of Counterclock, we at AudioCuck are doing something a little different. The story I'm investigating is so big and so twisted that to wrap your head around it, we think it's important you hear the whole thing all at once. On top of that, time is of the essence. This is the first case I've covered for counterclock that's still actively going through the criminal justice system.

For the first time, we're releasing this new season for you to binge. This is season three, episode one of Counterclock, Establishing Base. And this is exactly where you should be starting if you want to understand this confounding mystery. For a long time, I thought that I would begin telling you this story at the place I started when it got my interest as an investigator. Olive Branch United Brethren Church, the end of April, 1989, in rural Lakeville, Middle of Nowhere, Indiana.

The parsonage next to the country church is where Reverend Bob Pelley, his second wife Dawn, teenage son Jeff, and daughters. Jessica, Janelle, and Jolene lived in 1989. The buildings are still there today. Thirty-two years ago, the parsonage became the scene of one of the worst and most infamous family massacres in Indiana history.

But I've realized that in order to really tell you the story and prepare you for what my investigation has uncovered, I have to go back a little further than 1989, almost 20 years, to 1970.

That year, on september eleventh, Robert Bob Pelle married his first wife, Ava Joy Armstrong. The couple met in the late 60s at Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Mount Vernon, Ohio, just north of Columbus. was from Ohio and had enrolled in some classes at Youngstown State University before meeting his wife, but eventually transferred to Mount Vernon Nazarene because he felt called to more religious studies. Ava, who everyone called Joy, was provided.

Yeah. According to Joy's parents, Mary and Jack Armstrong, Bob and Joy's love blossomed quickly after they met, and it didn't take long before they went from dating. After their wedding, Bob and Joy moved into a trailer down the street from Joy's parents, Despite Bob completing an education in religious studies, he took a job in Kentucky. Computers at a company called Square D Manufacturing. Thank you.

Now, if you've ever been to Kentucky or Ohio, you know that manufacturing is a big part of the economy and the middle class workforce. In the early 70s, as computers and the technology industry as a whole was advancing, Bob developed a strong interest in computer programming. So his job in Florence at Square D was perfect for him, even though it was far from any kind of ministry. That would come later. In December 1971, Bob and Joy welcomed their first child. A sign.

They named him Robert Jeffrey Pelley, after his father. The only difference was that Bob's middle name was Lee. So to prevent any confusion with two Robert Pellys running around, Robert Junior went by Jeff. By 1980, the couple's second child had been born. In April 1980, Bob and Joy moved the family from Kentucky to Cape Coral, Florida. At the time, Cape Coral was an up-and-coming residential city in Southwest Florida. It's about halfway between Tampa and the affluent city of Naples.

Now, just to give you a little background on Cape Coral, it's very different than Kentucky, as you might imagine. Cape Coral was then and still is a tropical Floridian coastal city. balmy mid-70s weather most of the year and palm trees are everywhere. I worked as a reporter in the city for four years, and I can honestly say the only negatives to the place are that summer thunderstorms are severe and the traffic can be bad, but that's about it. It truly is a beautiful place to live.

It's 80% single-family homes and condos, all packed into a peninsula that's bordered on one side by the Calusahatchie River, and the rest of the city sits next to estuaries from the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the Cape is the largest city in Southwest Florida. Back in the early 80s, there were way fewer people, but it still had a buzz about it that made it a good place for a young family to settle down.

Deed records show that by 1983, Bob and Joy had bought a home and were settling in nicely. They had a pool, a nice neighborhood, and Bob was making a decent living. The Pelles were also committed members of the Fort Myers First Church of the Nazarene. That church was in the city of Fort Myers, about 20 minutes southeast of where they lived. A person who immediately befriended the family was their pastor, Michael Ross.

Bob and Joy were very active. They'd have the teens over for a party after church or what whatever. Bob was in some type of leadership. maybe on the board or something. But I do know that they both were very well thought of and very active and there was no problems with their leadership or anything. They were they were very involved.

Throughout the early 80s, Bob and Joy instilled their strong Christian faith in their two kids. There were rules and expectations when it came to how Jeff and Jackie were to behave and honor the Lord. By 1984, Jeff was 13, a full-blown teenager, and Jackie was a little girl on the cusp of becoming a young woman. Bob took on the role of disciplinarian, like a lot of fathers do, especially when it came to Jeff. Here's Pastor Ross again to explain.

I never saw anything out of Jeff personally that was anything beyond a normal teenage boy. Any teenage boy is gonna do stupid things. overdead it a couple of times. His expression of anger were sometimes extreme, absurd. Bob was harsh with the kids. very strict. He did not abuse them physically or anything, but he could come down pretty hard.

According to Jackie, Joy was more forgiving, particularly with Jeff. She handled correction more softly, but when she needed to be, she was still stern when it came to the expectations she had for her children. It's safe to say the Pellies were close, but mostly because of Bob's personality, the family was restrained when it came to affection.

I have all good memories of growing up with with my mom and dad and Jeff. Our life was normal, I mean, comparatively to other people. We were all close. Jeff may have been closer to They had more of the same sense of humor and I was probably closer to my dad who got his feelings hurt a little bit more than my mom ever did. Dad was big on um we were never allowed to cry. That's the way he grew up, and that was instilled in us.

So showing emotion around dad was a no no. But I can't say that we were ever like overly emotional with my mom. For the most part, I just remember Having fun, all of us. I I mean it was, you know, during the week it was work and school and on the weekend you worked hard together as a family to clean the house, mow the yard or whatever and then You know, the rest of the day Saturday and church on Sunday, everything was pretty normal.

Jackie and her whole family's sense of normalcy was shattered in nineteen eighty four when Joy was diagnosed with skin cancer. It was advanced and despite a short period of remission, eventually became terminal.

My mom was big on she did not want to fight it. She she was she loved Jesus. She wanted to go to heaven and meet her savior, and she didn't do chemo or radiation or any of that. So I think when it came back, It did seem pretty quick, but Pastor Ross remembers being super sad when he heard about Joy's diagnosis. I got very close to them, uh especially after Joy I'll never forget her coming to me after service, she and um Bob, and she showed me a place on her arm and it was melanoma.

But it advanced to a point that there was no hope. By January 1985, it was clear that Joy wasn't going to win her fight with cancer. Bob had changed jobs by that point and was now working as a supervisor for Landmark Bank in Fort Myers. The job paid well, and that helped him afford Joy's mounting medical bills. By the beginning of February 1985, Bob admitted Joy into the full-time care of Cape Coral Hospital because her health was rapidly declining.

She was comatose basically. So it's one of those turn off the machine things. At what point do you do that? But it was irreversible. I mean she was last I saw her she didn't know I was there, didn't know anybody was there. She was in a coma, basically. On February 24, 1985, Joy Pelley died. Bob had made the decision to remove his wife from life support and let her rest in peace. And he had to make a decision of how long to sustain her.

because she was dying and she was not eating or you know, that story. And I stuck with him through that, helped him through it, guided him. Her family did not particularly agree with his decision, but it was his decision, and he caught some flack for it. Bob became a widower with two young kids, and according to Pastor Ross, he spent most of the family's money on end-of-life care for Joy.

The only people Bob had left were his kids, his in laws in Kentucky, some distant relatives in Ohio, and his church community in Fort Myers. Pastor Ross says that in the wake of Joy's death, Bob leaned on his faith and the spiritual family he and Joy had grown to know at church. Pastor Ross says when it came to paying for Joy's funeral, Bob had a lot of anxiety. I remember it came to me. after Joy had died and he said I I don't have any money.

And the only casket I can afford is a cardboard. It's decor you know, it looks they try and make it look like it's and I said, Bob, don't worry about that if that's that's what it is. It's no no one's gonna think less of you or but when the funeral when she brought in she was in a a steel She wasn't in the cardboard one, she was in a one that was a little more routine or acceptable. So where he got the money for that, I don't know.

Bob had a pretty good paying job at Landmark Bank Data Center, did he not? Yes. So when he came to you and said financially things are tough right now, did that surprise you, considering you knew what he was doing for a living? Yeah, it surprised me. Did you ask him? No, I just remember saying, Bobby, doesn't matter. You know no one's gone

I didn't say this, but you know, it's it's gonna be buried in the ground anyhow. But I tried to minimize his guilt or embarrassment, but I was surprised that he'd somehow gotten the money for a a nicer casket. Wow. And where he maybe had it the whole time, didn't want to spend it, I don't know. But I never did explore with him why and what was behind all of that.

Pastor Ross assumed that most likely someone within the congregation had helped Bob pay for Joy's funeral expenses. It was the only explanation. Bob wasn't the kind of guy to make money appear out of thin air. If someone gave the grieving father money to pay for Joy's funeral, it didn't surprise Pastor Ross. He knew many people in his congregation loved the Pelley family. Plus, church members recognized that Bob had to continue to care for Jeff and Jackie on his own.

What no one in Florida knew though was that someone else had just died, hundreds of miles away back in Ohio. And that death would change the Pelle family's future forever. Look, I have been through this a few times now, and learning a new language always feels super daunting. But not all learning methods are created equal. Rosetta Stone is designed to help you learn languages naturally.

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Fifty-three days before Joy Pelley died, a man named Edward John Huber died in Lucas County, Ohio in a garage shed in the backyard of his home. His wife and three young daughters were just steps away inside the house. According to coroner records from Toledo, Edward died while working on a car inside of the garage. It was January 2nd and the weather was cold.

When Edward failed to come back inside the house after a few hours, his wife Dawn went outside and had discovered him lying unconscious underneath the vehicle he was fixing. His official manner of death is listed as accidental. The coroner ruled that the death was a result of 90% acute carbon monoxide poisoning, with contributing factors of acute alcohol intoxication. So essentially, he inhaled exhaust and had likely been drinking. Edward was just 27 years old.

His wife, 28-year-old Don, and their daughters, five-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Janelle, and two-year-old Jolene, were left on their own. Jessica, now in her thirties, remembers the painful news of her dad's death like it was yesterday. I mean I do remember seeing him and thinking he was asleep. you know, and then later coming to find out, obviously that wasn't the case, you know, I've heard stories but I don't really remember

how my mom was. I just remember her s yelling at me to get my sisters upstairs. That's really the only thing I remember from from that day. Across Toledo, word of Edward's tragic death made its way to Jessica's extended family members, including her cousin, Jamie Collins. Jessica's dad was my uncle Eddie and he died when Jesse was five years old. He was found beneath the car in the family's garage after church one day. They think he had been working on the car.

and then didn't realize he wasn't getting enough ventilation in there and it was noted as carbon monoxide poisoning. The circumstances around Edward's death struck many people in the Huber family as abrupt and strange. Edward had a long history of working on cars as a mechanic. He tinkered all of the time in his garage. It just seemed odd that he would close the garage door while working inside because he of all people knew fumes could

This left a lot of family members speculating that maybe he'd shut the door intentionally to take his own life. And that's the rumor most people came to conclude was likely the truth. It had become common knowledge that Edward and Don's marriage was having problems, and Edward had even told some relatives he planned to leave the family.

Honestly, it was a really, really painful thing for our family. My grandmother had always already lost one daughter who was hit on a bicycle when she was younger, so this was her second loss of a child. And he was the only boy in the family of this huge family. So it would be devastating no matter what to lose a sibling, but to lose the only son and the only brother. I just think it's a different kind of deeper loss, I guess. So not to say no one ever.

talked about him or remembered him because they did and you would occasionally hear his name but there wasn't this sit down at the table to talk about exactly what happened or what do we think. Those kind of conversations just didn't really happen. Jessica has never believed her dad took his own life though. Nobody really talked to me about it when I was younger, obviously. When I got older, you know, some people thought

It was suicide. Some people thought it wasn't. But I just I don't think my dad would have killed himself, honestly. I found out he was gonna leave my mom and take us girls, so You know, not saying that anything really did happen, but you know, there's just speculation out there that it just it was different than what it was. Whatever the real truth is behind Edward's death, Jessica continues to only remember good memories of him.

The relationship with my dad was very good. Um he took me hunting, fishing. One of my favorite memories. It always makes me want to cry. But I was going to Big Boy, like every Sunday, and I'd get waffles with cherries and whipped cream and that just that memory really stuck with me. So, you know, we had a a really good relationship. He was one person that really got me. He was weird like I am, you know, he loved to sing like I do. Just kinda out there, you know, very bubbly and talkative and

you know, like a bright light. And after he passed I just I didn't have that anymore. So and it's hard to find someone like that, you know, that's just like you.

After Edward died, Jessica's mom Dawn started over, trying to take care of her daughters and support herself. She had minimal income and three mouths. She relied on her family and had a small support system of friends and church community in Ohio. Just a few months after her husband's death, Dawn visited her best friend Katie in Portage, Ohio, that's just south of Toledo. During their visit, Katie introduced one of her uncles to Don. He was a widower visiting from Florida named Bob Pelle.

Bob was there to pick up his two kids, Jeff and Jackie, who'd been with family for several days. Here's Jackie's memory of that moment. Jeff and I had actually met Dawn before my dad ever did. Um we had gone to spend some time with my dad's cousin, Katie no, maybe it was his niece, my cousin. Something like that. Anyway, she was Dawn's best friend and went to church with Dawn. We went to church with her on Sunday.

And I actually met Dawn in the ladies' bathroom at the church. That's the first time I ever met her. And we sat behind them, her and the girls, during Sunday morning service. And at some point I don't know if it was that day or later that week or how soon it was after that. We went to it's called Portage and it's a my dad's family had a cabin there and every summer they went for like family camp kind of thing.

And so my dad came there to meet us, to pick us up, to take us home. And Dawn and her girls were there. And that's the first time that he met her. Um and they spent some time together that afternoon at Portage before we headed back home. Those few hours walking and talking by the lake in Portage brought Bob and Don together. They parted ways that day. Don stayed in Ohio and Bob returned to Florida, but they kept in touch.

Within a few short months, their romance had grown into something more serious. He flew her out for my birthday in September. It was just her. The girls weren't with her. I vaguely remember him talking to us about like getting married. I don't remember there being a lot of discussion, nobody was upset. In fact, he wanted to go ahead and get married sooner than later. And that meant that Jeff and I didn't get to go to the wedding because we had school.

And Jeff was the one that was like, go for it, you know, it it doesn't matter, you know. On November 8, 1985, Bob Pelley married Don Hayes Huber in a small church ceremony in Ohio. Ten months after Edward Huber had died, and only eight months after Joy Pelley had passed away from cancer. Bob was six years older than Dawn. Jeff and Jackie didn't even attend their father's wedding to his second wife. It happened that quickly.

Jessica and her sisters were at the wedding, wearing little lace dresses and smiling for a photo. That picture's on our website, Counterclock. Unlike Jackie, Jessica expressed outwardly that she did not like this new life change. I was very angry. Great. I didn't want this man in my life. I didn't want his siblings.

you know, I was still grieving my dad. So I never got a chance to to do that because here were these people and I had to uproot and move to them, you know, so I lost everything pretty much at that point that I knew. So it was tough. Outside of the fact that her new home in Florida came with a swimming pool and there would be no more Midwest winners, Jessica says she disliked everything else about moving and her mother's remarriage.

For years, she struggled with being angry towards Dawn, but after all this time, realizes why her mother did what she did. I think she was just trying to survive. You know, it took me a long time being mad at her to finally realize that. You know, obviously after I had my children they started growing up and yeah, those thoughts do go through your head. What what would you do?

As a mom, you're gonna do whatever you can to protect your children, to make sure that they have a life, you know? And I think that's that's the way that she did it. The only way she knew how. remarry. Yeah. Yep. And get some help and'cause yeah, I don't She I mean, especially back in those days. It's not like today where women get can get a job anywhere. Back then, you know, there were certain things that you could do and, you know, I think she just needed some support herself.

Jackie says she understands why Don and Bob felt the need to rush their marriage. They each needed what the other could offer: companionship and support. I think they got married quick. I think it worked out for both of them as far as My dad was a single parent. I can't speak for Dawn. I don't know what her life was like. I can't really speak for my dad either. But he was single parenting.

and I'd have to get up at like five or five thirty in the morning and get dropped off at the school in Cape Coral while he and Jeff went to Fort Myers. And I was a latchkey kid. I came home all by myself. So I think it helped him. For Dawn, I can't imagine. She had three kids by herself and just trying to work and And her husband had passed away. Yeah.

Pastor Michael Ross, one of Bob's closest Friends understood the couple's reason too, but still, he felt deep down from the get go that Bob and Don's union was too swift. I was a little skeptical. He was still on the rebound, so to speak, hadn't How long after Joy's death did he say he met someone? I don't know, but it wasn't long.

But they ended up getting married. I remember she moved down to Fort Myers, basically Cape Carl with him but Not long after that he came and said that he felt like he was called to pastor and in fact he had a church that had offered him a position. And that's where our story about this case and my investigation really begins. From the moment in nineteen eighty six that Bob Pelle, a newly remarried man, and newly He was called to the ministry. I gave him a Bible and sent him off.

It's from this point that my investigation moves forward. Looking to find out if yet another job change for Bob, taking his blended family from We moved on their first anniversary. It was November 8th of 86. a sequence of events that many claim fanned flames of resentment. Their relationship was strained. He did not appreciate them. What exactly led to four Pelle family members being murdered? And a mystery that's a very good thing. Apole law enforcement free. In episode two, I'm not sure.

into the next phase of my investigation. crime that rocked Lakeville, Indiana. Listen, like. Every case file, interview, and archive tells a piece of the truth. I'm Kylie Lowe, and on my podcast, Dark Down East, original reporting is at the heart of every case I cover. I don't just retell crime stories. I investigate them. I'm speaking with families, searching court records, and piecing together the facts that have been overlooked and forgotten with time. The results?

True crime storytelling that digs as deeply into a case as you do. You can listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your