Christopher Pittman was just twelve years old when he murdered his grandparents. According to court documents Christopher was involved in an altercation at school, interrupted the piano player at church and would be disciplined by his grandfather later that night for his actions. Pittman responded by grabbing a shotgun and shooting his grandparents who were sleeping in their bed. Christopher using a candle and paper would set fire to the house and would take off stealing his grandparents car and a bit of money. Soon the teen killer would get stuck and would be arrested by police.
Initially he told police he was kidnapped after his grandparents were murdered however he would soon confess to the double murder. On the main aspects at his trial was whether or not the use of the antidepressant Paxil had anything to do with the double murder. Apparently not as this teen killer was sentenced to thirty years in prison which was later reduced to twenty five years on appeal. Christopher Pittman is scheduled to be released in 2023
Christopher Pittman 2023 Information
Christopher Pittman – Current Facility – Anderson – Current Release Date – 2023
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In November of 2001, Christopher Pittman (Appellant) shot and killed his paternal grandparents, Joe Frank and Joy Pittman, at close range with a .410 shotgun. At the time of the incident, Appellant was twelve years old and had recently come from Florida, where he lived with his father, to live with his grandparents in Chester, South Carolina.
Shortly before moving to Chester with his grandparents, Appellant’s relationship with his father became strained. Specifically, Christopher Pittman had attempted to run away from home, and also had threatened to harm himself with a knife. In response to this behavior, Appellant’s father committed him to an inpatient facility. While at the facility, Appellant began taking the antidepressant Paxil. Soon after a short period of commitment, Appellant’s father had him released from the facility and agreed to allow Appellant to live with his grandparents in Chester.
Upon moving to Chester, Christopher Pittman enrolled in school and began to actively participate in church with his grandparents. His grandmother also continued Appellant’s treatment for depression by taking him to a local physician to refill his Paxil prescription. The physician did not refill the Paxil prescription, but instead offered free samples and a prescription of Zoloft.1
On the day of the murders, the assistant principal of Appellant’s school called Appellant’s grandparents to the school in response to an incident which occurred the previous day on the school bus. During the incident in question, Appellant allegedly choked a second grade student. After leaving the school, Appellant and his grandparents attended choir practice. The church musician testified that she admonished Appellant for kicking her chair, at which time his grandfather took him outside to talk to him. Upon their return, the musician noted that Appellant had an angry expression.
According to Christopher Pittman, when they returned home, his grandparents locked him in his room and his grandfather warned him that he would paddle Appellant if he came out of the room. Later that night, Appellant came out of his room and his grandfather paddled him. After his grandparents went to bed, Appellant waited for ten minutes, loaded a shotgun, entered their bedroom, and shot his grandparents to death in their bed. Appellant then lit several candles and positioned them so that the house would catch on fire after he left. Appellant collected some money, weapons, and his dog, took the keys to his grandparents SUV, and drove away.
Early the next morning, two hunters found Appellant wandering around in the woods with a shotgun. Appellant told the hunters that he had been kidnapped by a black man who had shot his grandparents and set their home on fire. Appellant further told the hunters that he was able to escape when the kidnapper got the SUV stuck in the woods. He further stated that the kidnapper had shot at him before throwing the vehicle’s keys and running into the woods. Upon hearing this story, the hunters, who were also firemen with the Corinth Fire Department, took Appellant to the fire station where they alerted the police.
A search ensued for the black man who allegedly committed the crimes as Appellant suggested. During this time, Chester deputy Lucinda McKellar (McKellar) arrived to speak with Appellant. Under the impression that Appellant was a victim and possible witness to the crimes, McKellar took an oral and written statement from Appellant. In the statements, Appellant related the story that he had told the hunters.
As the search for the alleged kidnapper continued, the Chester police were also conducting an investigation of the crime scene. At some point in the afternoon, McKellar’s supervisor notified her that the information from the crime scene and the search of the vehicle indicated that Appellant was a possible suspect in the crimes. At that time, McKellar took Appellant to the police station.
When they arrived at the police station, McKellar took Appellant to a conference room and told him that they needed to have an “adult conversation.” Pittman sat down at the table and McKellar explained the Miranda rights. At that time, Appellant gave the officers a third statement in which he confessed to the murders and detailed the events of the night. McKellar wrote the statement and Appellant read and signed it.
After his confession, the police arrested Appellant for double homicide and arson. The prosecution filed a motion with the family court to waive its jurisdiction, which the family court granted. After several pretrial motions, various continuances, and delays, Appellant’s trial was held from January 31, 2005 to February 15, 2005. The jury convicted Appellant on both counts of murder. The trial judge sentenced Appellant to the shortest sentence possible under the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines-two concurrent terms of thirty years imprisonment.
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Christopher is currently incarcerated at the Anderson FAcility
Steven Pfeil was seventeen years old when he murdered a thirteen year old girl before killing his brother. According to court documents thirteen year old Hillary Norskog was last seen leaving a party with Steven Pfiel, three days later her body was found and she had been stabbed multiple times. Steven Pfeil was arrested soon after but would later be freed as his parents posted a huge bond.
The Pfiel family moved to a different community and soon after Steven would beat his brother with a baseball bat before slashing his throat with a butcher knife. This teen killer would receive a hundred year prison sentence for the Hillary Norskog murder and life without parole for the murder of his brother. Steven Pfeil has never given a reason for the murders
Steven Pfeil 2023 Information
Parent Institution:
MENARD CORRECTIONAL CENTER
Offender Status:
IN CUSTODY
Location:
MENARD
Sex Offender Registry Required
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There seems to be some confusion on whether his last name is Steven Pfiel as stated in the majority of the newspapers or Steven Pfeil as listed in the DOC pages of Illinois Steven Pfeil had always maintained that he didn’t murder a 13-year-old Palos Hills girl, and his older brother, Roger, had been his most vocal defender. Authorities say that after standing over Roger’s slashed and bludgeoned body, Steven Pfeil took pen in hand in the early hours of March 18 and finally confronted his demons.
In a brief note to “Mom and Dad,” Steven, 18, recounted that he had been drinking with Roger, 19, in the family’s Crete Township home, the two had fought and Steven “freaked out” and killed his brother. “I now know I am guilty of two murders,” he wrote in the note, which is now in the possession of law enforcement authorities. The note promises to be a key piece of evidence in Pfiel’s upcoming murder trial for the July 1993 death of Hillary Norskog, whose brutally stabbed body was found in a Palos Township field three days after she disappeared. “Steve was my friend. Hillary was my friend,” said Kim Gagner, 16, who introduced the two and took heat for maintaining her friendship with Pfiel after the murder. “I didn’t think Steve would do something like that.” Now, she said, “I hate him. I hate his guts.”
Steven Pfeil is accused of beating his brother with a baseball bat, then slashing his throat with a meat cleaver while his parents were away for the night at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, authorities said. Afterward, he allegedly sexually assaulted another family member in the house. Steven Pfeil fled in a family pickup stocked with guns and camping gear at about 7 a.m. Five and a half hours later, Crete Mayor Michael Einhorn heard pounding on the front door of Village Hall. “I think I’m in some trouble,” a harried Pfiel told Einhorn. Authorities charged Steven Pfeil with one count of first degree murder and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault. He is being held in Cook County Jail. When told of the note, Raymond Pijon, Pfiel’s lawyer in the Norskog case, said it could have a bearing on the case. “Anything that a defendant says that is a statement against his interests or admission of sorts is damaging,” he said. “On the other hand, sometimes such a thing could be helpful. It just depends on the nature of the defense.”
Many former friends can pinpoint the moments when their faith in Pfiel was irrevocably shaken. Ed Prasauskas, 18, of Lockport, had shrugged off the time when Steven Pfeil, a few months before Hillary’s murder, pulled out a new hunting knife from underneath his car seat and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to stab someone in the head with this?” Prasauskas’ loyalty was tested again when Steven Pfeil, now out on bail, suddenly started smashing his stereo speakers with a pool cue during a pool game in his bedroom-and then denied memory of the incident the next day. Roger Romo, 19, of Orland Park was jolted a couple of months ago when he and several friends were visiting the Pfiel brothers at the Crete Township home where the family relocated last year.
They’d been drinking beer outside when a shotgun blast shook the night, and they turned to find Steven Pfeil clutching his father’s most powerful firearm. “I thought, `No way. Somebody better get this out of his hands,’ ” Romo said. In hindsight, those who knew Pfiel point to landmines scattered throughout his past: a spoiled upbringing, his drinking and drug use, a thrill-seeking impulse and his use-’em-and-lose-’em way with girls. But although his behavior was sometimes odd, nothing could explain how the carefree Steven Pfeil they knew squared with the vicious killer described by police. “He did a lot of nutty things, but I know a lot of people who did a lot worse that didn’t commit murders,” said Jake Ostrowski, 18, of Palos Park. Pfiel is one of three children of Roger and Gayle Pfiel. He grew up in Palos Park in a sprawling ranch house with 1 1/2 acres shaded by towering oaks. His father is a high-ranking executive at a Chicago meat-packing company. “He had everything you could ask for money-wise,” said Anthony Gagner, 18, who has been a friend of Pfiel’s since 6th grade. T
he Pfiel house was the site of frequent gatherings because Pfiel’s parents either stayed in the other wing of the house or were not at home, friends said. “They let him get away with everything,” one friend said. Pfiel’s clique played pool in his bedroom, blared bands like Danzig, Pink Floyd and the Red Hot Chili Peppers from his stereo and jammed in the garage on his electric bass guitar. At Stagg High School, Pfiel migrated toward a loose-knit group of “misfits” and “stoners” who liked to ditch school and hang around local forest preserves, where they drank beer, smoked marijuana and occasionally used LSD. Ostrowski said Pfiel’s drug use could get excessive. “One time I saw him at the lunch table in school take five hits of acid,” he said. “This kid, he was going berserk.” On one drug-fogged night, Prasauskas said, he and Pfiel took turns speeding down Kean Avenue at 80 m.p.h., with the other clinging to the hood.
Steven Pfeil More News
On St. Patrick’s Day, Roger and Gayle Pfiel relaxed at a party – a respite from their waking nightmare, the murder accusation against their youngest son that had hung over their family for more than a year.
They returned home to find a cataclysm. Six squad cars and two ambulances lined the pothole-scarred rural road that separated their large and isolated Tudor home from a fallow cornfield.
Inside, their elder son lay dead, beaten with a baseball bat, his throat slashed with a meat cleaver. A young family member, the one whose hysterical telephone call had summoned help, had been raped.
For a family that already had too much grief to bear, there was one more terrible blow in store.ADVERTISING
Police told them it was not an intruder who was responsible for the violence, but Steven – the baby-faced, 18-year-old son who had been charged with killing a young girl 20 months before.
The son for whom they posted a $100,000 bond and moved the family to the rural home when the taunts and glares of neighbors became too much. The son who, days later, penned a note to his parents from a jail cell.
“Mom and dad,” Steven Pfeil wrote, “now I’ve killed two people.”
* * *
“Wouldn’t it be cool,” Pfiel once told his friend Ed Prasauskas, “to stab someone in the head with this?”
In his hands he held a knife. He had pulled it from under the car seat, Prasauskas told the Chicago Tribune.
After the murders, those who knew Steven Pfeil searched their memories for indications of murderous rage in a boy who was raised under comfortable circumstances, in a ranch house under towering oaks.
Prasauskas, 18, remembered seeing his friend smash his stereo speakers with a pool cue; others recalled that he had been arrested once for smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol outside of his home.
Steven Pfeil reveled in shooting pool, riding in fast cars and cranking up the volume when he listened to metal bands. He ran with a fast crowd at Stagg High School, where his record was unremarkable.
Pfiel knew Hillary Norskog, though they were just acquaintances. Hillary was 13, about to enter high school.
She was just starting to spend evenings away from the watchful eyes of her single mother. On July 14, 1993, she kissed her mom goodbye; she would likely party with friends, she said, and spend the night with a girlfriend.
Hillary and her friends headed to Hidden Pond Woods in a nearby forest preserve. The teens sat at picnic tables, laughed, drank a couple beers. At some point, Hillary apparently decided against spending the night at her girlfriend’s. She left the forest preserve in time to meet her 10:30 curfew.
Friends say that Steven Pfeil, just turned 17, offered her a ride home.
Three days later, two people walking behind a subdivision of million dollar homes not far from Hidden Pond found Hillary’s 80-pound body in a field of weeds. Beaten, stabbed and too decomposed to immediately identify, investigators recognized the Jurassic Park T-shirt her mother had described.
“She was so tiny,” Norskog said. “She never had a chance.”
* * *
Steven was arrested July 20 outside of his family’s Palos Park home, a short car ride from Hillary’s condominium. He told police the blood red stains that covered the seats of his 1988 Chevrolet were Kool-Aid.
He remained behind bars until Oct. 3, when his parents posted $100,000 of a $1 million bond.
Although Hilary’s mother Marsha Norskog kept intense pressure on prosecutors and police, the case against Steven was delayed again and again as attorneys wrangled over DNA evidence and its admissibility.
The trial has been put off once again, until June 21. Steven Pfeil has been found fit to stand trial, but prosecutors and defense attorneys say they are working on plea agreements in both the Norskog case and the murder and rape case.
Norskog has long been convinced of Steven’s guilt. Last November, as he left the courtroom, she leaned from her seat and hissed in a stage whisper, “Why don’t you go kill someone else? You’re already killing me.”
The Pfiels, meanwhile, sat behind their youngest son at every court hearing and continued to back him publicly.
Media scrutiny had become excruciating, and the Pfiels decided to move with their children to St. John, Ind., just across the stateline.
They changed their minds after St. John residents learned of the plan – Norskog acknowledges playing a role – and mounted a letter-writing campaign to urge the Pfiels to go elsewhere.
The family settled instead in rural Crete, more than 30 miles from Palos Park. The 4,500-square-foot house was purchased quietly, for about $200,000 in cash, through the Pfiel’s lawyer. He referred to his clients by first name only, said sources familiar with the negotiations.
“We thought they were in the federal witness protection program,” said a neighbor who requested anonymity.
Other than a rowdy teen party late last summer, neighbors say they kept to themselves, the Pfiels kept to themselves.
By several accounts, Steven remained tight with his brother Roger, older by one year. Roger defended his sibling against those who believed him guilty.
“They were really close,” said friend Shawn Baker.
* * *
On the night of March 17, Roger and Gayle Pfiel left home for the 50-mile drive to Chicago and the St. Patrick’s Day party. In the hours after they left, the Pfiel home became a slaughterhouse.
How it came to pass, police do not know. But at 7:13 a.m. on Saturday, they received a frantic call from a young female family member, asking for help.
By the time police arrived, Roger Pfiel was dead in a bedroom. Police say he had been bludgeoned and slashed. The young woman who alerted police had been raped. Steven Pfeil had fled the home, taking with him his father’s shotgun and two rifles, said a deputy chief.
Several hours later, Mayor Michael Einhorn heard a knock at the front door of Crete’s tiny Village Hall.
“I need to talk to somebody,” said a young man wearing a black Metallica T-shirt. “I think I’m in some trouble.”
The mayor called police, who arrested Steven Pfeil. Sheriff’s police say Steven made a full confession to his brother’s death but gave no motive.
Pfiel’s parents have not visited their son since the day they found their lives undone.
“It’s a tremendous loss,” said their attorney, Raymond Pijon. “I don’t think there’s any way to assess it. There are no magic words that make this go away.”
At his first court hearing after Roger Pfiel was killed, Steven was led through a phalanx of reporters on his way back to jail. “Steven, do you have anything to say?” shouted one of the reporters.
Steven Pfeil lifted both handcuffed hands, the middle finger on each extended upwards.
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Naeshawn Perry was sixteen years old when he murdered his exgirlfriend in Maryland. According to police the teen killer and his ex girlfriend had an on and off again relationship that ended when Naeshawn Perry strangled the fifteen year old to death.
It took police over a year to figure out who was responsible for the death of Maleigha Solonka. Naeshawn Perry was ultimately linked to the murder through DNA and when his court process finally began he would plead guilty to murder. Naeshawn Perry was sentenced to life in prison however all of it but twenty to forty years was suspended.
Naeshawn Perry 2023 Information
269784
PERRY
NAESHAWN
JAHIEM
02/24/2001
DOC ID
Holding Facility
00480921
Eastern Correctional Institution West
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An ex-boyfriend plead guilty Tuesday in the 2017 slaying of 15-year-old Maleigha Solonka.
Solonka’s body was found in a wooded area of Havre de Grace after she disappeared the day before her birthday. Officials said she had been strangled.
Naeshawn Perry, 19, was charged as an adult with first- and second-degree murder.
Solonka’s grandmother, Donna Elliot, said she has always suspected Perry, whom she described as Solonka’s ex-boyfriend, to be her killer. Elliot said Solonka was afraid of Perry for weeks before she disappeared.
A sentencing is scheduled for June 4, 2020.
Naeshawn Perry More News
A 19-year-old from Havre de Grace pleaded guilty in Harford County Circuit Court Tuesday to killing a 15-year-old girl and dumping her body in 2017.
Naeshawn Jaheim Perry pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder, according to court documents. As part of his plea agreement, he was sentenced to life in prison, with all but 20 to 40 years suspended, Harford County State’s Attorney Albert Peisinger said. Sentencing is scheduled for June.
Maleigha Solonka, 15, of Edgewood, was reported missing on Aug. 9, 2017, and found dead a week later in the woods on the 400 block of Webb Lane. Her body was discovered in a trash can, according to a news release from the Harford County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Medical examiners determined her cause of death was asphyxiation and it was ruled a homicide.
Police pinpointed Perry more than a year later, charging the then-16-year-old with first- and second-degree murder in August 2018. Authorities filed charges against him when “multiple items that were recovered during the investigation” underwent DNA analysis. He was held without bail after being charged.
Donna Elliott, maternal grandmother to Solonka, said that she could not believe the sudden plea.
She was stunned when she received a call notifying her, and she cried in court while watching it happen. Elliott said that this does not constitute closure, but she said that justice will be served come the day of Perry’s sentencing. She had custody of Solonka from 2012 onward.
“I do not think there is ever closure, I don’t believe in that because you will always grieve for your child,” she said. “Maleigha is getting the justice that she deserves.”
Elliott said Solonka and Perry were in a fractious, on-again-off-again relationship, which her granddaughter eventually “broke away” from.
Originally scheduled to begin Oct. 23, the trial was postponed after a jury could not be seated to hear the case. Threatening messages were also found scrawled in the courthouse’s elevator, with one reading “kill Perry.”
Perry’s defense attorneys motioned to move the case out of Harford County, but that motion was not granted.
The trial was scheduled to begin with jury selection Tuesday
Naeshawn Perry More News
A Maryland teenager has admitted he murdered his ex-girlfriend weeks shy of her 16th birthday, before he dumped her body in the trash.
Naeshawn Jaheim Perry, 19, pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder Tuesday in the killing of Maleigha Solonka, 15, according to court documents obtained by the Baltimore Sun. In exchange for his plea, Perry agreed to be sentenced to life in prison with all but 20 to 40 years suspended.
His jury trial was scheduled to begin on Thursday.
Solonka, 15 was reported missing on Aug. 9, 2017 and found dead in a trash can in a wooded area about a week later. Medical examiners ruled the girl was strangled before her body was dumped in the garbage, local television station WBAL reported.
Perry was 16 years old at the time of the killing, according to CBS Baltimore.
Perry was not charged as a suspect until nearly a year later, when investigators used DNA analysis on “multiple items that were recovered during the investigation,” police said according to the Sun.
“Mr. Perry was charged with murdering Maleigha Solonka after multiple items that were recovered during the investigation underwent DNA analysis,” Harford County State’s Attorney Albert J. Peisinger Jr. said in a statement Tuesday night obtained by Patch.com. “The Office of the State’s Attorney for Harford County sends its deepest condolences to the victim’s family for the tragic loss they have suffered.”
Solonka’s grandmother and guardian Donna Elliott told the outlet she was stunned by the plea.
“I do not think there is ever closure, I don’t believe in that because you will always grieve for your child,” she said. “Maleigha is getting the justice that she deserves.”
Elliot added that Molonka was involved in a difficult on-again, off-again relationship with Perry that she eventually broke off entirely.
“It has been extremely traumatic not knowing, depressing because everything kept getting postponed,” Elliott said. “My whole family is forever broken, but we can try to put some pieces back together.”
“She was very ambitious, beautiful, loved by everyone she met,” Elliot said of Molonka to CBS Baltimore.
Attorneys representing Perry did not respond to requests for comment from the Baltimore Sun. He is set to be sentenced on June 4, according to Patch.
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Alexander Perez was fourteen years old when he would murder a man during a robbery. According to court documents this Teen Killer would attack a man who was sitting on his porch, forcing the victim into his home before beating him to death. Alexander would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to thirty five years in prison with a chance of parole after fifteen years
A Holiday teenager will be facing adult first-degree felony murder charges, as Pasco County authorities say he battered and robbed a neighbor who died shortly thereafter.
Fourteen-year-old Alexander Perez was indicted by a grand jury December 9 for a beating and robbery prosecutors say he committed against a neighbor on September 23. They allege that Perez approached his neighbor around two o’clock that morning as he was sitting on his porch and began physically attacking him. Prosecutors say Perez forced Walker into his own home where Perez robbed him of cash and continued the assault.
Although grievously injured in the assault, Walker declined medical treatment. The county’s medical examiner says that Walker suffered a rupture in his chest cavity that allowed air to escape from his lungs. His organs began to swell, causing his blood pressure to rise to a point beyond which his heart could continue circulating his blood, ultimately leading to his demise. All of this, according to the medical examiner, was the result of the assault Perez is alleged to have committed.
Prosecutors do not allege that Perez intended to kill Walker. They instead say that Perez committed a dangerous felony, the commission of which led to Walker’s death. As a result, the county is pursuing felony-murder charges that Perez will face as an adult.
A conviction on the charges in question will lead to imprisonment for at least twenty-five years. Perez is not facing the death penalty, however. Additionally, as a result of a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling, should Perez be convicted of any charge that results in a lengthy sentence, he is required to have an opportunity for parole after twenty-five years.
Alexander Perez More News
Alexander Perez, just fourteen years old and charged with murder. Detectives say he robbed and beat 81-year-old Robert Walker to death back in September.
Medical examiners recently ruled Walker’s death a homicide due to blunt force trauma. As a result, investigators now say Perez faces murder charges in Walker’s death.
Robert Walker talked to News Channel 8 after he was attacked just hours before he died.
“Well, I was robbed once before by him. Q: you were robbed by him before? About three months ago. He tried to kill me. “
Police believe Perez did rob the man and did beat him but say it was never Perez’s plan to kill Mr. Walker.
“Unfortunately he died in a commission of a felony and that’s how it gets to first-degree murder,” said David Dacey, Pasco County detective.
Detectives hope this awful incident will serve as a lesson to those looking for mischief.
“Hopefully they see this and they see this fourteen-year-old gentlemen arrested for first-degree murder and they may think twice about going out late at night and robbing people,” said Dacey.
Perez will get to do a lot of thinking as he sits in jail waiting to be tried as an adult. Hours before Mr. Walker died he wanted to ask Perez this question:
“Why did you try to kill me?”
We asked detectives if Perez seemed sorry for what they’re accusing him of. They said not really.
“He seems calm when he talks to me. He doesn’t seem, I guess, very sorry,” said Dacey.
Alexander Perez has been in custody since his initial arrest in September. He’s being held in a regular detention facility. Not a juvenile jail.
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In 1989 Jeff Pelley would be arrested for the murders of four members of his family when he was seventeen years old and allegedly killed his family the night of prom. According to court documents Jeff Pelley was upset with his family regarding prom and he decided the best way to fix that situation was through murder. Jeff Pelley would murder his father Reverend Robert Pelley, his mother Dawn Pelley, and two step sisters. Thankfully three members of the family were not home the night of the murders or the number could be even higher. After his family was massacred Jeff Pelley would go ahead and have a great night out with friends and classmates.
Jeff Pelley would not be charged in the murders until 2002 when a cold case squad linked him to the four murders. Ultimately this teen killer would be convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to 160 years in prison, forty years for each murder. Now Jeff Pelley has been insisting that he is innocent since he was arrested and continues to fight through the court system in hope of getting a new trial and release. I could not find him initially in the Indiana Department Of Corrections how ever that is because Jeff is actually his middle name and Robert his first.
Jeff Pelley 2023 Information
DOC Number
168287
First Name
ROBERT
Middle Name
J
Last Name
PELLEY
Suffix
Date of Birth
12/10/1971
Gender
Male
Race
White
Facility/Location
Indiana State Prison
Earliest Possible Release Date * *Offenders scheduled for release on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday are released on Monday. Offenders scheduled for release on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday are released on Thursday. Offenders whose release date falls on a Holiday are released on the first working day prior to the Holiday.
10/03/2082
Jeff Pelley Other News
On April 30, 1989, Pastor Robert Pelley didn’t show up for church at Olive Branch UB in Lakeville, Ind. (just south of South Bend). Eventually, two men went next door to the parsonage. They knocked several times, but got no response. The blinds were tightly drawn.
The found a spare key, entered the house…and discovered a grisly scene. Robert Pelley (38), lay dead in the upstairs hallway, killed with two deer slugs. In the basement were wife Dawn (32) and her two youngest daughters from a previous marriage, Janel (8) and Jolene (6). All had been shot in the head. Three children were not at home: Robert’s son Jeff and his sister Jacqueline, from a previous marriage, and Dawn’s daughter Jessica, 9. (Both Robert and Dawn were widows.)
Jeff Pelley, a 17-year-old high school senior, was always the leading suspect, but wasn’t arrested or charged. There just wasn’t sufficient evidence. He moved to Florida, developed a good career, married, had a child, and was teaching Sunday school.
Thirteen years passed. Then a Cold Case squad reopened the investigation. Jeff Pelley was arrested in August 2002 and charged with the four murders. In July 2006, he went on trial.
The evidence was very circumstantial. No murder weapon was ever found (Bob’s 20 gauge Mossberg was never located). No fingerprints linked Pelley to the crime itself. Rather, the prosecution relied on a carefully constructed timeline which put Jeff Pelley at the parsonage during a particular 20-minute period, during which he did a whole bunch of things (commit the murders, change clothes, load the washing machine, take a shower, locate and pick up the shell casings, draw the blinds, lock the doors, get rid of the gun and casings, and more).
Investigators said he was angry at his father for grounding him from attending pre- and post-prom activities, and from driving his car. After the killings, they said, he cleaned up, went to the prom with his girlfriend, stayed overnight with friends, and the next day went with friends to the Great America theme park in Chicago, where he was located on Sunday.
During the trial, Jeff Pelley’s attorneys insisted there wasn’t enough time for him to kill his family, do everything they claimed he did, and still make it to the prom, and that after committing an act like that, nobody would act normal, which is how friends testified that he acted during the prom events.
After a six-day trial which included nearly 40 witnesses, jurors deliberated for 34 hours and returned a guilty verdict. Jeff Pelley, now 34 years old, was sentenced to 160 years in prison (four consecutive 40-year sentences). A Court of Appeals reversed the conviction in 2008, but in 2009 the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the conviction. He is now incarcerated at the Wabash Correctional Facility near Terra Haute, Ind.
Jeff Pelley is currently incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison
Jeff Pelley Release Date
Jeff Pelley is not scheduled for release until 2082
Jeff Pelley Retrial
A 50-year-old man was back in court today to make a case for what he did and didn’t do on prom night 1989.
In 2006, a jury in St. Joseph County found that Jeff Pelley was guilty of the shotgun murders of his father, stepmother and two stepsisters under the age of 10.
The Olive Branch Church parsonage in Lakeville was the scene of the crimes.
Prosecutors argued that Rev. Robert Pelley was killed because he had grounded his 17-year-old son, preventing Jeff Pelley from attending prom related activities that he wanted to attend anyway.
Jeff Pelley was sentenced to 160-years in prison, with his earliest possible release date listed as 2082, unless he and his attorneys can convince a judge that he deserves a new trial or some other form of post-conviction relief at a three and a half day hearing that began today.
About a dozen years ago, the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at Indiana University took Pelley’s case. Attorney Fran Watson today criticized investigators for telling jurors that Pelley’s jeans, shirt and socks were found in the washing machine, having been washed.
Watson found absolutely no evidence to back that up—not in police reports or crime scene photos.
Watson suggested the investigation was plagued by political overtones and asked one officer if clothes in the washer was what he would have preferred to see.
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