![]() For the podcast, she plays audio of his interviews with police.ĭ’Ambra told The Tribune that she came away from the project without feeling that he was guilty or innocent, but she’s certain that Pelley didn’t receive a fair trial when he was convicted in 2006. “I believe they will take some of that, obviously do some of their own due diligence.”ĭ’Ambra said Pelley, who turned 50 this month and is serving four consecutive 40-year terms, declined her interview requests. “A lot of the stuff in Florida, particularly documentation and corroboration, witnesses, people that I actually interviewed on tape, some of that stuff are things that his defense team was unaware of,” D’Ambra said. He moved the family to Lakeville to become a pastor at Olive Branch United Brethren Church about a year before the killings. Robert Pelley had worked in information technology at a Florida bank that federal officials investigated for money laundering. ![]() ![]() In seeking a new trial, Watson will rely heavily on the possibility that someone from Robert Pelley’s past came to Lakeville to murder the family. The school’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic has been fighting for more than a decade to get Pelley a new trial.ĭ'Ambra said she has communicated and compared notes with the law students and with Pelley’s attorney, Frances Watson, a faculty member at the Robert H. “My familiarity with Florida, and being able to really probe into the crime and victims in light of their whole life before they were in Indiana, was really beneficial to the story and the investigation.”ĭ'Ambra learned about the case from an Indiana University law school student who was interning at Audiochuck Podcast Network, the Indianapolis-based firm where D’Ambra works. “I’m very familiar, having worked in Florida, with working with public records laws, obtaining documents and just navigating the state of Florida,” D’Ambra told The Tribune. The season’s 20 episodes are rich with detailed accounts of primary source documents and include interviews with a variety of people in both states.ĭ’Ambra said she appreciated the Rolling Stone nod because most true crime podcasts that achieve a national following are more entertainment than journalism. But Ludlow only narrated a script based largely on journalist Carlton Smith’s 2009 book, " The Prom Night Murders: A Devoted American Family, Their Troubled Son, and a Ghastly Crime."ĭ’Ambra spent a year researching and reporting on the case, which included investigating Robert Pelley’s past in southwest Florida, shortly after quitting her job as a reporter at NBC2 in Fort Myers to focus on podcasting. San Francisco-based Esther Ludlow in May 2020 devoted two episodes of her weekly " Once Upon a Crime" podcast to it. It’s not the first time that a podcaster has featured the case. The free podcast has been downloaded more than 30 million times since its April release and was named by Rolling Stone as one of the year’s 10 best true crime podcasts. Her podcast has reignited national interest in the case, in which the 17-year-old La Ville High School senior was convicted of fatally shooting his father Robert, stepmother Dawn and stepsisters Janel, 8, and Jolene, 6, in their Lakeville home on prom night in 1989. Joseph Superior judge, someone with no ties to the case will be in the courtroom watching and listening closely.ĭelia D’Ambra will be there gathering material for additional episodes of " CounterClock Season 3," one of 2021’s hottest true crime podcasts. When Jeff Pelley returns to South Bend in March from his Michigan City prison cell for a days-long hearing before a St.
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