Crime History: Whole

The Pelley course, at crime-leg strength. The Rev. Robert Pelley took the Olive Branch pastorate in 1986; on the evening of 29 April 1989 — LaVille prom night — Bob, Dawn, Janel, and Jolene Pelley were shot dead in the parsonage; the bodies were found the next morning. His son Jeff, 17, grounded from prom over a recent burglary matter, attended anyway; the State's case was and is circumstantial and timeline-based, and no murder weapon was ever recovered. The prosecutor did not charge him in 1989; on 7 August 2002, thirteen years on, the State charged four counts of murder. Trial in July 2006 (the opinion carries both 10 and 12 July in different passages; both print) ended in conviction and, on 17 October 2006, four consecutive 40-year terms — 160 years. The Court of Appeals reversed in 2008; the Supreme Court affirmed on all issues in 2009 (Pelley v. State, 901 N.E.2d 494). He has maintained his innocence throughout — printed as his position, with the courts' dispositions beside it — and on 13 August 2025 the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of his post-conviction petition (24A-PC-1860): that affirmance is the case's state in November 2026; filings after it are a named gap. The Moses case is settled. Moses v. State, 271 N.E.2d 446 (Ind. 1971): Perry Moses, convicted of uttering a forged instrument — on 8 August 1969 he tendered Indianapolis diamond merchant William P. Nicholas a forged $45,000 check and a letter impersonating the Central State Bank of Lakeville. Cashier Robert Herbsten and teller Elizabeth Rowe testified for the State that the check was not the bank's and the letter not on its stationery. That is the whole of it: an Indianapolis forgery in which Lakeville's bank was impersonated — no Lakeville money moved, no premises entered, the bank's people only the authenticating witnesses — settling the question the bank file carried open. The Stroud case, dug to record strength: on 14 September 2000 the bodies of Wayne Shumaker, Lynn Ganger, and Corby Myers were found in a barn on the Sears property in Lakeville, where they had been building a loft. Phillip A. Stroud was convicted capitally; in 2004 the Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and vacated the death sentences (Stroud v. State, 809 N.E.2d 274); on 11 July 2005 he pleaded to life without parole plus consecutive 20-year terms. Shumaker's age prints both ways (59, prosecutor summary; 58, Tribune caption). Stroud was a South Bend man: the town did not produce him; it holds the ground — stated exactly. A fourth defendant thread (Charity Payne of North Liberty, charged 2000) stands at its telling's strength, her disposition a named gap. The Roncz flag closes negative: John Roncz, the town's aerodynamicist (d. 2023, of cancer — his date prints 27 September in the funeral-home record, 28 in a trade obituary) has no criminal record in any carrier reached; the flag was a check, and the check returns negative. The Pierpont thread, found: after Harry Pierpont's execution (17 October 1934) his funeral was conducted at his parents' home on US 31 in Lakeville, and in summer 1937 the town authorities took court action to clear the "roving coppersmiths" at Lena Pierpont's White City Inn (the Historical Bureau's essay, Tribune-cited) — the gang era touched Lakeville as aftermath and residence, not as a crime scene. No directory-era crime course stands in the banked county histories; the mention-level sweep is a named gap.