Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Circleville Letters

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

An anonymous letter-writer antagonized residents of Circleville, Ohio for years, singling out the school superintendent, Gordon Massie, and a local bus driver, Mary Gillispie, as the focus of much of the vitriol. When Mary finds a booby trap with a loaded gun in 1983, the gun is traced to her brother-in-law Paul Freshour – but the letters would continue long after Paul went to prison for attempted murder. You can find the ASL version of this episode HERE. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-circleville-letters/

Hi, Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt. And before we jump into this week's wild case, we actually wanted to mention that this Friday, April 15th, is National ASL Day. And some of you may already be aware of this, but a couple of years ago, we started a Crime Junkie YouTube page, which offers ASL videos. Because even though podcasting is amazing, it's also an imperfect medium that can be inaccessible to those who are part of the Deaf and Signing community. Brooke, who is currently our ASL interpreter on the YouTube page, told us that since podcasting

is solely targeted to hearing folks, many Deaf people do not even know what a podcast is. And it's really important for us to implement new ways to make sure that those within that community can experience these stories firsthand too. And even as a bonus, we also include closed captions for every single episode released within our fan club. So you should absolutely check that out and please share it with the people in your life who may find these resources helpful. Now, everyone needs to buckle up because the story I have for you today has a little bit

of everything. A mysterious death, an attempted murder, a conviction that's been questioned, and more than a thousand anonymous letters mailed to dozens of people in southern Ohio. Add in a dash of gossip and a heaping help of small town who done it and you've got, well, you've got today's episode. This is the story of the Circleville Letter Writer. It's late March of 1977 and a woman named Mary Gillespie is going through her mail expecting the usual, some junk mail, maybe a few bills, what we normally pick up at our mailbox.

But among the routine stuff is one envelope that kind of stands out. The handwriting is very distinct. It's all caps kind of like block style and slanted to the right. Now there's no return address, but it's postmarked from Columbus, Ohio, which is about a half hour north of where Mary lives in Circleville. So she opens it to see what it's all about. We actually got a copy of the letter from court records and Britt, I'm going to have you read this for us.

Okay, it says quote, stay away from Massey. Don't lie when questioned about knowing him. I know where you live. I've been observing your house and know you have children. This is no joke. Please take it serious. Everyone concerned has been notified and everything will be over soon. End quote.

Okay, that's like a really cryptic creepy letter. And who's this Massey person? Well, so Mary knows that the letter writer is referring to Gordon Massey, who is the superintendent of schools for the West Falls school district. Mary's actually worked for the district for the past few years as a school bus driver. But even if she didn't work directly with this Massey guy, she would have known who he was because Circleville is a town of like 14,000 people and it's definitely one of those like everyone knows everyone else's business kind of small towns.

But when Mary gets this letter, she doesn't want to alarm anybody, especially not her husband, their son and daughter. So she kind of just ignores the letter, except a week later, she gets another letter with even more personal information like the number of her bus and the details of her route. Sometimes a person would only know if they were in fact watching her closely. And the second letter is even more alarming than the first, threatening to come to her house and quote, put a bullet in that little girl's head. End quote.

Okay, I feel like that should be everyone's red flag that whoever's writing these letters is not well, right? But Mary swallows her fear and tries to just move on with her life. She's a busy working mom with a family to take care of. But she is understandably freaked out, who is doing this and more importantly, why? Before she can suss the writer out herself, Mary gets another letter, the third now. And this one is threatening that it is her quote, last chance to report him. End quote.

Okay. And does Mary know what these threats are even about? Like who do they want her to report and for doing what? Yes. So the him in the letter is referring to Gordon Massey, the superintendent and the what? That's a little more complicated. What the letter writer is insinuating here is that Mary and Gordon are having an affair. And unlike the other letters Mary received, this last one actually has a return address.

The address is 550 Ridgewood Drive, which is the home of Gordon Massey. Oh, wait, he's been writing these letters? Well, no, he hasn't. Or should I say it doesn't seem like he's writing them. It seems like a pretty obvious way to just get people to try and like say he was sending them, but actually Gordon has been receiving letters of his own this whole time. In fact, it seems like he was the first person to get one of these letters. According to the Whatever Remains podcast, Gordon started getting letters in early March

of 1977. Same handwriting style, same type of threats, and the same focus on allegations that Gordon, who is a married teacher in the district is like a womanizer who sexually harasses employees. And the writer really wants to see Gordon get in trouble, like this writer seems to want him fired and embarrassed. The writer even accused Gordon of hitting on his girlfriend and other female bus drivers and warned the superintendent that if he didn't stop, the writer would contact the school board.

So the letter writer's girlfriend is also a school bus driver? It's what it sounds like? Or again, at least what the writer is trying to make people think for whatever reason. Of course, Gordon denies all of these allegations. And what's really strange to me is that within literally 24 hours of Gordon getting that first letter, the writer also sent a letter to the school board. So basically, the writer was like, stop doing this or I'm going to tell people what I think you're doing.

But actually, I'm just going to tell people what I think you're doing no matter what. Oh, okay. Now, for Mary's part, she denies having an affair with Gordon. But the allegations are not something she really wants to bring up at home. She's hoping that if she just ignores the letters that they'll just go away. But they don't. In fact, the next letter is sent directly to Mary's husband, Ron. It warned him that if he didn't do something to stop the so-called affair between his

wife and Gordon Massey, Ron's life would be in danger. And the letter writer even suggested that Ron should kill them both before they kill him. Oh, well, that escalated quickly. I know. And according to unsolved mysteries, when Ron brings it up to Mary, that's when she tells him that she's been getting the letters too. And she says she has no idea who's behind them or why.

And this is apparently the first time Ron's hearing of an affair, although I don't know if that's accurate because it seems like the letter to Ron was sent to his job and actually postmarked before Mary got her first letter. So the details are a little bit murky. But listen, I'm not going to lie if I found out that Eric got not one, not two, but three anonymous letters accusing him of having an affair and threatening him and he didn't tell me about it. I would be suspicious.

Yeah, I would definitely be siding at least a little bit. Yeah, so I don't know what Ron's thinking was or if he was suspicious at any time ever, but in the end, he stands by his wife and together he and Mary report the letters to Pickaway County Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe. But even though they report them, the letters keep coming, warning the Gillespie's that everyone will know about Mary's so-called affair soon and they should let the school board know before the writer does. Even though, again, it sounds to me like the school board is already well aware of these

rumors. Right, and I mean, what did they think of all this? Well, we actually sent one of our reporters, Nina, to Circleville last summer and while she was looking through the thousands of documents in the case files, she actually met the clerk of court, a guy named James W. Dean. And talk about everyone being connected in small towns. As it turns out, James was the Westphal School Board president when Gordon was hired as superintendent and he was still on the board when the letter debacle started.

Here's James. All school board members, we all thought this was just crazy thinking, no, Gordon wouldn't do something like that. He said he didn't do anything with her, so I took him out of his board. He denied any affair with Mary? Yes. They had it informed. That's the way I felt about it, and they were trying to make an issue out of it.

I did not believe it. I still don't believe it, and I know Mary quite well now. I don't think she would do something like that. Now I'm not entirely sure whether Mary and Ron knew that Gordon had been getting these letters too. There doesn't seem to be any info out there about that, but according to an episode of 48 Hours on CBS News, the letter writers started mailing stuff all over Circleville. Churches and stores and the newspaper and even random people are opening their mailboxes

and seeing that same distinctive blocky handwriting. And the writer stays on the same message, it's not like he's targeting all of them. All he's talking about is Gordon and Mary. So despite Mary and Ron's best efforts to keep this whole thing contained, the word of the letters and the alleged affair is very much on the street, and I mean literally on the street. According to an article by Jake Rossen for Mental Floss, the Circleville writer graduated from sending letters to actually posting signs around town for everyone to see.

But even worse than the letters accusing Mary of having an affair with Gordon is the fact that the picket signs dotted around town also say that Gordon is having a sexual relationship with Mary and Ron's young daughter Tracy. Oh. Yeah, and now understandably, this is infuriating to them. Ron is so determined to keep his daughter from seeing the signs that he actually wakes up early every morning so he can drive around Circleville and take the signs down before his shift at work.

What Mary and Ron really want is to stop the letter, stop the threats and ultimately keep themselves and their kids safe. So they decide it's time to take action. The Gillespie's invite Ron's sister Karen Sue and her husband Paul Freshour and possibly Paul's sister as well, depending on the source material you read, over to their house to talk about what's going on and basically to help them come up with a plan. And actually it turns out Mary does have some idea about who the anonymous letter writer might be.

She suspects this guy named David Longbury, another bus driver, and she suspects him because David had made a pass at Mary one time and she turned him down so she thinks maybe he's bitter about being rejected, bitter enough to want to make Mary's life miserable for a while. So the Gillespie's decide to send this David guy a letter of their own, a few of them actually. They're hoping to scare him just enough to get him to stop this campaign. Paul says that he ends up being the one to put pen to paper saying, basically we know who you are, we know what you're doing and it's time to move on.

And the plan seems to work. Weeks go by and Mary doesn't get any more letters. So it seems like the nightmare might finally be over. That is until the night of August 19th, 1977. Mary's not at home on this particular night. She's actually on her way to Florida with her sister-in-law Karen and two friends. So it's just Ron and their two kids at the house. And that's when a call comes in that truly changes everything.

When the phone rings at 10 o'clock that night, Ron answers it. Now it's not clear to us who the caller was, but according to unsolved mysteries, when Ron hangs up the phone, he tells his kids that he's going to confront the letter writer. Without divulging the mystery caller's name, Ron grabs his 22 caliber revolver and climbs into the family's pickup truck, even though the letter writer had said that he was watching the truck. Now, we don't know exactly what happens after Ron leaves his driveway, because the next time anyone sees him, he is less than 10 miles from his home, off the road, his

truck is totaled, and he's unconscious. Just after 10.30 p.m., police and paramedics arrive on the scene and load Ron into an ambulance. He's rushed to the hospital, but he is pronounced dead on arrival. A story in the Circleville Herald published the day after the accident said that Ron's truck was traveling at a high speed when it missed a right hand turn and went off the road, traveling 36 feet before hitting a tree and bouncing back 7 feet, and Ron wasn't wearing a seatbelt. According to a state of Ohio traffic crash report, Ron died of massive internal injuries.

He was identified by Sheriff Radcliffe, who obviously already knew the Gillespie's from the department's investigation of the letters, and Sheriff Radcliffe goes to the Gillespie home to notify the family. Everyone is shocked. I mean, this is a road Ron knew well and traveled often. He would have known that the road curved at that exact spot and should have known to slow down to take the turn. It's like he just didn't.

And yes, it would have been super dark out there, but it was a clear night, the roads were dry, so it's not making any sense. As normal protocol in an accident like this, the officers request a test of Ron's blood alcohol concentration, and it's found to be.16, which is almost twice the legal limit in Ohio. So when you hear that, you're probably thinking like, oh, this was a terrible accident. He was under the influence, he missed a turn, he hit a tree, end of story. But the Sheriff doesn't rule Ron's death an accident right away.

Something isn't sitting right with him about it. And here's the thing, Ron wasn't a huge guy. A report from the Pickaway County Sheriff's Department listed his height at 5'7 and his weight at 155 pounds. So for someone that size to have Ron's blood alcohol level would mean he likely had four or five drinks. But his family insists that Ron didn't just sit at home and have like half a dozen drinks randomly on a Friday alone.

And more than that, his daughter Tracy, who was home that night and got close enough to her dad to give him a kiss goodbye, didn't even think he was drunk. What's really strange is that the officers at the scene that night find Ron's gun under his body and in the gun are eight live rounds and one spent round. Now it's been widely reported that this one spent round means that the gun was fired sometime between Ron leaving his house and crashing his truck. But we actually couldn't find any official document corroborating that. And the Whatever Remains podcast points out that the spent round just means that the gun

was fired at some point. Now Mary insists that Ron was in that area trying to figure out if the person who was writing the letters lived there. But the details of what actually happened that night are super murky. Ron's brother-in-law, Paul Freshhour, he's the one that Mary and Ron had talked to about the letters and he's actually the one that responded to the guy that they thought might be their guy. Well, Paul was interviewed for the Unsolved Mysteries episode I mentioned and said that

initially the sheriff agreed that there was foul play in Ron's death. But by the time they spoke next, quote, he was telling me that it wasn't foul play and that the suspect had passed a polygraph test, end quote. Though, as far as I can tell, we never learned who that suspect was. Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. I'm sorry, suspect what? Yeah. So in the end, finding no evidence to suggest anything else, the Pickaway County Sheriff

rules Ron's death an accident and his family begins the long and difficult work of trying to pick up the pieces. But as soon as Ron's cause of death is released to the public, the letters start showing up again. This time, they're accusing Sheriff Radcliffe of covering up what really happened the night Ron died. And whoever is writing the letters seems to think Mary and Gordon are responsible for Ron's death.

So hang on, this anonymous writer thinks that Mary and Gordon, what, like, ran Ron off the road and shot at him or shot at him and then ran him off the road just to get him out of the way? I guess I'm not really piecing everything together because Mary wasn't even around, right? Yeah, there is no, like, mechanical description of how Mary and Gordon were supposed to have done this. Like, who made the phone call, what'd they say, how they actually got him off the road?

Like, none of that is actually put in the letters. Because you're right, Mary is in Florida at the time of the accident. And remember, this accusation is coming from an anonymous letter writer, not someone who needs to make, like, an airtight case or even lay out a theory that makes sense. Right, because, I mean, these letters are already full of false accusations at this point. Yes, right. So this batch of new letters about Mary and Gordon having something to do with Ron's

death and a police cover up doesn't really change the Sheriff's mind that Ron's death was a tragic accident. And things do quiet down for Mary and her family for actually a couple of years. But then, in the fall of 1979, Mary opens her mailbox and sees a familiar site. It's a letter with that distinctive handwriting. The writer tells Mary she should encourage Gordon Massey to leave the Westfall School District. In fact, the writer urges Mary to move away with Gordon.

Wait, so now the writer wants them to be together? Okay, so this is where things get messy. By now, Gordon and his wife have actually filed for divorce and at some point around this time, Mary admittedly does get involved romantically with Gordon, although she insists that they weren't together when the letter started coming or when her husband was alive. She actually says that it was the letters that drew the two of them together in the first place, like they would get together and discuss them and then one thing led to another.

So I guess in these letters, the writer is basically saying like, listen, you've destroyed your families, now you should just leave town together. Eventually, the letters start being addressed to her daughter Tracy as well. And when I say that these letters are vile, I mean like truly disgusting stuff to say to anyone, let alone a child. Now of note, in 1982, more than five years after the letters first started up, Ron, sister Karen and Paul actually separate. Paul and their two daughters stay in the Fresh Hour family home in Grove City, which is like

20 minutes away from Columbus, Ohio. And Karen and their son move into a trailer on Mary's property, which I think belonged to Karen's parents. And by this time, I guess everyone must have just resigned themselves to the reality of life with the Circleville letter writer and no one was really reacting anymore. And maybe that's why the writer went back to the same approach that infuriated Ron six years before. Again they started posting signs outdoors.

The letter writer warns Mary around Christmas of 1982 that she's going to start finding signs again soon. And sure enough, those signs start popping up along Mary's bus route once again in February 1983. And once again, they're accusing Gordon Massey of having a sexual relationship with Mary and Ron's daughter Tracy, who is 13 by this time, by the way. Mary's taken a few signs down already when she sees another one pop up along her route on the afternoon of Monday, February 7th, 1983.

This one is at an intersection and the intersection is about a 45 second drive from where Ron had actually crashed his pickup truck and died. And we're actually going to have a ton of images, you guys, like from this case again, we sent our reporter to Circleville. So this would be a great episode to go check out our Instagram crime junkie podcast. Or if you're listening in the app, the pictures should have been coming up all along. Now Mary spots this sign in between picking up and dropping off kids on the bus. So the bus is empty actually at this point.

Mary pulls over, climbs out and walks over to take down the sign, which seems to be mounted at eye level on a fence post. But when she peels the sign down, she notices something strange behind it, something different than the other signs. She sees a cardboard box attached to a two by four on the fence post. There are strings coming out of the back of the box. Now she's never found anything like this with any of the other signs before and she thinks, you know, maybe this is going to give her a clue about who's been doing this.

So she grabs the whole thing, like the box, the string, the board, all of it and gets back on the bus because she still has kids to pick up and drop off. So she shoves the whole contraption into a narrow space to the left of her seat so no one would see it. Obviously, she doesn't want kids to see it. The poster has like obscene words on it and she just finishes her afternoon bus run. Once all of the students are dropped off, Mary drives home and parks her bus in front of her house just like she always does.

She pulls the post and the box and the sign, all of it out from next to her seat to give it a closer look, trying to figure out what this whole thing is all about. And most importantly, what is in this box? She tries to open it, but the lid is completely glued down so securely that she has to work and work and work to finally get the box open. But when she does, she gets the absolute shock of her life. Inside the box is a 25 caliber handgun. Attached to the gun is either like a string or wire thing wrapped around the trigger and

it's held upright between pieces of styrofoam. At first, Mary is shocked, but right away, her brain is like, get a hold of yourself. That can't be real. It has to be a toy. Court documents say that Mary thought it might be one of those starting pistols used at like a track meet maybe. Something that looked real but couldn't actually fire actual bullets because in her mind, she's like, okay, someone just wants to scare me.

This wasn't like actually rigged to kill me, except when she looks even closer, there is a bullet in the chamber and another in the clip. And while she's staring at this booby trap, a loaded gun with the string on the trigger connected to a sign posted on her bus route naming her daughter, it dawns on her. This gun was supposed to fire when the sign was ripped down. It was supposed to fire at Mary. So Mary takes the whole booby trap box to the Pickaway County Sheriff's office to tell them that Cirqueville's annoying letter writer has just upped the ante in a big way.

And this is a huge, huge lead for them. And for the whole town, really, as they try to identify the person who's been harassing them with these letters for almost six years and who now is trying to kill Mary. When the officers examine the gun and the whole contraption, they confirm what Mary knew in her gut, that this thing was designed to kill her when she ripped down the sign. And somehow, either by a stroke of luck on Mary's part or the lack of skill in the part of the device's designer, it just didn't work. But it is, like, finally a solid piece of evidence, something they can trace.

Unfortunately, whoever built this trap filed most of the serial number off the weapon. But the officers decide to send it to their forensics lab anyway to see if there's any way to lift it. And what do you know? They get lucky. The lab is able to give them the entire serial number. It doesn't take them long to trace the gun back to a Columbus gun shop. And from there, to a man named Wesley Wells, Wesley tells police that, yeah, the gun did

belong to him at one time, but he had actually sold it to his supervisor just last year. And when he tells police who he'd sold the gun to, they almost fall out of their chairs. The gun that had been rigged to shoot Mary Gillespie was sold to her former brother-in-law Paul Freshauer. What? Yeah. Okay, but like, why did Paul need a gun? Like, why would he do this?

Well, police are just as baffled as you as to why Paul would go to such lengths to basically torture his own in-laws. Because obviously the assumption is whoever had been writing the letters and putting up the signs is the person who planted the booby trap. I mean, Mary literally got a letter telling her that the signs were going to be posted. And it doesn't make much sense for it to be Paul. Before his marriage to Ron's sister Karen had ended, but that was years after the letters started arriving in their mailbox.

But when Sheriff Radcliffe tells Mary that he's pretty sure it was her former brother-in-law Paul who rigged the booby trap, he finds out it's actually not the first time she's heard that. In 1982, just a couple of months before they filed for divorce, her sister-in-law Karen had said something about Paul possibly being the letter writer. But Mary says that she dismissed the concerns because Paul had no reason to do something like that to her. Like, she was just as confused as everyone else.

So after police discover Paul's gun was used in the booby trap, they interview Karen. And she tells them that when she and Paul were still together, she actually found some letters just like the ones in the Gillespie's mailbox. And these letters she found in her own home. She even found one clogging up the toilet because someone had tried to flush it. When her son fished it out with a coat hanger, she saw that it had the word Gillespie on it. Karen tells police that Paul had thought the world of her brother Ron and Mary before Ron's

death. But after Ron died, Paul hated Mary because of the allegations about the affair with Gordon Massey. But Karen didn't think anything happened between Gordon and Mary until after her brother died. But the letter started before that. I know, I can't explain it. But Karen also tells them that Paul is smart and manipulative and had physically abused

her at times during their marriage. Back in October of 1982, he had beaten her up and threatened to cut up her face with a broken soda bottle, which she had reported to police. And it was right after that incident that they both filed for divorce. A report from the court referral officer says that Karen showed the court photographs of her injuries, which included a black eye with four stitches. And it seems like Paul admitted to doing it because there's a note that he went to counseling after because he, quote, feels bad about what he did, end quote.

Police check with Paul's job and they find out that he wasn't at work on the Monday when Mary found the booby trap gun and the sign on her bus route. So now Sheriff Radcliffe is ready to approach Paul. He goes to Paul's house in Grove City on February 25, 1983. He and Paul already know each other because in fact, Paul had even gone to his office a few years ago to ask him how the investigation into the letter writer and Ron's death was going. But now the sheriff is the one with the questions.

Paul agrees to go down to the station with him to discuss the letter investigation. But at this point, Paul's got to know something is up because he knew that Wesley Wells had been questioned about the gun. Wesley had gone right to Paul and asked him why the sheriff was questioning him about the gun that he sold. So Paul tells the sheriff like, yeah, I did buy the gun from Wesley. But he says that he hadn't seen it in a while. Paul says that he went on a trip to Florida with one of his daughters that passed January

and when he got back, the gun was just missing. But Paul says he didn't report it as stolen because he thinks it was actually a family member who took it. Oh, that seems pretty convenient. Did he say which family member? He won't say, but Paul also tells police that no one even knew he had the gun, which he said was hidden in his garage. So someone stole this very well hidden surprise gun because no one knew about it.

While he was out of town, then used it to frame him. It seems like a really weird story to me. Agreed. Now, according to a police report, Paul agrees to take three or four polygraph tests and he fails every single one of them. And when Sheriff Radcliffe re-interviews him that same day after the polygraphs, Paul apparently breaks and admits to writing the like 40 or 50 of the letters, but he denies having anything to do with the booby trap even after the sheriff tells him that the gun had been traced back

to him. So the sheriff and Paul sit down in the detective's bureau of the sheriff's department and Sheriff Radcliffe shows him letters sent by the anonymous writer and he asks Paul to do his best and copy them for handwriting comparison. Oh, wait a minute, that is not how a handwriting comparison works, is it? Not at all. I actually looked this up to get a better sense of how it's supposed to be done. And according to a textbook called Forensic Handwriting Identification, Fundamental Concepts

and Principles that was written by Ron Morris, to get a proper handwriting sample, you're supposed to try and duplicate as many of the circumstances as possible, like everything from the type of pen or pencil and the paper, the writing environment. So for instance, if police were trying to find out if Paul wrote the letters and the letters are written on all caps, they should tell Paul to write in all caps. If they were written with a ballpoint pen, they should have given Paul a ballpoint pen to use. And they would ask him to write like the same words and phrases to see, you know, how the

letters are compiled, whatever. Yeah, I even remember we discussed a case once where there's a difference between writing at a table versus writing something on a wall, like that changes your handwriting. Yeah, but when you give someone a copy to write from, they're basically like copying someone else's writing. Right. It's duplicating. It's not a fair comparison.

Yeah, you're actually supposed to like dictate what's supposed to be written so they can't even see anything. But in this instance, like again, Paul can totally see the letters and the sheriff just like leaves the letters on the table while Paul is writing his samples. Now in the sheriff's defense, he does also dictate text for Paul to write and the sheriff isn't the one who's going to be analyzing the samples. He's just collecting them for an expert to examine. But to me, having him copy the samples, it feels like a trap and it feels like all this

is useless. Still, Paul gives them all of the handwriting samples that they want and he also agrees to let police search his house in his car. According to court records, police are looking for any materials that were used to make the booby traps, specifically solder, twine, ammunition, glue, styrofoam and chalk boxes. But even after an extensive search, police find nothing in Paul's house or his car. No solder, no twine, no 25 gauge ammo. Nothing that might prove Paul made the booby trap.

But even though they don't find anything incriminating, after that search, Paul is arrested and he's charged with attempted murder and sent to jail. Nina actually interviewed Roger Klein, who was the district attorney of Pickaway County at the time. I was thoroughly convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he attempted to murder America Lesbian and the evidence supported that. Paul pleads not guilty to the charge, which is only about the booby trapped sign, not about the anonymous letters.

He's in jail for about a month and while he's in jail, the letters are still coming and going. Other inmates are accused of smuggling mail out for him. A month after he's arrested, he's let out on bail and he's not home for too long because according to the Columbus Dispatch, he checks himself into a mental health facility in April. Now, it's not clear how long he's there, but it seems like he's home for the majority of the eight months between his arrest and his trial.

And during that eight month time period, tons of letters are sent all over Circleville. It seems like every restaurant, church, resident in town gets a letter. His attempted murder trial is postponed a bunch of times, including once when Paul briefly changes his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. But ultimately, he ends up back at a straight not guilty plea by the time the trial does begin. Paul's lawyer had even tried requesting a change of venue because how do you see an impartial jury when almost everyone in town, even the judge, has received a letter?

But that request was denied. And so for five days in October 1983, the 12 person jury hears the case against Paul. The jury hears about how Paul took a, quote, floating holiday from work on February 7, the day that the booby trap had been set for Mary. The judge allows 39 letters and postcards that Mary had received over the years into evidence. And the jury hears from handwriting experts who point out the similarities between Paul's handwriting and that of the Circleville writer. And they hear about how the gun rigged to kill Mary belonged to one person only, Paul.

Wait, so those handwriting samples you told me about, the ones that the sheriff got Paul to copy from existing letters, they were actually legit? So actually the copied samples don't make it into evidence, but the dictated samples are allowed, along with some documents from Paul's personal file at work that had his handwriting on them. But he wasn't charged with anything related to the letters, right? I guess why were any of the letters even allowed into evidence? Yet Roger Klein actually explained that to us.

The case wasn't about writing letters. Am I convinced that he wrote the letter? Yeah. And that was a factor in his state of mind when it came to that box that held that gun in it, forehead high. To show attempted murder, you know, you would, helps if you have evidence showing that somebody's doesn't like that person or has feelings not favorable at all to that person. So yeah, they would have had some merit.

They'd been part of his middle state. What's wild is one of the handwriting experts who testifies for the prosecution was originally hired by Paul's defense attorney. Paul's lawyer objects to his testimony, of course, but it's overruled. The expert doesn't identify Paul as the letter writer. He says that he can't prove or disprove that. But he does say that in his opinion, the person who wrote the dictated handwriting samples is the same person who wrote the letters and the booby trap sign that he examined.

And that expert also says that he found indications that Paul tried to disguise his handwriting when he gave the samples that were dictated to him. In trial, Paul says that he wants to testify, but according to his lawyer, if Paul takes the stand, he opens himself up to the possibility of the judge allowing all of the thousand or so letters that had gone out over the years into evidence. So ultimately, the jury doesn't hear from Paul. So what about fingerprints? Were any of Paul's prints found on actual letters or anything with the booby trap and

the sign? Well, this is interesting because according to records from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Paul's fingerprints or palm prints were found on 26 different letters and envelopes that were sent after he was arrested. Although it doesn't seem like that was brought up in court, because I found a 1986 article from the Columbus Dispatch on Paul's website, circlevilleletters.wordpress.com, that says Paul's fingerprints aren't on the gun, the booby trap, or any of the letters. Paul has an alibi of sorts for parts of February 7.

A guy who was helping him do some work around the house and a neighbor who stopped by for a few minutes. And his defense attorney tries to pin the blame on Paul's ex-wife, Karen. He says that she's the one with the means and motive to do all of this. If Paul goes to prison, Karen apparently gets full custody of the kids and their financial assets. While Paul himself, the lawyer says, doesn't have motive at all. But the jury doesn't buy it.

And according to the Chillicothe Gazette, they deliberate for less than three hours before finding Paul guilty of attempted murder. And I have to think that when Paul headed off to prison, the whole town of circleville probably breathed a sigh of relief knowing that their nightmare was finally over, that all the postcards and letters and signs that they'd been getting for close to seven years at this point were finally going to stop. But they don't. All over Pickaway County, people are still opening their mailboxes to find the same,

threatening obscene letters in the same blocky handwriting that had been coming for years. What? How is that even possible? And are these all still about Mary and Gordon? I couldn't find too much information about that, but from what people say in town, it was basically more of the same, targeting Gordon and Mary, the West Falls School District. So everyone is thinking like how in the world is Paul orchestrating this whole thing from behind prison walls?

The sheriff is like freaking raging at this point, so he calls the prison warden and tells him that Paul is still sending letters or having someone send them for him and it needs to stop. But Paul insists that he's not the Circleville writer. He says he's never been the Circleville writer, that the cops got the wrong guy. And he says even if he wanted to, he couldn't get those letters out without them being intercepted by the guards. Okay, sure, but like prison isn't exactly what I'd call an impenetrable barrier.

We know just from all the stories that we've told that it's totally possible for stuff to go back and forth and into or out of jails all the time. Well, totally. I mean, it's possible to get letters out, but if Paul is the sender and he is still doing this from behind bars, he's got to have an accomplice because the letters are still postmarked from Columbus like they've always been. And Paul is locked up 200 miles away in Lima. So after that call from the sheriff, the warden throws Paul into solitary confinement, which

limits his access to pretty much everything besides a bed and a toilet. No pencils, no pens, no paper, but also no visitors, no cellmates, nothing. In an interview with Unsolved Mysteries, Paul said that he had regular pat downs and cell searches, like way more than they usually would given the angry call from the sheriff. And now they're monitoring his mail and sometimes even just straight up not letting him have mail, period. And actually this happened twice during Paul's time in prison, both times at the behest of the sheriff, but ultimately the letters still do not stop and community members in Cirqueville

just keep getting them. So finally the warden at Paul's prison is like cross my heart, hope to die. These letters have not come from Paul or from anyone else inside this facility, period. But the letters still don't let up. Even Paul himself gets a letter from the Cirqueville writer. In late December 1990, the parole board denies his application, even though he's reportedly been a model prisoner. So it seems like the ongoing letters had some impact.

Paul insists he's being framed. He's convinced that his ex-wife Karen is the person behind all of this and that she's bitter and angry about the divorce and doing all this to get back at him. He even offers to take a voice stress test, which comes back supporting his claim that he's not the person writing the letters. And honestly a lot of people want to give Paul the benefit of the doubt, which if you go back to the logic here at trial, I mean the thinking was the person writing the letters is the same person who set that trap for Mary.

So if you take away the part where Paul wrote the letters, then actually his whole conviction kind of like falls to pieces. But others have no doubt that Paul is behind everything. And one of those people is Selena Freshauer, Paul and Karen's youngest child. She says that she knows her father is guilty. Our reporter actually met up with Selena while she was in Ohio. And Selena told her that she remembers finding letters with that distinctive block style handwriting around her house when she was a kid, but she had no clue what the significance was.

Selena says that right after Paul was arrested, she got a call from her aunt, one of Paul's sisters, who told her to get rid of every single writing utensil in the house like crayons, pens, everything. And according to Selena, Paul was behind the continued letter writing over the years, even while he was in prison. Okay, but how if the warden is saying there's no way? Well Selena says that he had help. Selena says that her father continued sending letters with help from Selena's older sister,

Dawn, and possibly some other relatives. You see, back in 1983, when Paul was out on bail waiting for his trial to start, he and Selena and Dawn were staying with a family friend. Selena was spending the day at a friend's house. They had plans to go from her friend's house to the skating rink, so Paul wasn't expecting to see her until later. But at the last minute, Selena decided to go to the house that they were staying at to change real quick.

Selena said that she walked into the house and her dad like jumped up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table and started like scrambling to move stuff around. Dawn was there with him and they both seemed uncomfortable that she had surprised them. So Selena got suspicious and walked over to the table to see what they were doing. And that's when she saw a massive stockpile of letters and supplies, talking envelopes, stuffed, ready to be mailed, half written letters, it was a whole letter writing operation. Selena says that Paul told her they were just preparing the letters in case he was convicted of the attempted murder charge.

He figured that these could help him get out of prison. The logic being that if people thought the letter writer was still out there, they would think that they got the wrong man. Now Selena wanted no part of the plan. After all, Ron Gillespie had been her favorite uncle and Mary her favorite aunt. That led to an argument and the fresh hours got kicked out of the family friend's house. They went to stay with one of Paul's sisters after that, but Selena decided to go live with her mother and actually Dawn stayed with her father.

So Selena says that after Paul was convicted, it was her sister Dawn who sent letters for him while he was in prison. Okay, but I guess I'm I'm struggling to like wrap my mind around everything. How did this all start? Why did he want to hurt his brother-in-law and Mary? Like where did this begin? Yeah, here's the thing. Paul himself said that Ron was his best friend, but that's not the way others portrayed their

relationship. He testified that the relationship between Ron and Paul was amicable, but not especially good, which is not really the warmest way to describe something. And Selena tells us that they weren't close at all. With good reason. Paul was abusive. Right, which we know from what Karen told police when she came forward that Paul had a history of domestic violence.

Right. So Ron, being a productive brother, would come to Karen's defense, which led to friction between him and Paul. Selena says that Dawn, who was the middle child in the family, was really close with Paul, but Selena was subjected to frequent beatings from her father, as was her older brother Mark, and Mark got the worst treatment of all. Selena says that Paul even tried to blame his own son for taking the gun and filing the serial number off.

Oh, so was that the family member he was trying to say stole the gun? Yeah, most likely. In one of Paul's many appeal filings, we found an affidavit from this woman named Pam Stanton, who says that the fresh hours were like her second family. In the affidavit, Pam says that she lost touch with Mark after he graduated high school in 1981, but then he like randomly called her in 1985 and told her that he hated his father. He was glad he was in prison, even though he knew Paul wasn't guilty. According to Pam, Mark says that one of his maternal uncles stole Paul's gun and that

the booby trap was set up to frame Paul. Pam also says that Mark told her that he and his mother Karen and his Aunt Mary had written the threatening letters and signs. Uh, I find that pretty difficult to believe. Same, like I don't even know where to start with that. There's just so many more layers to that being potentially true than honestly any of the other theories that I've heard so far. Yeah, like why would Mark just decide to confess to a woman he hadn't spoke with for years?

I mean, to be fair, anything is possible, but that doesn't make much sense to me. So according to records from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Mark and Karen and Mary all took and passed polygraph tests back in 1983 when the booby trap investigation was going on. But unfortunately we can't ask Mark about it because he actually died by suicide in 2002. We did manage to reach Dawn, although we didn't get to ask her about that specific accusation because she declined to comment.

But that 48 hour special I mentioned earlier does kind of touch on this whole thing because they spoke with an FBI profiler about the possibility that Paul mass produced letters and had someone else send them after he went to prison. And they actually brought in a leading expert in the field of handwriting analysis. This woman named Beverly East to do an independent examination of the Circleville letters. Beverly said that she is 100% sure of who is responsible for writing them. And she says that person is Paul fresh hour. Now there has been no shortage of theories in this case.

And I do want to mention a few of them because there were rumors that Gordon Massie's son William was the letter writer. Some of the later letters were even quote unquote signed by him. Like he wasn't the one who actually signed them, but someone wanted people to be suspicious of him. And I guess you could say William had motive if he thought his father was having an affair with Mary. But the Whatever Remains podcast points out William as the letter writer really doesn't

make much sense because William was 19 at the time and he would have had to know like so much stuff about the Gillespie's to pull this off. Not just details about Mary, but also about Ron and their kids and their in-laws, their work schedules. Nina did go to William's house when she was in Ohio, but he made it clear in no uncertain terms that he does not want to talk about this, which I don't blame him for. I mean, this must be an awful thing to have gone through and have to like relive over and over.

Oh, totally. Now in the early nineties, while Paul was behind bars, an investigative journalist named Martin Yant took an interest in this case and spent several months looking into it for an article that he was working on. Martin calls the Pickaway County Sheriff's Office and asks for a copy of their file on the Circleville writer investigation, Paul's investigation, which they released to him. And as he's going through the file, something within the pages stands out that didn't make it into the trial.

During the attempted murder investigation, Mary told police that another bus driver had told her about seeing a man at that intersection just about 20 minutes before Mary found the booby trap. The bus driver told Mary that the guy had an El Camino, which he had parked at the intersection and he was out of the car and it looked like he was going to the bathroom. Mary said that the other bus driver described the man as being in his late forties with sandy blonde hair and a large build and Paul's hair is dark brown, not sandy blonde. Not to mention he doesn't drive an El Camino.

And were police ever able to find out who this guy was? I don't know how closely they checked. According to Martin Yant, there was an issue with the statement where like the other bus driver had apparently said the El Camino was yellow, but then a police report says orange. So ultimately the man with the yellow and or orange El Camino wasn't identified, not by police anyway. But Martin, who by the way is a PI now, says that the car is the same one driven by Karen's brother.

So Martin thinks that at least two, possibly three people are behind the letters. All active at different times. And Paul, he thinks, isn't one of them. According to a ranker article by Jacob Shelton, Martin thinks the first bunch of letters were written by, quote, a school employee infatuated with, but ultimately rejected by Mary. End quote. You mean the one you mentioned before, the other bus driver? David Longbury, yeah.

And did Mary's husband know this guy, would he have recognized his voice on the phone that night? I wish I could tell you. I mean, it's a small town, so I wouldn't be surprised if they knew one another. David resigned from his job in the Westfall district in 1981. James, the former school board president, said that he doesn't remember any disciplinary issues coming up. But years later, and this is like genuinely horrifying considering what he used to do

for a living, David was charged with rape for sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl who he knew through her grandparents. Oh my God. Yeah. But according to a police report from the Pickaway County Sheriff's office, David was never actually arrested for the crime because he fled the area. He spent years looking for David, who was considered a fugitive throughout the early 2000s.

It wasn't until the spring of 2009 that they learned David had died by suicide many years before. The other name that Martin brings up in his reporting is Karen, Paul's ex-wife. Martin felt strongly enough about Karen's involvement that he mentioned it in a letter to the parole board supporting Paul's release. In this letter, he wrote quote, in my 22 years as a journalist and investigator, I don't think I ever have met an individual so consumed with such irrational hatred for another and a willingness to say anything, no matter how provably false to defame him.

End quote. Martin says he got several phone calls from Karen and from people connected to her after he ran an article questioning Paul's involvement in the letters. And one of those callers went so far as to threaten his life, but Selena Freshour thinks her mother Karen has been unfairly vilified and that her father has manipulated a lot of people into believing him. Disagreements about who's to blame has divided her family. And Selena says that both she and her mom Karen have been diagnosed with PTSD after

years of dealing with Paul and the torment of the letters and signs and just everything that happened with their family. Paul Freshour always maintained that he was innocent. He was granted parole in May of 1994 after serving 10 years in prison for attempting to kill his former sister-in-law. He made a website which he used to proclaim his innocence and published pages and pages and pages of what he called scientific evidence supporting his innocence, but spoiler alert, there is no scientific evidence of any kind for or against Paul.

Paul even wrote a letter to the FBI asking them to investigate Ron Gillespie's death, which he calls a murder, an alleged cover-up by Sheriff Radcliffe, he says. Which was a subject of some of the letters, right? Right. What's interesting is, Selena, who was seven at the time, seems to suspect that Paul may have had something to do with Ron's death. She says that she has memories of the night Ron died. And she says Paul came home very late that night, which was unusual for him.

And he was, quote, shaky and nervous. She also says that he was furious when he saw that she was still awake. And according to a court transcript, Mary says she believes it was Paul himself who planned the Florida trip that she and Karen were on when Ron got that phone call. Which doesn't mean anything either way, but it's an interesting detail. By the time the letters stopped in the mid-1990s, the residents of Circleville and the surrounding areas had received over a thousand letters, obscene, threatening, dark letters, some that even contained arsenic.

It seems like everyone in town got a letter, or knew someone who got one. And to this day, so many people in town have a connection to this case. Like the same court reporter who handled Paul's trial in 1983 is still a court reporter for Pickaway County. Paul's case was the first big one she ever did, plus her husband was one of the many people who got a letter. Mary is still in the area. Nina went to her house and left her number with another woman who answered the door,

but she never heard back. And a lot of major players in this case have passed away, like Gordon Massey, Sheriff Radcliffe, and Paul Freshauer, who spent the rest of his life trying to clear his name until his death in 2012. While the Circleville letter writer may have had to put down their pen, the infamous story they wrote is still talked about to this day, and they left behind a pile of loose ends and questions that just may never be answered. To check out photos and documents and sources for this week's episode, you can find all

of that on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week for a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck, do you approve?