Criminology - The Circleville Letter Writer

Episode Date: April 4, 2021

In 1976, residents of Circleville, Ohio began receiving obscene and threatening letters that contained details and rumors regarding some of the residents in town. For residents of Circleville, it wasn't a serial killer that shattered their sense of safety and neighborly closeness. It was a serial writer - a writer who by the time he or she was done, had sent over 1000 letters targeting many of Circleville's residents, but seemingly targeting one resident more than the rest.  Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious and fascinating case of the Circleville writer. One man, Paul Freshour, was convicted of attempted murder and sent off to prison. It was thought that he was the Circleville writer, and handwriting analysis of some of the letters seemed to back that up. But, people continued receiving letters after Paul went to prison, something that the warden insists was impossible. Who was the original writer of the letters and just how many writers were there. One man died under mysterious circumstances. And, a woman who seemingly was the focus of early letters was seen as a target. How much misdirection was there in this case and did one or more persons conspire to frame Paul Freshour. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I want and welcome to episode 153 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you today? I'm back at work after taking a couple days off for my birthday, my wife and family. My kids took me out to a nice boat ride out in the Gulf of Mexico and did some fishing, had a good time.

And now I'm ready to get back to work. Well, happy bladed birthday. Sounds like you had a great one. Yeah. It was definitely fun one. And I, it was the 50th one. So it was the big one. The big 50.

Yeah. Wow. Scary. It's all downhill from here. No, man. You're just getting into your prime. Well, down here in Florida, I'm what you would call a spring chicken. You're young, right?

More if we continue to see some great Patreon support. Let's give some shoutouts. We had. Gina Oldendorf, Justin Jackson, Eileen Haney jumped up to our highest level, Kayan Komett jumped up to our highest level. We had Naomi Butler, Yasmin Barreto Klebstad, Bethany Brown, and Melissa Borden. So that's a lot of great new support. Yeah, we can't thank you enough for that.

And if there's anyone out there that would like to help support the show, they can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy, it's time to jump. right into this episode. And we've got a pretty weird case on tap, which involves a mysterious letter writer here in my home state of Ohio. In 1977, Circleville, Ohio had a population of just over 11,600 people. While that population isn't overly small, Circleville was the kind of place where a lot of people knew each other. And in some cases, maybe knew each other a bit too well. We've talked about rumors and secrets in smaller towns before, and Circleville isn't really any different from those other towns in some of these places.

Secrets don't always stay yours for very long. And before you know it, your secrets are the subject of gossipers. Sometimes what is spread or simply lies. Perhaps in this case, we are talking about the gossip includes some degree of truth. For residents of Circleville, it wasn't a serial killer that shattered their sense of safety and neighborly closeness. It was a serial writer, a writer who by the time he or she was done, had sent over 1,000 letters targeting many of Circleville's residents, but seemingly targeting one resident more than the rest. The weirdness in Circleville started in 1976, when residents there began receiving obscene and threatening letters that contained details and rumors about some of the residents in the town. The letter stated that Mary Gillespie, a Westfall school bus driver, was having an affair with Gordon Massey, the Westfall School Superintendent.

The first letter that Mary herself received warned her that she had to come clean about the affair she was having with Massey. The letter closed with an ominous warning. I know where you live. I've been observing your house and know you have children. This is no joke. Please take it serious. Mary didn't tell anyone about the letters until her husband, Ron Gillespie, received one too. The letter warned that Ron had to report Mary's affair to the school board so that Massey could be fired.

Mary denied that she was having any affair. The next letters received by Mary and Ron were harsh. The writer was angry and impatient. upset that the secret wasn't out yet. They began to threaten that if Mary didn't confess publicly, her daughter would be harmed, specifically shot in the head. The author had no problem with graphically threatening an innocent 12-year-old girl. The writer warned that if the affair didn't end,

they would broadcast on CB radios for all to hear. CB radios were a lot more common to have, even if you weren't a trucker in the 1970s, but not everyone had them. If the letter writer was serious, they had access to a CB radio. Gillespie was threatened with murder if he didn't expose his wife Mary's affair. The writer also warned that they would start posting signs around town, specifically about Gillespie's daughter. The person who sent these letters somehow knew Mary Gillespie's employee ID number.

The Gillespie thought that the letter writer would grow bored and stop mailing the taunting letters. They were wrong. When the letters didn't stop, Mary and Ron decided to confide in people that they trusted. They told only Ron's sister, Karen, her husband Paul Fresh Hour, and Paul's sister about what was going on. Mary thought of one specific person who could be responsible for the letters. She claimed that David Longberry, a fellow bus driver, had hit on her and she rejected him. She felt that he might be jealous and upset about that. The author was clearly mad that Massey was able to.

have an affair with Mary, whether that was true or not, Paul Fresh Hour wrote a letter to Longbury, warning him to stop immediately because they knew what he was up to. A few of the letters had been signed W, which they believed implied William Massey, Gordon Massey's teenage son. According to Paul, they sent five letters to William, stating they knew he was sending letters and told him to stop. The letters did stop coming for a while, but the writer wasn't done with the Gillespie family. The writer made good on their promise to post signs around town. Most featured lewd and sexually explicit messages about the Gillespie's young daughter and Massey. Ron drove through town each morning, taking down signs before his daughter could see them.

You have to feel for this man and what he was trying to do for his daughter. It's heartbreaking that someone would attack a 12-year-old with rumors like that. If her mother and Massey were having an affair, why attacked the innocent 12-year-old? This escalation worried the Gillespie's, and they really didn't know what the writer was capable of. Yeah, you said it more if you have to feel for Ron and what he was going through, and obviously the 12-year-old as well, and Mary, for that matter. You know, what jumps out at me is this is the late 70s. There's no internet. There's nothing like that.

So, you know, if this were to happen today, and I know it does, it's scary where somebody decides to target someone and they use various social media platforms to do it. I know it happens to young girls from other young girls, but it's perpetrated by all kinds of different people from different walks of life. It's scary because what do you do? How do you fight that? Now, this is scary as well because, you know, for the same reason. You don't know who's doing it. Now, you might have an idea. You might think it's this person or that person, but you don't know for sure. So what are you going to do? You're going to go to the police and say what? This person is harassing me when you don't know for sure who it is. I kind of think about that stuff happening online. A lot of people

make fake accounts. They try to be anonymous. I don't know how good they are at it. But if you don't know who's taunting you, who's saying, you know, all these nasty things about you, what do you do back then and then today now in the digital world? Yeah. And I think comparing this kind of bullying or intimidation comparing it now today versus back then, even as something as simple as trying to see who's putting out signs out in the neighborhood back then, they didn't have cameras all over like they have today. I think today it would be a lot harder to get away with that kind of crime because it seems like there's a camera on every intersection.

Yeah, good point. Definitely. On August 19th, 1977, Ron was watching the kids while Mary was out of town when the phone rang. Ron answered and was told that someone was watching him and knew what his truck looked like. Ron felt that he recognized the color's voice and believed they were behind the letters. He grabbed his gun and raised out the door talking to himself, apparently on the way to confront the caller. He didn't tell his family who he thought was responsible for the call, but he did kiss his daughter goodbye before he left. Just minutes after he left. Just minutes after he left. He left. He didn't tell

after he left around 10.25 p.m., 35-year-old Ron was found dead from what's been described as massive internal injuries inside his truck. He had crashed into a tree and his blood alcohol content was reported to be 0.16. Ron's gun had a spent round in the chamber. But Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe found no casing at the scene and no proof that he had shot from inside the the car. It's unknown whether he fired the gun that night or at an earlier time. Early articles reported that Ron had been following or chasing the car of who he believed to be the author of the letters when he lost control of his own truck. The crash was ruled an accident, even though Ron's family swears that he was not a big drinker, and he wouldn't have been so

drunk that night. His children have never stated that they saw him drinking, or believed he was drunk when he left that night. The location of the crash was on five points pike, an odd junction where five streets come to one intersection. During the day, it's pretty clear. But at night, at least in 77, there weren't many streetlights in the area. Looking on a map, it seems like a one-car accident would be sort of difficult if someone were driving at the speed limit, even in the darkness. It's certainly not impossible, especially if someone was drunk. But it does seem possible that someone had run him off the road, especially with claims that he didn't drink much. Sheriff Radcliffe seemed to agree that the circumstances were suspicious at first. Before his accidental crash ruling, the sheriff did interview

an unnamed suspect, but they passed a polygraph test and were cleared. The crash was then officially ruled in an accident. Ron Gillespie's death didn't slow down the unknown writer, and more letters kept coming to multiple Circleville residents. They weren't limited to just the residence either. newspapers, multiple government officials, churches, salons, and other businesses in Pickaway County also received letters. The letters sent to churches were a bit different than the rest, as they asked for sympathy. But the writer was still seeking attention. They actually requested that their letters be read aloud to the congregation. Most letters were unsigned, but some were signed Bob Hibbs, who appears to have never existed.

Sometimes the letters were only signed with the initials B.H. Some of the letters touched on Ron Gillespie's death, even claiming that Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe covered up his murder. It's easy to speculate about this happening since Ron's family had doubts that his death was an accident, and Sheriff Radcliffe was the one to report that there was no shell casing found, and the one to rule the death the result of an accident. Ron's truck was also quickly taken to a junkyard and scrapped, preventing further analysis of any evidence. The writer also claimed in some letters that Mary Gillespie and Gordon Massey had conspired to kill Ron together. In 1979, Gordon Massey and his wife divorced, and it was after that that he and Mary admitted that they were in fact in a relationship.

Mary claimed that it had only started after they began receiving the letters, and that the first letters pointing accusations about an affair were untrue. Paul Fresh Hour and his wife Karen officially separated in August of 1982. Sources are split and some state that Karen sued for divorce and some state that Paul filed in October after he found out that Karen was cheating on him. Either way, their split was not amicable and it was apparently quite bitter. Karen claimed that Paul was physically abusive and had a bad temper. Still, Paul received full custody of their children. and ownership of the home. Ron's sister Karen moved into a trailer on Mary Gillespie's property,

and she told Mary that she suspected Paul was the Circleville writer. She also thought that he was the one leaving signs around town. Karen had not mentioned these suspicions at all in court during her divorce proceedings. On February 7, 1983, Mary Gillespie was driving a normal route and saw sign about her daughter posted near the intersection of Five Points Pike in Sayudu-Darby Road. This location meant that nearly every person driving through town could see the lewd, sexually suggestive message about her 12-year-old daughter in Massey. Mary parked her bus and took the handwritten sign down by taking the entire post it was on,

including a container tied to the sign with twine, back onto the bus. She didn't inspect it until she got home after her shift. When she opened the container, there's a 25-calibre pistol. and it was crudely rigged to go off, a booby trap. The gun was rigged to fire when someone tore down the sign, but Mary took the entire post instead of ripping the sign off the post, and the gun didn't fire. Investigators were able to see the serial number,

even though there had been a pretty amateur attempt to file it off. When they traced it, they were surprised to learn that the gun belonged to Mary's ex-brother-in-law. Paul Freshower. When police approached him, Paul claimed he was innocent and had not been involved in, creating the booby trap or mailing any letters. There were no prints on the box or the gun.

When police searched Paul's home, they found no ammunition or remnants of the booby trap, like twine, styrofoam, or any sign making materials. Paul said his house had been burglarized recently. And because he didn't use his gun all that much, he didn't even know that it had gone missing. He assumed it had been stolen during the burglary, but claimed to have no clue what happened to the gun, which he kept in the garage. Sheriff Radcliffe asked Paul to copy down some of the Circleville letters for handwriting analysis. Paul claimed he believed he was helping a family member, which he never expanded on and obliged by writing specific words in the same blocky text as the Circleville writer. On the same day he gave the samples, Paul was arrested for the attempted murder of Mary Gillespie.

His week-long trial was held in October 1983. Mary and Karen both testified that they believed Paul was responsible for the letters. No one including Paul was ever charged with harassment or threats for writing the letters, or even officially named as the letter writer. Instead, the focus was on the signs posted around town and the booby trap. During Paul's trial, handwriting analysis was said to prove that he had written the sign that was booby-trapped, and proved they had written some of the letters. This belief that he was the author was directly responsible for his conviction for the attempted murder of Mary Gillespie. Paul was linked to 434 of 1,000 letters sent by the Circleville writer by handwriting analysis.

This was according to Sheriff Radcliffe's testimony, and only 39 of the letters were ever entered into evidence during court. all of which were the ones sent to Mary Gillespie. Paul didn't go to work the day Mary found the booby-trapped sign. At trial, Paul did have a witness who gave him an alibi for certain parts of the day, at least the time period where authorities thought the sign would have been placed. There was another witness who claimed there was no sign along Mary's bus route earlier in the day before Paul's alibi time period. But other witnesses directly contradicted Paul's alibi witness, claiming Paul was near the scene

that day. Another bus driver claimed she drove past the area 20 minutes before Mary and saw no sign. Paul never took the stand in his own defense, which he later regretted because in his opinion, it definitely would have changed a lot about the outcome of the trial. One witness, a fellow bus driver said that they saw a sandy-haired man standing in the spot where the booby trap sign was erected, but saw no container on the sign. This man was there about 20 minutes before Mary found the sign. And he was driving a yellow El Camino. When he noticed the bus driver looking at him, he turned around and pretended that he was urinating on the side of the road.

Despite Paul not owning a yellow El Camino and having a thick mane of dark black hair, he was sentenced to seven to 25 years in prison for the attempted murder of Mary Gillespie. The judge recommended he stay in prison for at least seven of the 25 years, with 25 being the maximum sentence for the crime. While Paul was in prison, more taunting letters were mailed, and it appeared that there may have been at least two Circleville writers sending letters. One author used smaller block lettering, where the letters that came before usually had very large block letters, and this writer blamed Mary for the original Circleville letters. These letters were sent to addresses all over Ohio, not just in Circleville. Grove City Police Chief James R. McKean received the letter on March 16, 1992.

In the letter that contained small block writing, it claimed Mary was responsible for the letters and also that whoever killed Ronald Gillespie had also killed a woman named Vicki Koch in 1980. A second letter to Chief McKean claimed that Sheriff Radcliffe had told Mary about the letter McKean received and claimed that the reason they had come clean about Mary in the previous letter was because they had found Jesus in their life. This letter explained how Mary had printed the letters and also stated that there had been multiple booby traps placed at the schools in the town and it accused the police of lying and covering this up. This letter ended with write a letter and I will give you more. But McKean didn't know where to send a letter.

The writer also claimed that more signs had been left on the walls of restaurants in Circleville. but instead of saying anything about Mary's daughter, these signs warn that to gain attention, a waitress would be murdered. McKean tried to investigate the claims in the letter, and he couldn't verify them. The letters continued even when Paul was in solitary confinement, where Sheriff Radcliffe had requested the prison warden place him because he believed Paul was still responsible for the letters being sent. Paul was actually subjected to strip searches before and after. each visit he was able to receive.

Any mail sent to Paul was screened before he was able to receive it. It was prison protocol for prisoners to submit their mail for a review unsealed and for a prison official to screen outgoing mail before sending it, something Paul would have known as a former prison guard. If he had been trying to send Circleville letters, with their distinctive blocky writing and familiar taunts, someone screening his mail would have surely seen it. Some letters had paper stamps which weren't available in the prison.

Paul only had access to emboss stamps. He would have had to have helped mail the letters. The mail screening protocol also would have made it impossible for Paul to ask anyone by mail to send a letter for him, because the request would clearly be seen by whoever screened the mail, especially once they were suspicious. He was still writing the letters and had help on the outside. But the letters kept coming, and they contained accusations and threats. it seemed like no one was safe.

Pickaway County coroner Dr. Ray Carroll was accused of child molestation. Sheriff Radcliffe was accused of not investigating Dr. Carroll properly about those allegations. Judge Roger Klein, who had been the prosecutor on Paul's case, was accused of getting a teacher named Vicki Koch, who we mentioned a few minutes ago, pregnant, and murdering her. and the child. Klein was even threatened with having the deceased baby's bones on earth and sent to him in the mail. This would imply that Klein killed or hired someone to kill Ron if the letters were all sent by one author. The letters warned the recipients that they were being watched and whoever was writing the letters knew about their homes and families. Even the producers of unsolved mysteries received the letter while working on an episode about the Circleville letters in 1993 while Paul was still in prison.

The letter warned not to harm Sheriff Radcliffe and contained the odd warning that if anyone came to Circleville, quote, you L. Sickos will pay. After publishing a story about the letters and Paul Freshower, journalist Martin Yant received a call from a woman who was angry that he had mentioned that an El Camino had been seen. He was warned to never mention it again. Unsolved mysteries had to be. included the information about the yellow El Camino in the episode as well. It seems like El Sikos could have possibly been a reference to the El Camino and someone was apparently upset that the car was mentioned. Paul Freshower himself even received letters from the Circleville writer while he was in prison

after he had been denied parole because the letters were still being sent. Someone taunted him, claiming that they had warned him that when we set him up, they stay set up and they asked him if he truly understood that he would never get out of prison. More if I think another mystery in this case is how everyone kept thinking that Paul was sending these letters. It seemed pretty clear that he couldn't have mailed these letters from prison, especially when he was in solitary confinement. Even the warden believed it would have been impossible for Paul to be sending the letters from prison because of all the safeguards and precautions and the fact that some letters were postmarked Columbus. When Paul was in prison in Lima, Ohio,

about 100 miles away, it was physically and logically impossible. Yet Paul continued to be blamed and remained behind bars. Whoever was sending Paul the letters, if they really did set him up, must have been quite secure in their knowledge that new letters wouldn't convince anyone that Paul wasn't the writer. I think the important thing to remember is that there's no DNA or fingerprints or hard evidence implicating Paul in any of the stuff besides the fact the gun is his and they came to believe that he had placed it there. They're really using handwriting analysis to connect him to some of these letters.

And I think we know that, well, that's one of the tools in the tool set for investigators to use. It's not 100% infallible. It's not DNA. It's not a fingerprint. It's just someone's opinion of writing. So if for some reason that the expert was wrong that linked him to these writings, it's very possible that Paul was in there having done nothing at all and was even connected to the letters in the first place. Yeah, I mean, I got, we didn't.

get too in depth into his trial, but I think you get the sense, right? That, you know, most of the evidence against him was very circumstantial, the fact that it was his gun. And the fact that Marion Karen believed, told jurors, I think, that they believe that Paul was the writer. You know, I go back to your point on handwriting analysis. And I, I think back to the Zodiac case. You know, so many letters, so much handwriting analysis, more if you, you've been immersed in that case for a very long time, how many different opinions have there been over the years on the handwriting analysis of the Zodiac letters?

Yeah, I think in the Zodiac letters in particular, the main document examiner besides the FBI was Sherwood Morrill, who was a well-respected. official and the state's top writing expert who had years and years of experience examining question documents. But we really don't know the skill level or the training that the document examiner had here that connected this writing to Paul Fresh Hour. So for example, when Sherwood Morrill, as skilled as he was after he retired, his replacement second-guessed some of the findings of Sherwood Moral and disagreed with him about some of the letters moral attributed to Zodiac. So I think that proves that two quote unquote experts in the same field can disagree on

something because, again, it's not infallible. It's not like DNA where it's a positive answer. This comes down to people's opinions. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved

until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to who done it.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories.

Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodont. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy.

And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched, true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodont. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. A letter dated March 1994 stated, stated, writer almost had another innocent man put in prison. Ha ha.

David Longbury would have been the man if the man in prison now had not tried to trick writer with writer's own writing from Homebreaker Gillespie. This implies that Paul had sent the writer of that letter something, purporting to be from the Circleville writer. Imagine that you sent secret threatening letters to people in your town and no one knows it's you. You then get a letter from someone pretending to be you without knowing that it's you they're pretending to be. For someone already mischievous and secretive, they may have felt insulted or angry or just having fun with tormenting Paul. But this also seems to suggest that Paul Freshauer was not the original target, and what happened was only a result of him having sent letters of his own. If this March 1994 author was not the original writer and was not someone Paul had sent letters to, it had to be someone who knew he had sent those letters. Only one article claims that Paul admitted to writing 40 or 50 of the Circleville letters,

the government employees and school officials, businesses, and residents who lived within the Westfall school district. The wording is tricky and could be taken to mean that Paul denied knowledge of the booby trap, but did admit to writing some of the letters, or that Paul denied knowledge of the trap. And Sheriff Radcliffe was the one stating Paul. was the author. Examining court documents, records, and Paul's own statements. It seems he only admitted to four or five, not 40 or 50, and the ones that he copped to writing were ones he was writing to try and stop the actual writer. If that March 1994 letter wasn't from the original Circleville letter writer, it could be someone trying to clear Paul's name rather than

trying to keep him in prison because it makes it very clear that someone was framing Paul for a reason. The same 1994 letter stated two teenage boys seen what happened. You always use high speed for elimination of someone if you must get rid of them. You don't fire shots for drinking. The author of most of the letters, even the earliest ones, spelled things like elimination and involved with ease where the eyes were. The threat to Mary's daughter about putting a bullet in her head spelled bullet with an eye instead of an E as well. It's interesting to note that the writer seems to think using a gun is too obvious. Yet the sign Mary pulled down was booby-trapped with a gun. Paul Fresh Hour was finally paroled in 1994. He had been in prison for 10 years. He reviewed all of the

available files in his case because he still knew that Ron's murderer could be out there. and he wanted to figure out who was behind the letters that put and kept him in prison. He wrote to the FBI, asking them to review Ron's death and started a website with information about the case and some corruption in Circleville. While Paul was going through his files, he realized that somehow the yellow El Camino, which the witness described multiple times as clearly yellow in color, was originally rebranded. reported to police as an orange El Camino. There were other large errors that in Paul's mind could not have been mistakes. Things like altered trial transcripts. Even today, many people read a few pages of Paul's, quote, proof and decide that it's just

the ramblings of an unwell man. Paul understood that it would be hard for him to be taken seriously, especially as a felon. But he just wanted someone to look into Ron's death again. Before all of this happened, Paul Freshower earned multiple degrees, including a master's degree in business administration. In the 1960s, he was a prison guard at Ohio State Penitentiary. He was also a U.S. Army veteran. He worked 50 hours a week doing quality control at an Anheiser bush plant in Columbus, Ohio, and lived in Grove City about 40 minutes north of Circleville.

He seemed like an upstanding citizen. In 1999, David Longberry went on the run. after raping an 11-year-old girl. There are reports that he hanged himself in Texas while still a fugitive. Paul believes that the letter stopped in 1999 after David died. Most news sources stopped following the story in the mid-90s because law enforcement technically believed Paul was the writer. There was no open case on the Circleville letter writer.

We may never know. when the last letter was actually received. Gordon Massey passed away on June 18, 1996 at age 63. Paul Freshower passed away on June 28, 2012 at the age of 70. Because all of this did start happening 45 years ago, a lot of witnesses and people who received letters have changed their names, moved away, or unfortunately passed away. Paul Fresh Hour maintained his innocence until the day he died.

Sheriff Bradcliffe, Clifford, retired in 2013 and passed away on May 6, 2020 at 87 years old. Roger Klein retired in 2013. I think someone could definitely look at this case and think there was a rush to judgment in pointing the finger at Paul Fresh Hour. Sheriff Radcliffe did not have to be corrupt to want the case closed. We've seen it in a lot of cases. There's pressure, immense pressure, morph on police.

to close cases. Tunnel vision does happen and people are human, even police officers, and they can and do make mistakes with the proof of the gun belonging to Paul and at least one handwriting expert to vouch that the sign was written by him. Officials wanting to bring the fear that went along with this case to an end could have easily made all of the pieces fit. But this became a problem. once Paul was in prison and the letters continued to come. I think at the very least morph, it made the authorities look bad in some people's eyes as though, you know,

did they rush into putting this man Paul Fresh Hour on trial? Was the evidence good enough to convict him? I mean, obviously the jury thought it was, but again, how do you explain the letters that keep coming? Him being able to send those letters out while he's in solitary confinement, there's no easy explanation for that. But I think in their minds, I could totally understand why they find a gun with the serial number

partially deleted and they're able to connect it to Paul Fresh Hour. That literally, no pun intended, is a smoking gun in their mind. So it's easy to see why they might really lock in on him. Yeah, I definitely get that. I'm not blaming them, but, you know, I think playing devil's advocate, is it possible for somebody to sneak into your garage and steal a gun? Maybe somebody that knows you keep it there. I mean, there are a lot of possibilities that don't involve Paul Fresh Hour. I think you can make that argument. And many people have. Some people even think that Sheriff Radcliffe could have been the target the whole time. The theory here is that he wanted to be president of the National Sheriff's Association, and the letters were in attempt to prevent that appointment. And his potential cover-up or rushing to solve the case was to earn that appointment.

Paul Freshauer believed that the National Sheriffs Association was the reason Sheriff Radcliffe concealed the true nature of the letters. Sheriff Radcliffe indeed became the president of the association. The letter that unsolved mysteries received, pointing people away from Sheriff Radcliffe, really only served to make him look more suspicious. Could that have been perhaps by design? Let's address some of the other rumors in the letters, starting with the case of Vicki Koch, who was murdered in Circleville.

Her murder is still unsolved. Some believe that the parents of the deceased baby, which the letter writer had threatened to unearth, were actually contacted. and they confirmed that the allegations against Klein were true. But if this were the baby that Vicki Koch had allegedly been carrying, only one parent, Klein, would have been able to speak about it accurately in this case if it were true. Maybe the author threatened to unearth a different infant's bones,

if there's any true to this rumor. In 1993, Dr. Carroll was charged with 12 counts. Eight of them alleged gross immorality. These included sex crimes, corruption of a minor, pornography, and indecent exposure. It may be a coincidence. Or the writer could have been in some sort of position to know about these things. The author of the letters did seem to be interested in local politics and the officials there. So it could also be a coincidence that Ron Gillespie's blood chemistry,

report lists Dr. Carroll as the physician. The letter writer could have been angry at Dr. Carroll and Sheriff Radcliffe, who worked Ron's death or murder scene, as well as Klein, the prosecutor in Paul's case, and worked to dig up dirt on them. Unless everyone in Circleville had bones to pick with each other, the culprit should have been quite obvious, but to this day it's unknown how many authors there even were. One thing to focus on is the language. One thing to focus on is the language in the letters. The writer was attempting to seem all-knowing and intimidating, emphasizing how serious they were. Yet they used the word please. They do not ominously warn, take this seriously. Instead, they ask the recipient to please take it serious.

One of the first letters to Mary warned, if you make a fool of me such as the school is done, they'd shoot Mary's daughter. I don't think the superintendent having an affair with a bus driver counts as a schoolmaking fool of the scorned spouses. Was anyone fired from a position involving the school? Maybe this is a reach here, but did anyone fail to graduate recently? Who had been embarrassed by Westfall School District and had a grudge against them? The thing morph that jumps out to me is the school connection. Massey, Mary, the letter writer is saying, you know, if you make a fool of me, such as the school has done.

There's obviously a connection to Westfall. I wonder if the true gripe or the true issue that this writer had was something with the school or Mary Gillespie's possible relationship with the school official. And they just sort of mixed in with all these other letters to other residents just to sort of camouflage it and make it look like a part of a bigger letter writing campaign, but that they were the actual real targets all along. Well, we've seen that in some bomb cases. there have been people over the years who have mailed out bombs to a number of people. But really, you know, when it was all said and done, there was one intended target.

And the other bombs, as heinous as they were, were intended to take the focus away from the intended target. I think you also see that in some of the poisoning cases, specifically like the Tylenolone. case or, you know, some of these pill-type poisoning cases where medication is tainted on store shelves and a bunch of people die. Sometimes it turns out that there's one intended target and all of the rest of the carnage is just for trying to mask the fact that there was one target. And the entire time researching this, I was thinking back to the D.C. sniper case wondering, could this writer have wanted to mix in with these letters the way that the D.C. sniper wanted to mix his ex-wife's murder into all these random murders. And so we see a precedence of this definitely being done time and time again, just not with letters so much. Well, and let's face it, I'm not telling anybody to go out and do this, but if you look at it logically, it's an effective way to take the focus off of where you don't want it to be, right?

If you have a vendetta grudge against someone and you go kill that person, well, you've got a tie. And how long is it going to take for the police to figure out, that connection and come knocking on your door. But if four, five, six, eight, ten different people are killed in pretty much the same way, it makes it that much tougher because you don't have a connection to all of those other people, just the one. A letter received by Paul Fresh Hour while he was still in prison stated, tell no one of this letter.

yet the prison was screening his mail and therefore someone besides Paul was aware of the letters he received. I think one question that is often asked is how would the writer not have known this? Another lingering question is did someone really tried to kill Mary specifically or did the person who planted the booby trap simply not care if anyone was hurt in the process? of framing Paul. Was Mary even the original target in the letters? She was never directly threatened in the original letters. Ron and their daughter were threatened. Maybe the person knew that the gun would never go off. The first letters do not portray Mary as the target. Instead, they are about massy and the awful working conditions female bus drivers had with him as their boss, claiming he would

flirt with all of the female bus drivers repeatedly, and that only the weak ones gave in, sometimes due to fear of losing their job. The author had to have time to write and send the letters on detected, as well as a source to get material for the rumors, especially the ones that ended up hitting the nail on the head. Some believe Mary Gillespie was in a prime position to overhear gossip because she drove kids around all day. And maybe she wrote the letters, which is why she didn't get hurt by the trap. Longberry would also be able to overhear the same kind of gossip. But Longberry had no reason to target Paul Freshauer, and would probably blame Massey a bit more for his role in the affair, as if he stole Mary from him. Massey kind of fades into the background of the whole story

somehow. Even in articles about this case today, Massey has only really mentioned due to the first letter Mary received, but nothing else has said. Paul Freshower lived in Grove City, not Circleville, and worked even further north full-time in Columbus. The fact that he would have to know so much local gossip when he didn't even live in the town makes it even more unlikely that Paul was the author of most of the letters. It's like there are pieces to more than one puzzle here, and we're still trying to make it all fit. Well, I can tell you from experience, that does not work. Take three jigsaw puzzles and mix them up.

You're going to have a real hard time getting the, final picture. But that's what we're left with with a lot of these mysterious kind of unsolved cases. Some people view Massey's wife as an easy person to point the finger at due to the nature of the letters. If she was the writer, she was clearly upset that Massey and Mary were having an affair together. The author seems to acknowledge that Massey chased after women, yet became increasingly angry at Mary, who was called weak in the letters for giving in to his advances, the writer's only real demand was that Massey be reported to the school board and his affair stopped. If his wife felt that she was losing her spouse, an attack on Ron, may have been a way

to try and make it even between herself and Mary. There's a reason for the saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Many people have pointed the finger at Mary Gillespie as being the Circleville letter writer, because what are the chances that the one sign she pulled down had a malfunctioning booby trap? Unfortunately, the sensationalism of the coverage of the case probably meant that any mention of a sign she took down with no booby trap on it were overlooked. We don't know how many signs she took down, but we do know that her husband Ron regularly took them down, daily before his death.

Sheriff Radcliffe confirmed that no other signs had been booby-trapped. There are some people that point the finger at Mary Gillespie and that she could have had something to do with her husband's death. She was out of town when he suffered his fatal accident. But that's the thing. His death was ruled an accident, not murder. So while spousal murders are very common, there's no evidence here that points at Mary Gillespie murdering her husband. And if Mary was responsible for the booby-trap sign that she found and reported, this means she knew no one would be harmed by it because she's the one that found it after planning. it. Many in the town believe that Sheriff Radcliffe had arrested the right man. It didn't matter

that he wasn't arrested for writing the letters. The people in town believed the circle of the letter writer had been stopped until they received more letters that as we mentioned were impossible for Paul to have sent. The booby trap sign showed up less than six months after Paul and Karen's contentious divorce, which essentially saw Karen lose everything. There was no one with a stronger motive to frame Paul at the time than Karen. When Paul went to prison, Karen regained custody of their children, ownership of their property, and their shared assets. And I think when you add all of that together, it's the reason why there are some people that believe Karen was somehow involved in this?

I think all throughout this case from the very beginning to the end, when Paul was in jail, the letters, the motive for the letters have to be questioned. Why did the letter writer start in the first place? What was her true motive going after Mary Gillespie and this supposed affair she had? And then later on, what are the motives in the letter rights? writing, trying to tease Paul or taunt Paul while he's in jail, or to go further with motive, who had a motive, what was the motive for stealing Paul's gun and framing him of all people? So I think these are a lot of questions that really may never be answered,

and the answers are things that might help solve the case. Paul Freshire apparently remarried in 1983, before Mary found the booby trap. By 1983, Paul's ex-Caron had already begun dating the man she would eventually marry. He looked a lot like the sandy-haired man that was spotted near the spot the booby-trap sign was planted. Karen also had a relative who drove a yellow El Camino, one of two registered in the entire state of Ohio at the time. People ask if Karen could have had helped covering up that she wrote the letters and planted signs. Then we have to ask who changed the color of the car on the official reports, and was that done to help point away from Karen. The first thing that jumped out to me morph about what you said is that there were only two

yellow El Caminos registered in the entire state of Ohio. Yeah, that's, it seems like a pretty precise number and a very small pool of potential vehicles that this could have been. So evidently, it wasn't a popular color. But I know as a kid, I'd see El Camino's all over the place, but maybe that color in that state at the time was very rare. Well, that's what that's what I was thinking. In this, in the late 70s, 76, 77, man, El Camino's seemed like they were everywhere. Now, I was a small kid, you were too, but I remember seeing, you know, El Camino's. I don't remember seeing a lot of yellow ones, but to be fair, there's not all that many yellow cars, I think, of any make. Yellow's just not a color that I think most people gravitate towards when they, they're car shopping. But the number

two did kind of jump out of me. And you think that if that car had something to do with planning that sign there, you'd have a very limited pool of people to have to go through and see if they might be connected and somehow and investigate. The problem is we just don't have that information, right? We don't know if those people were checked out. We just couldn't find it. One thing worth noting is that not all of the letters were handwritten. Some were typed. Some were postcards. Some were letters. Interestingly, Karen Freshauer had borrowed a typewriter from Mildred Russell who had borrowed it

from her brother, Paul Freshower. Mildred had been using it because she was helping Paul write a book and she was a better typist. This typewriter was later examined by the Bureau of Crime Identification in London, Ohio, where expert analysts tried to see if it was used to write. any of the Circleville letters. The typewriter was released back to Karen Fresh Hour after it had been examined. And again, I think the problem we have here, Morp, is we don't know what the analysis showed.

Couldn't find it. It just was not made public as far as we could tell. Some people have asked if Karen and Paul were behind the original Circleville letters working as a team. If so, it would be easy for Karen to continue and put the blame on Paul. during the nasty divorce, knowing he was unable to come clean without admitting his own guilt. But why wouldn't Karen just tell her brother that he was being cheated on? What did she have to gain by writing the original letters? Did she want to punish Mary for betraying her brother?

Why threaten her own brother? Perhaps it was Karen and she felt bad for her tactics later. Or in the words of the letter writer, found Jesus and sent more letters trying to exonerate Paul, but the sheriff's tunnel vision meant there was no movement in his case. Karen being the author, framing Paul with the booby trap, makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that she would risk harming Mary, her friend, confidant, and landlord. Maybe Mary lied to help Karen, and there was never any working booby trap planted. In the end, more, if it's probably safe to say that there is a real possibility that the

Cirqueville letter writer does not exist. There was never one person with all of the town's secrets. the first wave of letters to Mary and Ron are not even likely to be the same person. Some of the writing was much more blocky than the rest, and some letters were signed W while some were unsigned. This probably means that the first Circleville letter writer was really two people who had an interest in stopping Mary Gillespie's affair. I think most people believe that the most likely suspects are dated. David Longbury and a Massey, either William or his mother, Gordon's wife. It almost seems more likely that William Massey and his mother were the first letter writers

because they focused on Gordon's affair and how Massey's wife was a good woman who didn't deserve the betrayal. The tone of the letters and the author getting increasingly angry with Mary and her family, as well as someone knowing her employee ID number, points to a co-worker being involved. Some letters were probably written by residents wanting to air dirty laundry and have some fun. Some people say that Karen is the most probable suspect for the third author, called the Circleville letter writer. She would have written the letters possibly with Mary's help to frame Paul, but apparently later felt bad and continued the letters to make it seem like his sentence was due to Sheriff Radcliffe's corruption and lies. This is one case that will probably never be defecive.

solid. There's been too much time that has elapsed. And it's unclear if the letters even still exist today to be tested for DNA. If you want to read Paul's version of events and see documents from the case, you can definitely find a lot about this case and the letters online. There is a very memorable unsolved mysteries episode about this case, as we mentioned. And who doesn't want to watch a really good Unsolved Mysteries episode. How can you turn that down, Morve? I mean, you and I have talked about it. For many of us, that show helped fuel kind of our fascination with true crime. I mean, there's been a lot of shows, but it's, you'd be hard pressed to find one that is probably more influential in the lives of today's true crime addicts as Unsolved Mystery.

Yeah, and I think that show is the first time I ever heard about this case that we're talking about today. Well, and I think that was one of the great things about that show. It shed light on cases that you previously would have never heard of. You know, it's almost as if they, they combed for the lesser known, the, okay, we don't have all the facts, right? We're calling it a mystery. It's unsolved. much different than what you could have found, you know, 20 years ago on Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, things like that.

Unsolved mysteries pick some very interesting topics. I'll say that. But as we wrap up this case, you know, like I said, I think it would be tough to ever definitively solve the mystery of who the Circleville letter writer was or how many different Circleville letter writers there were. That's kind of the part that really sticks out at me about this case. That's one of them is could it be possible that you have a bunch of people who kind of jumped on the letter writing bandwagon and saw it as a way to air some dirty laundry in an anonymous way that they knew would get traction.

What's interesting to me about this is I think that whether it was one letter writer or more than one letter writer, if any of them are around, they could come forward today and own up to it. And I think any statute of limitations on any crimes they might have been charged with would have long ago run out. So they could probably come forward and just admit it and say, yeah, I did it and spill their guts right now and not have anything to worry about being prosecuted for. Yeah, because my thought is that not all of these letters were criminal, right, constituted some type of crime. Some definitely were. They were threatening and things like that, but I don't know that all of them were. I think some of them just were saying so-and-so did this,

so-and-so did that. I don't know what you're going to charge somebody. with for some of that stuff. As long as the letter writer, writers weren't involved in attempting to murder Mary Gillespie with that gun that was planted, then they, that's probably the most violent offense that we've talked about today. So,

well, and yeah, and that leads us into Paul Fresh Hour. You know, one of the, the second interesting thing that I was going to talk about is the fact that he's obviously connected to, Ron and Mary, right, by marriage.

His wife, Karen, is Ron's sister. So is that why he chose to do what he did? If you believe that he was guilty of what he was convicted for. If not, is that the reason why he was targeted? Because of his close connection to Mary and Ron. Or as we mentioned, was he targeted? because he and his wife were going through this divorce. That's what makes this case so fascinating.

You can look at it from a number of different angles. And you can go down the what if pass because there are many of them. I do believe Morph and tell me if you think I'm wrong. There are a lot of people that do not believe at all that Paul Fresh Hour was guilty of anything. and they feel as though because it was his gun and his wife and ex-sister-in-law felt that he could possibly have been this person. That's what ultimately led him into prison. Yeah, Paul definitely has some supporters online, people that have tried to defend him and accuse others of framing him because, again, it all ties back to his gun, as you just mentioned.

he's either been framed 100% and someone chose his gun specifically or he just made a mistake and didn't file a serial number all the way off the gun and and let himself be connected to the crime they're the only two real possibilities yeah because that's the one thing that is concrete right his gun was found in the the booby-trapped portion of the song that we know how he got there is the big mystery. Thanks goes out the Sunny Landon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show and you haven't done so yet, go out and give us a rating. You can leave a review. All of that helps quite a bit. The word of mouth angle is amazing as well. Keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That really goes a long way.

And if you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter. with the handle at Criminology Pod or by searching Facebook for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion, and Fans. So that is it for our take on the Cirqueville Letter Writer case. And that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morf and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morp.

We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.