My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 110 - Live at the Palace Theatre in Columbus

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Karen and Georgia cover serial killer Donald Harvey and the mystery of the Circleville Letter Writer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Yes, we haven't gotten one wrong yet. We practice and practice backstage. Where are we? How do you pronounce it? Columbus. Wow. Hi, what a beautiful theater. Gorgeous theater, gorgeous.

We got a fun fact on the way over here about this theater that it was a vaudeville theater and downstairs in like catering was where they had the animals come in for vaudeville. Like all the dogs in their ballet costumes and shit. Aw. What's funny is we didn't ask what animals. That's Georgia's cartoon of this theater in 1920. You just wrote it in your head. Poodles in fucking ballet costumes.

Poodle show. Poodle show. That's the most famous ballet of all. You know it. It's the sugar plum fairy from the nutcracker. With poodles. I pictured on the animal ramp just like 100 elephants. It's just like these people are amazing.

They got all those camels and elephants and rhinoceri out here. In my mind it was poodle, doodle, doodle, doodle. Poodles time, poodles time. Welcome to poodles time everybody. Thank you so much for coming. You bought special tickets to poodles time. We appreciate it. It's the official pre-show of the puppy bowl.

That's right. Who's excited? Talking puppy bowl. Talking puppy bowl. We're going to introduce Chris Hardwick. We're all going to come out and talk about what might happen. What happened last year. Remember when that one drank the water?

Fuck. That was the best. That was the best. You can see it in your mind again, huh? What's the music behind puppy's drinking water? Oh, well. Well, they're not drinking out of fucking FBI glasses. Shit, Shaw.

Right here. Thank you. They stand up and shoot us. Please sit down. You're not in charge right now, FBI. Jesus. Power tripping. Still standing.

Still talking. Amazing. Let's break this shit. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. It's what we meant to say. Wow. Can you hear me breathing in this microphone?

This sound system is insane because it sounds like the voices are coming from behind me. And that's when you're the one talking, that's kind of upsetting. Well, that's the ghost. Oh, is that a ghost? That's a ghost. That's the ghost of a dead poodle. The human voice of a ghost of a dead. Oh, why are we talking about dead dogs?

It's fun. It's funny. That's a bummer. It's funny. Oh, did you know what the show is about? I have bad news for you. Oh, no, I think security really is coming for those FBI agents. Oh, well.

Oh, shit. No, no, no. You know what it is? Oh. Someone tweeted this. I was eavesdropping. On Twitter. You get your own individual usher at this theater to walk you to your seat.

Each and every person? I mean, they could have been lying. Ohio. You got some fucking class going on. He's like, we did too. Because no one knows where they're going. They look at the balcony ticket and they're like, you're on your own. Figure it out.

If you want your own individual usher, you got to kick down that cheddar. Never said that word before. As money. Never. Cheddar has money. Cheddar has money. Karen, I have to tell you guys something. It's really upsetting.

Karen tried to steal someone's purse last night. Look. Listen. I had, I needed money for my children. That's how it starts. Having children? Yes. Last night at meet and greet, these gals woke up.

There's a problem with me. I make a lot of assumptions in my mind and then just go with it. It's a fun way to live, but you can be deeply wrong often. And these two women walked up and they had clutch purses. And they had with, I think, like sequence sewed on our logo onto these two clutch purses. Beautiful clutch purses when they were walking toward, I understand. They were walking towards us like, showing us. Oh my god, the gals, they did.

So I'm all like, this is amazing. And I open it up. I'm like, why is she giving me this old checkbook? I don't want that. I don't want this shit. Birth control pills. What the fuck? That was really awkward.

It was super, when the moment I realized I'm looking into a woman's purse, who I met three and a half seconds ago, I was all like, ah, loving your purse. She handed it to me. I don't know. They're not giving you something. And then we were like, oh, they're gorgeous. We had to play it. Well, they were, but I wanted one.

You know? Don't bring two. That's a real, that was a real mind fuck. She was a lawyer, so I think she's used to getting catching people in weird situations. Are you here? No. Oh, you love lawyers. There's one lawyer here.

These are people that got off on huge crimes. Yes. Lawyer groupies. You can't prove anything. Inadmissible. I never said shit. Your say. Let's throw out more legal things.

Approach the bench. Approach the bench. Order in the court. I'm just panicking going through every law and order I've ever seen. Argumentative, your honor. Welcome to my favorite brother, everybody. Thank you. That's Karen Kilgarum.

That's George Hartstark. For all the dads that were dragged along, don't know what this is, yes, it's going to get worse. More confusing. More confusing. More inside baseball. Yeah. But you guys get the Super Bowl, so calm down.

No, women like that stuff too, right? Absolutely. Everything's fair and even. Snacks. Snacks. I just love the snacks. Have you seen that picture online? That's the person who made a cold cut Super Bowl.

What do you call it, the stadium? Peel off pieces of ham. Off a ham stadium. Ever seen that? I bet that person is super chill. That person's just chill. It's just a person who is chill about meat. It's not that big of a deal.

She doesn't or he doesn't tell you where to eat from first or get mad at you in the corner. Why are you eating from the middle? Try the all of low front door. Is there a front door to a stadium? Probably. A front and back two side doors. Speaking of delicious food and beautiful food, so we went on our way here.

We were in Cleveland yesterday and on our way today. Thank you. Thank you. This is your incredible vintage shop called Flower Child. Oh my God. Oh my God. It was just troubling. We were like, what do we get for the hometown person, the person who comes up to read the

hometown, and Karen found something magical. Do you want to tell them about it? I would love to thank you, Georgia. This is creative cooking with aluminum foil. It's a wonderful recipe book from, I don't know if you looked it up. My guess is 72. I think it was 60 something. What's your guess?

69. Okay. $15,000. That's always our bet. We never do less than that. Can you see? 67. You're closest.

I win the cookbook. That's weird. You don't want that money? Okay. There are two recipes that are special. One is molded seafood salad. Like a jello mold. Where's the aluminum foil come in?

It doesn't matter. You eat it. You tear it up into tiny pieces. You make a thing out of it and you scrape your tongue off after you eat it because it's so disgusting. You actually, you put it on the orange zester. You use it to make into a key to unlock the handcuffs you've been put in that are force feeding you to eat the shit.

I thought you meant unlock the key to the front door of the meat stadium. Either one. Also, tuna temptees. Can you just read what's in a tuna temptee? A quarter pound of American cheese cubed. Yes. Right off the fucking bat. Why don't they, this is before integrations because today if it was a book like this,

it would be a Velvita brand TM fucking. This is, okay. This is by Eleanor Lynch, by the way. Oh yeah. A can of tuna. Great. A green pepper. You got some greens in there.

Nice. An onion. A pickle salad dressing. Salad pepper. Hamburger or Frankfurter buns. Hamburger buns. Sorry. Wait.

Where'd we go? I think it's just a tuna melt and we made a better name now for it. That's the kind of thing my mom would make. She would call it catch us, catch can. And she would just combine everything that was in the pantry. She would be like, you know what, we're going to have tuna sandwiches on hot dog buns. Sit down. It's going to be so fun.

No. No. No. Yeah. No. And that's that. And there's just one final page by the Alzheimer's Association in the back that's like, don't eat anything in this recipe book if you care about your memories.

There's literally a single page marked salads. It's pretty great. It's probably one of my favorite things. It's just like, whatever salad you make, go ahead and put some aluminum foil on top of that bowl. Put it in the refrigerator. The refrigerator. The refrigerator.

Or the ice box. Did Stephen think you were kidding when you said to put that one slide up that he made? It didn't matter because he wants this slide. He wanted it up. So it better be up because he sent us this. He took, I don't know how long it takes to make this ship, but whatever it is, he's not getting fucking paid for the time. We ask him, hey, if there's anything interesting going on in the towns we're going to, give

us a little fucking email about it because we don't know what's going on at the time. Anywhere. Like not even our own town. Yes, exactly. So we're just like any updates, stuff that we need to know, whatever. And Stephen in his, we called, I started calling it the hot sheet sarcastically. And today is one of the pieces of information about Columbus. Don't say what I want to show them is connected to.

Then he goes, maybe you guys can want to use this slide. Of course I immediately respond. Fuck. Yeah. Is it a yes? Go back one. Okay. Vince.

Vince on it. Holding it down. Yeah. Holding it, holding it down for us backstage. We hear that there's someone here from your town that's really special. And so, hey. Hey. Look.

They are mad at you. Welcome to flavor town. People who already live in flavor town. He made it. We've made it to flavor town. Boom. I don't know how to. Also, what's very funny is within the little paragraph, Stephen included the factoid that

his real name is Guy Ferry. Like a boat. People are bummed. I'm sorry. There's a bunch of Italian-Americans in the audience who are livid right now. Yeah. I met him in Cleveland, remember? Oh, yeah.

Remember? Remember when you weren't there? Anyway. Tell it. I don't know. It's a good, funny anecdote. I was on... Get your hand off your hip and tell these people that story.

Okay, yeah. I was in Cleveland with a fancy food show, and he was really nice, and he invited myself and my friend Allie. We did cocktails on stage to like make a cocktail for his fans, and it was really scary because I'd never been in front of more than like 30 people on a stage in my life, and it was like the size of this room. Yeah. Now I don't care, but we did, and we brought this cocktail, and I was just like Thanksgiving

yam cocktail, and she went to shake the cocktail, and the top flew off, and the yams flew all over everyone on stage, including Guy Fieri. Blended up yams. Uh-huh. Cocktail yams. With whiskey. Shit. And the crowd was mad at us because we spilled yam on their Lord and Savior.

He was really nice. He never spoke to us again. He was very... He laughed. Oh, he didn't do some follow-up hangs and emails? No, he didn't want to hang out after that. It's weird. I thought Hollywood was different than that.

Do what did he say on stage when things spilt? He laughed. He was very sweet about it. There's a photo of me in a vintage dress hugging him with yam all over the place. He was very sweet about it. He didn't do any hand gestures or anything to make it... You didn't go like this? No.

Kabam? Kabam? I'm not a fan. I don't know what he said. It's kabam. I don't watch his stuff. I just love him. It's definitely kabam.

It's not kabam. It's not kabam. I don't know. Yeah. Should we sit down? I guess so. Okay. I don't...

I know it's cold weather business, but I just don't... I can't keep a shoe clean in this cold weather situation. Every time I look down, it looks like I've been going like this on my shoes. I swear I haven't. I thought you didn't have shoes on because they look like you have socks on, but you don't. I'm just wearing my gym jams. Jammies.

Oh, they use the good tablecloth. Thank you so much. Oh, great. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. This was not balled up in the back of someone's car at all. They were probably like, what? Why the fuck did they need a tablecloth?

No one was screaming about a tablecloth. Vince was not saying... It was on the writer. Nobody was doing that. Now, what? And they want to rug? Get the fuck out. We don't even know who you are.

Wait a minute. What is a podcast? Women aren't supposed to be alone on stage. Jesus. Everybody knows that live podcasts are made and broken by the Oriental rugs that they're done upon. 100%. Our worst show is when we were on an IKEA rug, not a toucher.

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led her down a dark path. Follow Even The Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Hi. Hi. I go first? You go first. Okay.

Okay. You guys. Ohio. You guys, are you ready for your angel of death, Donald Harvey? Oh. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit is right.

Okay. April. Here's the one thing I know about all angels of death. Yes. They love a transition lens. They just fucking, they love an 80s math teacher glasses situation for themselves. Afternoon to evening. I mean, yeah, exactly.

They're like, I might want to step outside the hospital door and have a quick smoke before I go kill nine more people. But I don't want the trouble of changing my glasses. I'm not going to change into different glasses. Yeah. That's my maintenance. Help me lens crafters, they all say. It's true.

God, I don't want to disappoint you. What's the photo? I have a photo of him. Okay. We'll take a look. All right. In April, 1987. Ding.

Where's Karen in 1987? Oh, 87. That's a senior year of high school. So I'm at the bottom of a Mickey's big mouth. Trying to explain someone to someone probably. I'm trying to explain to my father how the words of Depeche Modes, people are people, are actually about him and his racist problems. Oh.

Listen to the words, dad. Do you hear that? People are people. People are people. It doesn't matter. And I swear to God, this was a real conversation my dad and I had and the tape was in the tape deck and I was crying outside of my dance studio, telling him to listen to the words and finally he's just sitting there pretending to listen to the words and I went to say something

and he goes, I get it. Be nice to people. Children. 87, baby. 87. All right. Well, in 1987 at Drake Hospital, 44-year-old John Powell, he had been in a coma for several months ever since a motorcycle accident.

He died from complications of pneumonia. In Ohio, it turns out that when you're in a car accident, an autopsy is required. So that is a good idea. Yeah. Insurance companies, man. They are fucking. On it. In it and on it.

And about it. And around it. Loving it. Okay. So, Coroner, Dr. Lee Lehmann, he's a forensic, yes, he's a forensic psychologist. He has a background in biochemistry, so he's probably a blast of parties. He, he's like, guess what this one will do to you? Take it.

Zip zap. So he's like, great, probably getting ready to go to lunch and he's like, I'll just do this one real quick. It'll be fine. And no big deal. But no, it turns out he suddenly smells the faint smell of almonds. Oh shit. That's right.

It's a fucking almond croissant. No. It's cyanide. And did you know that only 60% of people can smell that cyanide? Oh, wow. Isn't that interesting? So he hadn't been one of those people, you know. I wonder if that's part of being a doctor.

That's like, after you take your boards, then there's the smell test. They never talk about it. Yeah. But they make you pay for school and take your boards. Yeah. Then they make you smell it. And then they're like pulling out that croissant, like, let's see if you're gonna be a doctor. Oh, sorry.

You're gonna be a dentist. That's right. I slammed dentists. Karen's got a deep-seated hatred. I do. Look at these fucking teeth. Okay. So authorities are like, oh shit.

And they start looking into John's family, of course, friends. They all take lie detector tests that nobody had been giving him cyanide. Turns out. Well, they were a great liar. No. And then they were like, well, let's check all the people who had come in contact with him at the hospital, of course. So all the nurses and everyone, they are cleared.

And then when it's this dude's Donald Harvey's turn to take a lie detector test, he's fucking sick that day. Oh. Oh, red flag. It's 87. So how did he call in sick? What's up? Top and bottom.

The entirety of the phone. And so when they questioned him, he immediately was like, yeah, I fucking did it. Immediately? Yeah. Oh. He doesn't try to lie. He's like, I did it because I felt bad for him. He was suffering, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.

And so police are like, okay, great. And but they didn't know it at the time, but they had just ended the run of one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, Donald Harvey, the Angel of Death. Of all time, Columbus. Yeah. That's. We've got a ton of those. Don't worry about it.

He's not the only one. So Donald was born, it's also, he's never mind. Tell me the secret in front of them. Okay. Well, he worked in Cincinnati. I just didn't want anyone to be mad at me. Oh shit. She said I just, I just didn't want anyone to be mad.

You can't control them that way. If I don't say the word Cincinnati, everyone will stay happy the whole show. They don't even know what they're cheering for it. Cyanide? What's wrong? You guys. Why do you love cyanide in Cincinnati? Okay.

Donald Harvey is born in Butler County, Ohio in 1952. You. You. You. Such a nice county. Mmm. That man in the tuxedos there the whole time. He's leading everyone to their seats.

In Butler County, everyone has a personal usher all day. They're known for it. He. Okay. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Booneville, Kentucky, small community. Yeah. Up in the balcony, Booneville baby. Yep.

At six months old, father falls asleep while he's holding him, clonk, hits his fucking head. Oh. Dad. Falls asleep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And at five years old. Sorry. I could have done it with an actual cup. That's not improv. I do. I do. With my hand and immediately take a real sip. Oh, lost opportunities.

Let's do it again. Do it over. Okay. And then at five years old, he has another fucking head injury. Just saying. I'm not saying one leads to the other. It doesn't fit there. Sorry.

It doesn't fit there. So his mother, Goldie, and sis said he was brought up in a loving family environment. He was a happy child. All his, it looks like all his teachers thought he was great and he had a great childhood. But then it's like, no, actually, he was molested from four years old to 20 years old. What the fuck? By two different fucking men. His uncle and his fucking neighbor.

So I think mom is golden, Goldie over her eyes more than anything else. She's doing a little bit of, we had the best time. By the way, we forgot to tell the rules that this is a true crime comedy podcast. We're not laughing at the, I guess we're laughing. It's too late. It's way too late. Please butler yourself out if you don't like it. If you raise your hand, someone will come grab you.

But also if you were the mother of someone who ends up being one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, you're going to go into fucking full denial mode anyway. Sure. You're probably very good at it. It's not my fault. It's certainly not my fault. So, but he was well liked by all his teachers, but it seems like he was better with adults than with children, you know.

Me too. He was super smart, but he was bored, so he dropped out of high school. In 1970, his mother asked him to take care of his sick grandfather who had been placed in Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. And he's like, great, I'm there. I'd love to be there. I love it. I think he's like 18 years old this time, which what 18-year-old doesn't want to go?

God, is it some kind of a convalescent hospital? That would be perfect for me. I'm there. Absolutely. That's my summer vacation. He spends a lot of time at the hospital so much that the nuns who work there, like, love this guy. He's a sweet baby angel.

And so one of the nuns asked Harvey if he wanted to work there as an orderly. And he's like, yes. And then she slapped him across the face. Is that what they do? Yeah. 800 people just had flashbacks in this audience. Are there 800 people? Yeah, there's got to be.

Okay. Even though he wasn't trained as a nurse, his duties required him to spend long hours, not long, but a lot of time with patients alone. Some of his duties included changing bedpans, inserting catheters, and passing out medications. The fun stuff. It's party time. Yep. This is his version of MTV's spring break.

He's just fucking stoked. During one evening, just months after he started working at the hospital, Donald commits his first murder. And here he is tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Please say hello. Was that death? I think that was actually the Grim Reaper is here tonight. The Grim Reaper is like, yes, girl.

Kill them all, bitch. Slay them all. Literally, slay them all. Okay. Here's what happens. And tell me how you'd feel about this. Okay. Donald goes into this patient's room to do what, to check on him.

He had had a stroke before. Goes into this patient fucking ribs, feces all over Donald's face. What? So don't... So I don't like that. If that's the question you're about to ask me. He becomes angry, loses all control, later he says, the next thing I knew, I'd smothered him.

Okay. I'd smothered him. It was like it was the last straw. I just lost it. I went to help the man, and he wants to rub that in my face. No, he doesn't want to. Following the murder. So then Harvey, then he cleans up the patient, takes a shower real quick, and then tells the

nurses that the guy was dead. And no one ever questioned it, he said. So that's his first murder. Three weeks later, he kills again when he disconnected an oxygen tank to an elderly woman's oxygen. What do they call it? When no one suspected him, he starts to get more brazen. He used various techniques to kill.

He used a plastic bag to suffocate patients, morphine, and a variety of other drug overdoses. In the first year, he kills more than a dozen patients. Fuck. Yeah. Do you want to see a picture of him? She's asking me. Doesn't he look like a fucking Brady? Which one?

Mike? No, the middle one. It's Greg. Peter? Peter. He's the Brady they keep in the sub-basement. Look at how bright and cheery his eyes look. What is he thinking about?

Theses. Jesus. Can you imagine being in a bed in a hospital and then those eyes come into you? Do you need some juice? Yeah. I'm feeling better. You just pop out of bed. The fever's broken.

Bye. Okay. Goddamn. Okay. A dozen patients in a year. Okay. So he's gay, he starts a relationship with a man named Vernon Midden. He is an older man, he's married with children, and he's an undertaker.

Oh, my God. Check, check, check. It's a little bit, a little bit hacky. How old, much older? I think he was in his 40s. Oh, okay. So he tells him about all these different ways to kill people and things that will affect, you know, so he learns a lot from this undertaker.

He also learns about... You gotta talk about something at Olive Garden, you know? He also introduces Donald to his favorite pastime, Vernon's favorite pastime, the occult. Oh. You know. Mine too. I think this is him. I think I have a picture of the occult right here.

I don't know. I watched this like hokey documentary on YouTube about it and I had to stop it and take a screen grab of this amazing photo because I was like, either way. Then there was also like... It was one of those documentaries that they say a line dramatically and then they show some stock footage of like, you know, and then they went to the police and you just see like a car driving, it means to go to the police. But then they're like, and he was into the occult and it just shows like a, like, pentagram

with the word occult across the front with like occult. It's like, okay. Oh, that's the occult. That came up. And so I was like, well, they need to see this. So this is, you think it could possibly be the undertaker like on the weekend. Uh-huh. That's what they, that's what they made it seem like.

This is him just on like a, on the fun. Let's all go out. Hold on. Let me put it on my upside down crucifix. Yeah. Real quick. Or it's a, they went and had a Rocky Horror Picture show live. I don't know.

All right. Well, so, okay. Um, he gets, so then, um, oh, he gets a, he gets a spiritual guide when he joins the occult as well. Um, and he gets a spiritual guide named Duncan, who was a doctor in his past life, a ghost, I guess, that would assist him with figuring out who to kill. What? She's like, that's not real.

So he joins the occult to him, see in a circle, and immediately is like, I love killing and I kill, and then they're like, here's great ways to do it. No, I, I, it's his like, it's like ghost guide. Oh, oh. You know what I mean? Okay. It's in his head. It's in his fucking head.

Sorry. I pictured at the occult meeting. Yeah. Sitting in a circle and folding chairs. Duncan, you've got to meet our friend over here, Donald. Does anybody have any ideas about new ways to kill? Yeah. So he gets, uh, Donald gets caught burglarizing when he's drunk one night, um, which I'm sure

is like the worst way to burglarize is when you're drunk. Yeah. Right? Into, into a house? I think like, I don't know, into an apartment building. No, save drunk burglarizing for just shoplifting at CVS. Yeah. That's, we pick CVS up and then we put them back down.

That's right. Right in their place. Uh, so he gets caught, you know, he has to leave his job because of it. It's a story. And he enlists in the air force, serves us. Big solution. The occult air force serves less than a year before he's discharged in March of 1972. After he's released, he has a severe bout of depression, which he does throughout his

life. He attempts suicide and in 1972 he commits himself to the mental ward of, uh, the veterans administration in Lexington, Kentucky. You guys are on the mental ward too? Right. They're on a holiday pass. While they're, he receives, over the course of a few weeks, received over 21 electric shock therapies.

I really hate those parts of like, old mental hospital movies when they're like, they're laid down and someone's holding a hood. Right up there. That's the worst. It's the fucking worst. Okay. After working, let's just think about it first. After working various jobs where he didn't kill anyone, um, that's where I started that

out because it was like, he worked all this time and blah, blah, blah, but just, he didn't kill anyone at this job. He moves back to Cincinnati in September, 1975, where he gets a job working the night shift at the Cincinnati VA medical hospital. He works as a... That hospital you're against? Is it haunted? Cause you know some bad shit's about to go down.

He works as a nursing assistant, housekeeping aide, a cardiac catheterization technician and autopsy assistant. Man there, buddy. Since he worked at night, he had no supervision. He had access to all areas of the hospital, which sounds horrible to us. If you work in a daytime, you have to have a certain kind of pass, you have to be a doctor to be on certain wards. And then after 11, all those rules just go away.

And it's just like, whoever wants to be here gets to be here, do your thing. Free for all. Yeah. So he hears Donald Harvey murders at least 15 patients while working at the hospital. He keeps a precise diary of his crimes, takes much on each victim, detailing how he murdered them. He presses plastic bags and a wet towel over the mouth and nose. He sprinkles rat poison in patients' desserts.

He puts arsenic and cyanide into orange juice. He injects cyanide into intravenous tubes. And all the while, he's studying medical journals for hints on how to kill people and how to conceal his crimes. And here's how he studies. Laser eyes burning each page. But at this point, he doesn't just keep his murdery stuff to his patients. He, in the early 80s, he moves in with his lover, Carl Howler, and soon, so he finds

out Carl's going out on Sundays and like hooking up with other dudes and he gets pissed. So Carl starts getting sick on Sundays and can't go out. Oh. Oh, my God. The old Sunday flu? Yeah. After you have your croissant, and then you're like, I feel weird. Because Donald starts slipping him small doses of arsenic so that he wouldn't be able to leave

the apartment. Then Carl has a female, the boyfriend, Carl has a female BFF, and Donald, of course, is like, she's getting in the way of a relation, you know, the crazies. The old hag comes in and is like, can I see that croissant, please? Carl, your boyfriend seems like a psychotic murderer, and the psychotic murder is like, I'm going to kill this bitch. Right? So he, okay, this is so fucked up.

He doesn't kill her, but he retaliates the way any sane person would by infecting her with hepatitis. Uh-huh. This guy is not chill. They catch it and treat her. He also tried to infect her with AIDS, but it didn't work. Jesus Christ. What are the fucking fuck?

They're just going to the beer bust. It's not that big of a deal. Let them party. Another neighbor who Donald thought was getting in between him and Carl was Helen Metzger. She's a 63-year-old woman. Donald makes her a pie, laced with arsenic. She dies. So he's just basically trying to kill everyone all the time.

Okay. In April 1983, Donald has an argument with Carl's parents, his boyfriend's parents. They piss him off. So he starts to poison their food with arsenic. Carl's father, Henry, suffers a stroke, is taken to the hospital, Donald visits him, puts arsenic in his pudding, and he dies that fucking night. Jesus Christ. Harvey continued to poison Carl's mother, Margaret, on and not for the next year, but

he didn't kill her. Then, poor Carl, then he accidentally kills Carl's brother-in-law, because, as his name is Howard Vetter, Donald made him some cocktails using a bottle of vodka that Donald, oops, forgot, had wood alcohol in it. So he'd been, like, taking tape off of something, I don't know, in a vodka bottle, and was like, let me mix you up, but whatever. Was he claiming it's truly a mistake? He says it is, but do we, is this the person we believe?

No. No. But he says it like, it was a mistake. His death is attributed to cardiac failure. So in January 19, what? It's just so many people to die around one person, that even if it was, like, the best sex of your life, you'd be like, I'm sorry, I have to take a break, like, I just have to run the numbers and see.

Yeah. And since it's just you and I left, and I know that I'm not killing everybody, it's just a hunch I should break up with you. And he's like, every time you pull out your creative cooking with Lumen and Foyle recipe, someone gets sick. Someone dies. Okay, so in 1984, in January, Carl breaks off the relationship and asks him to move out.

And Donald's angry, spends the next two years trying to kill Carl. Jesus. He doesn't. And then on July 18, 1985, security guards search Donald's gym bag at work. They find a 38 caliber pistol, hypodermic needles, surgical scissors and gloves, a cocaine spoon, various medical texts, two occult books, and a biography of serial killer, serial killer Charles Sabrage. Sabrage?

He's the bikini killer. You know him? No. I mean, you can't come up. Stay tuned to a feature episode of my favorite breakfast spit on you up in the comments. You're taking the bikini killer? I wanted him. So it's basically, they open a bag, and there's a piece of paper that says, I'm super guilty

inside. Yeah, all I want to do is continue to kill people. I just, I can't stop killing. I'm doing it as we speak. And I enjoy it. Come get me. So the hospital is like, look, just if you quietly resign, we won't put a mark on your record will like, won't tell anyone at the place you want to get a job in the future.

We want you to continue doing this, just not here. Wow. So he quietly resigns rather than being fired. Nothing about the incident has ever noted his work record and hospital authorities didn't open an investigation to determine if he had committed any other crimes while working at the hospital. Oh, it turns out his mom ran that hospital. Seven months later, in February 1986, Donald was hired as a nurse's aide at Cincinnati's Drake Memorial Hospital from, you guys hate that. No one gives a shit. That's where Cincinnati drops out hard. No way are we supporting Drake. What about the singer Drake? It's up to grassy. That's the only way I know him. You can't not know that. That and then there was an Instagram

picture where he piled up money where I was like, that's not that cool. What? Don't tell him I said that. Please, Steven. You know this is his favorite podcast. Drake is crying at home alone in a bed of money. I'm trying so hard to get away from the grassy. A thousand dollar bill, a thousand dollar bill. Eye infection, eye infection. No one touches thousand dollar bills. Oh, and when you're that rich, it's all brand new money. It's brand new money. Sometimes you go down and you exchange it at the mint just if you feel like it. Good. Okay. From April 1986 until March 1987, Donald kills 26 patients. It's so many. And tries to kill several more by, let me tell you, I'm going to keep naming names. Disconnecting life sport machines,

injecting air into veins, which is like the scare. I hate that one so much. That's a bad one. Who? Suffocation and injection of arsenic, cyanide, and petroleum-based cleansers. Say that one again? No. Is, is mace involved? Based. Petroleum-based cleansers. I don't know what that is. Neutrogena? What's wrong? I don't know. I just copied and pasted it. I don't know what it is. I didn't look that one up. Bikini killer? Yes. They're like, do not use Noxema. It will fucking kill your face. Back to, okay. We're back to the beginning of this awful story of 1987, April. Donald's like, yeah, I killed that one motorcycle accident victim because I felt bad for him. That's it. Bye. And so that same day, though, he had, but PS, that same day he

had also killed an 82-year-old woman, Hilda Leitz, by feeding her Detachol. Detachol? Detachol. Derses. They're in her gastric tube and in her orange juice. So he had killed two fucking people that day. And he was like, no, I just killed that one guy because I felt bad for him. Then investigators were like, great, we're going to go look through your apartment. They find like 300 pounds of cyanide and arsenic. Made that number up, but it was a lot. They find, so jars of, because he was just bringing it from home. He didn't even need to steal it anymore from the fucking... He's got that Tupperware lunchbox. It's got all the different little size containers. Arsenics in the circular one. No, that's salad dressing. It's not deadly at all.

They find that. They find books on the occult and poisons. A detailed account of the murders. Like, don't do that, dude. Which he has written in a diary. So they come back and they're like, look. Listen. We look and listen. Something's up, bro. And Ohio has the mother fucking death penalty. So you better start plea dealing. And he's like, okay, that's transcript. On August 11, 1987, Harvey, who's 35, sits down with investigators and confessed to committing 33 murders over the past 17 years. The days go on, though, that number eventually grows to 70. He's up in Chikotillo territory. It's crazy. He said that the reason he got away with it for 17 years was that doctors are overworked and sometimes don't even see the patients

after they die. So he's also kind of blaming it on the hospitals for not checking up on him. And it's so weird. And then you read, there's a list of every single person he killed. And some of them are like... He says he's an angel of death and he's trying to help them. And they're sick and dying and he wants to save them. And some of them, you can see that they were actually sick and dying. That doesn't mean he was trying to help them. But some of them, well, most of them were not. And he's a monster. They're like, I just had a nice eye lift. I was gonna go live my life. Yeah, totally. Although one of his ex-boyfriends had said to him, when I'm... If I get sick and I am gonna... I'm dying, put me out of my misery. And he's like... On it. Yeah. I already am. You've

come to the... And you want like your loved one to argue. No, I would never, you know. But he's like, great, I'll do it. You're like, oh, shit. Do you want air in your tube? Do you want really rotten tea? By 1998, he had been convicted of 28 counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. Total eventually that he would convicted of was 36 murders. 35 men, 11 women ranging in age from 42 to 91. Plus one conviction for intentional manslaughter. He claimed to have killed 87 people and there's probably a lot that we'll never know, obviously. So up until he was serving... He got four life sentences. Just four? Uh-huh. Okay. He's serving them, what's up, then back in March of this year. He's still alive? Uh-huh. That was like in the 90s, 898. Okay. Back in

March of 2017, couple, what's up? Yeah. He's 64 years old. He's found beaten in his cell at Toledo Collectional Institute in Toledo, Ohio. Shit, Toledo. And he dies from his injuries two days later. Wow. No assailant is ever identified. And that is your fucking... What's it called? Angel of Death, Donald Harvey. Wow. Right. Heavy. When they interview those, when they interview the prisoners that beat him to death, they were like, no, no, we were just putting him out of his misery. Oh. He was very sickly. It's really weird because in the documentary I did watch, like he willingly, he's just clearly so, I don't know, it's so weird. He like is interviewed for this documentary. And he's like, yeah, I'll tell you everything. Like he really wants the

attention. Yeah. And he kept throughout, every time he'd get in trouble in the past, he'd be like, yeah, I killed a bunch of people. And he was like, he wanted to tell people and he wanted attention for it so badly. And he was like, no, I made this big mistake. If I hadn't done this thing, it'd have been fine. He's just like so weirdly lighthearted about it. Yeah. It's creepy as fuck. It's crazy. And he looks like a Brady the whole time. Well, that was amazing. Why? Fuck. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to do the Circleville letter writer. Do you know this one? You don't know it? Is it the one with the, you know what? You should tell it to me. Okay. You guessed it. Okay. For as long as you can. Okay. I'm always at the Circleville

letter writer. Yes. I know that one. No, I don't. Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay. Here's the best part about this is one. So I thought for one day that I was going to do the horrible murder of Dimebag Darrell from Pantera and Damage Plan. And when I started reading this fucking story, it was so awful. And then I emailed my friend Brian Posein. He's a stand-up comic. Hilarious stand-up comic. Do you have any friends with him? Huge metal fan. No. But he's a, he, I've known him since I was 20. And he's the hugest, like, metal fan in the world. So I was like, hey, got me any, you know, insider tips on Dimebag Darrell's death before I knew anything about it. And he wrote me back one of the saddest emails that I've ever read where he was just like, it was so fucked.

It affected the metal community so badly. All of my friends that are in metal bands think about it before every time they go on stage. It like, we always do a cheers to him once a year on the anniversary of his death. And I was like lightly crying in my hotel room. Like, I have to change my murder. And he's like, but thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, exactly. But it was also very sweet because he was like, I was like, thank you for that insight and information. He's like, I just want regular people to know that like metal fans aren't gross and we really have feelings and care. It was the sweetest and yet saddest thing in the world. I know I love it. So the Circleville letter writer, so fascinating. And luckily and amazingly, there is a Dennis Farina hosted Unsolved

Mysteries about it. And it's the first one on that episode. So you know it's a good story. I don't think I know it then because I think the one I was thinking is newer. So let's do this. Okay. Let's do this thing. But the way I found it was then I had to go after I abandoned the Pantera murder. That's that. See, that's inaccurate. He was in damage plan. Do you see, do you see how much I could fuck that up? I went online and they actually found an article that entitled the mysterious and unsolved five Columbus mysteries worthy of a podcast. Shit, you couldn't have sent that my way. I know. No, I took them all to myself. You took them all right now. Mine was written by a guy named Zoe Miller in his bio. Do you know that guy? It's a great article. Please tell him I

liked it. Can I give a shout out really quickly to my article? It's too late. No, it's okay. Get in there. Steven, can you cut this and paste it up, Tom? I'm really excited to tell you guys about this. I found a lot of information from Murderpedia, of course, but from the article from serialkillercalendar.com. So thanks, guys. Serial Killer Calendar. I wonder if they do a Serial Killer a day. I don't know. That'd be cool. Okay, now we're back in. Okay, so Steven, right here. Zoe Miller on his bio on this, the Columbus Navigator website who he wrote this article for, he said in his bio, he says that he struggles daily with his addiction to cats. I thought you'd like to know that. But most of the information that we're about to hear came from a local

journalist named Martin Yant who reported on this story, right? The answer in the back row. What up? He did all the work and was kind of there for this whole story. And he's also live in the Unsolved Mysteries. So it's very cool. So you can see him as talking head when you look up that episode. Okay, so Circleville, Ohio is a small city 25 miles south of here. Thank you. The population is around, well, I got on the Circleville Pumpkin Show website. Truly one of the most beautiful and informative websites I've ever seen. No joke. So every year they have the Circleville Pumpkin Show. Oh, I love pumpkins. So on the Circleville Pumpkin Show website, it says the population of Circleville is around 12,000. Other websites said 14. If Circleville

says 12, it's fucking 12. So every year, the third Wednesday through Sunday in October, they have the Circleville Pumpkin Show. Oh my God. Yes, cheer for it every time. This year it's from October 17th to the 20th. So as of today, 256 days to the Pumpkin Show. It's a countdown. Was that a countdown? There's a countdown on the website. Love it. Fucking love it. It's a beautifully designed website. Everything's in a little square. So easy to navigate. The Fall Festival has 100,000 visitors a day. I want all the snacks. What do you think they have? Okay, well, I'll tell you, there's pictures on the fucking website. Are there corn dogs? Of course they have corn dogs. Is there pumpkin flavored food? Yes, that's the

whole point. Oh, it's like pumpkin, like a pumpkin fair? Yes. Girl, this is Squad Gord's times 500. It's where they have pumpkin, fucking, arts and crafts. There's a really cute picture of somebody. Remember those weird collages you made in kindergarten, where there's a little piece of paper in different colors, and you would glue it to a thing? Because you were so young, that was how you made art. So it was like your teacher made the pumpkin, and then you were just like, pieces of paper with glue. They have like a wall of those on the website. Those are arts and crafts for drunk adults. It would be so good. Everyone has glue on their face. There's rides, full on rides. There's, as I said, arts and crafts displays, and then, of course, one lucky young lady will

be named Miss Pumpkin Show 2018. Which, if that is a beauty contest where you're the most beautiful, if you're the most shaped like a pumpkin, fucking, I want it already. I already, I'm in it. And if you have like kind of widely spaced teeth, I'm in. Fucking, I am Miss Pumpkin Show every day. And on top of everything, there's a fucking giant pumpkin contest. Am I right? Oh my god. Oh my god. Check it out. Here's last year's winners. In the center, you have Cecil Weston, who's the champion. That fucking pumpkin weighed 1,701 pounds. Oh my god. Cecil nailed that shit. What do you think he was putting in the ground? But then, second place, that's Bella Liggett. Bella. Hers, she was only 200 pounds behind with a 1,562 pound pumpkin. Then, of course,

over there, you know Mark Hopkins. His pumpkin was 1,155.5 pounds. Oh shit. Yeah. You gotta love the fucking lady who breaks into the pumpkin business. Oh, you know. Everyone knows that a fucking masculine thing it is. It's the pumpkin show business. It's very toxic. And Bella's like, fuck it. This is my dream. You can't keep me down. My pumpkin is humongous. And none of you can change it. It's just a fact. Or you cannot shame me out of this contest. No. And then, it turned out that she... Oh my god. Was there a scandal? Yeah. She tried to hit Cecil in the knees. No, I'm just kidding. She fucking, Tanya Harding, Cecil right before. And then, someone's like, Bella, it's the pumpkins that get weighed. It's not about his skating. Wow. That was a

roller coaster. Fuck. They have roller coasters. They have roller coasters. And the zipper, and it's right there on the street. It's just crazy. So, you could like live here. And then, there's just like a fucking Ferris Reel in your front yard. Did you just say Ferris Reel? A Ferris Reel. My dentures are just kicking in right now. So, Circleville is famous for the pumpkin show. Okay. I love that they call it a show and not a contest or a festival. Hey. I'm sorry. I'm going to control for it. I don't know. Get out. Get out of my slideshow. I'm sorry. It's okay. I have to control everything. What didn't you like about the pumpkin still being there? I wanted to look at it. Oh. You're trying to keep yourself from turning all the way around. I don't even know what you said after. Okay. Let's just look at them one last time. How did they get them there? Where are they from? Are any of these people sponsored by like the people that grow fake foods? Oh. That's a huge accusation, Karen. Okay. What? You're talking about what is it called when they take steroids? You know, like when foods take steroids? No. When people take steroids. You just said it. Doping scandal? What? Juicing. Thank you. We look over and it's this woman with the huge muscles in the front. I know the answer. It's called juicing. Gun show. Gun show. Do you like that I screamed what into a crowd? What did you say? That's what happened last night. Last night I'm clear.

We started talking about one city that we're afraid to say because we're going to mispronounce it and the entire audience just immediately started yelling out names of cities they thought we couldn't pronounce. It was the weirdest thing and so fucking hilarious. We're like, first of all, we can't understand what anyone is saying. And then one girl raised her hand. Yeah. Real polite. Yeah. And said Koya Hoga, which was like, fuck you. I gotta say that. It was chili coffee. Yeah. What are they? Who spelled that initially? The fuck. Okay. I was going to call it Chilicote. Luckily I didn't. So. Okay. Circleville is famous for its pumpkins. Look at them. No. Look at them. They're larger than anything you've ever seen. I guess because I was raised because I did 4-H as a child and we would go to the fair, right? Then you go to the fair every summer. You go to the county fair. We'd live at the fair for a week and you fucking walk around as like, well, because it was the 70s, so you'd be like a seven year old walking around the fair alone. Like, oh, look, a pumpkin display. I guess I'll look at this for a half an hour. Who me? Where's my mother? Just not around. Okay. Back at the RV. She said, please don't bother her until dusk. Again, pumpkinshow.com for any of your pumpkin needs. So Circleville is famous for the pumpkin show, but it's also famous for one of the weirdest unsolved mysteries on the globe. I put that. I don't know if it's true. Well, I guess you got to decide that if it's true to you or not. I get to decide in this moment. Wait. Second only to crop circles. Yep. I haven't solved those yet. No. It's the, okay, so this is so amazing. So in 1977, why did I skip to this next page? And there's so much information on this one. Oh, I put, I put parentheses Paul Winfield in this sleepy burgo Circleville, Ohio.

Citizens begin getting letters in the mail. They're all the letters are written in block print. They all are from an anonymous source. There's no return address on any of them. They all have the postmark from Columbus, or most of them do later on. That changes a little bit, but, and they all contain personal information about the recipient, sometimes that only the recipient knows. So Mary Gillespie, as you remember, is a citizen, a school bus driver, a wife, a mother of two. And she receives some places say it's the first letter, but it sounds like they all went out the same time. And people reading these letters got so weirded out and sometimes scared, they weren't saying anything. Because basically, and I think what's to me amazing about this story is, it's kind of like, it's like people using gossip as the ultimate weapon. You know what I mean? It's like all this, it's the thing that you fear. Like, what do you fear most? God bless you. What do you fear? Mine is the plague. I hear that the most. Yeah, but that guy was covered. That sounds like he used his whole arm and his leg to cover. We really appreciate that, sir. Thank you, sir. Or ma'am, if you're very sick. Oh shit, what if she could be very sick. I kept thinking about it as I was writing this up of like, what would you, if you opened a letter that said, I know that you blankety blank blank blank, whatever, and you're reading it in block, weird block handwriting, just starting to sweat and you just fold it up and put it away. Okay, we'll see where this goes. Like, that's what was happening in the town of Circleville, a town of 1200 people at the time, 11,000, I mean, 1000, 11,000 people. But still, tiny, right? Everybody knows everybody's business. Everybody knows each other. So it's such a like, it's such a like, live, live ammo thing that's happening. And it's a threatening too. It's because like, I don't just know this, I'm like letting you know, but I know.

And I want to do something about it. So that's part of it. So she gets her letter. And inside it says, so it's in block writing. And I have it here. It says, stay away from Massey. Don't lie one question 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, bad grammar. Everyone concerned has been notified and everything will be over soon. Horrifying. Terrifying. So scary. Scared. Tell me your worst secret right now. I don't have any. You know I don't have any.

Really? Because here is your life. Oh no, oh no, oh no. So the Massey that is being spoken of at the top of this is superintendent of schools. Massey. Renee. I don't know his first name. It's superintendent of schools. So it's good thing he went to that business. It's all one superintendent of schools. It's a nice landing name. Massey. I couldn't find, it's kind of, I actually, it made me kind of happy because I couldn't find pictures of Mary Gillespie. I couldn't find pictures of the superintendent of schools, Massey. But I did find this. I swear to God, this is a real book cover on Amazon. Oh my God. This guy, Meryl Massey, wrote a book entitled So You Want to Be His Superintendent.

Oh my God. Why don't we all have books if it's this easy? We can. If you know Photoshop, you can. Oh my God. I'm not saying Meryl had anything to do with this. We don't know. Meryl, Meryl. Meryl, right? Who knows?

Well, it's House Kim. Come on out. He's up in the balcony, red cheeks. Oh shit. Not this again. He keeps sneezing into his arm. He's allergic to secrets. So of course, she's nervous about the letter, but she doesn't say anything. She just puts it away. And then she gets another one. And she's just like trying to handle it, trying to be calm. So then the next letter that the family receives goes to her husband, Ron. And it's the same block lettering, same basic info. And I'm not sure if it's because it's such a small town.

But in that first letter on the envelope, it just said Mary Gillespie, R.T. Circlesville, Circleville, Ohio. Sorry, Circleville, Ohio. Because you can just be like... No address, no zip code. But the mailman's like, yeah, I know who that is. We know her, yeah. She lives over there. Which is great for secrets. You know what I mean? So his letter is exactly the same.

And the first letter basically says, put an end to your wife's affair or die. So it's like directly threatening his life. Oh my God. So he confronts Mary, and then she shows him her letters. She says, she swears there's no affair happening. So they try to go, okay, well, something's weird happening, but let's just deal with it and go on with their lives. Then Ron gets a second letter, and it says...

I'm not sure if I have this one or not. It says, Gillespie, you have had two weeks and done nothing. Admit the truth and inform the school board. If not, I will broadcast it on CBs, on posters, signs, and billboards until the truth comes out. Oh. Oh. Stephen.

There are some people who thought, because of the block lettering, that he said, I will broadcast it on CBS. But there is no way for a letter writer from Circleville, Ohio, to get this information onto the network. In 1977, they were much more of a, you know, all-in-the-family type of situation. So they believe that the writer meant CBs. Anyway, so that Ron and Mary are fucking panicking, right?

This is getting very serious. So they invite Ron's sister and her husband, Paul, for a shower, to come over, and they show them the letters, and they try to make a plan. They think they know who sent the letters. And so what they decide to do is, we should, you know, the Gillespie should send a threatening letter back to that person. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Oh, yeah? That's right, pumpkin justice. Get ready for it. Well, it seems like it works because everything goes quiet for a couple weeks. And then on the night of August 19, 1977, the phone rings at the Gillespie's house,

and Ron answers, and he gets into a fight with someone on the phone. So Mary doesn't know exactly what happened because she didn't hear anything exactly, but he basically slammed down the phone and rushed out of the house, grabbed his handgun on the way, got into his truck, and raced off, and almost immediately, like, moments away from their house, ran into a tree and was killed.

Yeah. So when the sheriff inspects the scene, they find the handgun that he brought with him, and some articles, they argue at this point, but some say that between the house and the car accident that was moments later, the handgun was fired once. But nobody heard the gunshots. There's no proof that the bullet landed anywhere that anyone could find.

And there's some articles that say there's no way to prove that that handgun didn't get fired some time before. But at first, that's what they thought. So the sheriff inspects the scene, and he declares that foul play is probably involved from what they're looking at. But then the sheriff suddenly changes his stance and says that Ron's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, 0.16.

Therefore, it was an accidental death that basically he caused himself. But the family and friends of Ron Gillespie are just like, he didn't drink. He was not a big drinker. Oh, really? And he wasn't drunk. Like, the kids are saying they remember him leaving the house. He was not drunk. So that him having a really high blood alcohol level

makes absolutely no sense at all. But that's what the official report is, and so therefore the case is closed. It's an accidental death move on. So the now, the Circleville writer does not like, letter writer doesn't like this. And so a bunch of letters get sent out saying that this, the sheriff, the accusing the sheriff of a cover up

saying don't allow this to happen and basically saying don't fall for this. This is a cover up. And Mary continues to get letters threatening her about the affair until she finally breaks down and admits that yes, she actually was having an affair with the superintendent of schools. But she says that the affair started after the letters came.

Uh-huh. Honey. It just, she just threw her into his arms. Yeah. She was so upset about it. The stress of being accused of this insane thing made me do it. It made me go from being totally innocent of that thing to actually just doing the thing.

You know how letters are. Making you do shit. But she was in this horrible position, right? Because it's this tiny town. Everyone's already talking shit about her because she's the woman who's having the affair and everybody knows what's in that letter at this point. Then her husband is killed in this very suspicious car accident.

Suddenly he's a drunk. He was drunk driving. Like she is, you know, in the eye of the storm here. So I'm sure she was just trying to like make her life make sense a little bit and be like, fine. But I mean, she's, you know, it would have been a horrible position. But she goes back to work. She's driving the bus again.

And one day in 1983, and the letters keep coming. The letters don't stop. To her and people all around the area, the region. So one day as she's driving her school bus route, signs start popping up along the street. And one of them, this is the Steven. This is Steven's pull from the unsolved mysteries episode that I don't know if you can see it.

Tracy Gillespie sucks. Tracy Gillespie sucks. Whoa. Oh, it was Bart Simpson. Now, in all the things that I read, the sign that was put up was very threatening about Tracy. Some say lewd, some say threatening. Tracy Gillespie sucks is not that big of a deal. So I think that the producers were like,

let's not write anything bad about Tracy Gillespie anymore. So this was their, this is their way of sugarcoating it. Because I would lap my ass off if I drove by a sign that said amazing. I would have loved my name on a sign in any way. Karen Kilgarips. Yeah, they're talking about me. But of course, Mary sees this. It's like her family once again in, you know, getting in the limelight.

She pulls the school bus over. She walks over and she starts ripping down the sign. Oh girl, can you imagine? Well, as she's ripping down the sign, she sees there's a string attached to the sign. And she follows the string back behind a couple of leaves. No, she does. You can say no all you want, it's still happening.

And hidden is there's this box. She fucking yanks the box down. What is this, goonies? What is this, goonies? And inside there's treasure. There's a booby trap. The end. It is a booby trap.

She pulls the box down. She takes it home. In the Unsolved Mysteries thing, they made it hurt. They showed that she did it right there on the school bus, which she in truth did not do. She drove home with it. And at this point, the police already shown her how to deal with evidence and how to treat it and touch it and bring it to them.

And she's just like, what the fuck is this box? Let me put my fingerprints all over this. Damn it. So she gets home, opens the box, there's a gun pointing at her. So this was a booby trap. When she went to pull the sign down, she was supposed to yank it in a way that would just shoot her as she was standing there.

But the gun didn't go off. So she gives all of it to the cops. And the serial number on the gun is rubbed off. But they're like, we can, our people can look at this and figure out what the serial number is. Mary's like, great. I don't know if that happened. I lost my place on the page.

So basically when they get the results back, everyone's shocked because the gun belongs to her brother-in-law, Paul Freshauer. Now, when I say Freshauer, you're going to think of soap. You're going to think of... But actually, he is a man who has an airtight alibi about the day that this booby trap sign went up. But it was his gun.

And he said it went missing long ago. He hadn't known about it, hadn't seen it in a really long time. The old missing gun fucking thing. You know that thing where you buy a gun, and then it just slips your mind. And it goes missing. But you don't report it. I don't know.

I think I threw it under my pillow. So what the police do is this sweet-ass early 80s police work, they have hand... They say, can you copy this letter? Can you write the way the Circle of the Letter writer writes? And he's like, well, I can sure give it a shot, officer. And fucking copies out one of the letter samples that they have there. And then...

Why would you do that? Why would you do that? I mean, okay. Because you're just like, okay. Because he basically went in and was like, I've got an airtight alibi, and I didn't do it, so I'm here to tell you what you need to know. He does the thing.

They're like, well, this is amazing, because you've got the same penmanship as the Circle of the Letter writer. But they told him to copy it. Oh, God, this table is going to fucking break. They told him to copy it, though. Yeah, but... He's a really good copier. He's a really good copier of the most insane block letters in the world.

Let's see. But I mean... Oh, wait, sorry. This is one of the only letters where the writing looks like this. Just super nuts. And there are some theories that there's more... Do you want to be a superintendent? How many people in here have already Amazon bought this book?

People are just like way down low. I've got to get it before it sells out. I don't want to be a... Follow your dreams, guys. Follow your dreams right now. Yeah. Oh. Oh, fresh hour.

My gun disappeared. Maybe it's in my mustache. That's Steven when he lets himself go at age 60. Sorry, Steven. I'm sorry. You're going to be so mad. Steven! Here's the...

Okay. Oh, God. That's really what most of them look like. Okay. Freezy-ass, zodiac-style block letters. The sickos will pay. But also... Oh, don't read that one.

But... We'll go back a little bit. Should we go back to pumpkins? Where are we going? Just go to pumpkins. But I just wanted you to see where it's basically... It's basically a lot of people think... The way it's written, it's somebody trying to cover up so nobody recognizes their handwriting,

obviously. Okay. So, on October 24th, 1983, Paul Fresh Hour stands trial, and in court, a handwriting expert testifies that the handwriting in Paul's stationhouse copied letter matches the handwriting in all the circle of the letters. And he is found guilty of attempted murder, and the judge hands down the maximum sentence of seven to 25 years for attempted murder. I wouldn't clap.

Because even while Paul Fresh Hour is in prison, the letters keep coming. And they're sent to people... They're sent to hundreds of people. They're sent to... Sometimes they contain lewd pictures. Sometimes they're very directly threatening, really angry, really mean. And sometimes they're typed even. And...

What? Hmm. Oh. Sorry. What? And so the prison authorities can't figure out, since they think Paul Fresh Hour is the circle of the letter writer, they're like, every time he has a visitor, they strip search him before he goes into the room, and then after he comes out, they never find anything.

And also, they don't understand how he's getting... They're still almost always postmarked from Columbus, but the prison he's in was in a different city. So he'd be having... He'd have to be giving them to somebody who would take them to Columbus to send them. Also, the typewriting thing. I can't imagine there's a ton of typewriters in prison. He's got one hidden behind a poster of a 40s actress.

Okay. So then Paul receives his own circle of the letter writer letter in jail. And it says, all caps. Now, when are you going to believe you aren't going to get out of there? I told you two years ago, when we set him up, they stay set up. Don't you listen at all? Kind of buy it. You don't?

From what I remember that night, I didn't buy it then either. How fresh our ends up serving 10 years in prison for attempted murder. He's released in May of 1994. Oh, we can take a look at his face. Stay them. And by then, reports of threatening letters have basically stopped in Circleville. And Paul maintains his innocence until his death in 2012. So six months after his release from prison, unsolved mysteries hosted by Dennis Farina,

the new ones, they decide to do a story on the Circleville letter writer. And then a couple days after it airs, they get a letter from the Circleville letter writer. That's right. It's this one. And it says, forget Circleville, Ohio. If you come to Ohio, you ill sickos will pay. Signed the Circleville letter writer. Was this when he was, when Fresh Hour was dead already?

No. Okay. This was in 1994 or five, essentially. What I like and what I find interesting is that the Circleville letter writer uses colons for periods and in my mind, I picture them in doing this crazy rage writing and that at the end of every sentence, they're like, that and done. One period isn't enough for the Circleville letter writer. No.

Yeah. Done. You just have to find the person who screams the last word of every sentence. Yes. And you found him. Yeah, that's right. Who's that loud lady at the grocery store? And what's awesome is the introduction Dennis Farina does at the beginning of that episode

of Unsolved Mysteries, he's like, we got our own letter too, but we're not going to be scared off a Circleville, I mean, loving him, loving him actively. So at the end of that episode, Paul Fresh Hour actually says that he just wants justice for his family, even though the Gillespie's aren't his family anymore, they've been divorced and he'd been remarried, he has his own new family, he still wants them to reopen the case of Ron Gillespie's car accident and he wants to find out what really happened, which is a really beautiful thing at the end of that, it's not like he's all bitter and pissed or if he has saved it, he's saved it for off-camera.

So over roughly a 20-year span, the Circleville letter writer wrote and sent over 1,000 letters to the people in and around Circleville. Wow. Jesus, get a hobby. Well, I guess that is a hobby, it's a lot of stamp money. What's interesting is the penmanship never improves, okay, so the epilogue to this, which I think is fascinating, so local journalist Martin who reported on this the whole time, he went and looked into the case, he went and looked in the sheriff's files and found

that there was evidence there that was never introduced in court and it's the story that the other bus driver who had the shift, I guess, before Mary's on that school bus route told her that she had driven the route 20 minutes before Mary had when she saw the sign about Tracy Gillespie's. And the sign, when she drove that by that same spot, there was no sign, but there was a large, sandy-haired man who had an orangish-yellow El Camino who when the bus went by, he turned away and pretended to be peeing and she thinks so that they couldn't identify him. And Martin Yant says that if the sheriff had looked into that, if they had followed up,

they would have found out that one of their possible suspects in the case had a brother who had a yellowish-orange El Camino. Oh, shit, and loved to pee in bushes. That's right. And so that is the as-yet-unsolved case of the Circleville letter writing. Wow. Crazy. Thank you for, that was amazing.

Oh, no, sorry, sorry, look at that gorgeous tint. What did you press? Sorry. What did you hit? The tech guy's pissed. I went to see the Aurora Borealis. Oh, shit. It's none of your business.

Well, the show's over, I guess. Oh, shit. We blew up the projector. Oh, no. Damn. Okay. I think we have time for a... Yeah, we have time for a hometown murder.

Before you, no pointing yet. No pointing yet. Yeah, save it. Karen has to tell you some stuff. This is important. These rules, these are for you. And us. Most of us.

Mostly us. Okay. You know the ones like you can't read it and you can't be so drunk you can't tell it. And it needs to be local. We don't want to hear about shit that happened in Tennessee. To Ohio would be great. Right. Yeah, yeah.

State-wide. Mm-hmm. And... Everyone hates you. Okay. You have to remember that if you get picked, everyone else in the room hates you, so don't fucking... That's not the time to shout out all your cousins and stuff, like just get up here and tell

your story like you are on a clock because you are. Ready? Go! Okay, I'm picking, I'm picking, I'm picking, I'm picking. Quick at the lights up a little bit. Whoa! Hi! She looks mad at you.

You here in the leather, yeah, or whatever that jacket is. Yes. Go to this suite of vents. All right. Don't be mad at her. Okay, you can turn the lights down. Yeah, turn those lights down, please. She'll forget.

Bye, bye. Hi. Did you see my guy? What's her name? Hi, my name's Lauren. Hi, come over here, Lauren. Hi, fancy pants. Ooh, you do have fancy pants.

Can I say that I bought this bow tie specifically for the show? Oh, it's because it's from The Shining. I'm glad you recognized it. Can I tell you a secret? Yes. Or it's not. It's an open secret, but this is the pattern on the back of my album cover. Oh, that's right.

Hi. Hi, five, everybody. Sorry, that was about me. Where are you from? I'm from Cincinnati, born and raised. They love Cincinnati. But now living here in Columbus. Oh, okay.

Yes. A little for everyone. Yep. What's your hometown? Okay, so this is the story of my biological father being the prime suspect in the murder of his best friend in college. Okay. And just for a little bit of side note, this was like two years after I was born.

So life shit won right after the other happened. Okay, so this was like 96, 97 happened at Capitol University. Go accused. Yeah. Okay. So my bio dad, his best friend was Tony, who was the only other man in the art therapy department at the time. So obviously they're going to have to bond together because they're the only two men in

that department. Yeah. Okay. So he was the last person to see him alive. And so like he's dropping off at his apartment at like one in the morning because you do weird shit at like one in the morning. I think you said they were getting haircuts or whatever. You know.

Late night supercuts. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows is right. Anyway, so he drops him off and then his best friend is proceeded to be car jacked and like forced to empty out his entire ATM by a group of three minors by the way, who apparently each had a rap sheet like a whole page long each. Anyway, so then they like shoot him execution style in the back of the head and then find his car three days later on like Cleveland Avenue, which honestly is no surprise.

It's like a sketchy here. Oh, okay. You guys hate Cleveland. And not anywhere near Capitol University at all. But like so while they're investigating this, my bio dad is put through all this bullshit. So like when they come to question him, they take him out of his ceramics class. And if you work with ceramics, you know that you're going to wear the like worst clothing possible.

So they put him in handcuffs and put him in the back of the squad car and take him to like the jet, like to interview him and whatever. And so like he's looking hella guilty and like they fingerprint him and everything. Overalls. And that day they were working with red clay, which is very unfortunate. But so like they don't let him wash his hands and like drop him back off at class. And so like his like his next class, the teacher asks him to hand out all the graded tests. So each one has like a just a little thick thumb print on the corner.

And like so now he's looking hella guilty. And like at one point he's like rounding a corner and he hears the like principle of like the college or whatever, talking shit about him and like it's bad because like he's also like the son of a Lutheran minister and this is a Jesuit college. Oh, a perfect revenge. Yeah, exactly. But like he clearly didn't do it is what I'm saying. It's what you just said, but like I'm pretty sure the kids that did it are now out of prison

because they were minors at the time that they did it. Do you know how young? I don't know. Teenagers for sure. Shit. Wow. How did they get caught? I think they just followed the evidence.

I don't get it. Damn. Shit. Can I end on a joke? It's a really quick one. Of course. Okay. This is kind of an awful joke, you're going to feel slightly bad for you.

So why do they not tell jokes about the Reverend Jim Jones? Why? Because the punchline is too long. Oh my God. Girl. You earned that, babe. You fucking earned it. Oh my God.

Great job. There's Vince, amazing. Wow, that's how you do a fucking hometown. And then just end with just a touch of light humor, beautiful. A joke that we would get hate mail for but was adorable when she did it. You do it. I appreciate that because I want nothing more than to say that joke every day of my life. Columbus, this has been an amazing show.

Thank you. Have fun. We've had so much fun in Ohio. You guys have been so open and kind and wonderful to us and we really appreciate it. We're so happy to be here. We'll definitely be back. We do say this all the time, but all the credit we're getting is the work you guys are doing. So you are becoming all friends with each other.

You all are hanging out and having a great time and supporting each other. It's just this insane, amazing community that's growing up out of Georgia and I bullshitting on her couch. It's such an honor to be a part of this with you. We cannot tell you how much fun we're having and how awesome it is. Thank you so, so much. Thank you guys. Honestly.

We're so lucky. And so finally, to wrap up, please stay sexy. Yep. Bye you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Bye you guys. Thank you.

Thank you.