True Crime Campfire - The Strange Case of the Circleville Letters

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Some of y’all may be too young to remember, but in the days before email, getting a handwritten letter in the mail was fun. Somebody had taken the time to write out a message just for you and sent it through time and space. It could be from an old friend, a lost love, or a secret admirer. You couldn’t wait to get inside and discover what was so important that it needed to be personally drafted for your eyes only. But when school bus driver Mary Gillispie opened an envelope addressed to her in 1976, she had no idea that it would mark the beginning of a bizarre campaign of terror that would dominate her life for decades. One that would include blackmail, obscenity, harassment, threats against her family, attempted murder, and letter after letter, drafted to disturb in the most intimate ways imaginable. And it wouldn’t stop with Mary. The hysteria spread through the sleepy town of Circleville, Ohio like a plague. Secrets were exposed. Threats were made. Sometimes there were toxic powders in the envelopes, too. When the TV show Unsolved Mysteries got involved, they got their very own threatening letter—don’t air the episode, or else. Join us for one of the most twisted tales we’ve ever covered.Sources: Paul Freshour’s WordPress: https://circlevilleletters.wordpress.com/ Whatever Remains Podcast: Welcome to Circleville: https://www.whateverremainspodcast.com/circleville Invisible Ships Podcast: https://invisibleshipspodcast.wordpress.com/episodes/ Unsolved Mysteries, Season 7, Epiosde 6 ABC6 News: https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/circleville-police-looking-for-tips-in-unsolved-1980-homicide-of-25-year-old-teacher Mental Floss, Jake Rossen: https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awrii5iBXTBlBYgFqTFEDN04;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzUEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1697697282/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fm.imdb.com%2ftitle%2ftt0737542%2f/RK=2/RS=74RxpCcEm_B1s56K9cWTjMtY0n8- CBS News: The Circleville Letter Writer: You’ve got Hate Mail:https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pictures/circleville-letters-mail-gallery/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Some of you all may be too young to remember, but in the days before email, getting a handwritten letter in the mail was fun. Somebody had taken the time to write out a message just for you. and sent it through time and space. It could be from an old friend, a lost love, or a secret admirer.

You couldn't wait to get inside and discover what was so important that it needed to be personally drafted for your eyes only. But when school bus driver, Mary Gillespie, opened an envelope addressed to her in 1976, she had no idea that it would mark the beginning of a bizarre campaign of terror that would dominate her life for decades. One that would include blackmail, obscenity, harassment, threats against her family. family, attempted murder, and letter after letter, drafted to disturb in the most intimate ways imaginable. And it wouldn't stop with Mary. The hysteria spread through the sleepy town of

Circleville, Ohio like a plague. Secrets were exposed, threats were made. Sometimes there were toxic powders in the envelopes too. When the TV show Unsolved Mysteries got involved, they got their very own threatening letter. Don't air the episode or else. Join us for one of the most twisted details we've ever covered. The case of the Circleville letters. So you'll know it's a true crime cliche to start off a story with something like it was an idyllic, close-knit, all-American community, the kind of place where you didn't have to lock your doors. Yeah, you know what we think about that noise. by now. Bad stuff. Cannon does happen

everywhere, and you need to lock your damn doors. Like, for real, go lock them right now. We'll wait. But Circleville, Ohio was exactly that kind of place, and still is. Low crime rate, strong industry, good schools, even a massive annual pumpkin show that's run for over 100 years. I love a good pumpkin show.

I'm not going to lie. Somebody grew a 400-pound one this year and painted it to look just like Taylor Swift. I saw it online. That's pretty impressive. Anyway, in 1976, Mary and Ron Gillespie seemed to be a happily married couple, raising their kids in Circleville and enjoying the laid-back small-town life. When Mary went out to check the mail one afternoon, she had no way of knowing that the letter she'd find would be the first link in a chain of life-altering events that would play out over the coming years like an Agatha Christie mystery. The letter was addressed to Mary specifically, written in big, block, all-capital letters. It said, stay away from Massey. Don't lie when questioned about meeting him. I know where you live. I've been observing your house and know you have children. This is no joke. Please take it serious. Everyone concerned has been notified. It will be over soon.

The note was written in these big, blocky letters, all caps, the kind of handwriting you'd use to try and ward off anybody recognizing your writing. and it was postmarked Columbus, Ohio, about 25 miles north of Circleville. The Massey in the letter was Gordon Massey, the superintendent of Circleville High, where Mary drove the school bus. Shaken, Mary decided for the time being to just tuck the letter away without mentioning it to anybody, including her husband Ron. Maybe the writer would be satisfied with rattling her cage a little, and this would be it. Either way, she thought it best to wait silently and see how this may play

out. What Mary didn't know was that Superintendent Gordon Massey had gotten a letter of his own, too, sent directly to the school. His was less specific, though, and didn't mention Mary by name. Instead, it accused him of being inappropriate with multiple female bus drivers and encouraged him to knock it the hell off. Due to their position and their jobs with you, you should not do this, said the letter writer, especially when they're out trying to make a living. There's also talk of you dating a married woman and taking advantage of them. So at first glance, you might be like, well, yeah, you tell him, you know, but don't let it fool you that our guy is sounding kind of reasonable in this one so far. If it sounds like the

letter writer was genuinely concerned about the welfare of women trapped in a misogynistic work environment, yeah, that wasn't what bugged him, as he made crystal clear in the next line. To prey on another man's girl is untouchable. I suggest you find yourself a pimple-faced, whore and leave my girls alone, which is so gross on multiple levels. First of all, pimple-faced horror sounds like he's talking about one of the high school girls, which, ew. And I hate that sexist shit where you won't respect women unless you're stepping on the toes of some other dude, like, oh, sorry, hon, I didn't realize you were taken. Lech. But it's an ongoing theme throughout the whole Circleville saga, starting right out of the gate with the first

Gordon Massey letter and getting worse and worse as the years go by. I guess, before, for the internet, in-cell types needed an analog medium to vent all their toxic bullshit. Although Mary Gillespie got several more letters in the coming weeks, all with pretty much the same angry message, the letter writer wasn't giving her or Gordon Massey much time to obey their commands. If there was anything going on between them, I mean. The writer must have had ants in the pants, because soon they contacted both the school board and Mary's poor husband Ron. Ron needed to do something about his hussy of a wife. the letter writer said, or his new pen pal would, quote,

broadcast it on CB's, posters, signs, and billboards until the truth comes out. By the way, a lot of online sources seem to have thought that the letter writer was referring to CBS, the TV network instead of CB radios. But as Delulu as our letter writer might be, I doubt they were bad enough to think they could get a sit down with Walter Cronkite to spill all the Circleville to eat. You're absolutely right about that, but wouldn't you love it if the big news networks would do that. Like, I would be all over that shit. I want to know who caught who's stepping out with whose baby daddy last Thursday in, like, Junction City, Kentucky. What is baby

mamas planning on doing about it? I would watch this shit out of that. I know y'all would too. Honestly, that's what I think Facebook should be used for. If you post a status, like, don't want to talk about it, but I could use some really good vibes right now and, like, refuse to elaborate in the comments. You should catch a ban. I don't care about your Minion means, Sandra, give me the juice. It didn't take long for the tone of the letters to escalate, like this one sent to Ron. Mr. Gillespie, your wife is seeing Gordon Massey. You should catch them together and kill them both.

He doesn't deserve to live. He doesn't deserve to live. That's kind of interesting. It seems like the writer's main rage is directed at this Gordon Massey, at least so far. Mary and Gordon denied any affair or inappropriate. on-the-job behavior, and everybody involved seemed to agree that it was more important to find a letter writer and shut this nonsense down than to figure out if the allegations were true. Ron Gillespie had complete faith in his wife, and he and Mary set up a meeting with a few

trusted family members to try and narrow down who the shadowy pen pal could be. Late into the night, Ron, Mary, Ron's sister, Karen Fresh Hour, and Karen's husband, Paul, got down to some amateur detective work, making a list of people who might have a motive to do this. and by morning they'd narrowed down their list to one prime suspect. Now, we don't know for sure her they picked, which is kind of infuriating, but most researchers agree that it was most likely one of two possible individuals. The first was David Longberry, a fellow school bus driver who had once made a pass at Mary and got his fee-fee's hurt when she rejected him.

This champ was later accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl, and he's been on the run ever since, assuming he's still alive. And the other was William Massey, Gordon's teenage son. William was still under his parents' roof after graduating with the Circleville high class of 75, and the Massey home was pretty dysfunctional around the time the letter started. William's mother, Clara, had recently filed for divorce, citing extreme cruelty, among other things, before abruptly getting back together with her husband a few months before the divorce was finalized. Maybe William blamed an affair between his dad and Mary Gillespie for all the family.

family turbulence, that could be a pretty solid motive. So we think their prime suspect was probably one of these two, we're just not sure which. For some reason, Mary and her team of amateur sleuths decided not to contact the police at this point, or even to try and have a direct conversation with the suspect. Instead, they opted to send a sternly worded letter of their own. We don't know exactly what they said. Paul Freshauer, Mary and Ron's brother-in-law, took the lead in the whole thing and later told reporters that they didn't make any physical threats or anything like that, they just warned

their suspect that they knew who he was and would take legal action if he didn't knock off the creepy harassment. And abruptly, the letters stopped. Everybody started to breathe a sigh of relief. Okay, maybe he's got it out of his system and he knows we mean business about pressing charges. We can put this weird shit behind us. But no. The piece only lasted a few weeks and then it was back to business as usual for the letter writer. More letters started coming, always obsessing over this alleged affair between Mary and Gordon. The Gillespie's threats to call the cops or sue apparently didn't mean jack to the letter writer. And as time went on, the letters took on an even nastier tone. There was a lot of disgusting sexual innuendo, as well as violent threats, both involving the Gillespie's

little daughter. It's your daughter's turn to pay for what you've done, read one particular I shall come out there and put a bullet in that little girl's head. Yeah, that's what you should do for sure. Involve a little girl who's probably never even met the guy you think her mom is cheating with. Yeah, she really needs to pay. What the fuck? It reminds me so much of Saul Wachtler, right? Like that New York judge who stalked and harassed his mistress in the early 90s. We covered that case a while back. I think the episode's called Wolf and Sheep's Clothing. But Anyway, this dude was a well-respected judge, and he lost his entire damn mind after this woman broke up with them, lied to her about having a terminal brain tumor for some reason, and then

started sending creepy, anonymous threats to her and her teenage daughter. Absolutely vile stuff. And this reminds me a lot of that. Involving the kids is just so beyond fucked up, and it really brings home the fact that this is a seriously sick puppy. As soon, the letter writer amp things up even more by adding handwritten signs placed around town in the cover of night, broadcasting their twisted, profane ramblings and strategic locations that the Gillespie's were likely to see. By 1977, it was a part of Ron's routine to wake up before daylight, get dressed, and drive all around town looking for signs. Whenever he found one, he'd tear it down to try and protect his wife and daughter from being humiliated by whatever duck shit for brains was torturing them.

Which is just a heart-breaking image, isn't it? Like poor Ron driving around town before sunrise, tearing down all the mean signs. Bless his heart. And then, in the summer of 77, when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, they did. For the first time, the actions of the Phantom Writer would culminate in death. It was mid-August when Mary Gillespie went on a much-needed Florida vacation with her sister-in-law, Karen Fresh Hour, and a few other girlfriends. You know, one of those Stella get-a-gitch-a-groove-back kind of trips. Good times. Karen's husband Paul was the one who encouraged the group to go, have some fun at the beach for a few days.

He arranged for them to stay with his parents down there and, you know, just take a break from all the madness back in Circleville. On the evening of Friday, August 19th, with Mom Away in Florida, Ron Gillespie, he was trying to relax with his kids. Hanging out on the couch, sipping away at a six-pack after another long week at work, at both his regular job and his new part-time job of collecting disgusting signs around town so his family wouldn't see. Ron was just managing to get his mind off his troubles when the phone rang. Anybody else remember how jarring those old-school rotary phone rings could be. Katie, it might be before your time, and I know some of you peeps out there are going to remember those rotary phone rings.

Like, just unreal, especially when, like, the house is nice and quite. quiet, you're melded to the couch, watching TV, and then it just sounds like the freaking rapture right in your ear. Y'all youngers don't know how good you have it. Those phones had actual literal bells in them, and they hit your eardrum at about 110 decibels. They were freaking menace. And you know how it is. When the phone rings past a certain point at night, it's usually nothing good. Either somebody's been in an accident or somebody's in jail. Or that shitty teenage mustache boyfriend of your daughters is calling when he's not supposed to. Either way, it's going to suck.

Yeah. Ron jumped up and snatched up the phone, and as soon as he heard the voice on the other end, his face changed. Seems the letter writer had decided to expand his repertoire beyond ink and paper and start harassing the Gillespie's by phone. The problem with that, of course, is that you can't always have the same anonymity over the phone. According to Ron's two kids, as soon as he answered that call, he seemed to immediately recognize the voice on the other end of the line. He slammed the phone down, grabbed his pistol, and rushed out the front door. The kids heard his pickup truck start up and rumbled down the road.

Before dawn, the kids would learn that their father would never come home again. Ron Gillespie was dead. His truck was found a few miles from home on a road called Five Points Pike. It had missed a turn at a high rate of speed and slammed right into a a tree killing Ron on impact. Suspiciously, his gun had fired a single round before the accident, though nobody was sure when or at what. Police said his blood alcohol level was well above the legal limit.

Ron was just 35 years old. To this day, no one knows what happened between the time Ron ran out the front door of his house and took off in the pickup to the moment he died. Was there a car chase in a gunfight like a 70s road movie? Did someone force Ron off the house? the road, it would have been pretty hard to get him to slam directly into a single isolated tree. Or maybe Ron was just furiously grinding around town with a little too much booze in him, hunting the perpetrator and firing the gun off into the air when he lost control of his truck?

I mean, who wouldn't be losing it to some degree after everything he'd been through? The Gillespie's and the fresh hours were understandably devastated and enraved that the letter writer's reckless and unnecessary actions went so far as to rob two children of their father. Some even speculated that the letter writer himself never intended things to go this far and retired their campaign in quiet shame and regret as there was no more letters for the time being. Ron's brother-in-law, Paul Freshower, took his anger out on the local police, especially Sheriff Dwight Radcliffe for dismissing the tragedy as an accident. Ron knew these roads like the back of his hand, he argued. Clearly he must have been run off somehow. This was

murder. And things would have never gotten this far if the law enforcement had taken the threat seriously. Paul even went so far as to suggest the police were in cahoots with the letter writer and were covering up Ron's murder, faking his blood alcohol level results. And it was actually out of character for Ron to drink a lot or drive drunk. Paul, an army vet and former prison guard, seemed to feel insulted that the sheriff wouldn't let him take much part in formally investigating Ron's death, which is just but. bizarre. Why would you think that the police would let a family member help them investigate, but that's what he was mad about, and a bit of a rivalry ensued. And interestingly,

another angry voice eventually emerged from the woodwork to accuse the Circleville Sheriff of intentionally mishandling Ron Gillespie's death, the letter writer themselves. Though they disappeared for a brief period after the crash, their need for attention led them back into the spotlight eventually, and the writer came out swinging with their own accusation, of police corruption and scandal. Only their version discounted themselves from the conspiracy and added, who else?

Mary Gillespie and Gordon Massey, who they said had Ron killed to get him out of the picture so they could finally be together. Pickaway County Coroner, Dr. Ray Carroll, who performed Ron's autopsy, was also written into the conspiracy and accused of being a pedophile, too.

Holy shit, letter writer, do not hold back, right? Tell them how you really feel. This guy's like the her on steroids. This preoccupation with Sheriff Radcliffe and his cronies would soon occupy more and more of the writer's correspondence, though Mary was still their main obsession. Over the next few years, it became clear that the Circleville letter writer and their endless stream of allegations, accusations, and threats was not going to be going anywhere.

This was Pickaway County's new normal. And unlike disco, the letters would carry over into the 80s and infiltrate many different demographics over time. As the seasons passed, the letters kept coming to the original victims, but the writer also wormed their way into the lives of many others in and around town, too, with a particular fascination with government institutions, school systems, and local businesses. It's also possible that as the mystery continued to make the local news, copycats might have jumped on the bandwagon, too. People with their own beefs and or, you know, just pranksters, prank in. After all, most high-profile crimes result in at least a few hoax letters to the police

in the press and even sometimes the victim's families. Just look up all the debunked letters from the Jack the Ripper and Zodiac cases if you want evidence. Now, consider the fact that this particular case has mail sending as its focus, and it becomes clear that loads and loads of impostors should be, you know, expected. One major twist in this case that nobody saw coming presented itself sometime after Ron Gillespie's death when the widowed Mary actually confirmed that she had had an affair with school superintendent Gordon Massey.

I know. The reasons for Mary coming clean don't seem to have ever been made public and we don't really know if she fessed up willingly or if somehow her hand was forced. Although if years and years of threats and torture from the letter writer wouldn't get her to spill the beans on the affair,

what the hell would? I guess Ron's death could have been a factor, or maybe she even thought the letter writer would finally give her a break if she was just willing to come out and confess. Strangely enough, though, Mary insisted that the writer's initial accusations were total bullshit. According to her, the affair only started after the letter started. Yeah. So, surprise, surprise, nobody really bought that. It's a funny idea, though, like, God, Gordon, I can't believe this guy is accusing us of having an affair. And Gordon's like, right?

Like, I never even thought about that before. That's a real nice dress, though, by the way. I mean, like, who on this planet responds to false allegations by a stalker like, hey, man, you might be a maniac, but you're full of great ideas. I think that your stalker would be in the bottom three people to take relationship advice from, only slightly better than, like, a literal toddler or Jeffrey Dahmer. And to be fair, some people have speculated that the stress of the whole thing just kind of created a trauma bond between Mary and Gordon and just sent them like flying into each other's

arms. But I don't think that's how most people see it. Most people seem to accept the idea that the letter writer must have actually been close enough in proximity to these people to spot this affair before anybody else did. Which makes it creepier for me. I mean, how spooky is it to know that you're being stalked by someone who was examining your life so closely that they were able to figure out your secret. And on top of that, the fact that the letter writer was apparently correct in their claims, as inappropriate as they were, does that mean there could be some truth to the other accusations too? No matter what, Mary and Gordon's affair certainly didn't justify the living hell they'd been put through for over half a decade now, or the coming

escalation, which would once again up the stakes in the writer's sick game. And by the way, how much would you be living in fear if you lived in this town around this time? I mean, look, we all have secrets, okay? Everybody has secrets. Your grandma has secrets. I promise you. What secret would you be scared of the writer finding out? I've got a couple. I have none except for what happened in the winter of 75. That one will never get out. It's easy to see how suspicion and paranoia arose to John Carpenter's The Thing Like Levels as time went on. Whoever was doing this was causing psychological chaos on a skill normally reserved for fictional villains from comic books and horror movies. This was town gossip run amok, the rumor mill from hell.

The next major events in the Circleville mystery happened in early 1983. The nation was in the grip of Care Bear fever. People were moonwalking everywhere. Shoulder pads were the size of concrete blocks. Good times. Despite everything that had gone down, Mary Gillespie was still driving the bus at Circleville High, refusing to let the letter writer force her out of a job she loved. Good for her. By this point, the letters and signs were just a regular pain-in-the-ass part of Mary's life. She was as used to them as you could get to a thing like that. So she barely batted an eye when, on February 7th, she once again had to interrupt her bus route to tear down another gross sign. But this time, something was different. The writer's sign was attached to a

regular road sign, and when Mary looked down at the place where the signpost stuck out of the dirt, she noticed a wire running into the ground. Weird. She cleared away the brush and found a small wooden box hidden in it, and inside the box was a loaded pistol aimed right at her face. After years of terrorizing Mary in print, it seemed the letter writer was no longer getting the reaction they wanted, so they'd graduated to full-blown attempted murder. Thank God. the asshole, whoever it was, had done a shit job of making this little artisanal booby trap. And the police assured Mary it probably wouldn't have worked even if she hadn't found it. It's even possible that the person who made it never actually meant for it to fire,

just needed a way to recapture the attention they were so desperate to keep. But that didn't make Mary feel a whole lot better. It shook her to her core. I don't know whether Mary ever got counseling during this whole ordeal, but I hope so. The fact that she hadn't had a nervous breakdown by this point is a minor miracle. I mean, as a former high school teacher myself, I'm sure driving a bus full of teenagers every day was already working her nerves enough. But as awful as this new and terrifying means of attack was for Mary, it was what finally led police to a serious break in the case. See, apparently, the letter writer sucked as much at filing off serial numbers as he did at booby-trap construction. Because despite his efforts, police could still manage to make out all the numbers on the pistol, which very quickly led them to its own.

her. And so seven years after Mary Gillespie received that first letter, which would eventually turn her world upside down and spread paranoia through her quiet little town, they finally had a name. And it was Paul Fresh Hour. Yeah. The gun belonged to none other than the husband of Mary's sister-in-law, Karen. Paul had been there from nearly the beginning of the whole mess, offering support, helping in the search for the phantom stalker who was mentally torturing everybody close to him. Could he really have been the one responsible this entire time? Sheriff Radcliffe must have felt some sense of satisfaction and the idea that he just captured two of his biggest critics at the same time, Paul Fresh Hour and the letter writer.

Paul was charged with attempted murder and let out on bond to wait for trial. Meanwhile, Paul's wife Karen didn't exactly come to her hub's defense. In fact, she told everybody, she thought he was probably guilty as shit. As it turned out, Karen and Paul had been on the rocks for quite a while with divorce proceedings beginning the year before. Oh boy. She must have felt like a kid on Christmas when she heard the news. Don't you know it? Got a divorce going on and suddenly this shit.

It's like a gift from the angels. Karen accused Paul of being a violent, lying, thieving narcissist who neglected their kids. And Paul accused Karen of being a suicidal, unemployable, alcoholic cheater who, neglected their kids. Karen insisted she'd long suspected Paul of being the Circleville letter writer, and that she'd even mentioned the possibility to Mary, who she'd been staying with during her separation. She said she remembered a lot of suspicious incidents where she found letters and envelopes around the house, which Paul seemed to always have a shady excuse for. And she'd always thought it was a little strange how interested

Paul was in Mary's personal life. When Mary spilled the beans about her affair with Gordon Massey after Ron's death, Paul was absolutely livid, like to a weird degree. Plus, Karen and her co-worker claimed that threatening phone calls, letters, and signs were regularly making their way to Karen's work. Peggy H. and Karen F are lovers, said one message. They have no time for anyone else. I guess back then the suggestion of a lesbian relationship would blow everybody's mind. Of course, Paul and Karen had always been in the letter writer's crosshairs themselves,

but it seemed like Karen Fresh Hour's share of the harassment had seriously ramped up, just as her marriage began falling apart. Hmm. There was even an incident involving a bullet fired at Karen's car. Next, in a move that surprised absolutely no one, Paul countered his wife's claims by claiming she was the writer. Well, at least the most recent writer. Whether she'd been the guilty party from the start or not,

he argued she at least took advantage of the whole thing once they filed for divorce, and she stood to lose money and custody the kids. After all, who else had access to that gun, right? She must have intentionally botched filing off the serial number, he claimed, and set him up. Karen's over here playing 3D chess, right? But it seemed to most residents that Pickaway County had finally got their man. A handwriting expert said Paul's writing matched that of the writer, and Paul's boss confirmed he'd called out sick the day of the booby-trap incident. The court was also able to this opportunity to test some of the suspicious powders that had accompanied a few of the letters and actually found small amounts of arsenic. In 1984, Paul Freshower was found guilty of the

attempted murder of Mary Gillespie and sentenced to seven to 25 years in prison. Though he wasn't technically convicted of being the letter writer, everyone in Circleville was pretty confident that the Phantom Penman was finally off the streets. The funny thing was, though, when Paul Freshower's face made its way to the local news. Many in Pickaway County felt sure they'd seen him before, and it didn't take long for them to put it together. The Ohio Penitentiary Riot. Apparently, while working as a guard there in 1968,

Paul was taken hostage for two days, and afterwards he became the media's go-to source on the whole incident, appearing multiple times in the paper and on the nightly news. For a minute there, he was almost a local celebrity, though, of course, the hype eventually died down, and he left his job as a prison guard to work at the Anaheiser Bush factory. Paul seemed to really enjoy his time in the spotlight, though, telling his story to anybody who'd listen and maybe embellishing it a little over time. Like when he told a story about a sympathetic inmate, comforting the guards with a song he'd written on an acoustic guitar, or the bizarre claim that the inmates had a drug-fueled orgy,

made the hostages watch, just, you know, writing his own self-insert fan fiction, a real Gary Stu type of guy. Damn. It seemed like the line between truth and fiction could get kind of blurry when Paul was around. Conspiracy theories and paranoia seemed to have followed him around like an obsessed stalker. In fact, 16 years before he was accused of being the letter writer, there were whispers around Columbus that he and the other guards actually planned the prison riot, even providing the inmates with weapons in a plot to get the new warden fired.

This warden, Marion J. Koloski, was a trained psychologist who took a gentler approach to reform, reflecting the changing social tides with the late 60s. In other words, he was a bit of a hippie. Many inmates have as much goodness in them as they do bad qualities, he was quoted is saying, they need help. My philosophy is to distinguish between those who want to help themselves and those who just want to wallow in self-pity. So basically, the exact opposite of the warden from Shawshank. Yeah.

The guards did not appreciate this view. They hated the guy. So you can see where the conspiracy theory comes from. A riot would give them just what they needed to get Kowalski out. Right. And it was a hell of a riot. For two days, inmates ran around torching buildings, taking hostages, and looting all the snacks, money, and meds they could find. And kicking the shit out of each other, too.

In the end, the FBI blasted a hole in the wall and stormed in guns blazing. Five inmates lost their lives, and though there were many injuries on both sides, no guards were killed. As soon as the smoke cleared, there was talk of this riot being either caused or encouraged by the guards on duty. And this is wild. According to Marie Mayhew of the podcast Whatever Remains, an inmate named Edward Spalding was serving time for an armed robbery at the time of the riot. When he spoke out against any violence toward the hostages, a fellow inmate stabbed him. And while he was recovering in the hospital afterwards, he slipped a note to a reporter. It said, guards started the August riot.

They didn't want Koloski as warden. He didn't allow for their mistreatment. Wow. Spalding also alleged that the guards had provided the inmates with both drugs and weapons. Now, some people thought those claims were totally ridiculous. The guards were subjected to a hellish ordeal kept locked in a cell for hours with a can of gas right outside, which the hostage takers repeatedly reminded them would be used to roast them alive if they'd put a toe out of line. That'd be a long way to go just to make your boss look bad.

On the other hand, though, why would Spalding offer up such a... a red-hot tip, like something that would get him nothing but hate from both inmates and prison guards when he went back. Not to mention that a lot of people who have examined the case after the fact came to the conclusion that it would have been really difficult for the rioters to have gotten their hands on a gas can and some of the other stuff they used in the riot without some inside help. And that it seemed to be kind of an open secret among the prison population that this was the case. On the one hand, it feels a little bit like victim blaming to question if the hostages of this riot, most of whom had, like, PTSD for years after, could have been in on it.

Like, would that really be worth risking your life over? But the thing is, it wouldn't have to be all of them, right? It could have just been one or two. And if Paul Freshower was the Circleville writer, I could definitely see him go into extremes to disgrace his boss. Uh, yeah, this dude has the same exact type of, like, little chihuahua facing a big dog energy as somebody in an HOA that drives around in a golf cart siding their neighbors. And Homeboy would repay a fender bender with a nuclear bomb. Yeah. He has no sense of proportionality. Right, exactly. So maybe he was the only guard in on it,

or maybe he talked one or two other ones into it. His ex-wife, Karen, once said Paul could, quote, influence people to think a certain way or believe something without it making you feel like you're being coerced. Interesting. Another possibility is that the riots had nothing to do with Paul, but the PTSD from being held hostage triggered a decline in his mental health and maybe also explains the letter writer's contempt for local law enforcement and government in general, right? Or maybe the trauma combined with how much he loved his little 15 minutes of fame being a minor celebrity afterwards,

got him addicted to attention. And the letter writing was some kind of a warped attempt to try and get some of that attention. back. Or maybe the riot had nothing to do with the letter writer whatsoever. Like so many other things in this case, it's hard to say for sure. So anyway, back to 1985, where Paul Freshower now sat in an Ohio prison cell. Paul, of course, professed his innocence, blaming the double whammy of Sheriff Radcliffe's dislike of him and his ex-wife Karen's financial, legal, and emotional incentive to have him locked away forever. And as time passed in this case of endless twists and turns, many people around Circleville actually started to see his point.

For one thing, Paul may have had a legit reason to miss work on the day of the booby-trap thing. He was having work done on his house that day, and several witnesses confirmed he was there for it. Also, handwriting analysis, which was used to connect Paul to the letters and signs, is very far from a perfect science, and the method they'd used to compare the writing samples seemed really sketchy to some people. Like, instead of just asking Paul to write something down in block letters, they specifically asked him to copy the letter writer's penmanship, which that's not how it normally works, right? Plus, after the trial, it came out that one of Mary's fellow bus drivers spotted a shady character along Mary's bus route that day, not far from the booby trap, just a few minutes before Mary passed by. He was a large man with sandy blonde hair and appeared to be pretending to peasant.

next to a yellow El Camino on the side of the road, while conveniently turning his face just enough so nobody in the bus driving by could get a good look at him. Now, two quick notes on this, okay? First, for our younger campers, and El Camino was a popular car from the 70s and 80s that has been christened, I think, the mullet of automobiles. It's like the mullet of cars,

because it's business up front, it's got the cab of a coop, and party in the back with the bed of a pickup. So, yeah, basically it's a truck except it's a car. They're rad, and I always wanted one. And secondly, a little tip for any would-be criminals, you realize you can be arrested for indecent exposure for peeing outside, right? Especially if you do it in front of a busload of school kids.

Maybe don't hide your criminal activity with other criminal activity. Only commit one crime at a time, folks. Anyway, the man in question was never identified, but clearly he looked nothing like the short brunette non-El Camino rockin' Paul Freshower. He did, however, seem a bit like a man the ex-Mrs. Freshower was now dating. And although that guy didn't own a yellow El Camino, Karen's brother apparently did. Do we have a conspiracy of three now? Trying to frame Paul for the attempted murder of Mary Gillespie? Or was it four?

What if Mary was in on it? After all, she'd stayed close to her sister-in-law Karen. That seems like a bit of a stretch, though. You know, the old saying. Three people can keep a secret when two of them are dead. That's a lot of folks to keep quiet over the last half a century or so. But there are still people who believe Paul could have been framed, including private investigator Martin Yantt, author of presumed guilty when innocent people are wrongly convicted and a contributor to the Innocence Project. Yant admits that he can't. can't say for sure that Paul is innocent, but he thinks he was unfairly railroaded by the local court system, which he says was a hotbed of corruption at the time. He insisted on a recent episode of the Invisible Ships podcast that Sheriff Radcliffe's family ran Circleville as their own personal fiefdom for many generations. And he's not a fan of Paul's ex-wife. Here's his take on her. I don't think I've met anyone so consumed with an irrational hatred for another

and a willingness to say anything no matter how provably falls to defame him, which makes me think that maybe this guy does not watch a lot of court cases on YouTube because, oh boy, that's part for the course. Every custody in divorce case is like, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. It's like, it's crazy. That's just kind of a, oh, you sweet summer child kind of moment for me. I can send three videos. That one woman, you know who I'm talking about.

the what did he call her the flame thrower Whitney oh yeah oh yeah oh dudes I will like watching court cases sometimes on you too yeah this one is this it's literally the worst person you've ever seen that's yeah and she's trying to manipulate the court and she just it's not working oh we should post that on our page we're gonna post it everybody can watch her she's a nightmare nightmare of a person god but the main reason why a lot of people people think Paul was framed was because even after he was incarcerated, the letters kept coming. Yep. Every damn time, we think we have an answer in this case. Some more bullshit shows up. With the letter writer seemingly still going strong at this point, we're forced to look at our

options. Either we've got A, Paul Fresh Hour was not the letter writer. B, Paul Fresh Hour was not the only letter writer. Z, Paul was somehow sending mail for prison that was both bypassing the guards and somehow getting postmarked from Columbus, which is not where he was incarcerated. D, Paul was the letter writer and had an ally on the outside sending mail around in hopes of getting him exonerated. That's definitely been known to happen. E, the new letters were copycat hoaxes.

F, any combination of the above, or G. Who the hell even knows at this point? They even placed Paul in solitary confinement and wouldn't let him anywhere near a stamp, an envelope, or anything he could possibly use to write with. And still, the letters continued. If Paul did indeed have someone on the outside continuing the letter writer's work so that he'd look innocent, the plan backfired horribly. Despite being a model prisoner, Paul's first shot at parole in 1991 was rejected for the simple fact that the letters were still coming.

His old nemesis, Sheriff Radcliffe, was convinced he had the type of cunning it took to pull that off, despite the fact that the current prison warden insisted there was no way he was doing it from the inside. And wouldn't you know it, Paul soon received a letter of his own from Circleville's least favorite resident, mocking his failure to make parole. Now, when are you going to believe you aren't getting out of there, it read? When we set them up, they stay set up. Oh, shut the fuck up. Whoever this asshole is, I'm really starting to want to smack the taste out of his,

mouth. The letter writer, of course, had lots of opinions on Paul's conviction and even started to weave the judge who sent him away, Judge Roger Klein, into the seemingly unrelated murder mystery of Circleville resident Vicki Koch. Koch was a schoolteacher whose body was found in a field several weeks after being violently murdered in 1980. The writer alleged that Judge Klein either did it or ordered it, as he'd gotten her pregnant while married to another woman and didn't want to compromise his, you know, career as a judge. The writer also threatened to take the macabre step of digging up baby bones for some reason and mailing them to the judge if he refused to come clean, which I'm sorry, but if you've got a black enough heart to have the mother of your

unborn child killed so your wife won't find out, you ain't going to break down and confess just because you get some bones delivered by UPS. Sorry, that's not going to work. I'm not quite sure how this murder would connect to the Paul Fresh Hour case, even if the judge had done it. Maybe Judge Klein owed the sheriff a solid for not investigating him? I don't know. It seems really thin to me. But at any rate, nobody seems to have ever taken this idea seriously in Pickaway County. And it would be a huge coincidence that Paul just happened to land a judge who had this kind of dirt in his past versus the possibility of the writer just pulling this out of his ass, right? the murder of Vicky Coke, incidentally, is still unresolved as of now, with DNA testing in 2019

failing to break any new lead, so that's really sad. While Paul Freshower stayed in prison throughout the late 80s and early 90s, more strange twists and turns would continue to come about in the Circleville mystery. Remember back when the letter writer was accusing Sheriff Radcliffe of being in cahoots with Mary Gillespie and Gordon Massey to cover up Ron's murder? And remember how he also accused a coroner, Ray Carroll, of being involved, and of being a pedophile? Well, starting in 1993, former patients of this coroner, Carols, from back when he was a family doctor, started coming forward with disturbing stories of inappropriate touching and unnecessary pelvic examinations from when they were young.

To this day, many of the alleged victims of Carol, about 150 of them, which is just staggering, are understandably furious about the fact that this doctor never faced any legal consequences whatsoever, other than being stripped of his medical license in 94, when he was pretty much ready to retire anyway. Ray Carroll died in 2007. So, to confuse us all even more, it looks like once again, one of the letter writer's accusations turned out to be true.

The pedophile part of it anyway, But she kind of wondered, did the fact that he never got charged with anything for these alleged crimes have anything to do with his relationship with Sheriff Radcliffe? The writer was right about Marion Gordon Massey's affair, too. Does that mean we should give some credence to this bug nuts crazy idea that this judge murdered Vicky Coke? I mean, it's just all so bizarre. How does this person know all this stuff? Does he have every house in town bugged? Like, what the hell?

Is he psychic? It's just bonkers to me. Now, this was also around the same. time that the TV series Unsolved Mysteries started researching the mysteries of Circleville for an upcoming episode only to receive a threat of their own. Forget Circleville, Ohio,

it read. If you come to Ohio, U.L. Sickos will pay. Signed the Circleville writer. Pretty clever insult there with U.L. Sickos. Spanish for you the sickos, I guess. I don't know you L sickos. But it didn't work. Because you don't mess around

with our boy Robert Stack. You don't scare Robert. He's seen it all. The Unsolved Mysteries episode aired without incident. Surprise, surprise. National Treasure Robert Stack, rest in peace, read the letter on air himself. I'm sure everybody ate it up. I remember seeing that original story like when I was a kid and scared the shit out of me. It was so creepy. Paul Fresh Hour was finally released from prison in 1994 and he actually checked himself into a mental health facility for a few weeks before heading home, which is probably a good idea. And eventually he retired in Florida. Now, by this point, you would think half of Circleville could use a stay in the psych ward. I know I would need one. And then, once Paul was out of jail, the letters pretty much stopped. Well, they didn't completely stop. As late as the mid-2000s, people were still getting mail purportedly sent by the writer.

But as far as the whole Circleville letter hysteria goes, it kind of just grinds to a halt around the time Paul Fresh Hour got out of prison. The culprit, whoever it was, had decided to hang it up. why? Your guess is as good as mine. Yeah, I kind of think it's because it was Paul Fresh Hour. I mean, I don't think that he was necessarily the one sending the letters from prison, but it's really not that hard to get somebody on the outside to help you with stuff like that or even on the inside. Like, it's not that hard to get hold of stuff in prison that you're not supposed to have. It happens all the time. People have freaking cell phones in there. Like, go look at prison TikTok if you don't believe me. And to me, Fresh Hour is the best suspect, in my opinion, for a lot of reasons. But one of the big ones for me is that writing those letters, if you're the letter writer and you're not Paul Fresh Hour, continuing with the letters after you've got somebody in prison is not going to help you. That's insane. Yeah. It's just going to keep them investigating until they find the right guy. So to me, the only person that that might help is

Paul himself. Like, oh, look, you know, it's like when Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, was in prison awaiting trial, he romanced this young woman on the outside and actually convinced her to commit a copycat murder for him so that everybody would think that Bianchi was innocent. Her name was Veronica Compton. It's a wild story. We're going to cover it someday. He gave her his semen. Oh, yeah.

He gave her a semen. That's how insane it is. He gave her a semen sample to plant on the body. That's not even the craziest part of that case. But yeah, that's, oh, yeah. Yeah. And she tried to do it. And fortunately, the woman was able to fight her off and she went to prison.

It's a whole big thing. But, you know, that's certainly a strategy that we've seen people try before, like fake letters to the cops from prison and everything. So I just think it's the only thing that makes sense to me is that it's Paul Fresh Hour. Yeah. And he'd know exactly how to get letters out being a prison guard. So, you know. Oh, yeah. And I don't care what the warden says.

Every prison has a leak. That's, that's. Oh, absolutely. There's an entire like underground black market of like just getting products in and out of prison. That's 100%. It's part of it's part of the natural like environment of a prison, all right? I don't care what the warden said. All right.

Oh, there's no way. Okay, shut up. Yeah. You think maybe he didn't have a buddy who was a guard there that maybe was like, yeah, I'll send this letter for you. Come on. As the new millennium approached, life seemed to most. go back to normal for Circleville. The annual pumpkin show finally returned

to its rightful place is the biggest deal in town. We really don't have a ton of info about the personal lives of most of the people in this story after the drama wound down, and I'm sure that's how most of them want it. Very few of them have done interviews, TV appearances, stuff like that.

By all accounts, they've gone back to their lives. I hope they're doing well. Me too. Despite the fact that the internet has given the story a new life, including by the way, an episode of drunk history, there don't seem to be any books on the Circleville letters, though there are several about the pumpkins.

But it's interesting to note that one key player did seem to want to keep the attention going. Paul, Fresh Hour. Of course. He always seemed happy to get in front of a camera or a tape recorder, even if the tone of the interview was accusatory. Yep. Paul died of natural causes in 2012,

but not before leaving us, one last statement about the Circleville mystery. One last long, rambling statement. Paul created a WordPress blog before his death, outlining the vast conspiracies he believed were secretly running the show from the CD underbelly of Pickaway County, Ohio, and how they all converged into a 10-and-a-half-year prison stint for him. Paul reiterates all the old usual suspects with a few new ideas thrown in,

like that his own lawyer was in on the anti-Paul agenda. You can still read the whole thing online if you have a good day and a half to kill. Paul created the WordPress to try and prove an innocence once and for all. But my dude, if you're trying to convince the world that you aren't a paranoid, gossip-obsessed conspiracy theorist, you should probably avoid posting a manifesto online. Just get a Tumblr blog and post gift sets of Loki and Captain America kissing, like all the other mentally unwell girlies. I mean, for a guy claiming to not be the letter writer, he sure does write like him. He really does.

And that's really the nail in the coffin for me, because when you read that blog, it's like, oh, yeah, this is the same dude. And he fits the profile. I mean, we talked about this a little bit in the Tylenol Poisoner episode, and I think maybe a little bit in the watcher as well, where there's a type that tends to write letters like this. And he's right out of central casting for it. Yeah.

Kind of a smug, haughty kind of like movie villain kind of narrative. Impotent little weasel. Yeah, there it is. You just boiled what I said down to a perfect, perfect phrase. As confusing as the unsolved mystery of the Circleville letter writer is, it's definitely one of those cases that could be solved at some point. Oh yeah. And many people, including Whitney, would say it already has been.

This is one of those quote unquote unsolved, wink, wink. cases, right? But, you know, it would be great to have a definitive answer, and most of the key players are still alive, and there's still a ton of evidence. There's been a huge resurgence of interest in it online, and plenty of internet detectives are obsessing away, and I'm not going to lie, I'm one of them. And as a pastime, it delivers like dominoes. You could spend years on this shit. It is rabbit holes all the way down. Thanks so much to our friend Baltimore comedian Mike Moran for helping us hugely with this episode. Mike has his own show, the confessional podcast with Mike Moran, and it is a gem.

Tackling a different topic every episode, Mike gets way too deep with artists of all kinds, discussing their spookiest stories, personal struggles, greatest fears, favorite horror media, and lots more. Plus, listeners write in with their own personal stories and anecdotes, some of which are read and discussed on air. And holy smokes can this guy get great guests. Past guests have included comedians like Michael Ian Black, Chris Gethard, Michael Winslow, and Shane Torres. Musicians like

CJ and Richie Ramon, Gina Shock from the Go-Go's, and MC Search of Third Base, plus filmmakers like Paul Haynes of I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Joshua Zeman of Sons of Sam and Cropsey. And me. And Kay and me. We've both been on the show, too, and we were the best, obviously.

So check out his show. It's a blast. You can find the confessional podcast with Mike Moran on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and any place else you find your podcasts. So that was was a wild one, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again

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