The Circleville letters: Anonymous letters threaten to expose an Ohio town’s rumored secrets

Imagine the shock and worry of discovering in your mailbox a poison pen letter from somebody who claims to know your deepest secrets. And what occurs when the letters proceed, and your mates and neighbors start receiving them too? It might sound like a plot from a thriller, however, in truth, a really actual flood of nameless letters terrorized a small city in Central Ohio for almost 20 years.  And the letters did not cease even after a person went to jail.

Today, the query of the id of the mastermind behind the poison pen letters continues to divide the city of Circleville, the place many individuals nonetheless imagine the incorrect individual went to jail. I check out the case that’s the topic of quite a few podcasts in “The Circleville Letters.”

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, simply 30 miles north of Circleville, a quaint city finest recognized for its annual Pumpkin Show that draws, in accordance to the town’s web site, greater than 400,000 guests a 12 months. Nowhere on that web site, nevertheless, is a point out of the opposite occasion that additionally put a highlight in town: the marketing campaign of menacing letters that started someday within the late Nineteen Seventies. 

The primarily handwritten, nameless letters initially targeted on Gordon Massie, the married Westfall School superintendent whom the author accused of getting an affair with a college bus driver by the identify of Mary Gillispie. But quickly, Gillispie herself, her husband, Ron, and even their youngsters grew to become the goal of letters that grew in quantity and in vitriol. In time, almost everybody on the town both acquired a letter or knew somebody who did. 

The vicious tone of the letters appeared out of character for Circleville, a Midwestern group the place many residents place household, religion and soccer above every thing else. The Pickaway County Sheriff’s Office investigated however turned up nothing. People started to marvel who would take the time to crank out letter after letter to frighten associates and neighbors? Was it multiple individual? Male or feminine? Could the author be that individual behind you within the grocery line or on the submit workplace? And would the letters lead to violence? 

Life and the letters went on for years in Circleville. Then the author started supplementing the letters with indicators posted on the town and alongside Mary Gillispie’s bus route. On the afternoon of February 7, 1983, Gillispie was driving her empty faculty bus on the way in which to choose up college students when, as she advised police, she noticed one such signal posted on a fence. She stopped, tugged on the signal, and found it was hooked up to a field trailing twine. After taking the field dwelling, she says she seemed inside and was shocked to uncover a loaded gun. Sheriff investigators decided the handmade gadget to be a booby lure that failed to hearth. 

The alleged tried homicide of the varsity bus driver grew to become an enormous story within the space. And even greater news was the person who was arrested and charged with the crime: Mary Gillispie’s brother-in-law, Paul Freshour. The arrest shocked his household and associates. Freshour, a supervisor on the Anheuser-Busch facility, had no legal historical past and lived exterior Circleville. Pam Stanton, a longtime household good friend, thought investigators had the incorrect man. “Uncle Paul was not this cruel, callous, want-to-be a murderer,” she stated. “It’s just preposterous.” 

Freshour, nevertheless, had turn into a suspect after the gun was traced to him. And though he denied establishing the gadget and advised investigators that his firearm had been stolen weeks earlier from his storage, his destiny was sealed after investigators spoke along with his estranged spouse, Karen Sue. She advised them that she believed Freshour was, in truth, the Circleville letter author.

In October of 1983, Freshour went on trial for tried homicide.  It was not a robust case. There was no bodily proof that tied Freshour to both the gun or the gadget it was present in and Freshour had an alibi for a lot of the afternoon when the alleged booby lure would have been positioned on the fence. Yet, after two doc examiners testified that the handwriting discovered on these nameless letters despatched to Mary Gillispie might be Freshour’s handwriting, he was convicted and despatched to jail. 

Although Freshour was convicted of tried homicide, investigators believed he was the person behind the poison pen letters and that the lengthy reign of terror was lastly over. They have been incorrect. The letters did not cease.

Paul Freshour was locked away, however the onslaught of nameless threats continued. And continued even after a pissed off jail warden put Freshour in solitary confinement. One letter was even despatched to Paul Freshour himself. Still, authorities continued to insist Freshour was behind the letter marketing campaign, suggesting he had an confederate exterior the jail. It was one other 10 years earlier than the letters lastly ceased, across the similar time that Paul Freshour was launched from jail. 

So, was he the Circleville letter author? Until his demise, Freshour insisted he was neither the author nor the one who put up the booby lure. An evaluation achieved by former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole, as a part of a “48 Hours” investigation, raises new doubts about whether or not the case was solved with Freshour’s conviction. 

O’Toole, who in her profession with the FBI helped profile infamous criminals just like the Unabomber, describes an individual who would not seem to match Freshour’s public persona. She believes that the nameless Circleville author had a critical character dysfunction and loved hurting others. She means that these across the author would have seen the callousness. “That the need for that kind of power, control. The need to dominate,” she says, “… the need to scare people preexisted these letters.”  

More importantly, O’Toole believes the individual behind the letters, who went to a lot bother to keep nameless, probably wouldn’t have taken the chance to arrange the booby lure. Instead, she says, “I think there’s certainly a possibility that — that booby trap was put up by somebody else … who took advantage of the situation.” 

O’Toole’s perception that the author might be somebody aside from Paul Freshour calls into query the testimony of these two handwriting consultants at trial that linked Freshour to the letters. So “48 Hours” requested forensic doc professional, Beverly East, to do a brand new evaluation. 

After evaluating a collection of 49 of the nameless letters to Paul Freshour’s recognized writing, East says she is assured she is aware of the id of the Circleville letter author. “I would go into court and swear on the Bible on the evidence I found,” she stated.