Circleville Writer /// Part 1 /// 501 | Forensic Files

[Music] so [Music] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
listening i'm your host nick and with me as always is a man that would like to point out
that your neighbors are not the folks that they appear to be here is the captain it's good to be seen
and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music]
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]
i want everyone to stop for a second think about the life you have worked so hard to build
and the relationships you have created and maintained think about your job sure some days it's
a real drag but most of the time you don't know what you or more importantly your family
would do without that job and career what if that paycheck stopped coming in how quickly would those bills start
piling up how quickly would you be at risk of losing it all everything what would you do
would your family turn their backs on you and say you did this to yourself or would they
stand by you and support but even if they did would you be able to face them now i want all of our male listeners
to stop and think about their situation and this will hit even harder for the husbands and fathers in that group
picture this you are at work and you receive the following letter it is addressed to you by name at your
workplace the letter has no return address but you can tell from the postmark it
was mailed from a nearby city it reads dear sir according to my girlfriend you have asked her to go out many times
and have asked the other female co-workers too due to your position in their jobs you
should not do this this must stop at once for the good of all involved if this does not stop
i will be forced to write to the board members and i'd hate to do that to prey on another man's girl is
untouchable especially when they are out trying to make a living there's also talk of you dating a
married woman and taking advantage of them do you need time and names again please think i suggest you find yourself
a pimple-faced [ __ ] and start up with her and leave my girls alone now to all the ladies listening who
share all of the same concerns as the men picture this you are at home after a long day at work
you walk out to your mailbox to retrieve the daily mail you pull the short stack from the box
and see the usual catalog advertisement the electric bill and then what is this on the bottom of
the stack it's a letter addressed to you with no return address but you can tell from the postmark it
was mailed from the busy city not too far up the highway from your town you opened the envelope
it is a handwritten letter that reads stay away from your boss don't lie when asked about knowing him i
know where you live i have been observing your house and i know that you have children this
is no joke please take it serious everyone concerned has been notified and everything will be
over soon now regardless of which camp you fall into receiving such an ominous letter and
from an anonymous source no doubt would be of concern to any of us even the most honest and innocent of us
would want to know why they received the letter and why the threatening pen pal refused to sign a name
or leave a return address even if you could just brush it off what do you do when you receive another
letter and then one after that and regardless if the implied or otherwise allegations
are true or false most of us have a secret some more than one or two would you want to be outed at work would
you want your secrets brought into the light and again even if the allegations are
false you will wonder why me why did i receive these letters why did i receive this threat and how
can i stop something that is not happening and then it occurs to you maybe i'm not
the only person who's received such letters and if i'm not the only one who else what do the other letters say
and is it about me and more importantly why does the writer know where i work in
my job title why does the writer know where i live and why is the writer watching me and my
children this is true crime garage [Music] would it be an understatement captain to
say that unsolved mysteries is one of most true crime buffs favorite shows of all time
yeah and if you don't know you better ask somebody ask somebody just some random person you
better call tyrone in season 7 episode 6 of unsolved mysteries this is back in the robert stack days the
good old days as they say unsolved mysteries ran a segment titled poison pen which nowadays most people refer to that
case that they were talking about under several different names and these would be the circleville
writer or the circleville letters or the letter writer it has many names when you start to
dive into this case and i have seen online many people saying that this is one of the masses
favorite unsolved mysteries episodes of all time which makes sense it's a very intriguing
mystery right here in our own home state of ohio and i remember seeing this episode when
i was a kid and who doesn't like a mystery where there's letters involved that's correct everybody likes a mystery
with letters involved now because this is such a complicated case in my humble kernel opinion it has a lot of
moving parts and pieces i would like to go through unsolved mysteries original overview of the case and then we can
dive into it in further detail starts off circleville ohio is a small town south
of columbus it's a place that rarely attracts outside attention but in the 70s frightening letters
started to arrive the first letter was received by mary gillespie a school bus driver telling her that the
letter writer was aware that she was having an affair with the superintendent of schools and
that it had better stop in addition to allegations of an affair the letter carried an ominous threat
it read in part i know where you live i've been observing your house and i know you have children
this is no joke please take it serious the envelope was postmarked columbus ohio
there was no return address no signature inside no way to tell who sent it now a week later mary received another
letter with a similar tone mary kept the letters to herself though until her husband ron
also received one according to journalist martin yant quote this letter addressed to ron
gillespie told him that if he didn't do something to stop this affair that his life was undoubtedly in danger
end quote the alleged affair became the talk of circleville the mysterious writer
understood the power of gossip the next letter was even more threatening it read in part quote gillespie
you have had two weeks and done nothing make her admit the truth and inform the school board
if not i will broadcast it on cbs posters signs and billboards until the truth comes out
so this one sounds to me captain like it would be a letter again addressed to ron gillespie
he is the husband of the woman accused of having the affair with the superintendent
in this letter the writer is threatening hey i told you about this affair you've
had two weeks to tell the school board or to yeah to inform the school board and
you've not done that if you don't do something soon i'm gonna broadcast this on cbs which
back in the day more people had seabees than they have today not just in their vehicles but some
people kept them in their homes or their garages and would turn them on listen to them and
even talk on there people even had big musical hits like cw mccall with convoy they would discuss
these cb radios and the lingo and how to conduct yourself while on the cb radio and such
but this is also a threat right this is hey if you don't do this i'm writing you to tell you about this
affair you've been made aware you haven't done what i've asked you i'm going to announce this on cb radios
i'm going to put up these posters and signs everybody's going to know the truth will
come out well and here's what's kind of confusing to me you would think that the writer would be mad at the
superintendent or the wife for having an affair but it seems like he's targeting
the guy that's a victim in all this yes it's weird it's like i've wrote to your wife threatened her
she didn't do anything so now i'm writing to you and i'm giving you task right to
complete now according to unsolved mysteries mary and ron evidently told three people
about the letters that they were receiving this would be ron's sister linda freshower
her husband paul freshhour and paul's sister mary had an idea about who was sending
the letters and she had a plan according to paul freshhour mary and ron gillespie's brother-in-law
quote we thought we'd scare the guy we sent him four or five letters there was no violence in them or anything
just that we knew who he was and what he was doing and we sent him the letters and quote
for a while they say the plan worked the threatening letters stopped but then on august 19 1977
ron received a phone call the call seemed to confirm ron's suspicions about the identity
of the letter writer according to journalist martin yant quote he told his children he was going
out to confront the letter writer he took his weapon he did not seem to be drunk said goodbye
to his children and went out now angry and upset ron hurried to the family's red and white pickup truck
even though at one time the letter writer had said he was watching that vehicle according to martin yam we should point
out who martin yan is since we keep referencing him from unsolved mysteries he worked in the greater columbus area
for decades he's a very good journalist and reporter and has done lots of great work over the years
here in our area so he's interviewed at length on unsolved mysteries and this is
another quote from him within a short distance this is in regards to ron leaving that night within a short
distance at an intersection that ron knew very well he lost control of the vehicle
hit a tree and was killed somewhere between leaving the house and hitting that tree
his gun had fired one shot and there was never any explanation for when or how or at
whom that gun could have been fired the police ruled ron gillespie's death an accident
but several circleville residents soon received anonymous letters accusing the sheriff of a cover-up ron
gillespie's brother-in-law paul freshauer said the sheriff had changed his story
saying that the sheriff agreed with him with paul that there was foul play and then when paul contacted the sheriff
again the sheriff changed his attitude completely then he was telling paul that it wasn't foul play and that a
suspect had passed a polygraph test well wouldn't they know if he fired a gun that day or not
would there be evidence of that there would be if you test for that there also could be other ways of
finding that that evidence so we don't know if they tested for that or if they did test for that they're not
thomas from what i found captain they didn't test for that i don't know if if uh gsr or gunpowder residue or
whatever you want to call it if that was available it was i talked to the source saying
that would have been available and my because my argument is if he fired the gun at somebody
and then he ran off the road and hit this tree and died to me that that leans towards foul play
if the gun was never shot and it was just found within the car and he hit a tree okay you know possibly
just an accident exactly you're exactly right there so everyone at the time wanted to know
and still to this day was ron gillespie's death an accident or was it foul play and of course why had one bullet been
fired from his handgun after ron's death the letters kept coming his wife mary and the super
his wife mary and the superintendent of schools eventually admitted to a relationship
but said it began after the letters were sent mary kept her job driving a school bus
but beginning in 1983 the letter writer began putting signs along her bus route so
let's point out here though captain that the truck accident involving the death of
ron gillespie was 1977. now on the unsolved mysteries overview of this case we are at 1983 on the timeline
the letters have continued for all of this time and at this point in 83 the letter
writer began putting signs along mary gillespie's bus route mary's daughter was being targeted
with some of the slander and nasty things that were being put on these signs again according to martin yant mary
finally took action she ripped down a sign much to her surprise behind the sign was
a box and string and also another post that was attached to a fence post she took it into the bus and she opened
it up and there was a small pistol when she looked closer mary realized that it was a crude booby trap
designed to fire the gun at her or whoever remove the sign investigators discovered that
someone had tried to rub the serial number off of the gun but when lab tests were able to read it
accurately the case took an incredible turn the gun belonged to mary's brother-in-law
paul freshhour of course paul denied any involvement according to paul i admitted the gun was mine but i hadn't
seen it for a long time i had no reason to check up on it or anything and i don't know
when it had come up missing i really don't know what happened to it and i told them that and that's the
truth and that's how it was end quote do you know if other people saw these signs on the road if there was
eyewitnesses to this or if it was just she had a car full of signs and and this booby
trap um it sounds like there may have been there's also an eyewitness to say that there was
no trap setup or no sign that they saw 20 minutes to 30 minutes before it was supposedly found
the other thing that's also not clear is if she was the only one on her bus at the time that it was found
but what ends up being the result captain is on february 25th 1983 sheriff dwight radcliffe asked paul
freshhour to take a handwriting test paul agreed to this and says quote he would give me an
actual letter and ask me maybe to do the envelope part just as near as i could to the envelope and then on
some he would take the actual letter out and have me to do them as near as i could on
the letters and i did them because i knew i wasn't responsible for the letters end quote martin yant
said that this is not the correct way to conduct handwriting analysis of course that's not the correct way to
conduct handwriting analysis martin yan goes on to say that is not the proper way to test to see if someone
has a certain writing style because if they're copying from a letter they're going to try to
emulate the style so they didn't really say that these letters were written by paul freshhauer
they said that they could have been written by paul freshhour the sheriff also searched paul's garage
paul freshhour was charged with attempted murder and paul goes on to say he meaning the sheriff called the
prosecutor and told the prosecutor that it was my riding on the booby trap and i was under
arrest for attempted murder later that year in october of 1983 paul fresh hour went on trial for the
attempted murder of his sister-in-law mary gillespie paul freshauer never took the stand
in his own defense it was a decision he would come to regret paul was found guilty of attempted
murder he said the verdict was completely unexpected paul freshauer was given the maximum
sentence for attempted murder 7 to 25 years everyone assumed that he had written the
circleville letters and everyone figured that they would stop once paul was in prison
everyone was wrong journalist martin yan quote they were being received all over
a large area of central ohio so a lot of people couldn't understand how paul freishauer could be mailing
all these letters from prison following repeated complaints from sheriff radcliffe the warden of the
prison had paul placed in solitary confinement but the letters still continued all of them were
postmarked from columbus even though paul was imprisoned across the state in lima martin yant said the warden
became convinced that paul was not writing the letters saying that a full-scale investigation
was conducted twice possibly three times during which paul fresh hour was put into isolation
and the warden of the prison then wrote a letter saying that as far as he was concerned it was impossible for
paul to be writing these letters and sending them from prison for seven years paul was a
model prisoner but when he became eligible for parole the parole board rejected his request based on the
letter still being sent a few days after his hearing paul himself received a sadistic
letter from the phantom writer it read in part 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 them up they stay set up
don't you listen at all in may of 1994 paul fresh hour was finally granted parole after serving 10 years
to this day he maintains his innocence he's sure that the real criminal is still at large
the circleville letters finally stopped but many questions remain who actually wrote the letters
was ron gillespie's death an accident or was he murdered and who made the booby trap found by
mary gillespie [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] all right we're back cheers mates he's
back i'm back we're all back cheers to my friend jerry reeves he partied more than most of them but he
was always the life of the party cheers to you my friend you will be sadly missed we will pour a little out for you
that was the rundown captain from unsolved mysteries when they covered this case titled it the poison pen
and it's one of people's favorites favorite segments of the show and it had so many great segments to choose from
over the years now i didn't lay it out there as well as uh robert stack would have or the
wonderful people over at the program would have back in the day but that was their general overview at
unsolved mysteries back then if you've only watched the current ones you're unaware of this but
back then they did segments you would tune in it was an hour-long show they would cover often cover a couple
different cases and a lot of times the cases had nothing to do with one another that's why the
show was so great and so interesting if one case didn't catch your interest the next one would and sometimes they're
not just talking about true crime they're talking about ghosts or aliens or bigfoot
and one quote or i'm sorry one post that i saw online that i thought was absolutely brilliant a guy that nailed
it he said you know i used to watch this show when i was a kid and the worst thing in the world
was after you would watch unsolved mysteries i think it aired at eight or nine o'clock at night so it's not
getting over till nine or ten depending on where you lived but he said the worst thing in the world was to
watch unsolved mysteries and at the end of the program being told by your parents that you had
to take the trash out to the street he said he was terrified every time that that would happen
well to be honest with the audience you would have done a better job of the breakdown if our
show paid you more yes i've been asking for more for more pay one of the best things and i think you
probably can agree with me by watching the old unsolved mysteries was towards the end of it
episode you might be watching about a case that you're so wrapped up into and fascinated and all of a sudden
change of music sounded alarms update and it would be an update on the case that they were just talking about
because sometimes they had re sometimes they had recorded and filmed that segment months in advance and the case
had moved along since their production of that case which was always really exciting
in this case because there's such a mystery of who was writing these letters was it
one individual was it a group of people but they cover the story almost 10 years later and then they
receive a letter themselves yes so they are covering the story after paul fresh hour is released
from prison so many years after the fact and they're covering it because not only is there this mystery writer
that's out there but now we have the story of okay well this guy that everybody thought that did
it that tried to kill this woman that was writing all these letters he was locked
up and he couldn't have possibly been writing these letters while he was locked up for practically
10 years so in december of 1993 unsolved mysteries received a postcard at their offices and the postcard was
they called a postcard but i'll describe it here in a minute it was as they say a
threat designed to keep them from telling the story of the circleville writer and what i'm a little curious about here
captain is the way that they word that is that they must have done some of the production if not
all of the production for this segment and then received this threat via mail snail mail
before actually airing it because it would be a little weird if they hadn't even done any of
the production yet how would this writer or whoever sent this postcard as they call it
even know that they were going to cover the story yeah my suspicion is that they had a crew go to
circleville and be in such a small town word would get out quickly oh by the way i mean and
unsolved mysteries was a huge hugely popular show unsolved mysteries down in our
little town what are they talking about all they're asking about the circleville letters
and at the very least they would have been in the greater columbus area because we know that they
recorded interviews with martin yant and with paul fresh hour as well so what they called a postcard i don't
know that that's the best description at least not the one that i would give it what it
looks to me is like somebody took almost like a three by five card and kind of cut the corners on it so it
almost appears to look like like a tag at a tag sale an old school tag sale yeah and somebody wrote in small block
letters all capitalized forget circleville ohio do nothing to hurt sheriff radcliffe if you come to ohio
you elsico's will pay signed the circleville writer dan all the letters that we do have i will try to post those
on our instagram facebook or twitter and there's some people that might not be familiar with this case
captain and they're going what do you mean all the letters that you quote do have well they're depending on the
sources it's listed as high as 1 000 letters that were sent throughout the years
and the thing is as great of coverage as unsolved mysteries did on the case we need to open it up because their
little segment sounds very centralized makes the case very compact that we have these few
people that were involved in this case that this writer was writing letters to mary gillespie her
husband and we also have the involvement of their brother-in-law and ron's sister we have the mention of
the superintendent of the schools where mary worked for and it's all very centralized in
pickaway county but this case expands years the letters expand for years and the
letters were being sent to not just people in businesses in pickaway county this involves franklin county madison
county ross county and several cities throughout and i think we should dive into that and the cities that you're
going to hear the most will be columbus which is the capital city here grove city and circleville now
circleville ohio is 25 miles south of columbus the capital of ohio and in the mid 1970s to 1980
the population in circleville is just under 11 700 people within that general area
captain we have westfall school district which operates one elementary school one middle school
and west fall high school the way that unsolved mysteries tells the story is that mary gillespie starts receiving
these letters when in fact there were earlier letters mary gillespie was not the first target
for the letters if you will yeah so some of these people were receiving letters and they would be like little unknown
facts about them but it'd be normally bad stuff like i know you're doing this or i know
you're doing that and so it's really you know like you said maybe there's a thousand letters
out there but some of these people that received letters never came forward because they didn't want to share maybe
this dark secret with everybody right if the letter writer is warning you about a secret that you're keeping
you don't want to present that to everybody and say hey look i received this letter
so the first letters you know it's very quickly in the series that mary gillespie
is sent a letter but however the first letter is sent to gordon massey so who is gordon massey
gordon massey is mary gillespie's boss she drives a school bus for west fall and he is the superintendent of westfall
school district he's the first one to receive a letter this letter was addressed to westfall
high school attention superintendent massey no return address and it says dear sir according to my
girlfriend you have asked her to go out many times and have asked the other female bus drivers too due to
your position and their jobs with you you should not do this this must stop at once for the
good of the school and families if they are not stopped i will be forced to write to the school
board i'd hate to do that to prey on another man's girl is untouchable especially when they're
out there trying to make a living there's also talk of you dating a married woman
and taking advantage of them do you need time and names again please think i suggest you find yourself
a pimple-faced [ __ ] and start up with her and leave my girls alone so that's the real version of the letter
we mentioned that in the trailer earlier but kind of generalized it so we could tell this story
later superintendent massey receives this again it's not addressed to to anybody other
than him and at the westfall high school there is no return address however we know that it's
postmarked from columbus ohio 25 miles up the road and it came from the postal hub
430 which at the time in 1977 was the only postal hub in the city of columbus meaning you could mail that letter from
anywhere in the big city of columbus and it's going to have to go through that hub
so all we can say is we know that that letter was mailed somewhere in the city of
columbus right but it could have been south side north side east side west side we have no clue
correct now think about what the threat is and what's stated in this letter to gordon
massey it says hey you're hitting on these female bus drivers you're taking advantage of them these
are people that are out trying to work for a living you're taking advantage of your position
it also mentions that there is even talk of you having a relationship with a married woman
it doesn't necessarily name anybody there but we can assume by later letters maybe
they are referring to mary gillespie and it also says this is one thing that i think is weird it it
says well there's two things that i think are very weird about this letter right one it says hey if you don't put
this to an end if you don't stop what you're doing i will be forced to write to the school
board and i'd hate to do that it's like it's right it's like the writer is giving him a warning hey
i know you're up to no good but if you stop what you're doing nobody has to know about it we'll we'll
just let it be but then he ends the letter i say he we don't know if it's a she or
he that wrote this letter but the person ends the letter with leave my girls alone almost like
they're referring to the female bus drivers as their girls i was popular with the
school bus driver the tricky thing here captain is the second letter goes to the school board
it's addressed to the school board remember the writer threatened to tell the board of education down there what
was going on however this letter is received two days later meaning the writer threw out the threat
and told massey to stop doing whatever the writer thought he was doing mm-hmm but did not give him time to
really stop or address the situation oh the writers if you if you don't stop i'm gonna tell on you
but boom two days later a letter arrives that is in fact telling on him to the school board
it's not until after both massey and the school board have been contacted several
times via these letters that mary gillespie starts to receive the letters and then when she's keeping them to
herself eventually ron gillespie starts to receive them the weird thing too here that we see
early on in these letters is this is where it is centralized it's centralized around westfall high school
gordon massey the superintendent and the female bus drivers that's the world that this writer is
writing about and the person whoever is writing this or persons seems to have some good
working knowledge of the behind the scenes stuff for the bus drivers in the school system
right and we know this because in the fifth letter that is written and this one is
addressed to the school board it's telling the school board hey you need to talk to gord
massey tell him to stop doing what he's doing and if you want to verify what i'm
saying is true talk to the drivers talk to the female bus drivers ask driver number this is very
interesting this one's received march 18 1977. it says ask driver number 62917 my favorite driver well driver number
62917 is mary gillespie right i don't think that john q public walking down the street
somewhere in circleville will know that mary gillespie is driver number 62917 that seems like a very behind-the-scenes
piece of information yeah it's tough one here because we don't know exactly who he wrote to
before but like he said it becomes mary gillespie almost becomes his singular focus
for a time period yeah with gord massey being the original receiver of the letters and
then the board members and you're right i technically we don't know for certain only the writer themselves would know
when they actually started but the general consensus seems to be the superintendent gordon massey was the
first to receive a letter right or at least publicly acknowledged that this was the first letter to be
sent well look if i was sent a letter in the mail like this a threatening love letter anyone's gonna sit back and go
who is doing this who's doing this who would i know that is capable of writing a letter or
or who maybe am i pissing off by being involved in this situation and that's the other tricky thing too
being involved in the situation implies that you are doing what the writer thinks you are doing
and what the writer is saying is basically i mean without putting the exact words on paper it's a
threat of oh i'm going to go to your boss and anyone would think that hey this inappropriate relationship if in fact it
is going on would warrant firing the superintendent firing the bus driver for their
misdealings for their flicky flicky the other thing that gets tricky too is it's a threat in the sense that even
if nothing is going on don't you still worry as an employee go well i ca it's hard for me to prove
something is not going on they may fire me anyway yeah or what are the repercussions of her husband finding
out is is he considered a hot head and he is he gonna you know take matters into his own hands
kill the superintendent kill his wife we've seen people do worse for less and as we said the writer
eventually addresses ron gillespie saying hey you've got to end this affair because i've already told massey
about it i've already told your wife about it they're not going to stop you need to be
the one to stop it and threatens which you pointed out earlier captain is bizarre to threaten
ron gillespie who if in fact this stuff is happening he is a victim as well yeah
and you would think that the writer feels slighted by this situation if in fact it's going on
it appears that the writer believes it to be going on whether it is or not that is up for debate but what we are
later told is that the gillespies tell the people that are closest to them about these letters hey we're receiving
these weird letters and they tell ron's sister karen and her husband paul fresh hour
they're incredibly close with these two paul says that him and ron are best friends
and they devised this plan of well you know what we think we know who's doing this
again very centralized right captain it's all behind the scenes involving the school
the school system and the bus drivers yeah mary gillespie's going to tell that group i think that this guy
david longberry could be the author of these letters that was my nickname in high school
so they devised this plan of you know what we're going to write these letters back to david longberry
and essentially they're sending him the letters similar type letters that they are
receiving this says hey we know who you are we know what you're doing you better
stop it or you will be thrashed what was the circleville writer saying i know what you're doing you better stop
it who is david longberry he's a bus driver he's a co-worker of mary gillespie's
he's also an employee of gord massey this is an individual that may know that should know if he's good at his job
the inner workings and the behind the scenes stuff over there so they say that they sent him a few
letters and the letters they're getting stop briefly but then they start back up again like
we stated before circleville is a very small community so just by the gillespies telling a couple
people a small fire can spread rapidly but there's other letters that are being sent to
other individuals and businesses and what's interesting here captain is it starts to become
somewhat general information within circleville that these letters are being sent and received
and i think part of that is because either what the writer is accusing these people of
is false or the people receiving them don't really care in the long run that the
information gets out so it kind of becomes general information that they're receiving these strange
letters and remember the threats of hey ron if you don't do something about this
i'm going to start broadcasting this business on cb radio and putting up posters everywhere and signs
telling the general public airing our grievances and your dirty laundry along the way
about what is going on what's truly going on it's like questioning his manhood because
if it's true that his wife is cheating on him that questions his manhood but that now
you have this letter writer saying hey i'm questioning your manhood that you're that you won't even come out and do
something about this you won't even stop it that shows you how little of a man you
are yeah i guess if the if the writer is the the end-all be-all of what is right and wrong at the end of
the day then they've decided what is wrong and right and drawn the line in the sand and ron's
on the wrong side according to the writer so what goes on at this point captain now we
are about midway through 1977. someone is in fact putting up these signs or at least has threatened ron
and mary to the point that they believe that they would put up these signs so ron is getting up every day a little
bit earlier than he needs to and on his way to work he's driving around town for about an hour
looking for any signs that may be put up sometimes there's signs most of the time
there's not but when he finds them he takes them and he collects them well especially in the 70s
because i used to teach in circleville but obviously not in the 70s but back then to get around the whole
town maybe 20 minutes and you can go through pretty much every major street in circleville yes and this
to to paint a picture for anybody that's going to look this up on a map to paint a better picture is the
case is often referred to as the circleville writer again notice that we said that this is
going to expand in other into other counties not just pickaway county but we're also talking about the
majority of the activity that seems to be surrounded this case is circleville all the way out
to darbyville which is to the west of circleville but some sources will say that there
were some letters that were very similar to the circleville letters that were sent to other states
so i don't know i couldn't find any confirmation of that but i saw several sources that would
state oh well there was letters that were addressed to people in other states so by august of 77 we have a situation
that's escalated and ron gillespie is busy looking for signs the gillespies are trying to figure out
who the letter writer could be well now we have mary gillespie who goes to florida
and this would be in august of 1977 and she's down there on the night of august 19th
her husband ron gillespie is at home he's at their home where they've received these letters
the way that the legend goes the local legend the story is that he is there that night
and late that night after the sun goes down he receives a phone call it's believed that the phone call is
from the letter writer and ron is able to determine or at least his suspicions that he already had
are confirmed by the phone call of who the letter writer is he decides that he's going to go out
and confront the writer he goes upstairs grabs his gun tells his children goodbye
hops in the truck and drives off in a mad tear looking for this letter writer the local legend is one of several
different stories but a couple of them are either ron was chasing someone at a high
rate of speed or he was being run off the road or he was being shot at and he was
shooting at the at someone else the result is him crashing his truck into a tree
and he's dead at the scene well for people who haven't maybe seen the old unsolved
mysteries this reminds me of the ray rivera case where in the newer seasons of unsolved
mysteries where he receives this mysterious phone call and leaves right away in a rage
and again circleville is a small area so if the guy told him well meet me over at this park
or meet me over you know you know behind this bar or what wherever you could get there within 15-20 minutes
no problem and we don't know who the phone call was from we don't know what was said on the phone
call we don't know 100 percent in my opinion if the phone call even took place right but let's say that it did stuff
the caller doesn't even have to say hey meet me here according to the legend ron is able to
determine who the writer is based off of that phone call maybe he recognized the voice
or as you pointed out captain maybe a meetup is set up or maybe there's something in the words
that were spoken that confirmed his earlier suspicions liam neeson and he's going to go out and
confront this writer i will find you and then i will kill well he crashes his truck into
a tree and unfortunately ron gillespie died that night and it is determined by the sheriff's
department pickaway county sheriff's department that this was a vehicular accident
resulting in the death of ron gillespie at the scene inside his truck they find ron gillespie's gun
a revolver which goes along with the story that we've been told per local legend by the children that he
grabbed his gun and ran off and there has been one shot that was fired you heard
the unsolved mysteries description of the shot fired the other local legend and rumor was
that his wife was conveniently out of town may have been having this affair leading
up to this event frisky in florida and that she is somehow responsible for what was an
actual murder or somebody that kind of set up this accident ran him off the road was firing at his
truck we know with his revolver that there was a spent shell casing in eight live rounds found in the revolver
meaning that at some point that gun was fired and it shot that bullet right this is what everybody at the time
would point out to say well he fired at somebody that means that there was foul play
later the letter writer then accuses the pickaway county sheriff's office of covering it up
claiming it was an accident when in fact that it was an all it was all set up it was set up for ron to die that night
or something bad to happen to ron that night why would the police or the sheriff
want anything bad to happen to this guy not that they would want something bad to happen to him but
some of the rumor was that they were covering it up for either mary gillespie or for gordon
massey or for both or maybe somebody that's not named doesn't really make sense let's dive
into that a little bit because there's a lot to chew through in this situation because the way that
that picture has been painted for many years is in fact that it was either covered up
or they just the sheriff's department got it wrong and ron was killed or harm was meant to be done to him that
night you know like i said before if he fires a shot i lean more towards foul play but
now that we're talking about it just seems very suspicious anyways and if he had a really bad traffic history
maybe that people would brought that up as a proof that that that this was just an
accident the whole thing just seemed so fishy either way everything about it seems
fishy from all angles in my opinion the whole circleville rider thing is fishy at all
angles as well so let's look at this one from all angles first off they run a tox ecology report on
the deceased on ron gillespie they find that he has a 0.16 percent alcohol level currently in the state of
ohio the ohio legal blood alcohol content level is below 0.08 so anyone over the age of 21 or anyone
of any age with a bac of 0.08 or higher can be charged with operating a vehicle impaired or ovi
so by the state law he's drunk driving right this is general information this comes out to the public at the time
well friends and family of ron gillespie say well he wasn't a big drinker i don't know that that answers the
question of whether he was drinking that night or not right like you said the report
proves that he was drunk the other thing that doesn't make any sense is the story that we get all these years
later and i want to be clear here i'm not accusing his children of making up a story or misremembering or
anything we are hearing this story second third fourth fifth hand who knows how many hands we're out at
this point i wish i said wash them but at at this point captain the story that we are left with is he receives
this mysterious phone call he tells his children i know who the letter writer is
runs upstairs grabs his gun runs out to his truck and speeds off into the night now when ron
gillespie was found crashed into that tree it was 10 28 p.m today is 2021 if i have my year correct
to this day the area where he crashed his truck is not well lit there's hardly any
lights if any in the very in that very specific area a lot of people say hey this is not an
area that this is an area that he knew well that he would have traveled many times he wouldn't have
crashed his truck that night but you're saying that people are saying he didn't drink often
and so maybe he wouldn't be able to handle his liquor as well as or handle the alcohol level as well as somebody
else that was a daily drinker or weekly drinker so to address the elephant in the room
first off you have a situation where stole my penis ron gillespie may or may not believe the letters he's receiving
that his wife is having an affair and his wife is down in florida out of town out of state that night okay
so let's assume he doesn't believe the letters his wife should be free to go and do
whatever she wants she should be free to go and do whatever she wants anyway but couldn't you see a situation if he
does believe the letters that he says i don't feel comfortable with you going out of state right i don't feel
comfortable with you going out of town now let's take it a step further by this point
he and his wife have been told in several letters that the letter writer is watching their vehicles their house
their property they have a fairly big property by the way and their children some of the threats
have even been directed to their daughter who depending on what source you read at this point in our
story that night that ron died would have been seven or eight years old i cannot fathom a situation where
i would be the father of a small child and be receiving threats to my family where i decide one night i know who's
making those threats i'm going to go off and get them and leave you two kids here
that's why i questioned the phone call and what ron's actual actions and intent was that
evening right well it could have been somebody calling saying hey you know how your wife said she was in florida i
think i just saw her in a car with some guy or i think i just saw her walk into some bar with a guy
it could have been anything you know i mean and then it was like oh well i'm going to catch her now the
other situation then becomes the spent round we've kind of been circling around that
the police couldn't figure out if he shot the gun that night or not so a lot of the times when this story is
retold it's told to say that between the time he left his home and crashed his truck
into that tree he fired that gun well it's a revolver that spent casing stays in there until
you physically remove it he could have fired that shot between leaving his house and crashing into the
tree he could have fired it the day before a week before a year before we do not know when
that gun was fired to leave behind that spent casing what we do know is inside the revolver
they find a spent casing in eight live rounds what they also find in the truck now
the tricky thing is the gun is found as described in the police report from the accident mind you this is a
lengthy police report probably about 10 pages roughly it says that the that the gun was found underneath of him
this crash was horrible his truck what happened captain is the road turned and for whatever
reason his truck did not follow that turn in the road it started to go off the road
and it traveled 36 feet from the road crashed into the tree and continued another seven feet but it wasn't just
the gun that they found inside the vehicle mind you it almost threw ron completely from the
truck out the window he's halfway out the window when they find him yeah he had no seatbelt on so to say
that the gun was found under him really is a loosey-goosey description of where the gun was
actually found in my opinion considering he's halfway out the truck but also found in the
in the truck captain is a full box of 22-caliber winchester western wildcat ammo
right which is not included in the local legend not included in the story from the
children that we've heard second third fiftieth hand all these years later they say he ran upstairs and grabbed his
gun no mention of grabbing a box of ammunition my other question then becomes if he did
grab both why how many times did he intend to shoot this person he has nine bullets in his gun i wonder
if he kept the gun in the truck and it was found at the scene of his death at the scene of this vehicle
accident because that's where it should have been found because that's where he kept it
one of the bullets could've been kept in the truck as well exactly think of this it's 1977
in the glove box underneath your seat and also this is you know this is a city yes but it's
it's a rural community this it's 1977. you own a pickup truck yeah doesn't it seem a little a pick-em-up truck
i would love to go back in time and interview guys that lived in the area especially guys that are around ron's
age and ask them hey do you keep a gun in your truck i'm guessing that the percentage would
be higher than most people would think i'd say is that a gun in your truck are you just happy to see me
both yeah um i'm happy that i brought my gun in that i saw you yeah that brings up another
thought could he have lost control see this is all that it means it doesn't mean that he
crashed into this truck tree or somebody ran him into this tree he very quickly could have lost control
of this truck as soon as he went off the road if he's drunk if he's traveling at a high rate
of speed in a an area that's not well lit it's very conceivable that he lost control of the vehicle
and this is just sadly an accident a fatal accident then people point out well the truck was towed immediately and
destroyed shortly afterwards and that is more point of a cover-up that there were bullet holes in his
truck and nobody wanted that to be seen well maybe they just didn't want this scene to be seen by the public
in general well it's signed off by his wife mary gillespie it's her property at this point you know the other thing
too is the truck was totaled there's no use for the truck at this point and your loved one just
died in the vehicle doesn't seem like something you would really want to keep a hold of or have much use for right
so here's the other problem with it being a cover-up if sheriff radcliffe got it wrong or
the pickaway county sheriff's department decided to cover it up first off there were multiple agencies involved in
this situation and analyzing and determining what they believed happened that night first of all you
have the coroner who has to sign off on the fatal injuries the coroner decided not to do an autopsy
it was not necessary unfortunately the deceased arrived at burger hospital and he had already
passed by this point well also at this point um some of the sources say that this guy
wouldn't have done the autopsy anyways they normally took murder cases and things of that nature and actually
send them to columbus where they had more experience well and we have a situation
too where this is not just sheriff radcliffe showing up and determining that it's an accident
we have detective phil brown who arrives on the scene he's actually the lead uh at this accident scene so now we have
to have two people covered up and of course phil brown works for radcliffe so that's not too hard to believe but where
did pickaway county sheriff's department get the call from they got the call from mount sterling
police department okay so now mount sterling has to be in on it oh and by the way they were curious
about the gun and they were curious about the spent casing as well so they sent the gun in the ammo
off the bci bureau of criminal identification and investigation here in ohio in london ohio a much bigger more capable
agency than the pickaway sheriff's department at that time still to this day so bci has to be involved in the cover-up
usually when people decide to cover things up captain i'm not one that covers things
up myself so i don't know this from experience but i'm guessing that when you choose to cover something
up you like to keep most of that stuff in-house you don't send it off to this big fancy
agency who can figure out what's going on they sent it off for all the right reasons
they sent it off because they wanted to ask bci can you tell us anything about this gun
did it belong to the deceased that we found and is there any reason that we should think
that this that this spent casing was involved in any other incident they look for information this goes on
for months and determine very quickly that no this this spent casing is not related to any other
incident that we can find so i like local legend as much as the next guy i like the folklore as much as anybody
else but the evidence here stacks up that this is in fact an accident sometimes a cigar is
just a smoke sometimes things are what they appear to be what are your thoughts so far we want to
hear them go to truechromegarage.com and leave your comments on the blog we will see you back in the garage
tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't [Music] you

Circleville Writer /// Part 1 /// 501

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Circleville, Ohio appears to be a town where everyone knows everyone’s secrets, or at least one person did. For over a decade anonymous letters were arriving in the mailboxes of residents, businesses, local city officials, schools and churches. These letters were demanding, accusatory and often threatening. Then one of the recipients dies a mysterious death. Afterwards, the local unsolved murder is mentioned time and time again in the letters. The author was claiming to know who was responsible for this unsolved murder of a local lady. Vulgar signs started to appear on the sides of busy roads and a murder attempt is made. A man is locked up for the attempted murder and yet the letters continued. Unsolved Mysteries featured this case and they too received strange and ominous letters. Many have called the Circleville Writer case - Ohio's greatest unsolved mystery. Join Nic and the Captain at your favorite spot on the Garage couch and hear the rest of the story.

Beer of the Week - Don’t Worry, My Mom Said It Was Cool by Hoof Hearted Garage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5 Our show - True Crime Garage “Off the Record” is available only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

Brief Summary

The episode discusses the Circleville letters, Ron Gillespie's death, and ongoing mysteries surrounding the case.

Key points

The Circleville Letters. A mysterious writer sends threatening letters to residents, sparking fear and intrigue.
Ron Gillespie's Tragic Death. After receiving threatening letters, Ron Gillespie dies in a mysterious accident.
The Booby Trap Discovery. Mary Gillespie finds a booby trap designed to harm her, leading to shocking revelations.
Paul Freshour's Parole. After serving 10 years, Paul Freshour was finally granted parole, maintaining his innocence.
The Circleville Letters Mystery. The mystery of who wrote the Circleville letters remains unsolved, raising many questions.
Threatening Letters. A series of threatening letters begin to circulate, targeting school officials and bus drivers.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

What if that paycheck stopped coming in?

Reflecting on job security and family support.

3:38WatchJul 9, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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