Circleville Writer /// Part 2 /// 502 | 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's not going to be scared
just because somebody's mind has jumped the tracks here is the captain but i'm definitely
afraid of clowns it's gonna be seen it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling
a friend [Music] today we are still sipping on don't worry my mom said it's cool
bourbon barrel aged imperial birthday cake stout and it doesn't have to be anybody's birthday to celebrate and
drink a few of these but it's 12 abv so drink these at home in your garage we put a four and
a half bottle caps on this one let's give some thanks and praise where it is most certainly do
right here first up we have a big cheers to beth and cleveland ohio that big we like your chip goes to melanie
in winfield west virginia next up we have a double fisted cheers to trish and nicole
in canonsburg pennsylvania and a big shout out to andrew from oregon next it cheers to abigail in milan
tennessee we also have daniela in astoria new york and last but certainly not least we have
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fund and for that we thank you yeah bwwr you and beer run get you some thanks for listening thanks for telling
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of the business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
[Music] where we left off yesterday captain is with the accidental or what appears to be an accidental
death of ron gillespie driving his truck august 19 1977. am i saying 100 that there was no foul play involved no
i don't think anybody can say that for certain however the evidence shows and stacks up that
this does appear to be an accident and if there was anybody else involved the police the sheriff's department and
bci could not find any evidence of such right and the police have to rule this an accident based
off the evidence and when people talk about a cover-up again what would be their motive what
would be the whole police department and the sheriff and everybody else involved coroner
everybody else involved what would be their motive to cover up this accidental death for the
superintendent or a bus driver doesn't make a lot of sense to me that there would be
a cover-up and in regards to sheriff dwight radcliffe i want to point something out here
this name may sound familiar to our long-time listeners because we gave him a shout
out in episode 396 in may of 2020 when dwight radcliffe passed away we gave him a shout out because dwight
radcliffe was not only the sheriff of pickaway county he was the sheriff from 1965 until 2013.
he was the longest serving sheriff in the entire country in the united states and i
understand that that does not make him a perfect man nor a perfect sheriff however what i see here captain when we
reviewed the information is rather than looking for reasons that this was a cover-up
what i found were reasons that the sheriff's department was looking to prove that there was no foul
play to themselves right by sending the gun to bci sending the ammunition to bci had there been foul play or had they
suspected foul play they would have followed up on that yeah because they want to solve why these
individuals are getting harassed by this letter writer and again let's go back through a couple
pieces of evidence his blood alcohol level was .16 family is surprised they go hey
we're surprised by this because he's not a heavy drinker well if he's not a heavy
drinker then .16 he might not be able to operate a vehicle to the best of his ability
also not wearing a safety belt yes basically thrown from his truck maybe if he's wearing the safety belt he
makes it through the accident and to be clear no one should be operating a vehicle
with a 0.16 especially here in the state of ohio where they've decided .08 half of that is past the legal limit
now the next stop in our timeline would be 1983 per the unsolved mysteries timeline that we
reviewed earlier 1983 in february is when the attempt is made on mary gillespie's life when
she finds the nasty sign that has words and statements so nasty and terrible on it that she has to tear it
down and if the booby trap would have worked it would have triggered the trigger
on that gun and fired a shot in the direction of her and her head as she removed that
sign however that is six years later that's it's 77 the time of ron gillespie's accident
it's 83 with the attempt on mary gillespie's life there is a lot that goes down during
that span of time and we're going to go through that and this whole time captain
that whole time frame there are letters that are continuing there are suspicions
that are going on in town about who could have tried to kill ron gillespie or who was responsible for
that truck accident who is responsible for these letters and how long are they going to continue
for mary gillespie that has claimed that there is no affair happening but now her husband has passed away and
the superintendent he is now going to get a divorce we could assume if he had a nice relationship
before these letters that these letters made his relationship a lot more complicated yes
regardless of the dynamics of that relationship i would guess so now it's the late 70s when gord massey
and his wife split up and at some point gordon massey and mary gillespie say yes we did have a
relationship their statement has always been that the relationship started after the letters a better date
for when that relationship started i don't have for you it's never been provided as far as i could find
other than the simple statement of we didn't start up this relationship until after the letters started so the other
statement would be it would be after ron gillespie's passing you can question that as much as you
want i'm fine with it i think that there's plenty of room for speculation there that can be a hard
thing to believe i have seen situations like that witness situations like that in
in my own life so i can believe them i don't 100 percent believe them however i don't look at this situation and see
mary gillespie being responsible for ron's death and i don't see what others are looking
for whether they say well mary or even gordon massey could be sending these letters
when the letter started well that doesn't make any sense why would gordon massey threaten his own
career his own job by sending these letters they were sent to his boss before they
were in sent to mary gillespie mary would be threatening her marriage or threatening her job as well
if she were sending the earlier letters yeah and again it's a small town so you screw up it's not just as easy as
getting a job somewhere else you you become a stain on that community the other person that we mentioned in yesterday's
episode captain that was possibly tied or at least suspected to by the gillespies anyway
to be involved in these letters is david longberry david longberry resigned from his
position with the west fall school district as a bus driver he resigned in october of 1981
october 22nd actually of 1981. this whole time again the letters continue now two of the people that have
been very central to this story all along are paul fresh hour and his wife who is also
ron gillespie's sister karen fresh hour to this point their only involvement in the story
because on our timeline we've not gotten to the attempted murder yet is that they have been trying to help
the gillespies through their problem through this issue of receiving these strange and
threatening letters we did say yesterday that the letters what we do know when they were
being mailed were coming from columbus ohio from postal hub 430. see bus shout out to my favorite postal carrier
in columbus tim williams mr speedy delivery himself pretty badass on the keyboards as well paul fresh hour and
his wife karen lived in grove city ohio they were super tight with the gillespies
paul worked for budweiser at the anheuser-busch plant in columbus ohio he worked there
as a quality control officer or agent whatever you want to call them in 1982 him and his wife
karen and paul they filed for a divorce it was an early 1983 in february when the attempt is made on mary
gillespie's life and i think we should go through that because there's a lot of questions there
and you post some of those questions yesterday first off we need to paint the picture
she's still driving her bus route at this point mary is correct the sign that she discovers is at the end of the
day okay this is not on her morning route this is in the afternoon a description of this sign should be
as such it's a nasty sign that she just she sees spots and decides she's going to take it down
however it's rigged to this booby trap right it's a very crude booby trap she doesn't know that though at the time
correct that's exactly right but what does it say anyways i don't know what the sign says
yeah i don't believe there's a sign until people tell me what what it says so until they tell me what
it says nasty sign don't buy it what do you mean don't buy that there was a sign or a
booby trap no i believe there's a booby trap i don't believe there was this horrible i
mean supposedly there was a bunch of signs and it was there they were all on this uh street but it
wasn't a main street right no this was a main street this is actually not terribly far
from the accident site of where ron gillespie was killed well what street was it on i don't have
that in my notes so but the but but you're also getting the that there was more than one sign there
was no the information i have states that there was one side see what i heard was that there were signs
on both sides of the street multiple you know a couple here a couple there like definitely trying to get
her attention or anybody's attention that would go down that road that could be the case then the issue
then becomes for me and i think other people will feel this way as well if the booby trap was
intended for mary gillespie the more signs that you put up makes it a little dicey that it's going to
hit its intended target the information i have states that it was one sign in a very specific location
that she would have passed through and she would have seen the sign and anybody driving in the area should have
seen this sign as well the way that it's described is that she sees this sign and that the crude booby
trap was set up as such that if she pulled the sign out or i guess anyone for that matter
pulled the sign to tear it down it would pull on a string that would pull the trigger on this gun that is
aimed at the person that would be tearing off the sign however she doesn't tear off the sign
it's attached to a you know like a post she pulls the stake or post out of the ground and then sees the string that is
tied to this other staker post right takes that down as well now on the second post we have
what's described as a box inside the box is where she finds the gun that has the booby trap now there's a
couple different versions of what happens after she takes this down in every version she takes both of these
items and brings them back onto her bus in some of the versions of the story she then discovers
that the gun was rigged up to shoot whoever would tear off the sign and other versions and i think this is where
it comes into question where you brought up her own personal vehicle the majority of the versions of this
story is it's not discovered the booby trap anyway until she gets home and she's done with work and as soon as
she discovers this booby trap she gets in her car and now she's driving off and she's going to report
this to the authorities well i also think that maybe that's the reason why people think there was
multiple signs was because like you said she had to take down two posts well and there's some dramatizations of
this story that do show multiple signs i think the reason why they showed that is to increase the threat level
some would say till midnight michael scott the office the other situation too is this was not
the first day nor first time in fact in years this has been going on for years where people were posting
these nasty signs and we mentioned yesterday ron would drive around looking for them
which let's see when i used to teach guitar lessons we would send a guy out at night once it
got dark and he would put you know guitar lessons call this number all around circleville because normally
if people you know if if we put them out during the day they were going to be taken during the day
but if we put them at night at least the morning traffic would see them well a lot of these signs had to do with
her whatever relationship with gordon massey which is not that big of a deal at this point they're both
not married yeah but it's it's one of those relationships oh well you're as you're together
you can keep rubbing it in their face that the the letter writer can keep rubbing that
that in their face see i told you i was right from the beginning yeah but that's not the issue the issue
is what people what is being posted is that there's some kind of relationship between gord
massey and gillespie's daughter who at this time would only be 13 years old so mary gillespie is tearing these down
not to save her own name nor gord massey's name she's doing it in defense of her own child
to me it seems like this individual if the letter writer is connected to whoever's putting out these signs
then their their target all along has been the superintendent it's difficult to say
i don't i don't know how to answer that or respond to that statement with words i don't think you're wrong
the problem becomes that there are so many people that this thing let's just call it a thing because
we don't know what it is we don't know if it's multiple people we don't know if it's one
individual and if it's multiple people we don't know if they know who the others are
that are doing this terrible stuff right it seems to be targeting a lot of people
from what i can see and yes it does seem to be that this started with gordon massey but i have some strong opinions
on who i think the writer is and i think we can address that once we get through the events of 1983
because the way that the story goes per unsolved mysteries and the local legend and the story that's repeated
over and over and over again for the most part to this day is that they trace this gun back to paul
fresh hour paul says yeah that's my gun but it was stolen from my residence the issue then becomes well
why didn't you report it stolen well i didn't know it was stolen until now right okay well if that's a good
defense i know that this is not a homicide that it was an attempted murder but if a homicide was committed with my gun
and a a good defensible excuses well it was stolen but i never reported it stolen
and everybody just went along with it then we all would use that excuse all the time
it's not believable and then dwight radcliffe the sheriff at the time sits paul down paul says hey i agreed to
do this and he shows me some of the letters in the envelopes that are coming from the
circleville writer and says you know what try to mimic this try to write like this copy it and then
sheriff radcliffe uses this as further evidence that he was not just the person that owned the gun that belonged in the
booby trap but the writer the letters in the envelopes coming from the circleville
writer matched what was written on the sign of the set booby trap and paul could not be eliminated as that writer
in fact radcliffe takes it a step further and says that this is proof that he was
the writer so not only is he the attempted murderer but he's also the circleville writer
they take him to trial and in october the trial lasts about one week paul does not testify on his own behalf
and he is sentenced to seven to 25 years in prison which is the maximum sentence
at that time then he gets jammed up even further because he can't get paroled because the letter writer continues to
write these letters and send them to businesses churches individuals mary gillespie
she gets more the school board keeps getting more letters in fact paul freshauer himself gets a
letter and we know unsolved mysteries gets a letter yeah it's like oprah you get a
letter you get a letter you get a letter look underneath your chair and so radcliffe tells the warden hey
you can't let this guy out he clearly has not learned his lesson he's still writing these letters
well that you know they did the investigation to see if there was a way basically for him to
get a letter out there's that's easy to do it's easy to do do we know do you know what
prison he went to well he was in lima ohio so this would be a maximum security prison
at the time and but the letters were still coming from columbus yes which makes it difficult one but the
other thing too it doesn't make it impossible i mean we have no but the the tricky thing captain
becomes they monitor in these prisons they monitor the in-going and outgoing mail no i understand that but what i'm
saying is if the mail was still coming from columbus you would all you'd have to do is bribe
one of the officers to take the mail for you and then that officer might think well i
get i gotta read the letter beforehand all he all he's doing is talking some [ __ ]
and i know he's harmless because we have him locked up i'm just saying it wouldn't be that
far-fetched to for to have him bribe somebody to hey if i write a couple letters will you drop
them off for me no and i'm glad you bring that up for a couple reasons because i'm on your side
i want to say this though i believe the warden exactly as the warden said in his statement in his
letter that i did an investigation and it is my opinion as the warden of this prison that paul
fresh our is not mailing these letters through my prison walls i believe that statement 100
because they are checking the incoming mail and the outgoing mail and even when the letters continued the
warden said cool i'll play along paul you want to keep playing your game i'll put you and lock you up in solitary
confinement and he kept him in solitary time and time again three different times and the letters
continued during all those times but again i'm with you i've seen shawshank redemption i've read the book
red in there said you know what whatever you need i can get for you guys and what did he do he got him and i know
that's fictional but let's throw this little wrinkle in there paul fresh hour at one point in his life worked as a
corrections officer in a prison in the state of ohio not at the lima prison he worked at the
ohio penitentiary which is in franklin county he worked that job i don't know for how many years
i believe it was less than 10 this was after he got out of the military after he went to college
i always think it's funny when they they get flipped to the other side like for so many years i was the
officer now i'm i am the prisoner so if anybody could figure out how to do it it
would be somebody in paul's situation somebody who had worked as you said both sides both sides of the bars
the other issue though also becomes it doesn't have to be paul fresh hour writing these actual letters that
continue during this time to be connected to paul it could be somebody for him on the outside that
doesn't need nor require any information from paul at all and just keep sending them
on his own or her own to try to make it look like paul is innocent because what did
they tell us at trial what did they tell us in the papers he was the writer not only was he the
attempted murderer but he was the writer that they're one in the same so if the letters
continue then maybe they got it wrong with the attempted murder right let's dig through this attempted murder
charge a bit more because there is some evidence that magically has lost its way
today when this retelling of the story continues [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's nice
[Music] [Applause] [Music] huh lower back i didn't go anywhere well you should have tall cans in the
air cheers to everybody back side to side oh by the way if you would like to receive
some mail from us make sure you sign up on our mailing list that's right that's right we will try
not to send any booby traps so here's some issues with paul's guilt and with his
innocent or innocence that we should point out first off we had several people at his
trial that testified as to eyewitnesses of what they saw that day where the sign
and the booby trap was set up yeah but we have issues we always seem to have issues
the issue became a couple of things one paul did not go to work that day we know
he worked in columbus so that would have been a really good day for paul fresh hour if in fact he was
innocent to go to work yeah i know you know it would have been a 20 30 minute drive for him
the anheuser-busch plant is north columbus it would have been an hour for him to
get to this location and he worked long days as a quality control officer he worked 50 hours a
week up in north columbus yeah but if he didn't go to work and he's coming from his home in grove
city that's correct i'm sorry i was i thought you meant if he was at work but yeah so it would have been a great
alibi had he been at work now he did have an alibi for portions of that day the question then became when in fact
was the sign in the booby trap set up because there are other people that say hey i saw a
tall sandy-haired man in a yellow el camino parked right in that general area and this was
before the sign was visible to anyone else there were other eyewitnesses however
that put paul in the general area of circleville and danville around the time that it is believed that
the sign and booby trap were set up so more for him being in the area rather than
against and of course the damning evidence is that he did not go to work that day
there's also a lot of stuff going on in paul's life leading up to february of 1983.
in 1982 he and his wife karen divorce and it's not a good one it's not a clean break it's not nice and
neat for everybody well then why not shoot her one problem has always been for the case against paul fresh hour as
setting the booby trap attempting to kill his one-time sister-in-law is that he's this nice quiet man he
would never do anything like this however at the divorce proceedings it's presented at that trial at that
court case paul beat up his wife when he suspected that she was running around on him and he beat her up pretty
bad and we know this because we have the police report she has a black eye she receives several
stitches and this is not a he said she said situation because in the court proceedings his own
attorney tells the court it's okay paul never meant to do that he lost control but he's gone to counseling
since and he's gone because he is sorry for what he did that's admitting that he was violent
against his own wife yeah piece of [ __ ] they divorced in 1982 and at some point paul moves on he has a
girlfriend which becomes his wife before february of 1983. paul somehow even with the violence is
awarded the children and the house during the divorce and karen goes to live in a trailer at the back of mary
gillespie's property there are signs that are being posted in darbyville and circleville leading up to the booby
trap sign that are now making nasty statements about karen freshhour saying that she's a lesbian and naming
the woman that she is supposedly involved with even though she has a boyfriend mm-hmm and she goes
over you have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time that's true i mean i mean all of the stories we cover you
can have a husband or a wife and a boyfriend or girlfriend at the same time i'm pointing part of
this out though because there are a lot of people that believe that karen fresh hour could have been
the letter writer well i mean just because there's some nasty signs about her it's like you gotta take a couple for
the team my look when i look at these letters i mean just going off i want to know your opinion
to me the the the writing seems a little feminine um possibly that's you're pointing out
something that's good that we have not pointed out that the letters are not identical no
there's several different styles of writing in the handwritten letters there's also
some that are typed some are on postcards some are on these little weird looking
tag things some are on signs as we've pointed out but yeah it's like even though they're
they're using they're almost like creating their own different fonts but even the one uh font
where they're using like really boxy letters it still looks like more more likely that a female
would have wrote that than a man i don't think you in my opinion i can't apply gender to any of the right that's
because you're not an expert okay so once you become an expert in junk science i'm just i'm in a room full of
experts i just don't i happen to be not be one of them so the the thing here though captain would you agree
that no would you agree that saying that paul fresh our was not the letter writer
does not then make him innocent of the attempted murder charge yeah but it's also i mean the the reason
why karen makes sense is because she would have opportunity to get his gun all they did was uh basically
shave off like part of the number but that would have to mean there'd be some reason why
mary gillespie's sister wanted her dead if in fact it was actually rigged up in a way that it would work
right you know that's where this story gets really complicated the case does get very complicated
because there's about 8 000 different rabbit holes that you could go down and the problem with this case is
the people again i keep going back to who is central to this story and it's the fresh hours it's the
gillespies it's gordon massey and it's the school board where it all kind of starts and the
victims if there are real victims are ron gillespie mary gillespie and at this point karen gillespie you
can say whatever you want to say about karen gillespie and people can think whatever they want to think
i'm telling you her husband beat her up we know that to be a fact because we have a police report it's presented
in court proceedings and through his own attorney admits to it yeah so what you're saying
is karen is telling us that uh paul right correct paul with the shitty mustache and the half mullet he beat her up so
again if maybe look maybe she was the letter writer and it was just she was getting kicks telling people hey
you're not supposed to be doing this you're doing this maybe she loved her sister but said hey you're doing wrong
because i love my brother-in-law he's a good guy and you're cheating on him bad for you right
but then your husband beats you up maybe and let's look if it happened once you start up in 1982
right the letters start in in 76 early 77. i understand that just i know i'm just
pointing it out for all involved okay again i'm not an expert i just that's what i'm saying i'm trying to
keep up you try you when you get your certification on the wall then we'll let you speak okay follow me
on this though you pointed something out really interesting was this booby trap even gone to work
it seemed like it would hypothetically right but it didn't what a great way to frame the son of a [ __ ] that has
beat you probably multiple times you see what i'm saying you're now done you're you're out of the relationship
for all you for all we know he can't let it go he he might still be harassing her here
and there and she goes hey i'm going to set this trap up with his gun and he's going to go
to jail for this i agree if paul fresh hour was set up it had to be somebody extremely close to him somebody that had
note the thing is you know that we're right you're talking to a you're talking to a
room full of people and i don't mean here in the garage i mean i don't believe for a second that there
was anything short of at least half a dozen people writing these letters really because why would karen fresh our
why would she be the original letter writer i don't believe the person that started the letter campaign
and back in 77 was the same person that was still writing the letters in the late 90s yeah if
there's hundreds maybe a thousand of these letters yeah you're gonna have multiple
writers because also it'd be so easy like you hate your job your boss is a little bit of a [ __ ]
muffin so you're like hey i'm going to write them a note get all my grievances out get my point
across and they'll just assume it's a part of these other letters so i'm covering i'm going to be covering
myself up well the issue for me becomes with karen being the letter writer for the
entire campaign if if she's upset about an affair why wouldn't she just tell her
brother there's no point in mailing a letter to gord massey and take it a step further yeah but if
you start with that hey i know hey you stay away it's easier to send them a threatening
letter but not say stay away from you would you not want your brother to to know
you just want the affair to end and it's it's probably maybe it's better he doesn't know
yeah yeah because where my mind goes is you just tell the if you really care about them you just
tell them hey i think this is going on or i know it's going on because of a b and c the other tricky
thing too is somebody definitely had some kind of insider knowledge of the the school buses the high school
the superintendent and the employees there i don't know unless she's being fed that
information from mary gillespie i don't know that karen would know that information
and it's equally difficult to believe that paul freshauer would know that information
where i don't think that paul i think that paul was the letter writer for a portion
of this story but i don't think that he was the letter writer when it first started
but that's what i'm saying with so many letters it's it's it really puts law enforcement
or any armchair detective at a loss i mean you're going to be chasing your tail we have businesses that were written to
we're talking about three or four lines sent to him on on basically a post-it note right
i think a lot of those are just random people that knew hey as long as i go up to
columbus and send it from columbus people are going to assume this shit's coming from
the circleville letter writer well in some cases they're just simply placed in mailboxes they weren't mailed at all
right the early letters were all coming from columbus the letters the majority of the letters that were
being sent and received while paul was in prison are coming from columbus but not all 1000 are actually
mailed and through the through the system itself well the but the reason why you want to
tell your brother-in-law is that you're well it's your brother it's not your brother-in-law
if you're karen yes if you're karen then it's your brother is your you're now taking um
guilt away and and people that are they're obviously if they're having this affair
they have guilt because they're obviously not telling people they don't know exactly what they want
to do with their lives or kind of using their spouses as they continue to have this affair and
you're just you're now just creating pain where if you can get to your sister-in-law if you can get to the
other guy that's having the affair and you can get one of them to see the light that maybe the affair
will just stop he doesn't have to know about it he doesn't have to be in pain about it
um and they could just move forward but you end up telling him anyway well because nobody
nobody did anything see what i'm saying so you kind of gave them the chance and they didn't and so
you also can't know that mary would open the letter address to her you see what i mean it gets very
complicated very quickly when you try to assign a certain person to being the letter writer
no no yeah no and it works that way for every single person you try to apply it to
not just karen it works that way for paul for mary for gordon for a lot of other people
involved and i think the reason why it works out that way is a the letter writer constantly contradicts
themselves the threat to gordon massey hey if you don't do this i'm going to go to the
school board but then you don't give him time to do anything about it you just go to the
school board hey if you don't marry if you don't come out with this affair i'm going to go to the school
board well you've already gone to the school board uh and then you tell the husband but
what's the husband supposed to do he's not he's supposed to end the affair it seems to be the original letter
writer was more concerned about ending the affair rather than actual consequences for any of these people
well i actually think that like i said there's there's probably a lot of letters that we've never seen that
the public has never seen because nobody came forward and said hey i got this letter
talking about this affair i had uh with so and so because they never came forward with that letter
and i think if we had all those early letters we'd have a better idea of who was who was writing these
but again the problem with this case is once you get all these letters out there
and like i said if i think my boss is the biggest you know douche in the world right
i can write him a letter in this style and and get away with it and how many other
people in that town decided i can do the same thing now take that same logic and go
in 82 i'm beat up by this little [ __ ] of a man that thinks he can put his hands on women whenever he wants
and uh i'm tired of his [ __ ] and maybe he's threatening her even afterwards and decides to set him
up it's not impossible i find i find it difficult there again to believe that karen would
be the letter writer based off of the nasty things that were said about her on the side no no did you not hear
what i said has nothing to do with her being the letter writer it's now opportunity oh some people are
questioning whether paul is the letter writer let me set up this scenario using his gun that i stole from him
right and make it seem like these signs were set up and it didn't seem like there was a lot
of eyewitnesses that saw those signs there's some reports of oh yeah i think i might have saw this i might saw this
but but then she collects that evidence and what did she find a booby trap that does not work for
whatever reason and she takes it back and just so happens to be paul's gun and what a great way for
you know karen or possibly mary and karen to set up uh so this son of a [ __ ] goes to jail
see what i'm saying oh i agree beat up my sister and she came to me and said hey we're gonna
i got this little ruse because they're not gonna put him behind bars they're not gonna protect me i'm gonna
protect myself i could totally see going okay yeah that makes a lot of sense and then it's his gun and if they think
he's the writer this guy goes to jail i get what you're saying and many people have thought that
and it's certainly an interesting angle to look at many people have said you know what maybe paul is innocent here
and maybe paul's the actual hero and karen is the villain all along that we should have been looking for
when we thought paul was the villain well i mean paul's paul's a villain in my eyes i mean you
don't put your hands on women there's a couple things that get again conveniently left out from the story
along the way one the incident of paul actually being a violent man on record when people say he's not capable of such
horrible things so the gun itself is lab tested so they can come up with the serial number to
trace where it came from they cha they trace it to a sale at a pawn shop in columbus
and it's proven that that pawn shop sold the gun to paul fresh hour that's not really in question because
paul admits to the sheriff yes in fact that is my gun but it was stolen and i don't know when
it was stolen why didn't you ever report it stolen uh i don't know why because i think no
it was stolen yes that's fair right however he does say that his home was burglarized
so i again i that's where he loses me a little bit is there a report of this burglary
it was there an insurance claim of this burglary those are things that i could not find
if he chose not to report the burglary why the other thing that gets lost along the
way is when we go back to the writer and and when we look at paul's guilt again we've
both agreed that whether whether or not he was the writer at any time during this story
has little to do with him actually being guilty he doesn't have to be the writer and be
guilty of this attempted murder the thing that gets really tricky with this when you think about how many possible
writers there were along the way is we have a situation where four people readily admit we were receiving letters
ron and mary gillespie and the four of us took action we took actions into our own
hands and decided we are going to send some anonymous letters to the person we think is writing them to us
right there we see a chain of events that sets into place multiple writers how many other people received
letters and thought they knew who was sending them the letter and anonymously wrote them and then that
person anonymously writes somebody else and then somebody else and it continues on and on and on a
great this reminds me of another great book needful things where somebody does something wrong to
one person they assume somebody else did it to him they wronged that person and then that person wronged somebody
else and somebody else and then somebody else and the circle and cycle continues and it grows and it gets more
vicious as it goes oh again that's the funny thing about where it happened circleville the
difficult thing against paul fresh hour is one he admitted that with that group of
four that they sent several letters anonymous letters later according to dwight radcliffe
sheriff dwight radcliffe paul fresh hour this is before he was convicted before his trial during
interrogation admits to dwight radcliffe as to sending 40 to 50 of the 1000 circleville writer letters this is
magically left from the story as well paul fresh our his original statement to the courts against the
charges of attempted murder of mary gillespie he pled innocent by reason of insanity
on august 8 1983. he later changed that to simply innocent and he decided to fight the charges
and lost in court at the trial karen his wife who may not be innocent we don't know i i can see your point
there captain and other people have brought up that scenario as well but karen testifies in
court that on more than one occasion she caught paul with strange letters one that he had ripped up and tried to
flush down a toilet one that she found stuff between the mattresses she thought that paul was
the letter writer but she also didn't think that he was doing it since 77. i wonder if there's a situation here
captain where paul fresh our went off the rails do we have a situation where his life is spiraling
out of control and he uses this already existence of the letter writer in the letters
themselves as something easy for him to step into to take advantage of a situation
he loved ron gillespie there's no doubt about that that's his own words that i'm
using there he says that ron gillespie was his best friend he's convinced that somebody
killed or ron gillespie was involved in some type of foul play that led to his death
is there a chance that he ultimately believed mary gillespie was somehow responsible for the death of his best
friend and then after his nasty divorce and after he is brought into the light and shown
to be who he really is uses this writer as an opportunity to attack his to further attack his ex-wife by posting
nasty signs about her and attack mary gillespie posting signs about her and sending nasty letters
along the way david longberry who we've mentioned several times in these episodes
he's not without fault here he's not just another innocent person along the way he in the 90s was accused of raping
or sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl and he went on the run i couldn't find
exactly what happened to him or confirmation of such but the story has always been that he
hung himself somewhere in texas i happen to wonder captain i'm not gonna sit here and
pretend to know who the writer was i'm not gonna sit here and pretend to say that paul
was 100 guilty or that ron gillespie died 100 in a in a one car accident that involved
nobody else but it looks to me to be a situation where paul was guilty of what he was charged with
and ron's unfortunate ending was probably just an accident i also think that there's a good strong
chance david longberry who resigned in 1981 and who worked for the school system in
76 and 77 78 and leading up to 1981 knew the inner workings of such he may have been the writer or one of
the writers in the beginning i think paul was probably one of the writers at some point along the way
maybe in 82 83 maybe he figured out a way to continue to write them or had someone on the outside
that's the other thing here too that i think gets missed people assume because the letters
continued that it couldn't have been paul they also assume that he had to have been getting letters out of prison he
doesn't somebody could have helped him on the outside with getting no information from
paul at all no help from paul at all mm-hmm nothing oh well even when people say well he got
a letter i mean if he was the letter writer he could just go well look guys i got a letter
so i just yeah it's he does this hey guys i got a letter i just finished writing it
no but but that's what makes this case so complicated like like what you're saying is there
one writer or multiple writers and are the writers even aware of each other or are they all using each other as a
pawn to not be caught as the main writer and a lot of times we should point out the light the
writer's not committing any actual crime right to send somebody a letter saying hey i know your secrets
that's not a crime sounds like a good time you have this whole situation with this car accident
was that caused or was it an accident was it so that there that becomes a twist and then you have this whole possible
booby trap that was set up and then how many other little stories that have just been left behind in the
past of the circleville letter writer of other possible wrongdoings happening one of
the stories that has been left behind and i would like to highlight it before we wrap up here today captain
is that in march of 1992 chief mckean he's the police chief in grove city where paul fresh our
one time lived he actually went back there and lived after he got out of prison and he passed away while still living in
grove city all those years later but in march of 1992 the police chief of grove city
receives a letter that says that mary gillespie is responsible for the letters but includes this tidbit of information
whoever killed ron gillespie is also the person who killed a woman named vicky koch
i agree with all the people out there that say that this mystery is super intriguing and super fascinating
what i don't love and i know that they're pushing a different product we have true crime here
in the garage but what is often said is that the circleville letter writer is the greatest mystery
in the history of the state of ohio or one of the greatest mysteries in the state of ohio i would like to
point out regardless of whatever this letter said i don't have the exact wording in
front of me that was received by the grove city police department but it did say whoever killed ron
gillespie also killed vicky koch vicki koch her murder is still unsolved to this day and she was killed
in pickaway county and this is from dave yost the ohio attorney general's list of unsolved
homicides their database the details of the case are this on august 14 1980 vicky koch was reported missing
from her residence in circleville ohio vicki was last seen by friends on or about
august 10 1980 after attending an event in ross county ohio on friday august 15 1980 her vehicle was
found parked approximately five blocks from her residence unoccupied neither residents nor her vehicle
revealed any evidence of a struggle or altercation on september 17 1980 a nearly skeletonized body was
discovered in an area of madison county ohio the remains were identified as vicky koch through dental records the
cause of death is listed as death due to violence again her case is still unsolved
to this very day and she was a teacher working in that area back in 1980 before she went missing
when we highlight mysteries of ohio or anywhere for that matter i think we need to sift through some of
the sensationalized and some of the ones that are filled with bright lights and shiny objects
and confusing rabbit holes and look to the real cases like that of vicki coach thank you our friends for joining us
again for another fascinating case if you need more true crime garage in your ear balls check out
our bonus show called off the record that's on stitcher premium colonel do we have any recommended
reading for this week this week we are recommending a great ohio true crime book it's titled murder
and mayhem in dayton in the miami valley this features several different true crime stories
from the miami valley area of ohio which has a rich but gruesome and bloody history
so check out murder in mayhem in dayton and the miami valley by up and coming true crime author sarah
kushel find that great title and others on our recommended page at truecrimegarage.com much love to you
guys see you here in the garage next week and until then be good be kind and don't litter
[Music] you

Circleville Writer /// Part 2 /// 502

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 Letter Writer case, Ron Gillespie's death, and Mary Gillespie's attempted murder in 1983.

Key points

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Hosts Nick and the Captain introduce the episode and their drink of choice.
The Accident of Ron Gillespie. Exploring the circumstances surrounding Ron Gillespie's death in 1977.
The Attempt on Mary Gillespie's Life. In 1983, Mary Gillespie finds a booby-trapped sign that could have killed her.
Paul Freshour's Trial. Paul Freshour is tried for attempted murder and linked to the Circleville letters.
The Complexity of Paul Freshour. Paul Freshour's past as a corrections officer complicates the narrative of his innocence.
The Letters' Impact. The ongoing letters raise questions about Paul Freshour's guilt and innocence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

What would be their motive to cover up this accidental death?

Questioning the motives behind a potential cover-up.

3:16WatchJul 9, 2021

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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