She tried to hide it, but that made it WORSE | The Circleville Letters

there is a town in central Ohio called Circleville it's a population of maybe 10,000 people it's very modest blue-collar totally obscure unless you maybe have relatives from Circleville or you are from the area there's a good chance you've never heard of circle bill their big claim to fame is their pumpkin show that they've been hosting every year since 1903 but if you're a fan of unsolved mysteries there's a pretty good chance you've heard of circle bill because it played host to one of these strangest mysteries that played out in American history that started all the way back in 1976 and depending on your viewpoint still persists to this day before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious then you've come to the right channel because that's the focus of my channel and I upload three to four times a week and so if that's something you're interested in I would ask you to gently bash the like button and then subscribe to this channel and turn on all post notifications so you don't miss any of my weekly three to four uploads alright let's get into the story [Music] in 1976 Mary Gillespie lived in Circleville Ohio with her husband Ron Gillespie and Mary was a bus driver for the local school and one day she came home from work and she found a letter that was addressed specifically to Mary it had no return address and it was postmarked from Columbus Ohio the letter effectively said we know you're having an affair with the superintendent of the school you must stop and come clean and tell your husband if you don't bad things are gonna happen to you we're watching your house we know you have children now Mary was obviously frightened she was scared for her kids she was scared for herself you know she didn't really know how to react to this letter so she just ignored it and hoped that it was a hoax and that it would just stop but a week goes by and she gets another letter this letter was even more threatening saying that if you don't stop this now we are going to harm you this is not a joke Mary decided to ignore that letter too but literally the next day her husband Ron woke up one morning and got the mail and found a letter addressed to him the letter had no return address and was postmarked from Columbus Ohio just like the first two letters sent to Mary the letter to Ron said that his wife was having an affair with the superintendent of the school and that if he didn't confront her and get her to admit the truth and get it to stop that Ron's life would be in grave danger Ron is horrified to read this letter he hadn't suspected anything of his wife this was very uncharacteristic and so he went to Mary and he said hey I got this letter what is this I've gotten two of these letters I'm just been ignoring it I didn't know what to do and she aggressively denied any accusation that she was having an affair she said I'm not doing any of that and so Ron believes his wife and says you know what I don't know what this is but I believe you let's ignore this this will go away I don't know what this is but it'll go away a week later Ron receives another letter addressed to him no return address postmarked from Columbus Ohio this letter said wrong it's been a week and you haven't done anything you have to get her to admit the truth otherwise not only are we going to put your life in danger we're also going to broadcast what she's doing all over town on billboards on radio and on TV so at this point Ron and Mary are scared Ron is still standing behind his wife he believes his wife that she has not had an affair this is just some horrible hoax but they're scared but they don't really want to go to police yet they kind of want this to just go away so their first step is let's tell some people in our inner circle just to kind of put this out there and see what other people think and so the three people that were closest to Ron and Mary were Ron's sister Ron's sister's husband named Paul fresh our and Paul's sister so it's a little confusing but those the players here and so while Mary and Ron are telling you know their inner circle about this anonymous set of letters they've gotten and all the threats involved Mary starts to think that she might know who's been sending the letters she has an idea of who it is now we unfortunately don't know who this person is it's been left out of anything I can find online but she decides that it's in their best interest to proactively send this personal letter and basically say you've got to stop but we're gonna pursue legal action and initially when they started sending the letters while it's unclear if they got any sort of response from this person the letters the anonymous letters did stop but that would all change in August of 1977 when Ron was home one night with the kids Mary was out and Ron receives a phone call he picks up the phone call and his kids would say that his entire demeanor changed he went from calm and collected to angry furious he's talking to someone and it's unclear what was said we don't know exactly what was said or who he was talking to but when he hung up he tells his kids that I'm gonna go confront the person who's been writing these letters and so Ron grabs his pistol gets in his pickup truck and blazes off down the road it's like he knew exact where he needed to go but literally minutes later it was discovered that Ron had died he crashed into a tree and he died on impact now nobody else was found at the scene I mean the sheriff and the police unit that went in to investigate it was just Ron in a ditch against a tree but they found that he had fired one shot out of his pistol they don't know who he was shooting at or what he was shooting at but he fired a shot before he crashed the sheriff initially suspected foul play but the sheriff changes his mind he says you know what Ron was drunk ron was one and a half times over the legal limit so he was drunk driving and he crashed but that didn't make any sense because Ron's family said Ron does not drink and his kids said he hadn't had anything to drink that day so at this point the story starts getting very bizarre after Ron's death hundreds of other letters anonymous letters no return address postmark from Columbus Ohio are sent to residents all over central Ohio not just Circleville but all over central Ohio and the letters took a turn instead of being accusatory of Mary although there was still some of that it was the sheriff incircle bill is covering something up it was around this time the people started to speculate that perhaps the writer's agenda is not as clear initially it seemed like they were targeting you know Mary and Ron and then when Ron is taken down there defending Ron so following Ron's death I mean Mary is scared for her life she just watched her husband die as a result of this horrible situation and all these letters are pouring in all over central Ohio with the same kind of nasty language about her and her suppose that affair with the superintendent of the school you know the letters are insinuating that the sheriff is covering something up with her husband's death I mean heard her kind of dirty laundry is being aired out by this anonymous writer all over Central Ohio and this goes on for years and so finally in 1983 Mary is at a breaking point and she finally admits that she was having an affair with the superintendent of the school now she claims that had happened or it started after the first letters arrived that it was just a crazy coincidence but whether or not that's true it's kind of secondary and she thought that that would stop the letters that the first thing that this this person wanted was for her to admit this and stop this affair so she comes out and she admits it and she puts an end to it thinking that's gonna do it but that didn't do anything it actually made it worse so in 1983 after she admits what was going on with her in the the superintendent she's on her bus route driving you know the kids to school and she starts noticing these billboards and signs all over her route condemning her for her actions and saying she's this horrible person and so she got mad she went from being kind of a victim and scared to being mad and so one day she in 1983 she pulls over when she sees one of these signs and she gets out she rips it out and then when she puts it down she notices there's a box that's a part of this kind of billboard contraption and she kind of looks inside and there is a loaded gun that has a wire wrapped around the trigger and the slacks been pulled out of it like it's it's literally ready to fire and had she been standing at a slightly different angle when she pulled down the sign it would have fired the gun and it would have shot her so she calls police police show up they do an investigation and they look at the weapon and they can tell that someone very poorly tried to catch off these serial numbers on on the weapon so it couldn't be traceable but they were able to lift the serial number and they were able to trace it back to its original owner who was none other than Paul fresh our and said the police go to Paul and they're like is this your pistol and Paul was totally cooperative when he was when he was approached he's like yes I didn't report it but that gun was stolen from me but I didn't I didn't sent that booby-trap the sheriff who was the same one who investigated Ron's death he didn't buy it and so they made him submit to a handwriting test it apparently totally swayed the jury they were like you know what Paul's the guy and he was found guilty sentenced to seven to twenty four years in jail and so Paul goes to jail and while he's in solitary confinement more letters are sent out all over Central Ohio and they're all being postmarked out of Columbus Ohio even though he is in solitary confinement in Lima Ohio but no one wanted to listen to that everybody believed that Paul was the guy even though he's like how could I have been writing these letters and so for seven years these letters are sent all over Central Ohio you know accusing the sheriff of this cover-up and condemning Mary for what she did and then when Paul is up for parole after seven years he stands before the parole board and they deny him parole on the grounds that he was sending these letters you know he's like how could I have been I've been in solitary confinement most of the time but they were like too bad you wrote the letters see it and so he goes back to jail and it was at this point that Paul actually he gets a letter this letter was taunting Paul because they apparently had known that he was denied parole based on him being the writer and instead of it being written in the first person like I it was written we we are keeping you in jail for as long as we can basically saying haha we know you didn't do it but we are gonna keep you in jail for as long as we can and they even said that booby-trap is not the only one it's only a matter of time before somebody else finds one and then you're gonna get blamed for that too but following that letter the letters stop and so for three years Paul remains in jail until he's up for parole again and since there haven't been any more letters and no one found any more booby traps Paul's granted parole Paul would maintain his innocence all the way until 2012 when he passed away so in 1993 which was the same year that Paul was released from prison the very popular TV show unsolved mysteries decides to cover this story as soon as they are beginning to do research on it they receive a letter from an anonymous person that no turn address postmark from Columbus Ohio written in the same style handwriting as the Circleville writer it said if you come to Ohio you el sickos will pay and so the staff and crew of this show had a decision to me you know is this a credible threat or not do we actually pursue this or not and they ultimately decided that they had to do it now and so they go into Ohio and they do their own research and they start questioning people that were involved in this case and they come across a crucial piece of evidence that more than likely could have potentially kept Paul from going to jail they discovered that there was another witness that was never brought forward despite she made herself available she was not used in the trial and was basically cast aside but she was also another she was a bus driver and she was on the same route as married and before Mary went to that booby-trap sign and and ripped it down and almost was shot this bus driver was ahead of Mary and when she passed by she saw there was a yellow flashy El Camino sports car parked near the sign and standing outside of the car near the sign was a man who did not match the description of Paul fresh hour at all and when she was interviewed by unsolved mysteries in 1993 they were like really the sheriff like that nobody wanted to talk to you about this and she's like yeah I told them that I'm available and no one wanted to talk to me about it so unsolved mysteries they air the episode and nothing comes of it they don't get any more threats there's there's nothing it just gets aired it's very interesting and that's that really at this point you're left with a collection of people the police included that fundamentally believe that there is no mystery it was Paul fresh our he's the guy that wrote these letters that set up the booby traps he went to jail for it and that's that but there's another group of people that believe Paul didn't do this that he went to jail for something he didn't do and one of those people is a journalist by the name of Martin y'ain't and so Martin along with a large number of people believe there are three additional suspects that should have been looked into or should be looked into now that could have been the writer the first one is the superintendent of the school the one that Mary was accused and then admitted to having an affair with the second was a co-worker of Mary's that apparently was infatuated with her and then the third one was Paul fresh ours wife so they were married when the Circleville writer drama unfolded but they ultimately divorced she left him and she ended up getting together with another guy so she's got a boyfriend and the boyfriend matches the description of the guy standing next to the El Camino at that sign in 1983 and one of this guy's relatives owned a yellow El Camino but nobody ever followed up the police aren't looking into it Paul fresh hours the guy and they're not about to reopen this case for me the letters that got sent out all over Central Ohio while Paul is and you know solitary confinement to me that is like the number one thing that makes me doubt that Paul was was the guy now could he have been involved certainly I think that that's definitely possible but I think that more than likely what we're looking at here is there was more than one writer if it was a whole group of them but it's just unclear what their agenda was and the whole thing is just very confusing there's lots of people involved lots of drama it's like the most epic drama that's unfolded in the most obscure place in the country but it is what it is and it's certainly a fascinating mystery and I would love to hear what your theories are was it Paul fresh hour was it one of the three suspects that I just listed off that Martin Yan thinks it was or was it something else I'd love to hear in the comments I'll do my best to go through the comments and respond to as many people as I can if you enjoyed this story please gently bash the like button and then subscribe to my channel and turn on all post notifications so you don't miss any of my three to four weekly uploads that look and sound an awful lot like today's story the dark strange and mysterious if you want to get in touch with me you can message me on Instagram my handle is John Balin four one six I'm also very active on tik-tok where my handle is mister ballin same as my YouTube channel and I go live over there Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern so I hope to see you over on other channels or here on YouTube or them but either way I really appreciate your support and until next time see you guys

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 3,412,171

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Id: yL35e5sr0Ac

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020