The Circleville Letters

hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of the casual criminalist i am your host here at the criminalist simon uh as always i have a very hefty script from callum in front of me right here i'm just trying to pick it up if you're watching this it's long um zero's callum as always he's written me a script i'm going to read it and uh throw in some of my own thoughts if i feel like it and then afterwards jen is our editor is going to edit it up make it nice and punchy add some music and some images for you to appreciate it if you're watching or if you're just listening to this show as a podcast and if you're just listening to this as a podcast well you get to enjoy the background music and let us get into it this i should say what this episode is all about maybe you didn't read the title which would be weird but it's called the circleville letters uh i've i have absolutely no idea uh this is a cold read as someone described it in in the comments so off we go [Music] the small town of circleville ohio appears like another small american town on the face of things but its history is one of the most compelling true crime mysteries out there in the late 1970s residents of the town began receiving strange letters from a mysterious individual like a low-tech gossip girl i'm innocent well except for a crime of passion this malignant pen pal seemed to know an awful lot about many of the town's 14 000 residents including some of their darkest secrets [Music] i have no idea what gossip girl is i know it's a tv show i had no idea it was about pen pals or anything like that no i mean it's one of those things you see trailers for many times it's like yeah i don't think i'd enjoy that at all so i never watched it thank you not long after the letters started their small town gossiping took a murderous turn so began a campaign of psychological torment which lasted almost two decades and left a trail of ruined lives in its wake it's gonna be someone who used to live there or maybe even still lives there and the people in the town did something to them that they didn't like and now they're seeking their revenge by murder and outing all of their awful skeletons and all that stuff that at least that is my initial theory it could be proved entirely wrong it probably will be because i'm not very smart but who was the mysterious individual dubbed the circleville letter writer that's the question we'll be trying to answer today we'll be diving into a tangled web of revenge plots unexplained death and police cover-ups and more the 70s local legend has it that the first circleville letters appeared out of nowhere one morning in late 1976. several of the towns fourteen thousand residents found in their mailbox a handwritten envelope postmarked from the city of columbus about 25 miles north there was no return address on the back inside were hunting letters filled with private details about their lives the writer dealt out accusations and threats making the recipients feel terrified in their own homes i feel like this would be less scary these days where it's like i know where you were last thursday i was watching you enjoy that beer in the pub it's like yeah yeah mate because i post about on instagram didn't i but bang in the 70s a bit more weird superintendent massey on the 3rd of march 1977 it was the turn of school superintendent gordon massey when he traveled to work at westfield high school a letter was waiting in his inbox the script on the front of the envelope was blocky written in all caps the message inside made him break out in a cold sweat on the surface messi had an ideal suburban life he was successful at work with a loving wife and teenage son at home however the contents of the letter seems to suggest he wasn't quite the wholesome family man that he appeared to be dear sir according to my gf item girlfriend you have asked her to go out many times and have asked the other female bus drivers too 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 and i would hate to do that to prey on another man's girl is untouchable i suggest you find yourself a pimple-faced [ __ ] and start up with her and leave my girls alone okay i mean his english isn't very good that was really difficult to read and also this is already weird because if this guy is writing to so so many letters to so many people i mean this just sounds like a very personal vendetta thing but if it's gone out to so many people then is it more than one person i don't know how mysterious let's carry on in the writer's trademark broken syntax the letter accused massey of infidelity abusing his position to chase female bus drivers behind his wife's back more letters would arrive over the coming weeks with growing intensity in some the writer even threatened to cut messi's brakes and slash his tires if he couldn't keep it in his pants but alas the superintendent failed to heed the warning he failed to secure himself a pimple-faced [ __ ] and the sender decided to out him to his employer dude what are you doing if someone's like you shouldn't be doing this anyway and then someone's like threatening to cut your breaks um and they obviously know what you're up to maybe you should heed their advice as you should have done anyway without the threats [Music] scoreboard letters not that messy was given much time to prove he was a changed man in fact he had less than 24 hours the day after the first letter another one arrived at westfield high this time addressed to the scoreboard the rambling four-page document accused massey of sexual harassment and urged the board to get rid of him the scans of this one are a little sketchy so some of the document is illegible but if the writer is to be believed massey picks on the weak ones constantly it ends with an ominous warning i sure hope he does not upset my girl for his sake another letter arrived at the school later that day claiming that the writer was keeping tabs on massey's illicit sex life daily every detail down to the exact drivers that he flirted with each day this is i mean super creepy of course the school board wasn't about to fire a senior official over some unproven accusations from a jealous boyfriend so the writer tried a new tactic on march the 18th the school's vice principal received a letter claiming the writer would soon send evidence of an unethical affair this time he singled out one female bus driver as another main target of their hatred uh am i missing something why they don't go and talk to the bus drivers like hey female but i mean how many are there how many female bus drivers are there at a school just go ask is the principal being a bit weird to you and if they're like yes someone finally asked me i was afraid to come forward um probably a good place to start but then i guess that already will start the rumor mill and that guy's career could be ruined over nothing um difficult position to be in uh the letter the the they singled out female bus driver is a target of the hatred the letter reads i want to protect your school it has a good reputation you should keep it like that i shall send you proof about driver number 62917 she has a child in school there now i shall prove this shortly i expect him to be discharged you'll see that i'm telling the truth well just why didn't you send it originally there doesn't seem to be some blackmail angle here it's just like hey i know this president is like pressing on inappropriately coming onto the bus drivers um why don't you just include it with the first letter and be like fire this dude what's the angle here from them [Music] driver number six to 917 the writer hadn't just pulled that id number out of thin air somehow he knew enough about the school system to identify mary gillipsy according to her driver number the married mother of two was about to find herself the focal point of the writer's twisted games while the school was being bombarded with warnings about their superintendent's reckless libido mary herself was saving up a pile of unwelcome letters in them the anonymous sender said he knew all about mary's affair and demanded that she end it they started out by implying that the writer was actively stalking her and her family i know where you live i've been observing your house and know you have children this isn't a joke please take it serious that's just a standard creepy dm in this day and age but when someone sends it directly to your family home it carries a little bit more weight yeah as someone i mean i mean i i don't have people telling me that they're observing my house but i've definitely had emails and dms from people who are mentally ill i you know paranoid or stuff like this and it is i mean yeah it's just it's i mean it's sad because you're mentally ill and i don't really know what to do but it also you know can get a little bit creepy out there in the dms i don't i mean generally i just go through my dms like once a month see if there's anyone with blue check mark that's messaged me i mean other than that i don't really dive too deep into them because there are many and they are weird but despite the apparent danger mary kept the letters to herself it was all the more maddening because she denied she was even having an affair at the time how could she finish an affair that wasn't happening so she just kept quiet and hoped the problem would just go away but it didn't so the letters came more and more frequently and their content grew increasingly vicious i know everything call the sheriff he can't watch you forever rt3 circleville ohio 62917 bus number 747301 i shall keep ringing again this is no joke either so if you're not if these people are not actually having affairs and this guy's just sending them crazy letters i i guess if i was in that position i'd phone the sheriff and be like hey this is weird but this guy was sending me these letters and he told me to phone you and say that i'm having an affair that i'm not having what should i do sheriff the writer knew where she lived what but she worked on even the names of her children she must have felt a pang of terror whenever one of her kids was a few minutes late or whenever she heard a strange noise downstairs in the night nowhere was safe but she still continued to ignore the letters so the circleville letter writer decided on a new approach [Music] ron gillips's letter at the beginning of april another letter arrived at the glitzy household this time it was addressed to ron gillipsy mary's husband the writer informed ron about his wife's infidelity and warned that if he didn't do something about it his life would be in danger you're a crap like you've okay i just let's see where this goes that's a double kick to the teeth by the way you're a cuckold p.s i'm going to murder you for it hardly seems fair when ron asked mary what was going on she denied the affair she admitted that some mad men had been obsessively accusing her for several weeks now but insisted it was all some deluded fantasy together they agreed to dig their heels in deeper into the sand in the hopes that it was just a bored prankster two weeks later on april 14th another special delivery appeared for ron uh i'm about to read it but i have to say like if someone sent me letters like this i'd definitely tell my wife i'd be like hey wife this is really weird but uh people keep sending me this whoever this is is crazy they keep sending me these letters because it's obviously better if i tell her that she finds out later like he would have secret gallipsie you had two weeks and done nothing you're a pig defender you are also a pig make her admit the truth and inform the school board if not i will broadcast it on cb posters signs billboards until the truth comes out only pigs ride motorcycles good hunting in your red and white truck on your way to work i followed him for weeks since last summer and have seen her meet him several times you will see this is no joke dude if you have evidence for this come forward with it you're obviously wanting them to do it but just do it it's a shame he doesn't include a return address i just write a letter okay then go for it although i'd be like he's probably gonna murder me isn't he this is just the abridged version the full thing comes off as even more frantic and rambling things were heating up and this latest letter proved that the writer didn't just know their address the lunatic had already visited in person how else would he know the kind of truck that ron drove on the back of the letter this time was a return address 550 ridgewood circleville ohio though the right hadn't slipped up and revealed himself this was actually the address of the superintendent of shagging gordon massey just another little mind game to mess with ron and mary reading between the lines the evidence at this point was pretty thin on the ground all we really know is that the letter writer was based in or around circleville and that he or she makes a habit of spying on their neighbors perhaps a closer look at the letters themselves will be a bit more to go on the first thing i noticed that even though the syntax is choppy and error-filled the spelling itself is actually pretty sound finally a practical use of my english degree some have taken the broken sounding flow to mean the writer isn't a native singing speaker but i don't agree if that were the case i would expect a fair few more spelling errors it could be that they're an educated person trying to throw the police off or whoever off investigator off by purposefully making it sound like a dumb person wrote it but then i mean getting the perfect spelling is a pretty weird thing to get wrong the few which are in there seem to be a bit forced to me for example the person actually wrote you have had two weeks t-o rather than t-w-o other errors include writing school uh capital s small c capital h-o-o-l uh mixed upper and lower case that make me think these errors are a contrived attempt to make the writer seem less intelligent than they actually are callum and i same page on this one like somebody writing a birthday card from a baby for that reason i'd have to say that the letters weren't written by someone uneducated or struggling with english quite the opposite i'd say they are attempts to actively morph the writing and their apparently decent grasp of spelling means it was probably someone who is quite well-educated yeah exactly i mean you don't have great spelling but right like i was reading i mean it was pretty bad then consider the fact that in the second letter to ron it seems like the only punctuation mark the writer knows is the colon he used it about 100 times in place of everything yeah that one i read earlier is just a load of colons that i just kind of ignored the one at the top that gillipsie had two weeks and have done nothing it's just colon colon colon everywhere however in the previous letter to massey and the school that habit is totally absent just a hunch but i reckon the mangled grammar is just a big red heading the font is further proof that the writer took pains to obscure their identity all of the letters are written in glorious caps lock it's always shouting but there are some notable changes between the early and later ones in the first letters addressed to the school the sender has much rounder conventional handwriting however in later letters they use a kind of blocky scroll kind of like the numbers on the digital clock or calculator the characters also become crude and scratchy as if the writer has started holding the pen in a fist grip to obscure their natural handwriting as this just was the time before printers and typewriters although i mean we've talked about it before how printers and typewriters they definitely leave little marks that people would like smart detectives and stuff now to follow although there was that the leopold killers or whatever they called the genius killers who were so far from genius and so you typed it out on a typewriter with a broken key and it's your typewriter it's like dudes that is almost as bad but not quite as writing down your crimes then there's the more concrete evidence attached to the letters all of them were postmarked from columbus about a 30-minute drive north for the letters to come in with such frequency you have to assume that the writer is someone with plenty of free time on their hands yeah they've also got to do all that spying like they're following these people around they're visiting their homes you've got to have time i'm going to guess you're probably not employed alternatively they might have a job in columbus allowing them to drop off the mail every day without arousing suspicion the content itself clearly suggests this person holds a personal stake in mary and gordon's alleged affair for one the writer claims to be the partner of one of the female bus drivers meaning they're likely male curiously the writer doesn't just talk about one woman they make repeated reference to their girls plural either this is another attempt to muddy the waters or they have some sort of delusions of possession or care over several of the women yeah i mean i often at this stage in the episodes i'm normally like sounds like someone's got some mental disease like that's normally what i jump to at this kind of point it sounds like this is a bit crazy yeah that's what's going on and also the writing is so crazy with all the colons and erratic and stuff i mean it might be red herrings or they might also have some problems in any case it seems as if ending massey's career is their main goal the writer believes that he's some sort of sex-crazed maniac bent on ruining the lives of female bus drivers his particular affection for mary just happened to make her a prime target too but there's one thing we need to know now was the affair real mary denied it for a long time and the town sheriff even officially repeated her version of events to the press however she later came out and admitted that she and gordon massey were having an affair it just started after the letters began what no way wow that sounds like some very strange decision making boy does it ever that's wild is that possibly true i mean really an honest maniac starts stressing your life for an affair that you're not even having and your genius plan is to start having said affair i suppose you if you're already doing the time you might as well enjoy the crime but i don't buy it it seems like mary just wanted to keep leading innocent as long as possible and only came clean after the terrible fate that befell her husband wrong oh things are about to get much more serious uh terrible fate i mean look you're listening or watching the casual criminalist you know at some point there's going to be a terrible fate pushing back returning to the glitzy house in 1977 the couple caused called a crisis meeting with their nearest and dearest to plan their next move they invited round ron's sister karen fresher and her husband paul together they drafted up a mental list of suspects based on information revealed in the letters chief among them was a man who had made a pass at mary the year before a fellow bus driver named david longberry the two had been friendly with each other in the past but their relationship soured after mary refused to let it become anything more than that perhaps the circleville letter writer was him venting his frustration at the woman who spurned him and the handsome boss that his female colleagues fawned over that would certainly make sense especially because it explains why the writer is so closely invested in the romantic lives of the drivers and how he refers to multiple women as my girls perhaps he saw himself as holding some sort of fatherly protective role over the female drivers it would also be fairly easy for him to gather personal information about mary and massey this does seem to fit i mean we definitely know it's someone who knows them is invested in their personal life is around them i get the feeling because there's still so many pages left in this script there might not be this dude but this if i was the police i'd be definitely looking into that guy's [ __ ] pretty hard certain that longbury was the culprit the family cooked up a plan to scare him off they found his address and sent him some unpleasant letters of his own they warned him that they knew he was behind the harassment and they'd be going to the police if he didn't stop over the next few days mary and ron checked the mailbox with baited breath hoping that the scrawled envelopes wouldn't appear days went by with no new letters so the nightmare was over for now i'd be like i'll breathe a sigh of relief but i'll be like i don't want to check the mail after a couple of weeks of respite mary and ron started to believe that the unpleasant episode was well and truly behind them but one afternoon driving home from work ron spotted something horrific a sign by the side of the road in that same scrawled handwriting oh my god that is so creepy that is maximum level creepy it accused gordon massey having sex with the glitzy's 12 year old daughter tracy uh oh that is a lot darker than an affair he stopped his car to haul the obscene sign out of the ground but over the following weeks more and more sprung up around town the majority of them planted along mary's bus routes they popped up far faster than the couple tore them down and soon the scandalous story spun by the circaville letter writer spread through the town like wildfire the stress of all these horrible accusations put an immense strain on ron in particular as his brother-in-law paul fresher explained ron was devastated and distraught he didn't get much sleep during that period of time in his life he was frantic and would drive around an hour or two in the morning before his shift looking for any obscene posted signs ron worked very hard to figure out what it was really about and to have all the problems solved these miserable morning chores continued every day throughout the whole of summer until one day ron took his chance to end the torment once and for all oh my god what's he gonna do he does he can't find out how the guy is i mean unless it's definitely the guy they sent is it they could be the i feel like it's the guy that sent the letters to it this is escalation but it feels too it just seems too obvious a dark knight in circleville on friday the 19th of august mary galipsi and her sister-in-law were on their way to florida for a girl's getaway far from the set stresses of circleville that evening alone in the house with his daughter tracy ron received a phone call tracy overheard him shouting down the line frustrated with whoever was calling after hanging up the receiver around 10 p.m robbedgare grabbed his h r 22 caliber revolver and kissed his daughter goodbye he was off to confront the letter writer he hopped in his truck and tore off down the street ron pulled out onto the dark countryside road five points pike about 10 minutes after leaving the house is a 22-caliber revolver like a 22-caliber rifle it's really i mean if i was going to confront someone i don't want to sound like a crazy person but i'll probably take a bigger gun 50 minutes later the wreck of his 1971 ford was found crumpled into a tree at the end of that road pictures so the driver's side cabin roof bent inwards at the left side of the door disintegrated ron wasn't wearing a seat belt during the crash so partially through the window and he died upon impact with the tree trunk wear seat belts psa from casual criminalist put your bloody seatbelt on had he accidentally crashed on the way to the meeting or was this the meeting's crispy conclusion intriguingly the police discovered that ron had likely fired his handgun sometime during the car ride however no bullet hole nor casing could be found anywhere had he been chasing after the letter writer perhaps the stalker had called to say that he was watching the house then ron spotted him through the window and gave chase that's roughly what his family believed they were adamant that foul play was somehow involved whether ron was run off the road or simply crashed while giving chase but there was one more detail that suggested otherwise the coroner found that ron's blood alcohol level was .16 well over the legal driving limit for ohio yeah 1.16 is pretty heavy his family maintained that his blood alcohol readings were impossible because ron wasn't a big drinker but to be honest if your wife's affair was talk of the town and a maniac was threatening you and your kids because of it there's a solid chance you'd be stashing a few secret bottles of vodka around the house before too long yes the more likely scenario is that ron drove off in a rage perhaps the call really was the writer or just prankster calling to mock run after hearing the gossip that had saturated the town whatever the case he set out for revenge fired his gun out of the window in anger then careened right through the tea junction and into the tree it was all just a tragic accident brought on by stress and whiskey unless that's exactly what they want us to believe the conspiracy theory so who are they well i'm not entirely sure who or why for that matter in fact it doesn't seem like anybody could offer up any particularly convincing explanations for the allegations of a police cover-up nonetheless ron's family considered it a very likely possibility paul fraschu once recalled the sheriff agreed with me that there was foul play and then when i contacted him again his he'd changed his attitude completely the police ended up ruling the whole thing an accident they apparently did have a suspect at first he was never named but the person managed to pass polograph test why are we always talking about polygraph tests they don't work stop it with the polygraph tests christ we can only assume this was the bus driver longbury without any physical evidence at the scene to suggest otherwise i'd have to say that this sounds pretty well case closed all we're really going on is the fact that his family never knew ron was a drinker i reckon otherwise especially since some have speculated that he knew the affair was real and the man sleeping with his missus was flying down to florida to meet her that weekend if my wife was going away to hook up with her boyfriend leaving me to deal with the psychotic stalker for the weekend the first thing i'd do is get absolutely hammered yeah it's like oh [ __ ] it's not good this is uh he's just drinking secretly that's okay i mean it's arkham's razor here guys this is not a conspiracy theory he got drunk and crashed a scar into a tree the sheriff's u-turn can easily be explained by the fact that paul seems like a bit of a nuisance i see this come up time and time again in dozens of cases random civilian isn't instantly made into an honorary deputy so he starts crying conspiracy and paul wasn't the only one in fact turkeyville's resident room amunga sided with him shortly after the accident dozens of people around town started receiving letters which claimed that sheriff radcliffe was orchestrating a cover-up hul okay callum writes but hold on aren't you the one that's supposed to have killed him why are you demanding an investigation actually the writer claimed that mary gillipsy and superintendent massey were to blame and the sheriff was covering for them they also asserted that this wasn't the first time that he had done this many of the letters accused the sheriff of corruption in his handling of a prior case against the county coroner ray carroll the coroner was accused of sexually abusing children but was yet to face any charges related to the allegations i mean this does sound like it got really complicated and it feels a bit conspiratorial doesn't it the 80s the booby trap if you thought the letters would stop with ron's death and you've severely underestimated the obsessiveness of the circleville writer mary kept receiving letters filled with vulgar insults and violent threats for years oh at some point you just gotta leave town no i'll be like i don't know if that person's gonna if they're crazy enough to follow you to another state or something but i'd be like my life here is this is this is pretty intense it's that i don't like being driven out of town by someone writing me letters but at some point you'll just be like i gotta go i just gotta go fast forward to 1983 and things are about to take another deadly turn on the snowy morning of february the 7th mary was driving along her route with the busload of teenagers when she spotted a sign by the side of the road it was by the edge of a farmer's field just like the signs that her late husband spent weeks pulling down it accused gordon massey of being a pedophile and abusing mary's daughter she received a postcard the previous december warning this would start again if she never admitted her infidelity but to see it happen again so close to where ron died was enraging mary stopped the bus and hauled the sign from its post which she did she found there was a strange box fixed to it connected with a string she carried the sign in the box back to the bus and found that the latter was sealed shut with glue after finishing her shift she took the stuff home with her and managed to force the box open with a tool inside was a handgun popped up with styrofoam and the other side was a string around the trigger this wiley katy contraption was clearly meant to blast mary when she pulled down the sign judging from the crime scene photos taken that night it looks like the box was mounted at roughly the chest or head height she was just one false move away from a violent death now he took the under the police who discovered that the serial number was still visible despite a shoddy attempt at filing it off uh oh the registered owner was probably the person you'd least expect oh my god who is it i don't know there's quite a lot of characters introduced is it the guy gosh i don't even know an unexpected culprit the handgun in the box was resident another than paul fresher mary's own brother-in-law wow okay had he been the one pulling the strings all the time it certainly appeared so but why well a bit of background might help us to understand paul married into the family through ron gillipsy's sister karen however their marriage had been on the rocks for years and the two separated months before the booby trap sign incident mary told the police that she wasn't particularly close with paul and that her deceased husband was friendly with him but not much more all in all he seemed like a minor unnoteworthy character in the whole thing and hardly a prime suspect yeah i mean we is isn't this the first time we've heard of him in this whole story side character but a few pieces add up quite nicely with what we know so far at the time of today's case paul worked as a quality control inspector of the anaheim bush plant in columbus he would easily be able to send letters on his way to and from work his previous job was as a prison guard at ohio state penitentiary back in 1968 he and eight other guards were taken hostage during a riot and subjected to a horrific 30-hour ordeal before the national guard managed to storm the prison the hostage-takers were threatening to decapitate them or burn paul and his colleagues alive even he admitted that this took a hefty psychological toll on him for years after enough to turn him into a killer though well we need a bit more proof before we go that far also wait a minute has anyone actually died i mean yeah ron died in the car accident but that's probably because he was a bit drunk this guy hasn't actually killed anyone he's just been a bit of a psycho the investigation when the police went to question paul he admitted that the gun was his but said that it had been stolen long ago he had procured it from a co-worker called wesley wells for the low low price of 35 that's about equivalent to 100 today and of course i mean that would be a hell of a coincidence and according to company records paul had taken a day off work when the trap was placed although he had a solid alibi for most of the day after establishing paul's timeline sheriff radcliffe had him perform a handwriting test on february the 25th and the way he did it was unconventional instead of having paul write some random nonsense and cross referencing it with the letters the sheriff handed him photocopies and told paul to copy them as best he could it's a bit like asking a suspect to hold the murder weapon then dusting it for prince right after you're kind of begging the questions like why am i copying out these crazy notes that would be my first question also i assume it would be the question of my lawyer who i would want sitting next to me when i'm being accused of like well at least being a psycho and possibly murder or manslaughter or have you wanted to find that death of course when paul was finished his writing was a dead match because that's literally what he was told to produce despite widespread criticism sheriff radcliffe was able to use this as the basis for an arrest sheriff radcliffe what are you up to paul was officially charged with the attempted murder of mary gillipsy trial paul prepared the case by checking himself into the southwest mental health center planning to bleed insanity but eventually dropped the idea instead he simply plead not guilty when the case went to trial the prosecution provided further proof that paul was the poisonous pen pal that they've been looking for i don't really think that the original proof is much to go on also he had an alibi the gun is suspicious granted but i don't think it's this dude they are handwriting experts testify that samples from his employee records at anizer bush were a match for 494 of the documents we don't have an exact figure of how many were sent by then but this probably accounts for the majority on top of that the jury listened to a treasure trove of circumstantial evidence pointing towards him well okay so the handwriting at his anheuser-busch job matching the letters that is a lot more suspect than the exact match that they got when they asked him to do an exact match although wasn't he disguising his handwriting while holding the pen like in his fist and stuff despite having a solid alibi for that day paul never bothered taking the stand to defend himself his defense came off as weak and he was eventually convicted for a maximum of 25 years behind bars paul were you just not bothered he's like nah nah it's okay i don't mind it's only 25 years it'll be fine okay analysis for me there's just too many unanswered questions to be satisfied with this conclusion okay not just me good cans on the same page if paul was really behind the letters i can't see why i'd then go on to try and murder mary and we already know that the letter writer is clever clever enough to pepper the letters with red herrings what if the gun itself or another one i mean if paul was savvy enough to file away the serial number surely he wouldn't have done such a half-assed job of it maybe i'm giving him too much credit but he a partially filed away serial number looks a lot like an attempt to frame him while making it look more legitimate yeah i i would say so it's way yeah it makes it's just there's too much doubt around paul and then if someone did want to frame him just you'd nick his gun do a bad job of fight this make yeah there's more to this of course the idea is backed up by a key piece of witness testimony which was curiously absent from the court proceedings 20 minutes before mary almost had her head blown off another bus driver spotted a strange man lingering around the spot where the trap was laid tall and skinny he looked absolutely nothing like paul who was best described as a real-life super mario the man stood next to a yellow camino parked by the roadside and pretended to urinate on a fence post as the bus passed by if this was the person who actually planted the sign then the state of ohio just sent an innocent man to prison which would explain what happened next [Music] the letters continue with the circleville letter writer safely behind bars you'd think that his campaign of terror would come to an end however that wasn't the case ah don't do this like criminals yo if someone's just been sent to jail for 25 years i mean i guess it's got to do with ego and you being a maniac but it's like uh i'm just gonna stop now because this is uh yeah they think they got their guy if i just stop now just carry on with my life everything will be fine but uh well no however that wasn't the case in fact quite the opposite happened over the mid to late 80s southern ohio was bombarded with piles upon piles of letters from its mystery correspondent even stranger the letters were all still postmarked from columbus while paul was incarcerated in lima the prison authorities put him on a male band to stop the flow of letters but this did absolutely nothing they're really thinking it's still from him they're being mailed from columbus it's not him just accept that this is not your guy or maybe you look into the idea of a copycat something like that still the envelopes turned up at newspaper schools homes and public offices around the area not even locking up paul in solitary confinement could stop them yes because he's not magically sending letters is he eventually the prison warden himself ruled that it was physically impossible for paul to be behind it whoever was to blame was very busy indeed over a thousand new letters were reported across the state with some even containing arsenic in the envelopes not quite as hardcore as anthrax but i guess you make do with what you can get your hands on they targeted well over 100 people in this campaign of threats and intimidation from school teachers to city officials many of these new letters took aim at political corruption in the state focusing heavily on public prosecutor roger klein the man who sent pulled prison the lessers alleged that earlier in his career kline got a schoolteacher pregnant then had her murdered to cover it up holy [ __ ] that is an accusation it's like oh he got a schoolteacher pregnant that's some fairly heavy sh and then he had her killed oh [Music] the writer threatened to dig the remains of the deceased child up as proof again they poured scorn upon the coroner ray carroll for the child abuse allegations which turned out to be correct carol did get found out in 1993 perhaps the writer was correct about sheriff radcliffe's corruption or incompetence all along all of this surely proves once and for all that paul wasn't the one behind the crimes however the authority saw things differently paul came up for parole in 1990 but his case was turned down due to the ongoing domain of hate mail around the country hate mail that he was incapable of sending but who cares about a little detail like that i do and it's absolutely insane that this guy is still in jail what is going on justice system normally it's the police on casual christmas they're like please come on get it together what is going on and i mean the police had a little bit to do with this one okay a little bit of a lot with the like letter writing stuff making him copy it out exactly but this is a huge failure of the justice system itself come on to rub salt in the wound the letter writer even sent a message directly to paul in prison taunting him for missing out and is shot at freedom now when are you going to believe you aren't getting out of there i told you two years ago when we set them up they stay set up don't you listen at all dear fbi it would be another four years before paul was finally released on parole in the interim he desperately sought help from the fbi begging them to take on the case and clear his name from behind bars he typed up 164-page report of the events of 1976-1983 laying the blame at the door of sheriff dwight radcliffe this mammoth report is actually where we got much of our details from today but we do have to take it with a pinch of salt the main thesis is that at the time of rongolipsi's death sheriff radcliffe was gearing up for a shot at becoming president of the national sheriff's association keeping a lid on the town's anonymous supervision villain problem would probably help his chances a super villain he's a real-life supervillain among paul's other requests he also asked that the fbi look into some of the other claims made by the circleville letter writer including the murder allegations against the county prosecutor klein who by then was serving as a high-ranking judge but that old side of the plot seems pretty half-baked to be honest for one nobody has managed to confirm that a murder even happened yeah this just sounds like this guy's making these crazy accusations just because he was right about the one thing he started with i mean that for that guy to have like had someone killed is pretty intense i mean i know people have people killed but it's just not that common is it i assume not from what i gathered the judge did get a woman pregnant the family confirmed it but details are of any wrongful deaths are hard to come by either it was a fantasy cooked up by the writer or a real death totally unconnected decline at any rate why the hell does paul care so much all of his ramblings about conspiracies in circle town didn't sound too convincing to the bureau either and they never took paul up on his offer so he remained in prison until eventually being paroled in 1994. he started a blog and made regular public appearances to plead his innocence but no further progress was ever made the same year he walked free the letters gradually dried up by the early 2000s the circleville writer had long since hung up his pen and he was never heard from again suspects round up [Music] vaniba wraps up our coverage of the major events in the circleville letters case but there are so many questions left unanswered with all of these jigsaw pieces journalists and online sleuths have managed to piece together some pretty compelling theories and a host of other absolute nonsense too if we go through our suspects one by one maybe we can get a better picture of the personalities yeah i have to say this would be helpful because this was a really long one and i'm confused about all the different people involved so i see here we have them listed and then we have a wrap up which will be a very good way i hope to uh bring all this episode full circle paul fresher first up the main man himself poor poor paul this guy's not the guy he's not the guy i mean the justice system was so locked into him being the guy that even when he was in solitary confinement impossible for him to write letters they're still like that's the dude writing the letters so what are you up to judges the very fact that the letters continued while he was in prison means that it def he definitely wasn't responsible for all of them yeah granted he could have written them before but i don't know it just seems unlikely but does that excuse him from the one sent before his arrest we certainly can't trust the handwriting test that's for sure and paul insisted that all the other expert opinions were either fabricated or forced by the sheriff to make the conviction run smoothly and judging by the sheriff's behavior you know in parts we know for fact i would say that that is entirely possible allegedly then there's the fact that paul received his own letters from the sender perhaps he had accomplices then who increased their output in order to absorb them of guilt i have a simpler explanation though which boils down to basic ugly human psychology what if after the story became media sensation in 1983 the circle for letters turned into something of a fad this was the pre-internet days and people all over ohio may have relished the rare chance to anonymously abuse each other under the guise of the mystery menace i mean just look at the horrible [ __ ] people are willing to do with online anonymity these days indeed i think this idea stands whether or not paul was guilty even if the original writer was still out there it's likely a fair few copycats joined them in the mid-1980s but still i believe there is a chance that he could have been responsible for the original letters partly because of the report he sent to the fbi okay this doesn't often get much airtime in the discussions of the case but it's a really crucial document and something about it doesn't really sit right for me for one paul seems determined to heapscorn on mary for continuing the affair despite the threats he even writes what kind of mother was she he also seems extremely preoccupied with having the feds investigate all the other corruption claims in the letters yeah okay that's kind of making sense that's a good one this is like why are you so interested in the contents of the letters and having that investigated as well when you are in prison like i i think your number one priority would be like just focus on the bit that shows me not being guilty rather than and you also real i mean those letters are pretty good though right pretty good they make a lot of sense i definitely didn't write them but they make a lot of sense if the goal was just to show he wasn't guilty why waste time throwing his weight behind these wild claim in fact if you bowl the entire report down to the main points it is basically the same agenda as the letters themselves okay that makes it way more suspect because i was like he can't have sent the letters but now it's like well those could be copycats and he could have done the originals hmm david longbury let's put a pin in that one for now and revisit a minor character from our first act the bus driver david longberry ah the guy with his girls or whatever you know he's felt all defensive of them or some such he was the very first suspect in the case and his motives and biography aligned quite perfectly with the very first few letters as far as we can tell he was absolved of any wrongdoing by the sheriff however that doesn't mean he was a good guy in 1999 david longbury went on the run after raping an eleven-year-old girl definitely means he wasn't a good guy seems like a pretty horrific human being if he was willing to do something that heinous then i wouldn't put a bit of nasty hate mail past him no i definitely would and i'll be like that sounds you know pretty pretty goddamn mild in comparison we have to ask though why did he start placing the signs after ron wrote a letter directly to him the letters stopped after that implying it was longbury so surely the risk of planting signs would be too high after he was already found out if we jump back to paul for a second you'll remember that he was present at the family meeting when longbury was named as the suspect if paul really were for some reason manipulating his loved ones he could have strategically stopped writing the letters to further incriminate longberry we'll never know for sure but the fact remains that longbury is probably the most likely suspect for the original letters whether or not it was him that planted the signs karen threshold whatever happened in those early days before the death of ron it's in the second half that things start to get really juicy as i mentioned before karen and paul fresher separated shortly before the booby trap incident in 1983. she was cheating on him and the divorce proceeding ended up pretty messy karen alleged that paul was physically abused but the judge sided with him and granted him custody of the children karen then went to live in a trailer on mary gillips's property robbed of everything dear to her some believe her resentment turned into a strong desire for revenge it's often alleged that she had one of her acquaintances plant pools gun in the box leading to his arrest after all when paul went to prison she regained full custody of her children she was the one with most to gain from the downfall yes a pretty strong motivation right there but would she really admit risked mary's life for revenge maybe although some believe that the two might have colluded on the plot while staying together that in turn leads us on to some interesting speculation if mary was involved in the disposal of paul could she possibly have been involved in her own husband's death all of these overlapping suspicions are getting pretty out of hand so let's turn to a proper professional for a bit of clarity martin yant's master theory journalist martin yant is an ohio native and one of the main authorities on this case he now heads up his own private investigation firm that's cool you go from journalists to being like yeah yeah i was really good at finding things out so now i privately investigate stuff during his journalism career he was deeply involved with the innocence project and contributed to overturning 23 wrongful convictions wow good for you martin he strongly believes that paul should have been his 24th in fact he was so convinced to paul's evidence he even wrote a letter supporting his second parole hearing it was yant that uncovered the reports of the yellow camino parked where the booby trap was found a bit of digging revealed that cara fresher's brother owned such a car what's more the man by the roadside also matched the description of her lover this is how i like my conspiracy theories with some proper meat attached yes like a conspiracy theory it i like a conspiracy theory when it's like oh this could be a real one otherwise but most conspiracy theories is like no it's not aliens stop it and do this the fact that karen visited paul's sister several months before while the divorce proceedings were underway she asked to borrow paul's typewriter which he had loaned out to his sister to work on a book she found it out that karen who had never used the device before came looking for it that day around the same time some of the circleville letters arrived typed rather than handwritten ah that is a pretty str that if that's that's not a coincidence uh was this an attempt to criminate paul by using his own machine certainly sounds like a karen thing just to do jan described her as a very very angry manipulative woman who was still planting negative stories about paul in the early 1990s so if angry divorcee karen was responsible for the second episode of the story how about the first she didn't exactly have a motive to name and shame her sister-in-law to explain this yan states that there were probably at least two circleville letter writers throughout the years jumping back in chronological order we have david longberry yet agrees that he was probably to blame for the original harassment campaign it's not clear at what point karen or another culprit took over the duties but safe to say longbury was most likely the one who started the whole thing as revenge for the superintendent stealing his love interest out of all the theories it ties things together the best but there's one thing missing why would karen keep writing the letters after successfully framing paul well by this point it might have been entirely out of our hands the story now belonged to the public and it's very possible that the carpet bombing campaign of vicious letters which follow paul's conviction were the work of multiple copycats these early prototypes of internet trolls helped repel the case to a new level of strangeness and cemented its place as one of the most baffling true crime mysteries out there yeah i mean i agree like who's the main person and it seems likely there are two but then later on when there's many it just feels like people are just piling on it's just the trolls are trolling i agree wrap up whatever really happened back in circleville all those years ago will never know the full truth the story has faded into legend and many of those involved are now dead and gone paul fresher passed away in 2012 never knowing who cost him a decade of his life unless it was actually him all along of course it's also the sort of case that's difficult to get a strong hold on there's always some little detail that slips through your fingers no matter how hard you try to explain it what we can say for sure is that there probably were multiple circleville writers over the years whether two or two hundred so what do you think do you agree with me that paul's fbi dossier sounds a little much too like the work of the circleville writer or do you think that the guy was framed by his spiteful ex-wife or maybe you're an absolute mad lad who believes a conspiracy of evil public officials was behind the whole thing i don't think it was the latter one at this point i'm honestly willing to consider anything dismembered appendices number one in 1994 the tv show unsolved mysteries was preparing to cover this case and received their very own postcard from the circleville writer it read forget circoville ohio do nothing to hurt sheriff radcliffe if you come to ohio you el sicos will pay i've been checking my mail all day and i haven't received a damn thing what casual criminal is not good for you callum you're baiting them if you want to take a look at paul's dossier for yourself his blog is still active at circleville letters.wordpress.com it goes into his conspiracy theory in great detail with court documents polygraph results and news articles backing him up depending on your opinion on him it'll either read as a load of wild nonsense or the desperate pleas of an innocent man so in that regard i do hope you enjoyed today's what film quite a mammoth length episode of the casual criminalist but very enjoyable slightly confusing at points i'm glad we had that wrap up at the end because i was getting a bit confused with all the characters and who's guilty and who's not and why are there so many circle circle build writers anyway that's how it is thank you for watching or listening wherever you get this show if you are watching please do leave a like uh subscribe if you're listening as a podcast a review would be fantastic thank you and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 261,998

Keywords: true crime

Id: wU5m3jTpq14

Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021