Speaker 1: Early one chilly morning in March of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: the sun was just starting to rise over the town
Speaker 1: of Circleville, Ohio. Most windows were still dark, the suburban
Speaker 1: streets empty of traffic. But despite the early hour, Mary
Speaker 1: Gillespie was wide awake. She was used to getting up
Speaker 1: before dawn. She'd been doing it for years, ever since
Speaker 1: she started working as a school bus driver, and had
Speaker 1: grown to appreciate the time she had to herself first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, before anybody else was awake. That morning,
Speaker 1: she closed the front door quietly behind her as she
Speaker 1: left the house, not wanting to wake her family. As
Speaker 1: she headed down the driveway towards her part car, she
Speaker 1: took a sudden detour to check the mailbox. Inside was
Speaker 1: one single envelope and addressed to Mary. Curious, she picked
Speaker 1: it up and briskly tore it open, finding a single
Speaker 1: sheet of lined paper inside. She pulled it out and
Speaker 1: unfolded it and immediately felt unnerved. It was a note
Speaker 1: written to her in large menacing block capitals, the letters
Speaker 1: so tall and narrow they looked distorted. It read stay
Speaker 1: away from Gordon Massey, don't lie when questioned about meeting him.
Speaker 1: I know where you live. Mary stared down at the letter,
Speaker 1: the blocky writing swimming before her eyes. Gordon had been
Speaker 1: her colleague for years. He was the superintendent at the
Speaker 1: school whose she drove, and just like her to the
Speaker 1: outside world, at least, he was happily married. And yet
Speaker 1: whoever had written this letter was clearly accusing Mary of adultery.
Speaker 1: And it didn't stop there. The letter went on, I've
Speaker 1: been observing your house and I know you have children.
Speaker 1: This is no joke. Please take it serious. Everyone concerned
Speaker 1: has been notified. It will be over soon. Mary felt
Speaker 1: a chill run down her back. She glanced up and
Speaker 1: looked furtively about, but the street was empty and silent.
Speaker 1: She blinked, half expecting the scene to fade away like
Speaker 1: a bad dream. But the cold breeze against her face,
Speaker 1: the rustling of the paper in her hands told her otherwise.
Speaker 1: Mary read the letter back one more time, then she
Speaker 1: folded it up, put it in her pocket, and continued
Speaker 1: on to her car. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm
Speaker 1: Richard mclin smith. Circleville is the definition of an all
Speaker 1: American small town. It's in the heart of the Midwest,
Speaker 1: surrounded by farmland on all sides, but just a short
Speaker 1: drive from the major city of Columbus. Its biggest claim
Speaker 1: to fame is its annual pumpkin show, which draws thousands
Speaker 1: of tourists every year. It's a quaint, sleepy kind of place,
Speaker 1: a safe place to raise a family. Mary and Ron
Speaker 1: Gillespie were high school sweethearts, and after getting married and
Speaker 1: having two children, they settled in Circleville. For years, they
Speaker 1: led a peaceful and happy life there. They were well
Speaker 1: liked in the community, friendly with their neighbors, and as
Speaker 1: the school bus driver, Mary was on first name terms
Speaker 1: with many of the local kids. They had no enemies,
Speaker 1: or so they thought, But the arrival of that shocking
Speaker 1: poison pen letter made it clear that somebody had a
Speaker 1: grudge against Mary, and that letter was just the beginning.
Speaker 1: Over the next few months, the letters kept coming, the
Speaker 1: subject never changed. The writer seemingly fixated on a supposed
Speaker 1: love affair between Mary and Gordon Massey, the local school superintendent,
Speaker 1: and with each letter the tone grew ever more menacing. Lady,
Speaker 1: They wrote, this is your last chance to report him.
Speaker 1: I know you're a pig and will prove it and
Speaker 1: shame you out of Ohio before the author began writing
Speaker 1: to Mary's husband Ron as well, mister Gillespie, your wife
Speaker 1: is seeing Gordon Massey read one especially vicious letter. You
Speaker 1: should catch them together and kill them both. He doesn't
Speaker 1: deserve to live. Then one morning, as she drove her
Speaker 1: usual bus route, Mary noticed a sign on the side
Speaker 1: of the road with mounting horror she recognized her own
Speaker 1: name written on it. It was an obscene message, calling
Speaker 1: her a word she would never dream of saying out loud.
Speaker 1: When she told Ron about it, he got straight into
Speaker 1: his car and troed the local roads on a grim
Speaker 1: scavenger hunt, searching for any more signs. Much to his horror,
Speaker 1: there were others which he promptly tore down, but it
Speaker 1: was too late. The damage was already done. Mary and
Speaker 1: Ron hadn't told anybody about the letters. They were too
Speaker 1: embarrassed for one thing, and they also hoped that if
Speaker 1: they ignored them for long enough, whoever was responsible would
Speaker 1: get bored. Not only did they not stop, but with
Speaker 1: the addition of the signs propping up all over the town,
Speaker 1: the cat was well and truly out of the bag.
Speaker 1: Word travels fast in a place like Circleville and by
Speaker 1: that evening, half of the town knew what Mary was
Speaker 1: being accused of. Humiliated and scared, the Gillespies knew they
Speaker 1: couldn't bury their heads in the sand any longer. They
Speaker 1: gathered up the stack of letters they'd reluctantly held onto
Speaker 1: and went straight to the sheriff's office. The police promptly
Speaker 1: launched an investigation to determine at least where the letters
Speaker 1: had come from. All had been postmarked in Columbus, about
Speaker 1: thirty miles north of Circleville, but given the size of
Speaker 1: the city, that wasn't much to go on. Both Ron
Speaker 1: and Mary, as well as a number of their friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors, were interviewed in the hope of trying to
Speaker 1: narrow down who on earth would want to publicly hound
Speaker 1: them like this. They tapped phones, surveiled houses, and worked
Speaker 1: with the postal service to try and track down the sender,
Speaker 1: all to no avail, and through it all, the letters
Speaker 1: just kept on coming. By the summer of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: Mary was at breaking point. She needed a break from
Speaker 1: the relentless abuse, the stairs, from neighbors, the whispers at
Speaker 1: the grocery store. So when her sister in law Karen
Speaker 1: Sue suggested they'd take a road trip to Florida. She didn't.
Speaker 1: Despite the hurtful accusation, Ron stood by his wife and
Speaker 1: supposedly believed her when she insisted that there was nothing
Speaker 1: to the rumor about her and Gordon Massey. On the
Speaker 1: morning she left for Florida, the couple asserted their love
Speaker 1: for each other and kissed each other goodbye. That evening,
Speaker 1: in the family home, alone with his children, Ron got
Speaker 1: a mysterious phone call. He told his children he was
Speaker 1: going out and left the house. A couple of days
Speaker 1: into their trip, on August nineteenth, Mary received an urgent
Speaker 1: call from the Circleville Sheriff's office. She picked up the
Speaker 1: receiver eagerly. Surely they wouldn't be calling her unless they'd
Speaker 1: finally cracked the case, she thought, But the Sheriff's voice
Speaker 1: was solemn. He asked Mary if she was sitting down,
Speaker 1: and then he told her that her husband, Ron was dead.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ray Carroll was no stranger to grisly sights. He'd
Speaker 1: been the Pickaway County coroner for long enough that not
Speaker 1: much phazed him. But as he pulled up to the
Speaker 1: scene just off Route three that evening, he had to
Speaker 1: take a moment to steal himself. The pickup truck was
Speaker 1: almost unrecognizable, twisted and warped and upside down, its remnants
Speaker 1: wrapped around a tree on the side of the freeway.
Speaker 1: He could just barely make out the silhouette of the driver,
Speaker 1: crumpled on the ground a few feet from the truck.
Speaker 1: He'd been ejected through the windshield as the vehicle flipped over,
Speaker 1: and the ground surrounding him was covered in shattered glass.
Speaker 1: The paramedics at the scene had done all they could.
Speaker 1: Everybody there knew it was a lost cause, but it
Speaker 1: was doctor Carroll's job to confirm the ugly truth. It
Speaker 1: didn't take him long. After checking for a heartbeat, respiration,
Speaker 1: and corneal reflex, he pronounced Ron Gillespie, husband and father
Speaker 1: of two, dead at the age of thirty five. During
Speaker 1: the full autopsy, doctor Carroll established that Ron had suffered
Speaker 1: massive internal injuries in the crash, so severe that he'd
Speaker 1: likely died within minutes. He also found that Ron's blood
Speaker 1: alcohol level was almost twice the legal limit. So there
Speaker 1: was the explanation he thought tragic, entirely preventable, but easy
Speaker 1: to understand. When he filled out his official report, doctor
Speaker 1: Carroll marked the cause of death as an accident caused
Speaker 1: by driving under the influence. As far as the authorities
Speaker 1: were concerned, that was the end of it. Perhaps Ron
Speaker 1: didn't believe his wife after all when she said there
Speaker 1: was no truth to the rumors of her affair and
Speaker 1: it had all been too much for him. To Ron's
Speaker 1: loved ones, however, this version of events made no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of Ron's death, Mary leaned on her
Speaker 1: in laws for support. Karen Sue, Ron's sister, had been
Speaker 1: with her in Florida when the terrible news came in. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Karen Sue's husband, Paul fresh Hour, was becoming increasingly suspicious
Speaker 1: about the official narrative. The two couples socialized often, and
Speaker 1: Paul knew that Ron was not a heavy drinker. Getting
Speaker 1: behind the wheel of a truck intoxicated. It just didn't
Speaker 1: add up, and that wasn't the only thing driving Paul's doubts.
Speaker 1: At the scene of Ron Gillespie's crash, underneath his body,
Speaker 1: police found a point twenty two caliber revolver. Analysis later
Speaker 1: showed that the gun had been fired. To Paul. This
Speaker 1: was a literal smoking gun. He was adamant that Ron's
Speaker 1: death was no accident and that it was somehow related
Speaker 1: to the vicious letter campaign. He went to the sheriff
Speaker 1: and begged him to re examine the case, insisting that
Speaker 1: he knew what had really happened. Clearly, Ron had fired
Speaker 1: that revolver in a last desperate attempt to defend himself
Speaker 1: seconds before he was murdered. Though the Pickaway County sheriff
Speaker 1: had been investigating the poison pen letters for months, he
Speaker 1: saw no connection between that mystery and Ron's tragic death.
Speaker 1: He certainly didn't buy the idea that he'd been murdered.
Speaker 1: To him, Paul fresh Hour seemed like a loon, but
Speaker 1: he did feel terrible for poor Mary Gillespie, who'd been
Speaker 1: through more trauma in a year than anyone should suffer
Speaker 1: in a lifetime. And it wasn't over yet. Despite Ron's death,
Speaker 1: the letters kept on coming. Clearly the author didn't care
Speaker 1: that they were tormenting a newly widowed mother of two.
Speaker 1: As far as they were concerned, Mary was an adulterer
Speaker 1: and deserved to be punished. And there was only one
Speaker 1: person alive who really understood what Mary was going through.
Speaker 1: Local school superintendent Gordon Massey. Although Gordon hadn't received any
Speaker 1: letters himself, he'd been openly named as Mary's alleged lover,
Speaker 1: and just like Mary, he'd had to deal with the
Speaker 1: relentless small town gossip the way conversations seemed to mysteriously
Speaker 1: stop as soon as he walked into a room, not
Speaker 1: to mention having to explain himself to his own partner.
Speaker 1: Up to that point, both Mary and Gordon always denied
Speaker 1: that they'd ever had an affair. It'll never be known
Speaker 1: if that was true, but what is known is that
Speaker 1: after Mary's husband, Ron's death, things changed. The Circleville letters
Speaker 1: had seemingly become a self fulfilling prophecy, as Mary and
Speaker 1: Gordon did then start to see each other. Unsurprisingly, this
Speaker 1: only added fuel to the fire. When this salacious revelation
Speaker 1: started doing the rounds, more and more venomous letters were
Speaker 1: sent to Mary's friends and family, to local businesses, even
Speaker 1: to her children's school. Some letters even included direct threats
Speaker 1: to Mary's children. It's your daughter's turn to pay for
Speaker 1: what you've done, said one, while in another the writer
Speaker 1: openly threatened to put a bullet in the child's head.
Speaker 1: The police investigation into the letters had petered out by
Speaker 1: this point with no solid leads at all, so Mary
Speaker 1: had little option but to do her best to ignore
Speaker 1: them and try and get on with her life. But
Speaker 1: as it soon turned out, the author of the letters
Speaker 1: didn't take kindly to being ignored. By February of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three were looking up for Mary. It had been
Speaker 1: almost six years since the first of what would come
Speaker 1: to be known as the Circleville letters were sent to her,
Speaker 1: and five and a half since she'd lost ron Through
Speaker 1: it all, she'd somehow managed to remain sane now. Whenever
Speaker 1: an envelope showed up in her mailbox with that familiar
Speaker 1: blocky scrawl, she didn't entertain it at all. She simply
Speaker 1: threw it away without reading its contents, and over time
Speaker 1: their power over her dwindled. She could go entire days
Speaker 1: without thinking about the letters at all, and so it
Speaker 1: was when in the afternoon of February seventh, Mary climbed
Speaker 1: into her empty school bus and set out to do
Speaker 1: her usual afternoon pickups. She'd been serving the same local
Speaker 1: schools for so many years now that she could probably
Speaker 1: drive this route blindfolded. But just as she was approaching
Speaker 1: a left turn, something caught her eye, a flash of
Speaker 1: white in her peripheral vision, an object that shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: A cold knot of dread formed in her stomach as
Speaker 1: her body reacted fiscerally to a sickeningly familiar sight. It
Speaker 1: was another sign written in that unmistakable aggressive handwriting, pinned
Speaker 1: onto a nearby fence. The message was obscene, violent, and
Speaker 1: this time it wasn't about Mary. It was about her
Speaker 1: thirteen year old daughter. Gripping the steering wheel hard to
Speaker 1: keep her hands from shaking, Mary pulled the bus over
Speaker 1: to the side of the road and switched off the engine.
Speaker 1: She clambered out onto the sidewalk, looking nervously about to
Speaker 1: see if anyone else was there. As her mind raised,
Speaker 1: she walked brit over to the sign and was just
Speaker 1: about to wrench it down when she felt the weight
Speaker 1: of something solid behind it. After a confused moment, she
Speaker 1: realized that there was a wooden box behind the sign,
Speaker 1: attached to it with twine. When she finally got the
Speaker 1: contraption off the fence, she tried to pry it open,
Speaker 1: but the twine was heavy duty and wound too tightly
Speaker 1: around the box. As Mary wrestled with it, she heard
Speaker 1: the sound of a car approaching. Terrified at the thought
Speaker 1: of being seen next to the sign, she quickly hid
Speaker 1: the box under her coat and hurried back into the bus.
Speaker 1: When Mary made it home later that evening, she was
Speaker 1: finally able to get into the mysterious box. With her
Speaker 1: heart pounding, she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut
Speaker 1: through the twine, then yanked open the lid. Looking down,
Speaker 1: her eyes widened in terror at the sight of a
Speaker 1: loaded pistol primed to go off. There was no denying
Speaker 1: what she was looking at. The box was a booby
Speaker 1: trap designed to kill her. When she took the box
Speaker 1: to the Sheriff's office, the officers there confirmed it. The
Speaker 1: gun had been clumsily rigged up to a spring mechanism
Speaker 1: seemingly designed to make it fire as soon as the
Speaker 1: sign was pulled down from the fence. Fortunately for Mary,
Speaker 1: the trap had failed. Though the Circleville Letter's investigation had
Speaker 1: lain dormant for years, this dramatic new piece of evidence
Speaker 1: revived it instantly. The sheriff sent the trap to Ohio's
Speaker 1: Bureau of Criminal Investigation for expert analysis. The serial number
Speaker 1: on the gun had been partially filed off to prevent
Speaker 1: it from being traced, but it was a shoddy job,
Speaker 1: so investigators were able to restore it, and when they
Speaker 1: ran it through their system, the name of the owner
Speaker 1: came up right away. The gun belonged to none other
Speaker 1: than Mary's beloved brother in law, Paul fresh Hour, husband
Speaker 1: to Karen Sue. Mary was flabbergasted at first when police
Speaker 1: told her the gun belonged to Paul. She refused to
Speaker 1: believe it. There must have been a mistake. She insisted.
Speaker 1: Paul and his wife, Karen Sue, had been her rocks
Speaker 1: after she'd lost Ron, karen Sue's brother, and though she
Speaker 1: hadn't seen as much of them lately, she still considered
Speaker 1: them family. The idea that he could have set such
Speaker 1: a cruel trap for her, never mind that he might
Speaker 1: have been behind the letters all along, was unthinkable, but
Speaker 1: the authorities confirmed it with the seller of the gun,
Speaker 1: Paul fresh Hour was undoubtedly its owner. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: the fresh Hours were in the middle of an acrimonious
Speaker 1: divorce at the time. This was a stroke of luck
Speaker 1: for the police investigation. If the couple did have something
Speaker 1: to hide, maybe they'd be more inclined to turn on
Speaker 1: each other now that their marriage was over, and when
Speaker 1: the police went to interview Karen Sue, she was more
Speaker 1: than willing to talk. According to Karen Sue, she and
Speaker 1: Paul had been very close with the Gillespies when they
Speaker 1: were first married, but back in nineteen seventy seven, Paul
Speaker 1: became convinced that Mary was having an affair with Goaudon
Speaker 1: and Massey and was furious at her for it. Incredibly,
Speaker 1: according to Karen Sue, Paul had been the writer of
Speaker 1: the letters all along. She told investigators that she first
Speaker 1: knew it was him after finding one of the letters
Speaker 1: torn up in their bathroom. Soon after that, she said,
Speaker 1: she searched the house and found two more letters among
Speaker 1: Paul's things. But when investigators spoke to Paul, he denied
Speaker 1: any wrongdoing. Yes, the gun was his, he said, but
Speaker 1: according to him, it had been stolen weeks before Mary
Speaker 1: found it. He had nothing to do with the letters,
Speaker 1: he insisted, and would never dream of trying to harm Mary.
Speaker 1: Paul allowed the police to conduct a thorough search of
Speaker 1: his house and his car, and gave them samples of
Speaker 1: its handwriting to prove that he hadn't written the letters.
Speaker 1: He also agreed to take a polygraph test, but he failed.
Speaker 1: Though such tests have been widely discredited as a means
Speaker 1: of establishing guilt. On top of owning the gun and
Speaker 1: Karen Sue's testimony, this proved to be the final nail
Speaker 1: in his coffin for the police. Shortly after he failed
Speaker 1: the polygraph test, Paul fresh Hour was arrested for the
Speaker 1: attempted murder of Mary Gillespie. Although Paul fresh Hour was
Speaker 1: never charged with writing any of the Circleville letters, they
Speaker 1: played a central role in his trial. The prosecution clearly
Speaker 1: figured that in order to convince a jury that Paul
Speaker 1: had tried to kill Mary, they first had to establish
Speaker 1: that he was the one who'd been tormenting her for years.
Speaker 1: Paul's lawyers tried to exclude the letters from the trial,
Speaker 1: arguing that because they didn't contain any explicit threats to
Speaker 1: Mary's life, they were irrelevant to the charge at hand.
Speaker 1: The judge agreed in part, but still allowed more than
Speaker 1: thirty of the letters to be admitted as evidence. A
Speaker 1: handwriting expert for the prosecution testified about three different pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence the letters, the sign attached to the booby
Speaker 1: trap and a sample of Paul's handwriting. He stated that
Speaker 1: there were significant similarities between them all and that in
Speaker 1: his expert opinion, Paul was the sole writer. Paul's fingerprints
Speaker 1: weren't found anywhere on the gun or the box, and
Speaker 1: he had a decent alibi for most of the day
Speaker 1: that Mary had found the trap. But in the end,
Speaker 1: these glaring holes in the prosecution's case weren't enough. The
Speaker 1: jury found him guilty of attempted murder, and he was
Speaker 1: given the maximum sentence of seven to twenty five years
Speaker 1: behind bars. Mary testified against Paul at the trial, and
Speaker 1: as painful as the whole process had been, she no
Speaker 1: doubt felt a sense of relief when the verdict was
Speaker 1: read out. At last, She thought the nightmare was finally over.
Speaker 1: But after Paul went to prison, the letters didn't stop,
Speaker 1: not even close. In fact, during the decade that Paul
Speaker 1: spent behind bars, hundreds more anonymous creeds were sent. Journalists
Speaker 1: who'd covered Paul's trial received letters, as did Paul. Fresh hour, Now,
Speaker 1: when are you going to believe you aren't getting out
Speaker 1: of there? The taunting letter read, no one wants you out.
Speaker 1: The joke is on you. Some have suggested that Paul
Speaker 1: could have simply sent a letter to himself as a
Speaker 1: way to cover his tracks, but according to the prison warden,
Speaker 1: it would have been physically impossible for him to send
Speaker 1: any letters from prison. All of his communications were closely monitored,
Speaker 1: and he had no access to pens or paper. Some
Speaker 1: reports indicate that he was even kept in isolation for
Speaker 1: large stretches of his sentence. So there are three logical possibilities.
Speaker 1: Either Paul was the writer of the letters and somehow
Speaker 1: found a way to post them from prison, or somebody
Speaker 1: else to cup the mantle after he was sent away,
Speaker 1: or he was entirely innocent. Incredibly, since the Circleville letters
Speaker 1: were not part of Paul's conviction, the fact that they
Speaker 1: continued after his arrest had no bearing on his case.
Speaker 1: After serving ten and a half years in prison for
Speaker 1: attempted murder, he was finally released in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: In one final bizarre twist, the letters abruptly stopped for
Speaker 1: good as soon as Paul was free. For his part,
Speaker 1: Paul maintained his innocence and accused Karen Sue of framing him.
Speaker 1: His defense lawyer even raised this possibility at the trial
Speaker 1: arguing that she was the only person who had something
Speaker 1: to gain by Paul going to prison, but she was
Speaker 1: never considered an official suspect. Paul spent the rest of
Speaker 1: his life trying in vain to clear his name, writing
Speaker 1: multiple times to the FBI about his conviction, the letters,
Speaker 1: and the mysterious circumstances of Bron Gillespie's death in twenty
Speaker 1: twelve at the age of seventy, he died, taking with
Speaker 1: him any hope of a genuine, concrete answer to the mystery.
Speaker 1: As compelling evidence both for and against Paul. The fact
Speaker 1: that the letters continued while he was in prison strongly
Speaker 1: suggests to many that he couldn't possibly have been the author.
Speaker 1: But recently, the American CBS program forty eight Hours conducted
Speaker 1: a new independent analysis of the letters. Forensic document expert
Speaker 1: Beverly East examined forty nine of them alongside samples of
Speaker 1: Paul's handwriting, looking for distinctive traits that they had in common.
Speaker 1: She concluded that he was beyond any shadow of a
Speaker 1: doubt the writer of the letters, but to this day,
Speaker 1: the true culprit behind them has never been conclusively identify it.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by
Speaker 1: Richard mc clain Smith. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard mc lain Smith. All other elements
Speaker 1: of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by
Speaker 1: me Richard mc clan smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook,
Speaker 1: with stories never before featured on the show, is now
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Speaker 1: and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
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